Chinese Music – Other

The development of western music

1900, Beijing set up China’s first Western brass group. Jinling Women’s University, a mission school established in 1913, has a music department, which has played a significant role in the spread of Western music. In 1927, Shanghai established the Shanghai National Music College. In the 1930s, Shanghai established China’s first Western Symphony Orchestra.

Since the introduction of Western music, Chinese people who are good at absorbing foreign culture have made great progress in mastering and digesting Western music. Since the 20th century, many Chinese have won prizes in international piano, violin, bel canto, and opera singing competitions. China Musicians have created a large number of bel canto songs and music played with Western instruments.

Comparison of Chinese and Western Music

Chinese music has mastered the seven-tone scale for a long time but has always preferred a more harmonious pentatonic scale, focusing on the development of music in the five tones, and at the same time focusing on the pursuit of melody and rhythm changes, and the role of harmony is underestimated. The development direction of Chinese music and western music different from Western music from the ancient Greek pentatonic scale, and gradually developed to seven sound scales, until tempered; development from a single part to the use of harmony. So if Western music is like a thick wall, the outline on the top is like a melody, and the masonry is like a wall. Even if the outline is straight, as long as there is harmony, it is a wall, just like some of Handel’s works. Chinese music is different. It is like a Chinese painting drawn with lines. If there is no outline (melody), it will not be music, but harmony is optional. Therefore, Westerners who have never been exposed to Chinese music listen to Chinese music “like a line in the air”, while Chinese people who have never been exposed to Western music feel that Western music is like “mixed noise”.