Listening Notes
Listening notes to accompany the digital audio reserves
1. "Moderately decorated six beats" (Zhonghua liuban). Traditional piece from the Jiangnan Sizhu ("silk and bamboo from south of the Yangtze") instrumental ensemble genre of the Shanghai region. An example of the category of instrumental ensemble known as "silk and bamboo," because the main instruments are flutes made of bamboo and string instruments whose strings were traditionally made of silk. Jiangnan Sizhu instruments include transverse flute DIZI (lead melodic instrument), endblown flute XIAO (very quiet), mouth organ SHENG (easy to identify--plays two or more notes at once and sounds a bit metallic), two-string fiddle ERHU, four-string plucked lute PIPA, three-string plucked lute SANXIAN, two-string plucked lute QINQIN, hammered dulcimer YANGQIN, woodblock BANGZI or drum BIQI GU and clappers BAN. Texture is heterophonic, with all instruments improvising their lines while adhering to the same basic melodic structure. Quadruple meter (i.e. in four beats, or 4/4 time). The recording was made in a Shanghai teahouse, a common location for performances, hence the background chatter.
2. "Moon Over the West River" (Xijiang yue). Traditional piece from the Chaozhou string music repertoire of the Chaozhou area, Guangdong Province. Chaozhou string music is another genre usually categorized as "silk and bamboo." Once again, note heterophony. The instruments here appear to be multiple-string bridged zither ZHENG (listen for the occasional rapid downward sweep over the strings, as at the beginning), the high-pitch and very penetrating two-string fiddle ERXIAN, and what seem to be a XIAO and PIPA.
3. "Eight Dragons" (Ba tiao long). Traditional piece from the shawm band repertoire of Liaoyang Town, Liaoning Province. This is a funeral piece, played by two SUONA (shawms), knobbed gong, cymbals, and drum. The second suona plays in heterophony with the first, but is frequently slightly behind temporally and appears to listen and try to complement what the first one plays. At one point they play the same thing an octave apart. Listen for how the drum gives the fairly free-wheeling piece a sense of rhythmic stability and unity. The suona rasping sound POGONG is very audible here.
4. "Raising the bridal sedan chair" (Tai huajiao). Traditional piece from shawm band repertoire of Heze Town, southwestern Shandong Province, probably originating as a wedding piece. This is a very extrovert piece played by the small shawm HAIDI, accompanied by SHENG, DIZI, and BANGZI (woodblock). In the second half we hear many examples of the "tassel" style--rapid alternation between two pitches, or rapid revolving around one pivotal pitch (see reading #3 in course reader).
5. This piece, a prelude to a lengthy ritual suite, is called "Buddha of Five Virtues" (Wushan fo) or "Five Summons to the Buddhas" (Wusheng fo). Traditional repertory from the Music Association of Nan Gaoluo Village, Hebei Province, near Beijing. The music associations of Hebei Province are sheng-guan ensembles (i.e. ensembles in which the GUAN, or GUANZI, a double-reed instrument quieter than the suona, and lacking its flared bell, and the SHENG, are the main melodic instruments). These village groups perform rituals for the community, e.g. at Chinese New Year, using music probably acquired from Buddhist and Taoist temples. They usually accept no pay, doing it as a community service, and also play for funerals. This recording was made in 1989. The instruments here are guanzi, sheng, dizi, tuned gong-set YUNLUO, and percussion including drum, cymbals, and a small gong suspended in a frame. You have a transcription of this piece in reading #4 of your course reader. Note how the heterophony of the melodic instruments often approaches unison.
6. Same piece, same musicians, also recorded in 1989. This is the musicians' singing of the GONGCHEPU solfège notation for the piece.
7. "Ancient melodies of Wulin" (Wulin yiyun). Solo for four-string plucked lute PIPA, performed by contemporary virtuoso Wu Man. This is a "civil" piece. (Note that "civil" pieces are generally slow, lyrical, and refined, with subtle shadings of dynamics and tone colours, in contrast to the bravura style of "military" pieces, which usually tell a story, often explicitly a battle, in a very virtuosic, bravura fashion). Wulin is the ancient name for the city of Hangzhou, near Shanghai. The piece is a suite of six short melodies, each of 68 measures. The melodies and the title are first found in the pipa score of Hua Qiuping in 1818; different schools combine different melodies into a suite of this name.
