Da Fermo alla corte imperiale della Cina: Teodorico Pedrini, musico e missionario apostolico

Abstract

The Lazarist priest Teodorico Pedrini (1671-1746) was chosen by Pope Clement XI for the fateful Tournon legation to the Chinese Court, but avoided its dire consequences by fortuitously missing his ship in 1702. Upon his arrival in China eight years later, he was summoned to Peking to replace the emperor Kangxi's beloved music master, Tomás Pereira (1645-1708), remaining in courtly employment until the end of his life.  His 12 violin sonatas—the only known manuscript of western music remaining in China from this period—reflect his contact with Corelli during his early years in Rome.  Furthermore, he was commissioned to complete a treatise on Western music—the Lülü Zhengyi (The True Doctrine of Music)—as part of a massive encyclopaedic endeavour of the Kangxi emperor. His wider significance, however, lies in his championship of papal authority against the Jesuit accommodation of the Chinese Rites to Confucius and the ancestors condemned as superstitious by a papal bull of 1704.  The Peking Jesuits regarded Pedrini as a mortal threat to their very survival and succeeded in having him discredited, beaten, and imprisoned in their house, to be freed only after two years by the new emperor Yongzheng. Pedrini's extraordinary life is chronicled in over 1600 pages of letters spanning the years 1702-1744. These provide unrivalled insights into his courtly activities and offer a view of the controversies in stark contrast to the predominantly Jesuit bias of current opinion.