Chinese Music

click to enlargeMarnix at the 2007 CHIME conference

Chinese music was until recent years a very much neglected field. Yet Confucius, like Plato, saw music as the key element of education in goodness. China has a rich tradition in religious, operatic and folk music but it is the meditative qín (ch’in) that has proved most popular internationally. Chinese music uses few chords, mostly octaves and fifths if any, but places great emphasis on fingering slides or vibrato and percussive stroke. Touch and timbre provide the key to its musical dynamics.

The music traditionally had various systems of musical notation, but is now written either in European stave or the Chevé numerical system (1 = do, 2 = re etc) of ‘moveable solfa’ which is the same for all keys. The barring is usually 2/4 or 4/4,but, while the skipping 3/4 of European music is generally

 absent, underlying triple rhythm phrasing of six-beat (2-2-2 or 3-3) and eight-beat (3-2-3, 2-3-3 or 3-3-2) are common.

Marnix has lectured and published papers on various aspects of rhythm in traditional and ancient Chinese and Korean music. He deciphered and transcribed ‘West River Moon’ (Xijiang Yuè) with lyric setting from the Dunhuáng cave library (sealed in 933 AD). On 16 September 2007 he sang and acted four arias which he had deciphered from the earliest surviving scores of West Chamber Story (Xixiang Ji), the famous Yuan dynasty opera, at the Vanbrugh Teatre in London. He gave a paper on the influence of Jurchen music and the Daoist ‘Blue Sky Song’ (Qingtian Ge) at the CHIME conference in Dublin on 13 October 2007. He plans to publish a book shortly.

 

Other content by Marnix Wells can be viewed in the attached documents.

West Chamber Story Xixiangjì zájù by (Yuán) Wáng Shífû (click here)

11th CHIME, 2006: July17-25 Yúlín Northern Group Expedition (click here)

CHIME 2007 - 'I Sing Who I Am – Identity, Ethnicitiy and Individuality' - Abstract (click here)