Term Papers on Chinese Music

Term Paper Title	Chinese Music
# of Words	958
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	3.83

Chinese Music

Chinese Music, the body of vocal and instrumental music composed and played by the Chinese people. For
several thousand years Chinese culture was dominated by the teachings of the philosopher Confucius, who
conceived of music in the highest sense as a means of calming the passions and of dispelling unrest and
lust, rather than as a form of amusement.

The ancient Chinese belief that music is meant not to amuse but to purify one's thoughts finds particular
expression in the cult of the qin (ch'in), a long zither possessing a repertory calling for great subtlety and
refinement in performance and still popular among a small circle of scholar-musicians. A famous qin
scholar once said, “Though the qin player's body be in a gallery or in a hall, his mind should dwell with the
forests and streams.”

Also, traditionally the Chinese have believed that sound influences the harmony of the universe.
Significantly, one of the most important duties of the first emperor of each new dynasty was to search out
and establish that dynasty's true standard of pitch. A result of this philosophical orientation was that until
quite recently the Chinese theoretically opposed music performed solely for entertainment; accordingly,
musical entertainers were relegated to an extremely low social status.

Melody and tone color are prominent expressive features of Chinese music, and great emphasis is given to
the proper articulation and inflection of each musical tone. Most Chinese music is based on the five-tone, or
pentatonic, scale, but the seven-tone, or heptatonic, scale, is also used, often as an expansion of a basically
pentatonic core. The pentatonic scale was much used in older music. The heptatonic scale is often
encountered in northern Chinese folk music.

Chinese musical instruments traditionally have been classified according to the materials used in their
construction, namely, metal, stone, silk, bamboo, gourd, clay, skin, and wood. Of these, the stone and wood
instruments are obsolete. The older instruments include long zithers; flutes; panpipes; the sheng, or mouth
organ; and percussion instruments, such as clappers, drums, and gongs. Of later origin are various lutes and
fiddles, introduced to China from Central Asia.

Chinese music is as old as Chinese civilization. Instruments excavated from sites of the Shang dynasty
(circa 1766-c. 1027 bc) include stone chimes, bronze bells, panpipes, and the sheng.

In the Chou dynasty (circa 1027-256 bc) music was one of the four subjects that the sons of noblemen and
princes were required to study, and the office of music at one time comprised more than 1400 people.
Although much of the repertoire has been lost, some old Chinese ritual music (yayue) is preserved in
manuscripts. During the Ch'in dynasty (221-206 bc) music was denounced as a wasteful pastime; almost all
musical books, instruments, and manuscripts were ordered destroyed. Despite this severe setback Chinese
music experienced a renaissance durin...

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