From ‘craftsman’ to ‘interpreter’: educational re-socialisation and identity negotiation of Chinese musicians in UK historically informed performance programmes

This interpretivist multiple-case study investigates how musicians trained in China engage with Historically Informed Performance (HIP) learning in UK higher education. Drawing on communities of practice and musical identity, it examines how students experienced contrasts between Chinese conservatoire training and UK HIP pedagogy and how they negotiated participation in HIP communities. Thirteen participants (nine students across strings, keyboard and winds, and four UK-based faculty) contributed asynchronous email interviews alongside programme documentation and performance-related artefacts. Findings indicate that HIP study operated as a form of educational re-socialisation, a layered process in which participants moved between differently configured learning communities – from expert demonstration and technical refinement towards harmonic analysis, source-based inquiry and collaborative negotiation. Participants reported reworking their understandings of authority, authorship and technical expertise, describing an expansion of identity: technical mastery (the ‘craftsman’) came to incorporate historically argued interpretation (the ‘interpreter’), building on rather than replacing earlier training. Implications for curriculum and teacher development in Chinese conservatoires and beyond are considered.