8. "Ambush from all sides" (Shimian maifu). Solo for four-string lute PIPA, performed around 1960 by Li Tingsong from Suzhou, near Shanghai. This is one of the bravura pieces of the "military repertoire," which features all kinds of contrasts of timbre, register, and attack, with a wide dynamic range. This piece was published in the first known collection of pieces for pipa in 1818.
9. "Double Voicing of Bitterness" (Shuangsheng hen). An example of Cantonese music. This was recorded around 1930, probably in Canton. The performers are the famous violinist Yin Zizhong together with Song Hong and Song Yuwen, one of whom plays yangqin, the other probably a plucked lute. This was originally issued on the New Moon (Xinyue) label of the day. The score may be found in your reader, in reading #5. This piece is in the plaintive YI-FAN scale, in which the seventh degree (B in your score) is somewhat flatter than in equal temperament, while the fourth degree (F in your score) is a fraction sharper.
10. "Thunder in the Drought" (Hantian lei). Another example of Cantonese music. This piece was composed c.1927 by Yan Laolie, based on an older piece called "Sanjilang." It was conceived to feature the hammered dulcimer YANGQIN, which is good at wide melodic leaps--listen for these. This performance is by a two-piece ensemble: yangqin, and high-pitched fiddle GAOHU. It is in the standard scale (ZHENGXIAN), which sounds bright and lively.
11. Two pieces for modern Chinese orchestra: "Days of Emancipation" (Fansheng de rizi) and "Full of Joy" (Xiyangyang). "Days of Emancipation" was composed by Zhu Jian'er, and is arranged here by Peng Xiuwen. The piece was adapted from the melody for a film. The Chinese liner notes state that, "With a typical flavour of the country music, it portrays the peasants' boundless joy after their emancipation." "Full of Joy" was composed by Liu Mingyuan, adapted from a Shanxi folksong, and is arranged here by Wan Li'nan. An example of the "conservatory style" that has developed since the first half of this century and may be heard all over China. Note the careful scoring, with different instruments featured at different points, sometimes with a very Western-sounding "oom-pah" accompaniment. At times there is clear Western-style harmony rather than traditional Chinese heterophony. Most instruments are similar to those in Jiangnan Sizhu, though some have been modified to have a wider range of notes, greater dynamic contrast, or Western-style equal temperament tuning in place of regional tunings. Performers are primarily reading a pre-determined score rather than improvising on the basis of memorized, internalized basic melodies. The up-beat style is typical of many works composed in the early Communist era, when major keys, lively tempi, and a buoyant mood were approved by the Communist Party.
12. "Remembering an Old Friend" (Yiguren). Piece for seven-string zither GUQIN (also written QIN), long the instrument of Chinese literati. Performed by Lin Youren (b.1938), retired professor of guqin at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Many guqin pieces go back hundreds of years, but this one was only made publicly available through a score published in 1937, based on a musician's family score. Listen for all the "special effects," including GLISSANDI, where the player glides between two pitches; places where two strings sound together as a chord; and places where you can here the left hand fingers sliding up and down the strings and wood (this creates a rustling sound that is deliberate, and is part of the instrument's aesthetic). At the beginning and the end you can hear passages of HARMONICS. These bell-like floating sounds, many quite high in pitch, are created by the player resting his LH fingers lightly on the strings rather than stopping them all the way down to the wood, which is what produces the usual duller sounds that you hear for the majority of the piece. The rhythm is quite flexible. Guqin scores, written in a form of notation we call TABLATURE, tell the player only where to place his or her fingers in order to produce the desired pitch and sound quality (which finger, which finger movement, on which string); rhythmic indications are either vague or non-existent. Hence rhythmic conventions are passed down from teacher to student. The guqin Prof. Lin plays was made in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), and like most classic guqins, has its own name: "Hearing the bell on a snowy night." It is strung with metal strings.
13. Same piece, performed by Lau Chor-wah on a qin strung with the traditional silk strings. Note the very different effect of the silk strings.
14. "Wild Geese Landing on the Sandbank" (Pingsha luo yan). Qin piece performed by Dai Wei on the qin (metal strings), accompanied by her father Dai Shuhong on the xiao. Listen for how the xiao follows the qin, picking out the main melody and trying to match the changes in pitch, rhythm, texture, ornamentation, and general "feel."
15. "High Mountains and Flowing Water" (Gaoshan liushui). This is one of the most famous pieces for multiple-string bridged zither ZHENG (or guzheng), performed here by Wang Wei of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. This is in the Zhejiang zheng style.
