Chuei-Kuan Lu is an important music scholar of Taiwan. He has been collecting, preserving, researching and promoting traditional music for years. The breadth and depth of his study is second to none in the world of Chinese. He has spent more than 30 years traveling all over Taiwan collecting first-hand musical materials – performances of Nanguan and Beiguan musicians, and the ritualistic techniques and music of the Northern and Southern Taoist sects of Taiwan. His achievements have inspired many others to devote themselves to studying, playing and publishing traditional music. He is a pioneer of the publication of traditional music.

Chuei-Kuan Lu was the founding chairman of TNUA’s Department of Traditional Music, the only one in Taiwan offering traditional music as a major. He created the structure and pattern of teaching in the higher education institution. He believes that problems in education underlie the decline of traditional music in Taiwan, and that has to do with social values. Nanguan and Beiguan music has high artistic value, and it has been recognized and appreciated in many international art festivals. Therefore, he expects that people can be enchanted by the music of Nanguan and Beiguan as much as they are by Beethoven, Puccini and Verdi.

As early as the late 1970s, Lu, as both a composer and scholar, started playing an active role in the Taiwan chapter of the Asian Composers League, as well as in Hong Kong and Korea. Since the 1980s, he has published 40 monographs and 174 papers and essays in various conferences and journals. In addition, he has taught at the National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) Graduate Institute of Ethnomusicology, the National Taipei University of Education, National Chengchi University, and National Cheng Kung University. In his teaching career, he has supervised 101 master’s and doctoral dissertations in the various areas: music aesthetics; cultural and social studies of Minnan, Hakka, and aboriginal music; various types of singing and opera music; various religious ceremonial music in Taiwan; and traditional music in other Asian countries.

Lu has received numerous awards for his outstanding academic contributions and publications, including the Special Award of the 2016 Golden Melody Awards, a nomination for the 2006 Golden Tripod Award from the Government Office Information, and winning the 1982 Golden Tripod Award for Best Music Arrangement. After retirement, he has been named an honorary professor by NTNU and employed as a chair professor by China’s Quanzhou Normal University (QNU).

Since his retirement, Prof. Lu has still been actively doing field studies, and has continued to publish works in his capacity as NTNU’s honorary professor and QNU’s chair professor. Many of his students have followed in his footsteps, devoting themselves to education, research, and work related to arts and culture. Prof. Lu has returned to TNUA’s Department of Traditional Music in School Year 2022, showing students how they can enjoy Nanguan and Beiguan music in multiple perspectives.

Photo provided by Chuei-Kuan Lu