5. Connotation
a. Definition
The meaning of Chinese art songs is partly based on German lieder (a terminology from the West), so before getting into the topic, it is better to clarify the meaning of "art songs" from the Western perspective.
i. The West
Art song is a musical genre composed of poetry as a singing language and exquisite music melody. "Art song" can be traced back to the German troubadours and troubadours of southern France in the 12th century. However, in a narrow sense, art songs refer to vocal works created by European Romantic composers in the late 19th century. It carefully and closely combines melodies from the human voices and the piano part, both have equal status in performance, and are highly infectious. Art songs are called "Lied", which originally refers to the songs created by German composers Schubert, Brahms, and Schumann in the 19th century. In France, songs similar to "Lied" are called "Mélodie".
The lyrics of Art Songs are mostly literary works deeply influenced by Romanticism, and they are mainly poems with strong musicality. The content of the lyrics has a strong lyrical style, focusing on expressing personal feelings and self-awareness. The literary form may directly affect the song form, and the lyrics and musical tone are also closely related.
ii. China
In a broad sense, if the singing culture related to elegant literature or poetry singing are defined as Chinese art songs, it can be even traced back to the 11th century BC. However, most of the music scores have been lost, and it is very difficult to reproduce the real singing atmosphere.
In a narrow sense, the "Chinese" art songs are definitely a modern concept. Because before the 19th century, there were no concepts such as "China", "Chinese music", or "nation" in Chinese territory. In the past, intellectuals holded a worldview of "everything in the world belongs to China's territory". To a certain extent, "Chinese music" and "Chinese art songs" are inextricably linked to the birth of modern national consciousness. Strictly speaking, Chinese art songs appeared in the 1920s after the fall of the Qing Empire, and had an inseparable relationship with the May Fourth Movement (1919).
In this research, I would only discuss Chinese art song works from the 1920s to the end of the 1930s. After this era, Chinese art songs tended to develop in another direction related to Russian communist culture due to civil wars, and the establishment of New China which was not discussed.
A. Origin
During this period, Chinese traditional culture was impacted by the spread of Western learning to the east, and intellectuals began to question traditional culture. Under this trend, music also gradually embarked on the road of Westernization. The music of this period is called New Music, and has a great relationship with Qing Zhu (1893 - 1959), Xiao Youmei (1884 - 1940), Yuen Ren Chao (1892-1982), Huang Tzu and others who just returned from studying in China.
In the selection of music materials, they brought back the compositional technique and characteristics of western art songs to China, and re-created them with Chinese lyrics, which became Chinese art songs with originality. In literature, coincident with the New Culture Movement and New Literature Movement in the 1920s, Chinese poetry was transformed from classical Chinese to vernacular, which affected the selection of literary materials for Traditonal Chinese Art Songs. Under this trend of thoughts, new "Chinese art songs" were born in the 1920s. It transplanted the concept of Lied and used Western writing techniques to create solo vocal music with Chinese ancient classical poetry or modern poetry.
B. Characteristics
"Chinese art songs" are very similar to German art songs in terms of music form and song themes. The forms of music are mostly binary form, three-segment, strophic form, through-composed form, variant “strophhenlied”, etc.
The lyrics are either ancient poetry, or modern poetry (also known as New poetry). Similar to the German art song (Lieder) of the Romantic period in the nineteenth century, when European composers such as Schubert and Schumann combined the works of poets with melody and piano arrangement, they integrated poetry and music and gave birth to a new performance art form.
In China, there are countless examples of “first poems, and afterwards with melody”. For example, Huang Tzu's work Flowers in the Haze that this research focuses on, the lyrics came from Bai Juyi (772-846) in the Tang Dynasty. This time, song writing hides a chronological order of words and music. A poem usually had several musical arrangements (different songs), and there were always poems appearing first. The composers came up with melodic tunes and piano arrangements, etc, based on poems. It is quite different from the creational process of modern popular songs. Due to differences in language and culture, although Chinese art songs are in line with Western musical models, they are quite different in interpretation and musical expression. Among them, "language" is the main reason for the biggest difference between the East and the West. For example, the Chinese language often emphasises the charm of individual characters. Chinese words are "single-syllable" and quite independent. Every word has an artistic conception. In addition, the Chinese sentence structure is very complicated, and there are many rhetorical ideas in it. Often in short sentence patterns, even in vernacular Chinese, the artistic conception brought about is far more profound and complex than that of Western languages. In addition, in linguistics, Chinese tones are very unique, and the tones produce specific timbres. Therefore, during singing, we must have to master the tones, otherwise the context of the entire sentence will be unclear. I will further discuss in more detail below later.
C. Searching for Chinese style
The musical form of Chinese music is most often remembered as the pentatonic mode. The "new" musicians of the May Fourth era in the early 20th century studied in Europe and the United States, and the music they brought back to China was deeply influenced by the West. The lines and music sense were almost a copy of the Western music, and were criticised as "completely foreign tunes and foreign music". It aroused great controversy at the time. Later new musicians discovered this problem, so they tried their best to find the uniqueness of Chinese music, from traditional opera, folk songs and rap music, and they extracted elements from traditional Chinese music like traditional opera, folk songs. Although the tunes and harmony of the Chinese art songs they wrote are quite westernised, they hope to combine some traditional Chinese melodies and scales.
From the perspective of the function and meaning of music, Chinese music has not reflected the objectivity of music itself since ancient times, but the ultimate goal or artistic conception brought by music. Therefore, music did not exist alone, but has a deeper meaning, which enables performers and listeners to obtain the enlightenment effect. The inheritance of this traditional Chinese philosophy could be simply found in Chinese art songs. I believe that the existence of Chinese art songs is not simple. It is too early to say that Chinese art songs are fully westernised. I think composers looked for traditional Chinese culture in the process of westernisation and responding to the needs of the circumstance.