16. "Happy Reunion" (Xi xiang feng). Solo for the transverse flute DIZI (northern style) played by Feng Zicun, recorded around 1960. Feng arranged this piece based on melodies and stylistic characteristics of a genre of regional music drama popular in Shanxi Province (northern China) and adjacent parts of western Inner Mongolia. (This dramatic genre is called ERRENTAI, and features very virtuosic dizi playing.) This piece is considered typical of the northern style of dizi: the flute is high-pitched (similar to the Western piccolo), and the style is very energetic, with lots of quick glissandi, flutter tonguing, melodic leaps, etc. See course reader, reading #10, for a transcription of the opening of this piece.
17. "Flight of the Partridges" (Zhegu fei). Solo for transverse flute DIZI (southern style) played by Lu Chunling around 1960. Lu created this solo in the 1950s from a pre-existing piece, first notated as a popular tune from Hunan Province in 1926 by renowned musicologist Yang Yinliu. This flowing style and lower pitch is considered typical of southern flute-playing; note the lack of tonguing. See course reader, reading #10, for a transcription of the opening of this piece.
18. Confucian sacrificial music from the Confucian Temple in Tainan, southern Taiwan. This is the piece accompanying the Second Offering. Instruments include flutes, mouth organ sheng, guqin, tuned bells hung in a frame (bianzhong), tuned stone slabs hung in a frame (bianqing), and many kinds of drums and other percussion. The piece is made up of several four-note phrases, which are interspersed with percussion interludes. Singers (almost inaudible on this recording) sing a hymn to Confucius. You can also hear commands being shouted by the ritual officiants. The music is very slow and stately, intended to show dignified respect for the memory of China's premier sage. It accompanies slow dancing by hand-picked schoolboys in the temple courtyard.
19. Folksong "Songs are easy to sing, but it's hard to open one's mouth." Riddle-song from Wuxi, near Shanghai, sung by Qian Afu, in 1988. The first verse goes:
Shan'ge [folk songs] are easy to sing, but it's hard to open one's mouth.
Mountain cherries are delicious, but it's hard to pick them from the trees.
Pearl-white rice is delicious, but it's hard to work the field.
Freshly made fish soup tastes delicious, but it's hard to cast a fishing net.
We hear three verses, and while each is a little different, all start towards the top of the singer's pitch range, and end much lower. When he has to fit in extra syllables, he can extend the alternation between two neighboring pitches ad infinitum. This tune allows for a lot of individual variation--if the singer wants to insert extra words, he can, without disrupting the structure. The vocal tone is quite strained. This singing style carries very well over a distance.
20. "Courtesan Du Shiniang." Narrative song from Suzhou (near Shanghai), in style called SUZHOU TANCI. Recorded c. early 1960s. Sung by Jiang Yuequan, who accompanies himself on three-string plucked lute SANXIAN, while Yang Zhenyan plays four-string plucked lute PIPA. The accompaniment is heterophonic, and the instruments also provide linking passages between lines of the song. The words are:
Beautiful, elegant Du Shiniang,
Sorry to have landed in a pleasure house.
She is like a flower blown off by the wind.
Without a place to settle her tears never end.
To be a courtesan is not her will.
She wishes to leave the pleasure house and be a good wife,
Never mind the hardship...
You can still hear this genre performed in teahouses and on stage in Suzhou and Shanghai. See your course reader, reading #14, for a transcription of this piece.
21. "In Liuhe Town lived Old Liu." Narrative patter KUAIBAN from the Nanjing area of eastern China. Recorded 1987. Li Yatai (b. 1963) accompanies himself on clappers. This story, created by Li in 1986, is a tongue-twister on the word liu (six, but also has many other meanings, including the surname Liu, which has a different tone). The words of this excerpt go as follows:
In Liuhe Town lived Old Liu, sixth uncle. He built sixty-six houses, piled sixty-six oil drums on top of them, propped sixty-six rolls of fine silk against sixty-six walls. In front he planted sixty-six large willow trees, tied sixty-six oxen to them, and kept sixty-six dogs at home. The dogs said "woof," and sixty-six oxen took fright and bolted, pulling down sixty-six trees against sixty-six houses. Sixty-six oil drums fell down, soaking with oil sixty-six rolls of silk. Poor dear old chap, sixth uncle Liu, he was scared out of his wits!
