Music—China | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

In Chinese music, a great deal of variety is achieved on the basis of a small musical repertoire through variation techniques. Metric variation is common in instrumental and opera music, whereby a skeletal melody is augmented or diminished metrically and performed with an accordingly greater or lesser degree of ornamentation.

China's diverse musical traditions and regional styles should be seen as part of the wider picture of music in Asia. Although politically part of China, Tibet and Xinjiang lie outside the scope of this entry, but their music was influential. Many instruments and musical genres, like the drum and shawm (a woodwind instrument) bands (guchui), the pipa (a four-string plucked lute), and the yangqin (a hammer dulcimer) were brought to China from the Near East and Central Asia. In turn, Chinese music has influenced the music of Japan and Korea.

Much Chinese music is linked to ritual contexts, from the Confucian rituals of the imperial court to those of village weddings, funerals, and festivals. This ritual basis shaped the aesthetics of Chinese music, whose emphasis on harmony, restraint, and conformity to tradition is linked to the need for correct, nondeviating observance of ritual. Variation and reinterpretation of existing melodies are prized over creation of the new. However, there are also dynamic, extrovert traditions, especially in northern China.

Chinese music is divided into fine (xi) and coarse (cu), civil (wen) and martial (wu) music. Professional musicians in China, like the drum and shawm bands or the opera troupes, were traditionally low class and disdained, whereas the gentleman amateur musician had much higher status. Likewise it was considered shameful for women to play music in public; few traditional genres are performed by women, though some are valued, like the southern narrative song genre of nanguan.

The ritual music of the imperial court was imbued with complex Confucian theories that linked musical sound to the stability of the empire and the turning of the seasons. This music was lost at the beginning of the twentieth century with the abdication of the last emperor, but court entertainment music has been partially preserved in the beautiful instrumental traditions of Buddhist temples and village ritual ensembles.

More widespread are the amateur silk and bamboo instrumental ensembles often found in urban teahouses. They are named for the silk strings of the erhu (a two-stringed fiddle) and sanxian (a three-stringed lute) and the bamboo of the dizi (a transverse flute). Percussion ensembles of gongs, cymbals, and drum are also widespread, as are the drum and shawm bands. Each region has its own repertoire and style.

The most common traditional musical notation (gongchepu) uses symbols based on the heptatonic (seven-tone) scale. Although Chinese music is basically pentatonic (five tones), the neutral fourth and seventh of the scale are used as passing notes and for modulation. Notation serves as a basic guide, recording only the skeletal notes (guganyin) of a melody. In performance, this skeleton is fleshed out by adding decoration ( jiahua). Each musical instrument ornaments the skeletal notes in its own way, creating a delicate variety of sounds.

Meter is marked by banyan (beats and "eyes," or rests), based on the beats of the ban (wood clappers). Many of these skeletal melodies are drawn from a stock of labeled (titled) melodies (qupai), found in varying forms in instrumental music and narrative song and opera genres across China. The titles or labels of these melodies are drawn from the Song dynasty (960–1279) poetry of the ninth and tenth centuries, and the melodies themselves can be traced back to the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368).

Labeled melodies also make up an important part of the opera repertoire. We may think of a musical spectrum ranging from solo narrative songs, accompanied by percussion or sanxian lute, to the high opera forms, such as those of the Beijing Opera. There are numerous regional styles, but they all draw on the same stock of melodies and stories taken from popular novels.

Traditionally, all-male professional troupes performed at rural temple fairs or public theaters in towns. In more complex genres, stock characters are used, with fixed conventions of costume and makeup, such as the painted faces of the warrior (hualian), clown (chou), and woman warrior (wudan). Labeled melodies are adapted to fit the words of the arias, which are interspersed with heightened speech. A drummer serves as conductor, directing the actors' movements and leading a percussion ensemble that accompanies the dramatic action. Set percussion patterns represent different characters and different dramatic situations.

A separate vocal genre is that of rural folk songs, often called mountain songs (shan'ge). Again there is great regional variation; folk song is strongly tied to locality. The most beautiful are thought to be the songs of northwest China, especially the bitter songs (suanqu'r) of the boat pullers on the Huang (Yellow) River and the camel drivers on the Silk Road.

Big folk-song festivals are held in the northwest, linked to the temple fairs, where men and women gather in groups to sing improvised, often crude sexual lyrics. Such occasions lie outside the normally strict Confucian morality of village life.

Another unique musical tradition is that of the guqin (a seven-stringed zither). This instrument—the ancient, indigenous gentleman-scholar's zither, played for personal refinement and meditation—has come to be emblematic of Chinese music. Its tunes are thought to be programmatic (they describe a scene or story), and much traditional literature is devoted to tales of disciples who perfectly understood the mood and images their master's playing evoked. The guqin has its own special complex notation, and its performance traditionally involves an element of historical research: interpretation and reworking of centuries-old scores and their commentaries, themselves based on still earlier notations.

All of these traditional genres still thrive in contemporary China, but Chinese music also underwent much change in the twentieth century in terms of modernization and Westernization, through the introduction of new instruments, theories, and attitudes and the implementation of a musical schooling system and professional troupes and orchestras.

The Communist revolution in 1949 brought with it attacks on traditional culture along with extensive reworking of folk music to produce revolutionary folk songs and model operas (yangbanxi), which the Communist cultural authorities use to instruct people through revolutionary models. After the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, the loosening of social controls in the 1980s brought about a great revival of traditional music alongside its old ritual contexts. It has also permitted the swift rise of a big pop- and rock-music industry promoted on television and through the ubiquitous karaoke bars. Several modern Chinese composers have also achieved international recognition with works that draw in part on Chinese traditions.

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