Music of China - Modern Changes

Modern Changes

These are genres and changes that started after 1912 coinciding with the New China, much of what westerners and even Chinese now consider to be music in the traditional Chinese style is in fact less than 70 years old. As with all other things in the New China the modernisation of Chinese music has been seen the wholesale adoption of the western forms and values, this having a profound effect on the performance and sound of Chinese music. For one, today a western equal temperament is used to tune traditional instruments, seemingly less harsh and more harmonious according to modern ears but which robs the instruments of their traditional voices, to ears now used to hearing modern tunings, even Chinese ones, traditional tunings sound out of tune and discordant. In addition there has been a desire to achieve a greater vibrancy and loudness with instruments (not to mention longevity) so for example string instruments are no longer strung with silk but with steel.

In common with the music traditions of other Asian cultures, such as Persia and India, one strand of traditional Chinese music consists of a repertoire of traditional melodies with tempo and ornamentation varying according to the mood of the instrumentalist, the audience, and their reaction to what is being played, the same melody can be used to serve many different roles be it merry, melancholic or martial (this can be glimpsed in the love theme of the Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto where the same melody at different points in the lover's story reflects elation, turbulence and dejection). Many modern performers now play pieces by following a score in a standard way rather than in the changeable reflective individual way of tradition, this can at times lead to the feeling that a performance has been rushed.

Although there was a tradition of massed instruments in the ritual court music form known as yayue, for the most part music was usually played by a handful of musicians, and even in yayue a single dominant melodic line was favoured. The creation of the Chinese musical orchestra, and the massed schooling of instrumentalists, has led to the desire to create music for them to play, the resulting new music and arrangements of traditional melodies being more polyphonic in nature.

The adoption of western musical notation, time signatures, the conservatory system of teaching, and the use of massed instruments in imitation of the western orchestra has on the one hand helped preserve and sustain one element of Chinese music and promulgate it to new audiences, yet a continuing desire to compete with and equal the Western tradition has seen traditional Chinese music hyberdised so much as to be in danger of losing much of its own identity.