Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Tianjin, China
About Xiao Shuxian
- Xiao Shuxian (Simplified Chinese: ???; Traditional Chinese: ???; Pinyin: Xiao Shúxián; sometimes spelled Hsiao Shu-sien) (4 April 1905 in Tianjin – 26 November 1991 in Beijing) was a Chinese composer and music educator. Xiao was born into a highly cultural Chinese family, some of her relatives were known people in Chinese history.
- After a period of music studying in China, she went to the Royal Conservatory at Brussels, winning a prize there in 1932.
- From 1935 to 1954 she was married to Hermann Scherchen, a conductor; their daughter, Tona Scherchen, became a composer.
- Xiao spent 14 years working in Switzerland, where she helped to promote Chinese culture with her music and writing.
- Her 1938 Chinese Children's Suite for voice and piano was among the first works by a Chinese composer to become known in the west, as was her suite for orchestra Huainian Zuguo (A Commemoration of My Homeland). In 1950, motivated by a desire to help her homeland's development, and a wish to have a career of her own, Xiao returned to China with her three children, not knowing that she herself will not be able to see Hermann ever again.
- From then until her death she taught in Beijing at the Central Conservatory.
- A substantial number of today's successful Chinese composers benefit from her teaching and among them recollections of Xiao is vivid.
- Her value as a teacher depended on the fact that she was among the earliest Chinese who had first-hand experience in western polyphony, as well as all sorts of compositional technique.
- Yet her role as a composer were largely ignored, as during the most of her lifetime a self-dependent composer is impossible in China, this is not until a few years before her death when finally a concert consisting entirely of her own music were given in the conservatory, followed by the publication of scores.
- In addition to her work as a teacher and composer, she translated various texts on Western musical thought into Chinese. In a limited compositional output, Xiao's style combines elements of Chinese folk culture with traditional Western techniques; she developed it mainly through teaching polyphony in the 1950s.
- Most of her works are written for small medium such as vocal and piano solo.
- The best among them, for example, the Piano Sonatina, can be described as having a neo-classical style.
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