A man of “a pure heart”: An academic biography of Liu Ching-chih

Abstract

This book is an academic biography of Liu Ching-chih, a renowned musicologist and translation scholar, and a prolific music critic in Hong Kong. Three Library Collections named after him are housed in the University of Hong Kong Libraries, the Hong Kong Central Library, and the Library of the Institute of Chinese Studies of the University of Heidelberg. This volume of life writing is distinguished from average biographies by its reliance on systematic analyses of an extensive array of texts and interview data. The chapters integrate chronologies, narratives, analyses and intertextual connections, with the voice of Liu foregrounded, to present a multifaceted character whose decades-long scholarship spanned across music criticism, the history of new music in China, and translation. Several chapters document Liu’s process of working on his major book projects, including A CRITICAL HISTORY OF NEW MUSIC IN CHINA and A CRITICAL HISTORY OF MUSIC IN HONG KONG. One chapter portrays Liu as a scholar-music critic, and another features his leadership at the Hong Kong Translation Society. A chapter that surveys Liu’s immensely rich array of academic and cultural services in Hong Kong is followed by a linguistic and cultural profile of the scholar. The ending chapter, on the biography project itself, traces the evolution of the project, explains the research methodology, and provides a metadiscoursal account of the writing of the book. The book provides a valuable reference for those who want to learn about humanities scholars, public intellectuals, music criticism, music research, and civic societies in Hong Kong, for those who are curious about the academic exchange between Hong Kong and mainland China during the 1980s-1990s, and for those who are interested in an interdisciplinary approach in life writing research and the genre of life writing concerning in particular scholars.