music of China

The music of China consists of many distinct traditions, often specifically originating with one of the country's various ethnic groups. It is produced within the country, involving people of Chinese origin, the use of traditional Chinese instruments, Chinese music theory, or the languages of China. It includes traditional classical forms and indigenous folk music, as well as recorded popular music and forms inspired by Western culture. Documents and archaeological artifacts from early Chinese civilization show a well-developed musical culture as early as the Zhou dynasty (1122–257 BC) that set the tone for the continual development of Chinese musicology in following dynasties. These developed into a wide variety of forms through succeeding dynasties, producing the heritage that is part of the Chinese cultural landscape today. Traditional forms continued to evolve in the modern times, and over the course of the last centuries forms appropriated from the West have become widespread. Today's Chinese music is both rooted in history and part of a global culture.¶

History

According to legends, the founder of music in Chinese mythology was Ling Lun who, at the request of the Yellow Emperor to create a system of music, made bamboo pipes tuned to the sounds of birds including the phoenix. A twelve-tone musical system was created based on the pitches of the bamboo pipes, the first of these pipes produced the 'yellow bell' (黃鐘) pitch, and a set of tuned bells were then created from the pipes.¶

Early history

Archaeological evidence indicates that music culture developed in China from a very early period. Excavations in Jiahu Village in Wuyang County, Henan found bone flutes dated to 9,000 years ago, and clay music instruments called Xun thought to be 7,000 years old have been found in the Hemudu sites in Zhejiang and Banpo in Xi'an.¶

During the Zhou dynasty, a formal system of court and ceremonial music later termed yayue (meaning "elegant music") was established. The word music (樂, yue) in ancient China can also refer to dance as music and dance were considered integral part of the whole, and its meaning can also be further extended to poetry as well as other art forms and rituals. The word "dance" (舞) similarly also referred to music, and every dance would have had a piece of music associated with it. The most important set of music of the period was the Six-dynasty Music Dance (六代樂舞) performed in rituals in the royal court. Music in the Zhou dynasty was conceived as a cosmological manifestation of the sound of nature integrated into the binary universal order of yin and yang, and this concept has had an enduring influence over later Chinese thinking on music. "Correct" music according to Zhou concept would involve instruments correlating to the five elements of nature and would bring harmony to nature. Around or before the 7th century BC, a system of pitch generation and pentatonic scale was derived from a cycle-of-fifths theory. Chinese philosophers took varying approaches to music. To Confucius, a correct form of music is important for the cultivation and refinement of the individual, and the Confucian system considers the formal music yayue to be morally uplifting and the symbol of a good ruler and stable government.¶

Imperial China

The Imperial Music Bureau, first established in the Qin dynasty (221–207 BC), was greatly expanded under the emperor Han Wudi (140–87 BC) and charged with supervising court music and military music and determining what folk music would be officially recognized. In subsequent dynasties, the development of Chinese music was influenced by the musical traditions of Central Asia which also introduced elements of Indian music. Instruments of Central Asian origin such as pipa were adopted in China, the Indian Heptatonic scale was introduced in the 6th century by a musician from Kucha named Sujiva, although the heptatonic scale was later abandoned.¶

The oldest extant written Chinese music is "Youlan" (幽蘭) or the Solitary Orchid, composed during the 6th or 7th century, but has also been attributed to Confucius. The first major well-documented flowering of Chinese music was for the qin during the Tang dynasty (618-907AD), though the qin is known to have been played since before the Han dynasty. This is based on the conjecture that because the recorded examples of Chinese music are ceremonial, and the ceremonies in which they were employed are thought to have existed "perhaps more than one thousand years before Christ", the musical compositions themselves were performed, even in 1000 BC, in precisely the manner prescribed by the sources that were written down in the seventh century AD. (It is based on this conjecture that Van Aalst dates the "Entrance Hymn for the Emperor" to c. 1000 BC.)¶

Through succeeding dynasties over thousands of years, Chinese musicians developed a large assortment of different instruments and playing styles.¶

Republican era (1912–1949)

The New Culture Movement of the 1910s and 1920s produced a great deal of lasting interest in Western music. A number of Chinese musicians returned from studying abroad to perform Western classical music, composing work hits on Western musical notation system. The Kuomintang tried to sponsor modern music adoptions via the Shanghai Conservatory of Music despite the ongoing political crisis. Twentieth-century cultural philosophers like Xiao Youmei, Cai Yuanpei, Feng Zikai and Wang Guangqi wanted to see Chinese music adopted to the best standard possible. There were many different opinions regarding the best standard. Symphony orchestras were formed in most major cities and performed to a wide audience in the concert halls and on radio. Many of the performers added jazz influences to traditional music, adding xylophones, saxophones and violins, among other instruments. Lü Wencheng, Qui Hechou, Yin Zizhong and He Dasha were among the most notable performers and composers of this period. In Shanghai, a popular genre of music called shidaiqu emerged in the 1920s. Shidaiqu is a fusion of Chinese and Western popular music, and Li Jinhui is considered to be founder of the genre. Popular singers in this genre in the 1930s and 1940s included Zhou Xuan, Li Xianglan and Yao Lee. After the 1942 Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art, a large-scale campaign was launched in Chinese Communist Party-controlled areas to adapt folk music to create revolutionary songs to educate the largely illiterate rural population on party goals. Musical forms considered superstitious or anti-revolutionary were repressed, and harmonies and bass lines were added to traditional songs. One example is The East Is Red, a folksong from northern Shaanxi which was adapted into a nationalist hymn.¶

2000–present

Annual events such as the Midi Modern Music Festival in Beijing attracts tens of thousands of visitors. There was also the "Snow Mountain Music Festival" in Yunnan province 2002. Today, rock music is centered on almost exclusively in Beijing and Shanghai, and has very limited influence over Chinese society.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Music of China”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

music of China is overview of music and musical traditions of China, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 14 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