Comment on " Influence of traditional Chinese thought on the performance style and creation of piano music works”

Yimeng Jiao[1]

Commented article: LI, N.; CHEN, Y. Influence of traditional Chinese thought on the performance style and creation of piano music works. Trans/Form/Ação: Unesp journal of philosophy, v. 47, n. 5, e02400155, 2024. Available at: https://revistas.marilia.unesp.br/index.php/transformacao/article/view/15088.

There is no doubt that the piano is known as the king of music. It plays an important role in the development of world music and has also influenced the development and progress of Chinese music. But the influence is also two-way. In the process of piano going global, traditional Chinese thought has had an important impact on the creation, performance and the piano music education. Li; Chen (2024) analyze the impact of Chinese traditional thoughts in piano works to deeply explore the uniqueness of Chinese piano music works, understand the embodiment of traditional Chinese ideas, explore the innovation of Chinese piano music composition, and provide reference for promoting the future development of Chinese piano music. If Chinese traditional elements successfully integrate into contemporary classical music, a distinctly Chinese musical language will be developed, and cross-cultural artistic exchange will be promoted (Zhang, 2024, p. 81). However, some arguments need further discussion.

Firstly, Li; Chen (2024) analyze the profound influence of traditional Chinese philosophical thoughts on piano music creation, mentioning Taoism and Confucianism. Influenced by the "doctrine of the mean" and the idea of "rule by doing nothing", piano music creation reflects the characteristics of simplicity and harmony. However, in addition to philosophical thoughts, we can also pay attention to the influence of traditional Chinese literary works on piano music composition. For example, "Rainbow Skirt, Feathered Tunic", the largest musical composition of Tang dynasty (Tsung-i, 2022, p. 232) can be analyzed. And another sample, "Flute And Drum At Sunset", created by Li Yinghai based on the Tang Dynasty poem "Spring River Moon Night", is a good reflection of the thought of "harmony between man and nature". Therefore, the author should give more examples to illustrate so that readers can better understand the philosophical ideas reflected in the article.

Secondly, according to the influence of themes, rhythms, modes of traditional Chinese music on piano works, we can focus on the analysis of traditional Chinese music modes and the influence of five notes of the pentatonic scale：宫商角徵羽（corresponding roughly to do, re, mi, sol, la）， to analyze their influence on the creation of piano music. For example, the mode of piano works combined with traditional Chinese culture often uses the four- and five-degree modulation technique of clearing 角 into宫and changing 宫 into 角(Bu, 2020, 99).This can better demonstrate the influence of traditional Chinese music modes on piano art.

In addition to rhythm and mode, Li; Chen (2024) also mentioned the importance of "artistic conception" in traditional Chinese culture in piano performance, pointing out that the combination of "emotion" and "scenery" is crucial. They can connect more "aesthetics" principles to further deepen the experience of aesthetics in the creation and performance of piano music.

Li and Chen's discussion of traditional harmony penetration very interesting, fully reflecting the folk characteristics of traditional Chinese music. In addition to the internal element of harmony and life, they also discuss the latest research results about the application of harmony on piano music composition. They affirmed the role of these studies in strengthening the theory and professional construction of piano nationalization. They not only focus on the influence of traditional Chinese music elements on piano music creation, performance, education, but also further explores the promotion and development of piano art by related research (Li; Chen, 2024).

In addition, the focus on harmony penetration has also broken through the limitations of previous studies that have focused too much on rhythm, timbre, mode and other musical elements, and fully reflects the folk characteristics of traditional Chinese music, thus "Chinese piano works are closely related to folk music. In piano education, Chinese piano works should be analyzed from the perspective of ethnomusicology to guide the students to accurately understand and feel the characteristics and charm of national music culture" (Bu, 2021).

As Li; Chen (2024) emphasize, the diversity of Chinese music culture is reflected not only in the learning and integration of Western music elements, but also in the integration of music elements from various ethnic groups of China. It is suggested that the author can give a detailed introduction to the influence of a certain ethnic traditional music style on modern piano music, in order to highlight the uniqueness of different ethnic and regional music styles. Because the integration of ethnic piano music in piano teaching in colleges and universities can make students have a deeper understanding of piano culture, enrich students' knowledge reserve and piano skills, and promote the development of piano music (Wu, 2020).

After discussing piano composition and musical style, Li; Chen (2024) further explored piano education, and pointed out that recently Chinese academic community pay insufficient attention to innovative music education. Therefore, teachers need to cultivate students' innovation ability based on their own knowledge and experience. But at the same time, students' subjective initiative should be brought into play. Because students themselves are the protagonists of piano learning, only by giving full play to their subjective initiative and creativity can we truly achieve innovation in piano education.

In this part, the OBE education concept can be mentioned and applied to music innovation teaching, so as to bring students' subjective initiative into play and promote music innovation education. Just like indicate Li (2021, p. 74): “school music teachers should take students as the center, strengthen the cognition and understanding of "learning output" in the three dimensions of piano knowledge and ability.”

In addition, in terms of music education, Li and Chen also mentioned that since the 21st century, Chinese piano music education has ushered in new developments. However, it should be noted that the importance of music education also needs to be combined with today's Internet and digital age. Therefore, we can further explore how to use the latest AIGC technology to integrate modern music methods and traditional Chinese cultural elements to promote the innovative development of piano education in the AI era (Yu et all., 2023).

Finally, as it indicates at the end of the article, while exploring the uniqueness of Chinese piano music creation, we should also focus on the innovation, to promote the dual development and innovation of piano music composition and education.

Reference

BU, F. Four-Degree-of-Freedom Overmodulation Strategy for Five-Phase Space Vector Pulse Width Modulation. EEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics, v. 9, n. 2, p. 1578-1590, 2021.

LI, J. Research on the Application of OBE Educational Concepts in the Field of Music Aesthetic Education--Taking Piano Education as an Example. Curriculum and Teaching Methodology, v. 4, n. 5, p. 71-75, 2021.

LI, N.; CHEN, Y. Influence of traditional Chinese thought on the performance style and creation of piano music works. Trans/Form/Ação: Unesp journal of philosophy, v. 47, n. 5, e02400155, 2024. Available at: https://revistas.marilia.unesp.br/index.php/transformacao/article/view/15088.

TSUNG-I, J. The Relationship between Dunhuang Pipa Scores and Dance Scores. Harmoniousness: Essays in Chinese Musicology, p. 232–275, 2022.

YU, X, MA, N, ZHENG, L, WANG, L, WANG, K. Developments and Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Music Education. Technologies, v. 11, n. 2, p. 42, 2023.

ZHANG, Z. The Influence of Chinese Traditional Features on Luo Maishuo's Selected Piano Works Zhen Zhang. International Journal of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences Studies, v. 9, n. 4, 2024.

Submission: 30/09/2024 – Decision: 05/10/2024

Revision: 09/10/2024 – Publication: 20/10/2024

Notes

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School of Music, Nanyang Normal University, Nanyang, 473000 - China. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-7176-6683 E-mail: 20162007@nynu.edu.cn.

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