22. "The meeting." NANGUAN ballad from Taiwan. Recorded in the 1980s. Sung by Tsai Hsiao-yueh. She also plays the clappers PAIBAN; the melodic instruments are a unique Nanguan PIPA, a unique endblown flute DONGXIAO, the two-string bowed lute ERXIAN, and the SANXIAN. Listen for the slow, elegant pace, the clear lines of the heterophony, and the distinctive vocal quality. Nanguan has a documented history of at least four hundred years, and uses its own form of gongchepu notation. See pp.205-209 of the Garland Encyclopedia of Music, East Asia volume (on reference shelves near the new New Grove in the Music Library) for more details.
23. Narrative area from Peking Opera The Match of Spring and Autumn. Sung by Jiang Qiulian, a qingyi (principal female role) actress. This area is in 4/4 meter and in moderate tempo, and belongs to the xipi aria category. Narrative arias generally provide narration in an unemotional manner. Note the instrumental introduction and the high-pitched, tight-sounding singing. Apart from percussion, the main melodic instrument is the high-pitched two-string fiddle JINGHU. You can also clearly hear a plucked lute here, YUEQIN. When the melodic instruments are accompanying the voice, it is done in heterophony.
24. "We workers have strength" (Women gongren you liliang). A song for the masses, popular in the People's Republic of China in the 1950s and 1960s. Inspired by indigenous Chinese work songs (note the call and response structure, for instance), this song is performed here in a very Soviet-influenced style. The solo male voice is basically bel canto, and the chorus and European-instrument orchestra, with the addition of Western-style harmony, are all highly Western-influenced. This recording comes from an LP of the era.
25. "Delight of the Celestial Beings" (Tianren le). DONGJING music played by about sixteen Han lay ritual musicians from Mengzi County, southern Yunnan. Recorded 1992. See reading #21 in the course reader on the lay ritual groups known as Dongjing associations, which claim a Confucian affiliation but use many scriptures more commonly associated with Taoism and Buddhism. Here, stanzas from the major Dongjing/Taoist scripture Transcendent Scripture of the Great Grotto of Wenchang are sung to the melody "Delight of the Celestial Beings." Some participants sing; the instruments include dizi, sanxian, bowed lutes, and percussion. The texture is heterophonic. This hymn is ascribed to the bodhisattva Guanyin. It describes how constricting life in the mundane realm remains prior to gaining a clear perception of the Tao. The style of music used by the Dongjing associations probably came into Yunnan around the 16th century and later, mostly through Han migration to southwest China. Dongjing associations are found only in southwest China—mainly Yunnan, but also in some parts of Sichuan Province to the north of Yunnan, Guizhou to its east, and among Yunnanese émigrés to Burma, which borders the west side of Yunnan.
26. Polyphonic rice-transplanting song of the Hani minority. Multi-part rice transplanting song of the Hani from Honghe Prefecture, Yunnan Province, southwest China, just north of the Vietnam border. Recorded in the late 1990s. Performed by five female singers, three male singers, endblown flute and two three-string plucked lutes. The flute starts, the lutes come in, and the singers enter one after another, each roughly imitating the way the previous ones entered, and then holding long notes creating a very dense-sounding harmonic effect. They frequently use the interval of a semitone, and also some microtones. The lutes mainly sustain a kind of ostinato rhythm. There follows a section for solo male singer before everyone comes in again to create the dense multi-layered effect. See reading #20 in the course reader for an article on the discovery of this singing style in 1995, and a transcription of the opening of the vocal section of one performance. The opening words are as follows, in the local Hani language:
Initial chorus (in which the singers enter one by one): "Yi she, she luo! Everyone should pull together to ensure optimal conditions for the rice seedlings!"
Male lead: "Farmwork is pressing upon the Hani, the horse has arrived. Ah! Walking in the mountains and looking at this ancient land evokes so many memories of the past. We have grazed cattle here for generations; the animals' troughs have been changed several times, generations of cowherds have come and gone, yet the land is as before."
Chorus: "Yi she, she yi, se e, ai se!"
Female lead: "The busy transplanting season is here, the old people have left the comfort of the hearth, and the youngsters should be in the fields. The whole year's work depends on a good start in spring, the transplanting season waits for no man. From the river embankment up to the mountain peak the terraced fields should be planted, so that in autumn the grain is golden and cereals are heaped up like a mountain. Girls, boys, old and young should strike up a song and pull together for a bountiful harvest."
Chorus: "Yi se, se yi ai se!"…
27. "Torch festival night." Jew's harp solo of the Nuosu Yi, northwest Yunnan Province. Performed by MA Guoguo (b.1976), recorded 1995. This instrument has two brass lamellae (tongues). Listen for the two fundamental pitches, and the incredibly varied harmonics Ma creates above these two fundamentals. The Jew's harp is widespread among ethnic groups of western China and southeast Asia. It is often used as a speech surrogate, frequently in courtship.
