Ma Ke (composer)

Ma Ke (马 可; 1918 – July 27, 1976) was a Chinese composer and musicologist, best known for his patriotic songs, including "Nanniwan."

He was from Xuzhou, Jiangsu. He studied chemistry at Henan University, then, under the guidance of the composer Xian Xinghai, suspended his studies upon the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, joining the anti-Japanese movement in Henan. In 1939 he traveled to Yan'an, where he studied at the Lu Xun Art Academy with Xian Xinghai, Lü Ji, and others, and worked to collect and record a massive number of Chinese folk songs. In 1947 he joined the Communist Party of China. After 1949 he was appointed the vice president of the China Conservatory of Music and the head of the Chinese Opera House.

He composed more than 200 musical works, including "Nanniwan," "We were Democratic Youth," "Our Workers Have Strength" (我们是民主青年), "The Luliang Chorus" (咱们工人有力量》), the yangge opera Husbands and Wives Learn to Read (夫妻识字), the opera Zhou Zishan (周子山), composed with Zhang Lu (张鲁) and Liu Chi (刘炽), The White Haired Girl (with Ju Wei (瞿维), Zhang Lu (张鲁), (向隅), and others), "Xiaoerhei Marriage" (小二黑结婚), the orchestral piece "The North Shanxi Suite" (陕北组曲), and many other pieces, which became very widely known.

As a musicologist, he devoted special study to the work of Xian Xinghai, writing a biography about the composer. He also studied the development of modern Chinese music drama and China's tradition of revolutionary music with several books and approximately 200 papers. In 1978 a partial collection of his songs was published.

A festival dedicated to Ma Ke, called the China Xuzhou Ma Ke Art Festival, was held in Xuzhou in June 2004.^[1]

References

External links

• Baidu article (Chinese, last section)