Chinese Classical Music

1. Chinese Classical Music Jeff Cribben HL Music Theory Period 6

2. Geography • Rivers flow from west to east, including the Yangtze, the Huang He, and the Amur. • The south has hill ranges of moderate elevation, and the Himalayas.

3. Background • Ling Lun was the “founder of music” because of the bamboo pipes that he tuned to the sounds of birds. • The Imperial Music Bureau, first established in the Qin Dynasty, was greatly expanded under the Emperor Han Wu Di and charged with supervising court music and military music and determining what folk music would be officially recognized. In previous dynasties, the development of Chinese music was strongly influenced by foreign music.

4. Chinese Music dates back to the dawn of Chinese civilization with documents and artifacts providing evidence of a well-developed musical culture as early as the Zhou Dynasty.

5. Culture • The "official" orthodox faith system held by most dynasties of China is a panentheistic system, centering on the worship of "Heaven“. It has features of a monotheism in that Heaven is seen as an omnipotent entity. Worship of Heaven includes shrines, the greatest being the Altar of Heaven in Beijing.

6. Culture • The Chinese government still has almost absolute control over politics, and it continually seeks to eradicate what it perceives as threats to the social, political and economic stability of the country. In 1989, the student protests at Tiananmen Square were violently put to an end by the Chinese military after 15 days of martial law.

7. Instrument Background • Traditional music in China is played on solo instruments or in small groups. The scale is almost universally pentatonic. • Woodwind and percussion • Sheng, gong, paixiao, guan, bells, cymbals • Bowed strings • erhu, zhonghu, dahu, leiqin • Plucked and struck strings • guqin, yangqin, guzheng, ruan, pipa, zhu

8. Guzheng • Strings are tuned to pentatonic • Belongs to the Zither family of instruments • Like the Guqin, but has bridges • Has around 16-24 strings • Picks are attached to the right hand and strings are plucked and strummed Guzheng

9. Pipa • The pipa is a plucked Chinese string instrument. Sometimes called the Chinese lute, the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body. • It has been played for nearly two thousand years

10. Gu Qin • The guqin is a quiet instrument, with a range of four octaves. Its lowest pitch is about two octaves below middle C. • It has 7 strings, and dates back by legend 5,000 years

11. Zhong Ruan • It is a lute with a fretted neck, a circular body, and four strings. Its strings were formerly made of silk but since the 20th century they have been made of steel.

12. Classical Chinese Music Structure • Chinese traditional art music is: • • written, and largely utilizes a number notation; • • homophonic (generally a melody line with some harmonic accompaniment); • • rhythmically simple • • expressive, rubato, ornamented, and nuanced; • • mostly in just intonation.

13. Western Music Structure • Western art music is: • • written, and largely utilizes western staff notation; • • polyphonic (independent lines of music played together); • • rhythmically sophisticated by comparison with Chinese, triple meters abound, and compound • meters also used; • • expressive and rubato, but not generally as nuanced and ornamented as Chinese; • • in equal temperament.

14. Liu Fang • Liu Fang born 1974 is a pipa player. Born in China, she began playing the pipa at the age of 6. Her first solo public performance was at the age of 9. In 1985, at age 11, she played for Queen Elizabeth II.

15. Bei-Bei • Bei Bei is a Gu Zheng (Chinese Zither) performer, educator, and composer. She started to play the Gu Zheng at the age of seven. • The feedback that she has received as she has introduced American audiences to Gu Zheng and its broad and varied repertoire has been extremely positive.

16. Shen Nalin • Born in southwest of Sichuan, China, Shen Nalin studied composition at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music. • In 1994 he moved to New Zealand and enrolled at the School of Music at Victoria University of Wellington, and graduated in 2000 with Master of Music with Distinction. For his Ph.D studies he is composing an opera based on the dramatic life and writings of Chinese poets. • He has composed chamber and orchestral music for piano, strings, orchestra, voices and compositions using Chinese instruments including The Mortal World for sheng, zheng, suona and percussion, and The Cold Dream for zheng, sheng, strings and percussion

17. Jeff Roberts • The compositions of Jeff Roberts unite his experiences as an improvising guitarist improvising be-bop, free jazz and Brazilian music and is a Chinese Guqin performer with influences ranging from American Experimentalism and the European avant-garde to Chinese and Korean traditional music, reaching audiences through concerts in France, Germany, Italy, China and the United States.

18. Roberts

19. Compositions • Many of his musical styles are with a combination of traditional timings and instruments in mind • Chinese poetry, in particular, is inspiring to Roberts, as he makes his music flow with the theme of poems; also incorporating instruments with different styles • Picture Brazilian-Chinese-Folk-American-Jazz fusion

20. Wandering “Reference to the legendary Chinese Tang Dynasty poet Li Po. There is an ephemeral beauty and scattered ness in the imagery that I find in his poems: an observation of nature here, a memory of a distant friend there, then a Taoist  immortal, then perhaps a ‘nostalgia’ from a past life. Analogous to Li Po’s wanderings in his poems and in his life as a recluse poet, this piece wanders too.

21. “Having lived for periods of time within different musical styles and traditions (jazz, Brazilian bossa and samba, classical, Chinese, among others), I have developed different senses of musical time. These different senses arise from the cultural and historical context of the music. How one learns to listen to and appreciate the music in the context of its tradition affects how they experience musical time.” Time Reflection

22. Current Stance • In Chinese music, Jeff is currently researching and analyzing structure in traditional guqin compositions. • As a guitarist, Jeff is involved in improvisation in several different styles. He performs jazz regularly in Beijing in local Jazz clubs and much of his time is dedicated to performing various types of music • Jeff won a Fulbright Fellowship Award for studies in China. He will continue his studies in Beijing, China on guqin with leading guqin master Li Xiangting,

23. Works Cited • www.wikipedia.org • www.chinesecultureonline.com • www.asiainfo.org • www.itvgou.com • Peking.org • Media.maps.com • www.worldofstrings.nl • www.theodora.com • http://www.china.org.cn/english/culture/151799.htm • http://www.elisabethwaldomusic.com/chinesemusic.htm • http://sounz.org.nz/contributor/composer/1684 • http://www.improvis.org/ • http://www.vi-co.org/pdf/Classical%20China-West%20study%20guide%20_general_.pdf