(b Xinmin county, Liaoning, 31 Dec 1920; d Beijing, 4 April 1998). Chinese zheng plucked zither player and scholar. While studying classical Chinese literature in Beijing, he took lessons on the zheng from Lou Shuhua; later he also studied briefly with Liang Tsai-ping. Turning professional on the eve of the Chinese revolution, from 1950 until 1964 he was based at music academies in north-eastern China, also spending periods at the Shanghai and Xi'an conservatories and making many recordings. Having been appointed in 1964 to the Chinese Conservatory of Music in Beijing, he was based there from the end of the Cultural Revolution.
Cao Zheng's zheng playing mainly represented the Henan style, though also borrowing from Shandong and southern styles. An influential music educator, he was author of teaching materials and wide-ranging articles. Despite his base in the conservatory system, Cao Zheng's outlook firmly reflected his training in the Chinese classics. He was also a keen maker and researcher of the ancient xun globular flute, and a great authority on the Yijing (‘Classic of Changes’), whose relation with the zheng and Chinese music he never tired of expounding.
See also China, §IV, 4(ii)(b).
Yuan Jingfang: Minzu qiyue xinshang shouce [Handbook for the appreciation of Chinese instrumental music] (Beijing, 1986), 171–2
Chine: musique classique, Ocora C 559039 (1988)
STEPHEN JONES