Western European and National in Chinese string music: ways of mutual influence

The article focuses on the problem of the mutual influence of traditional Chinese string music and the "cultural inoculation" of Western European strings, in particular, the violin. The historical materials related to the existence of instrumental music are studied: elite palace and folk music associated with cults and holidays. The author's attention is drawn to the problem of the absence of writing compositions in the centuries-old tradition of China, the possibility of acquiring musical and cultural monuments exclusively in oral form – from teacher to student. The ways of the influence of Western European music education on changing the current situation towards the greatest possible preservation of this heritage are reviewed. As a result of a detailed analysis of compositions for national stringed instruments, both solo and ensemble, and comparing them with the parallel developing violin art in the country, the mutual influence of the traditions of the East and the West in this highly specialized field of professional music is investigated. The historical-comparative method allows us to reconstruct the picture of the existence of instrumental ensembles and genres in previous centuries and to find differences with modern concert practice. The methods of structural, grammatical, semantic, and genre analysis help to find parallels in the development of music for national and Western European strings in modern China. A special contribution of the author is that for the first time points of contact were found, both the features and similarity of performing techniques were emphasized, the rise in popularity of violin art in the country was explained due to the similarity of many methods of violin and erhu sound production. The transformation of playing techniques on stringed instruments of the Celestial Empire and classical symphony orchestra as a result of mutual diffusion is considered; the evolution of synthetic genres based on the structural patterns of Western European forms, but enriched with Chinese methods of variation, ladoharmonic and melodic features is traced. The main result of the article is the finding of many common vectors of development both in the compositional art and in the performing methodology of erhu, banhu, sihu and other national strings and the entire family of stringed instruments of the classical symphony orchestra.

violin, arhu, chines traditional strings, playing methods, synthetic genres, composition, China, Ma Sicong, Liu Tyanhua, Silk bamboo