Accordion Music's Evolution

Chinese accordion is one of the evidences of the influence of western music on Chinese music. In about 100 years, accordion rooted in China and became very popular. It influenced heavily on the mass music lives of Chinese people. At the beginning of 20th century, it came to China. In the early time, it was just an accompaniment instrument used in harmonica bands and vocality accompaniment. After 1949 when the P.R.China was founded, with the development of Chinese production of accordion it has been well developed in performance, teaching, theoretical study and the composing fields. The introduction of "free bass accordion" provided solid substantial basis for the performance and composing in 1980's, and this led to a brighter future for the Chinese accordion art.With the background of international accordion music development and that of Chinese modern society, this dissertation systematically analyses and studies the development of Chinese accordion art from the aspects of history and composing and strives to reveal the procedure of its evolution.The dissertation is divided into five volumes. Volume 1 introduces the history of accordion , Volume 2 is about the preliminary spread of accordion in China . I dug into great amount of concerning historical data of four aspects, they are the early accordion textbooks, the accordion activities happened in Shanghai, Haerbin and Yan'an, which veritably resurges the development of accordion art in China before 1949. Volume 3 reveals the development of Chinese accordion art from after 1949, I focused on five aspects, namely the production, education, performance, theoretical study and communication between China and foreign counties, in time order. This part comprehensively shows the plenty fruits of accordion art in around 50 years after the foundation of China. Volume 4 mainly concerns the development of Chinese accordion music composing. It reviews the history in four periods. Meanwhile, this part also analyses in detail the nationalization pursuit and the utilization of performance skills in composing. Volume 5 is the conclusion of the dissertation. It summarizes the development characteristics of Chinese accordion art. As a popular musical instrument, Chinese accordion art experienced the progress from accompaniment to solo, ensemble and other performances, and from the tradition of adapting other kinds of music to the composing of its own. Accordion is a kind of very potential musical instrument, so, we need to acknowledge the problems during its evolution.