Trân Van Khê, *24 July 1921 Binh Hoa Dong (Tien Giang province, Vietnam), †24 June 2015 Ho Chi Minh (formerly known as Saigon, Vietnam), Vietnamese ethnomusicologist. He came from a family of musicians where he acquired traditional singing and playing Vietnamese instruments. In 1941–43, he studied medicine at the University in Hanoi, in 1949–51 at Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris, and from 1952 to 1958, he studied musicology at the Sorbonne with C. Brăiloiu, A. Schaeffner and J. Chailley; in 1958 he obtained his PhD with a dissertation on traditional Vietnamese music. In 1959–88, he worked at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), where he was the director of scientific research from 1971 to 1987. In the same years, he was the director of the Center d’Etudes de Musique Orientale (he conducted a course on playing Vietnamese instruments). In 1966–88, he taught ethnomusicology at the Sorbonne. He gave several hundred guest lectures in Europe, Asia, Africa and the United States. He received honorary degrees at the University of Ottawa (1975) and Moncton (New Brunswick, 1999). In his publications and lectures, he promoted the musical traditions of Asia. As a musician playing Vietnamese instruments, he participated in numerous festivals and made many recordings for radio and record labels; released several dozen albums and films, mainly presenting the music of Vietnam, India and China. He received the Grand Prix du Disque twice: in 1960 for Musique du Viêt Nam and in 1970 for Viêt Nam I. Trân represents the type of researcher who combined his performance experience in non-European instrumental music with musicological knowledge acquired in Europe; knowing the musical culture of Vietnam thoroughly, he described it from a general theoretical perspective.
Literature: M. Sarkissian Trân Van Khê et le Viêt Nam, “Notes” XLVI, 1989; F. Guillemot Trần Văn Khê Obituary (1921–2015), https://sites.google.com/a/uw.edu/vietnamstudiesgroup/news-announcements/member-news/tran-van-khe.
La musique vietnamienne traditionnelle, Paris1962 (doctoral thesis)
Musique du Viêt-nam, Paris 1967, 2nd ed. 1997
La musique vietnamienne, in: Histoire de la musique, ed. Roland-Manuel, vol. 1, Paris 1960
Le théâtre vietnamien, in: Les théâtres d’Asie, book of the Royaumont conference 1959, ed. J. Jacquot, Paris 1961
Note sur l’ornamentation du Viêt-nam, in the book of the 8th MTM Congress in New York 1961, ed. J. LaRue, vol. 1, Kassel 1961
Aspects de la cantillation, techniques du Viêt-nam, “Revue de Musicologie” XLVII, 1961
Les échelles régulières du cycle des quintes et leurs déformations occasionnelles dans le cadre du pentatonique, in: La résonance dans les échelles musicales, book of the Paris conference 1960, ed. E. Weber, Paris 1963
La musique bouddhique au Viêt-nam, in: Encyclopédie des musiques sacrées, vol. 1, ed. J. Porte, Paris 1968
La musique vietnamienne au XIXe siècle, in: Musikkulturen Asiens, Afrikas und Ozeaniens im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. R. Günther, Regensburg 1973
Muzyka w Wietnamie, “Muzyka” 1980 No. 2
and articles in “Journal of the International Folk Music Council,” “Bulletin de la Société des études indo-chinoises,” “Revue de Musicologie,” “New Orient,” “Cahiers d’histoire mondiale,” “Asian Pacific Quarterly of Cultural and Social Affairs,” “Cultures,” «Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology» and others
