The only Chinese conservatory named for a composer keeps the composer’s music in its classrooms. Xinghai Conservatory of Music in Guangzhou took its name in 1985 in memory of Xian Xinghai, the composer of the Yellow River Cantata and one of modern China’s most celebrated musicians, and the school that began in 1957 as a municipal music school has since become the leading conservatory of southern China, with its music and dance discipline rated A in the national evaluation.
The lineage passed through several identities, a music college in 1958, an arts school merged with a dance academy in 1966, a joint arts institute in 1970, and the Guangzhou Conservatory of Music in 1981, before the renaming four years later that fixed the school’s identity to Xian Xinghai. Today two campuses, in the university town and the old Shahe district of Guangzhou, house about 5,350 undergraduates and 500 postgraduates.
Teaching covers twelve undergraduate programs, five of them national first-class, with master’s degrees in music, dance and the art disciplines across 21 fields and 62 directions. The school was named a doctoral cultivation unit by Guangdong in 2021, and its music and dance discipline holds A-class status in the national subject evaluation, a ranking matched by few music schools outside Beijing and Shanghai.
Research is built around named centers: a Xian Xinghai research center, a Zhou Wenzhong music research center, a Chinese piano music research center and a Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao music technology center. Faculty include national-level musicians and 23 international teachers, and students and teachers have collected more than 2,000 prizes in international competitions from the Chopin to the Tchaikovsky, and in national awards such as the Golden Bell and the Lotus.
The conservatory leads the region’s music life. It founded the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao music education alliance, hosts a music season that has run ten editions, and stages original operas and musicals that have toured nationally. Partnerships with 27 overseas music schools, from Vienna and Birmingham to San Francisco and Sydney, feed its international programs.
In a conservatory that bears a composer’s name, the music comes first, and the composer still sets the standard. Six decades after a small municipal music school opened, the school that carries Xian Xinghai’s name keeps teaching what he believed: that music belongs to the people, and the people’s music can move a nation.
Data Source: XHCOM Official Website (as of 2025)
