Yuebei Xu

Yuebei Xu is a PhD candidate in Music History at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Professor Katherine Ellis. Her doctoral research project, Debussy in the Crucible of Shanghai, 1910–2016: Episodes in the Making of a "Chinese" Composer, explores the reception history of Debussy's music in Shanghai from the era of the French Concession in the 1910s to the present.

Conference papers

Mélisande's Water Sleeves: Re-inscribing Debussy in Shanghai, Royal Musical Association Annual Conference (2025)

Debussy's Music in 1960s China: How Criticism of a "Bourgeois" Composer Foreshadowed the Cultural Revolution, Joint Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Society for Ethnomusicology, and Society for Music Theory (2022)

Research interests

Nineteenth-century French music; reception history; global history; Chinese Kunqu opera and Chuanqi theatre;