28. Uyghur muqam: dastan. Third dastan of the second muqam "Cäbiyat." This is from the Muslim Turkic Uyghur people of Xinjiang in northwest China, which borders on the countries of Central Asia. Performed by the ensemble Sadiyana. Voices plus 4-string fiddle GIJAK, 3-string plucked lute RAWAP, 2-string long-necked plucked lute TANBUR, and frame drum DAP. The texture is heterophonic. The scale used is close to D E F# G A B D, with C also prominent in ornaments. The metrical cycle is 9 beats (3 + 2 + 4) which we will work out in class by listening to the drumming, with its two distinctively different pitches. The words are:
Stanza 1: I want to become a gardener in your garden. Then everyday I will make many flower bouquets for you. Allah has shaped you so beautifully that I want to embrace your waist.
Stanza 2: If you ask me why I look so pale, the explanation is that I always look out for you over the road. Because you are so beautiful you need not wear a veil.
Stanza 3: You walk so elegantly, if you cast a glance at me I simply cannot bear it. Your mouth is like a golden cup from which I hope to drink tea.
Stanza 4: You get up early in the morning to comb your hair. You wear a veil in front of your face that is like the full moon. May the whole mug of the enemy become as black as the small mother-spots on your face.
29. "Don't pick the wild flowers at the roadside." Love song by Taiwanese pop star Teresa Teng, especially popular in the 1980s. Note the mixture of Western harmony, trap-set and synthesizer with Chinese-sounding flute and percussion, especially gong. (Having so many Chinese music elements is relatively rare in her songs.) The vocal style is very warm and ballad-like, not particularly close to any traditional Chinese singing styles. The rhythm is the usual 4/4 found in such Western-influenced pop songs.
30. Meanwhile, in mainland China...two songs in praise of Chairman Mao: "Sunshine is Warmest, Chairman Mao is Kindest," leading straight into "The Bright Red Sun in the Sky." Two of a large number of such songs composed in the 1950s and 1960s, and revived with pop-inspired updated "new rhythm" treatment in time for the 100th anniversary of Mao's birth in 1993. The cassette-set from which these come, Red Sun, was a huge bestseller in China in 1992 and 1993. Note the use of Western harmony, and in the first song very warm, Western-sounding vocal color as the solo female singer uses a heavy VIBRATO over chords provided by the chorus of male singers. A deliberately Chinese-sounding instrumental passage (sounds like shawm SUONA) leads into a much more energetic second song, with the male singer's voice rougher, and sounding a little more like a cross between Chinese rock and roll and some northern folksong styles.
31. "Big Bad Girl." Notorious song by Hong Kong pop star Anita Mui (1963-2003). Sung in Cantonese. Example of Cantopop.
32. "Song of the Yellow River Boatmen" (Huanghe chuanfu qu). First section of the Yellow River Cantata, by XIAN Xinghai. Composed in 1939, this has become one of the mainland Chinese classics. This section opens with a narrator declaiming, asking the audience if they've ever been to the Yellow River and seen the boatmen risking their lives. The words of the chorus imitate the cries of the boatmen as they coordinate their movements, and include a lot of call and response, which is also derived from the actual working calls of boatmen. The chorus is singing in a very Western European style, and the accompaniment is mostly with conventional Western harmony, played by a Western symphony orchestra. See course reader reading #25 on Xian Xinghai.
33. "Fan I." Chamber music piece for Western musical instruments by MO Wuping (1959-1993). Mo is the singer on this recordings; the instrumentalists are members of the Dutch group Nieuw Ensemble, which specializes in avant-garde music. Mo worked as an opera musician in Hunan Province, central China, during the 1980s, before studying at the Central Conservatory in Beijing, and was influenced by the local music he heard from boyhood in Hunan, as well as by the Western art music tradition. He was one of the immensely talented art music composers of Tan Dun's generation to emerge from the conservatories of Beijing and Shanghai in the 1980s, but sadly died very young. This is what he said about this piece: "The character Fan contains several meanings in Chinese. The one I prefer is the meaning of secular. Every day I look for the spiritual in the secular. I will be happy if I find it. If not, I will just keep looking for it" (liner notes to the CD). See course reader reading #26 on the Chinese composers of Mo's generation.