Colorful costumes are enhanced with head dressing and veils, as performers from the Tucson Chinese School entertain festival audiences.
Chinese music is basically pentatonic-diatonic, meaning that the basic pentatonic scale can be modulated within a diatonic context. The theory talks of 12-notes to an octave, but most of the compositions are overwhelmingly pentatonic with diatonic/ chromatic passing tones. This is even more true of the traditional orchestral music than of the more intricate scholarly music which makes up most of this page.
Generally speaking, the Chinese tunes with which many readers will be familiar are much simpler than most of what appears here.
Performances bring out harmony with one's surroundings, although at times a more aggressive tone is used. The intonation is very subtle, and generally similar to poetic recitation. The music itself is clearly designed to be an abstract complement to the highly-developed poetic genres, and bears similar titles.
There are rather few classical compositions, although each instrument has its own repertory. Some of these repertories are several centuries old, and musicians add to them only slowly, especially in some areas. Therefore many compositions will be repeated from CD to CD, mostly for the same instrument, but sometimes versions exist for more than one instrument. Also, a performance by a musician from a different lineage will often bring out different facets. Explore and enjoy. |
