In the course of the establishment of modern Chinese music discipline and knowledge system, music textbooks played a key role. During the publishing process of modern music textbooks in the late Qing Dynasty, the compilation and publication of music textbooks went through different historical stages from sporadic publication by British and American churches, to the compilation of Japanese translated textbooks as the main body, and to the localization of textbooks in China.This historical process not only reflects the discourse context of the generation of modern music knowledge, but also indicates the competition between the eastern and western cultural power hidden in this context.