About Traditional Chinese Music

Music

Music in Chinese is 音樂 (Yin Yue). 音Yin means tone, which includes pitch and rhythm. 樂Yue means pleasure and joy. Therefore, just pitch and rhythm cannot be called music in China, it has to also be pleasant and provides joy in combination with pitch and rhythm to be considered as "music". Music in ancient China can be classified into two kinds, 雅樂(YaYue) Elegant Music, and 俗樂(SuYue) Common Music. 

Elegant Music 雅樂(YaYue)

• 雅(Ya): elegant, polished, refined, polite
• Monosyllabic
• Appeal to mind and soul
• Sign of self-discipline
• Stimulate man to be his best self
• Used to identify an imperial reign
• Written and performed by well educated people (including some emperors)
• Most commonly used instruments:
• 琴Qin, 瑟Se: stringed instruments with long strings
• 笙Sheng: reed mouth organ
• 胡琴HuQin: two-stringed violin (what I was originally going to learn)

Common Music 俗樂(SuYue)

• 俗(Su): vulgar, common, unrefined
• Melismatic
• Rhythms resembles European folk melodies
• Only pleases the ear and does not have higher meaning
• Too many embellishments to be exactly notated, performers often add their own embellishments to it (just like any other folk music)

Instrument classification:

Chinese instruments are classified by the material it's made out of, other than how the instrument is played, which is how the world of Western music do their classification (I have put the Western counterpart of each example in brackets):

• 金Jin (Metal): generally refers to instruments made out of gold or other metal. Examples: 編鐘BianZhong (a set of bronze bells), 鑼Luo (gongs), 喇叭 LaBa (trumpet), and 鏺Bo (cymbals).
• 石Shi (Stone): refers to instruments made out of stone, especially jade, which is often used with metal in formal orchestral combination. Example: 編磬BianQing - a mallet percussion instrument which consists of a rack of stone plates that are hung by ropes from a wooden frame.
• 絲Si (Silk): silk threads were used for making strings for all Chinese string instruments including, and are further classified by how they are played:
• Plucked: 箜篌KongHou (harp)
• Bowed: 胡琴HuQin (violin) 
• Struck: 揚琴YangQin (dulcimer) 
• 竹Zhu (Bamboo): mainly refers to Chinese wood wind instruments. Examples: 笛子DiZi (flute), 嗩吶SuoNa, and 簫Xiao (Recorder).
• 匏Pao (Gourd): this is a class of instrument which has no counterpart in the world of Western music. Example: 笙Sheng (Click here for an interesting cross over of the Sheng and Super Mario)
• 土Tu (Earth): this family consists of instruments made out of baked earth/clay. Example: 塤Xun (ocarina) *YAY!!!*, and 缶Fou - a clay pot played as a percussion instrument, which was part of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony (the count down) 
• 革Ge (Leather): basically drums of all shapes and sizes.
• 木Mu (Wood): most of the wood instruments are percussion instruments of some sort. Examples: 木魚MuYu (temple block), and 拍板PaiBan (clapper made with several pieces of flat wood)
  Fun Fact: the clapper was actually most commonly used for keeping the rhythm for what I would consider Ancient Chinese rap. It was basically a form of story telling, kinda like a stand-up comedy show that rhymes and have a strong sense of rhythm. It was one of the major entertainment back in the days. Essentially, a "story teller" will sit down at a tea house and begin to clap the clapper and start telling tales that was either made up by the "story teller" or mythology stories passed down generations. If a story teller is very good at what he does, and really funny, he would probably rent an opera house and do a staged performance with a drum instead, like this guy.

Functions of Music:

• Western:
• Artistic
• Religious
• Embellishment for life
• Chinese:
• Essential, fundamental to life
• Pervasive

Challenges of Researching about Ancient Chinese Music:

1. 秦始皇QinShiHuang, the first emperor in Qin Dynasty (221 - 206 BC), destroyed a lot of literature and state records prior to his rule.
2. Inadequate notation of ancient Chinese music.
3. Written literature (that survived the destruction by 秦始皇QinShiHuang, or written after his time) in the old days did not have much punctuation, which cause difficulty when one's trying to understand and interpret the records.
4. The Chinese created a lot of words over times, a word that had only one meaning in the past, may have five more meanings to it now, or the use of the word can be different then and now.

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While listening to my fellow classmates' presentations, it seemed to me a lot of good music in Western culture were made by poor, lower class, oppressed people, as if upper class people are supposed to be elegant and reserving, when music requires the person to be expressive, as a result, very seldom we have people with high social status compose and perform music. On the other hand, in traditional Chinese culture, music can be elegant and a state of class, even emperors often play an instrument to entertain himself. Instead of making music or not, ancient China use "elegant music" and "common music" to distinguish the people's social status.

That's it for now... Stay tuned for more about traditional Chinese music in near future... I still have much to read, research, and learn!!

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The information in this post was obtained from Music of China by Bliss Wiant with the occasional help of Wikipedia.