Modern Changes in the Music of China

These are kinds of changes that began after 1912 coinciding with the new China, much of what westerns and even the Chinese now seen to be the music in the traditional Chinese pattern which is in fact less than 70 years old. As with all other things in the New China the development of Chinese music has been seen as the wholesale adoption of the western forms and values, this having a profound effect on the performance and the sound of the Chinese music. Recently, the western equal temperament is used to tune the traditional instruments seemingly the less harsh and more peace according to the recent tunings, but which robs the instruments of their traditional voices, to ears that is now used to hear the recent tunings, even Chinese ones, traditional tunings sound out of tune and conflicting. Also, there has been a desire to get a greater vibrancy and loudness with the instruments (not to mention long) so for instant the cord instruments are no longer strung with the silk but with steel.

source of picture: en.wikipedia.org 

In rare with the music traditions of other Asia cultures, like the Persia and India, one strand of the traditional Chinese music comprise of a list of traditional melodies with their tempo and ornamentation differ according to the mood of the instrumentalist, the audience, and their reaction to what is being played, the same as the melody which can be used to serve several different roles be it merry, melancholic or martial (it is the glimpsed in the love theme of the Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto,  where the same melody at separate places in the lover’s story shows elation, turbulence and sadness). Several recent performers now play pieces by following a score in a standard way rather than in the changeable shows of individual way of tradition, it can be at the time of lead which is to feel the performance has been rushed.

While there is a tradition of massed instruments in the ritual court music which is called yayue for the most part music was usually played by a handful of the musicians, and even in the yayue a single lead melodic line was favoured. The establishment of Chinese musical group and the massed schooling of instrumentalists had led to the desire to make music for them to play, the resulting new music and ranges of traditional songs being more polyphonic in nature.

The acceptance of the western musical notation, time signatures, the conservatory system of teaching, and the use of massed instruments in imitation of the western group has on the other hand helped to keep and sustain one element of the Chinese music and broadcast it to the audiences, yet a continuing desire to compete with and equal of the western tradition has been the tradition of the Chinese music so much as to be in danger of losing much of its own identity.