Studies On Chinese Traditional Chanting

Chanting is a traditional method of composing and reciting classical poems. It appeared since the occurrence of classical poems with cadenced rhythm and unique melody, and has been approved as national intangible cultural heritage. However, all chanters are senior people who had received education in private schools in the old days. The audio-visual materials of chanting are far from enough for learning and research. Therefore, chanting is in the danger of being lost. Another important matter is that the research of chanting in the perspective of the relationship between music and the rhythm, the meter, and the language of classical poems has not yet been carried out.This research, from the perspective of multi-model phonetic research, has carefully chosen chanters and poems, recorded data of four chanters from Wenzhou, Changzhou, Jiangyin, and Fuzhou respectively. The data includes visual, audio, phonation (with Electronic Glottal Graph), and respiratory (including costal and abdominal respiration) signals. The material includes five-and seven-syllable rhythm poems and XX poems, ci, and essays,140pieces in all, with an aim of presenting and protecting the endangered traditional culture. Through programming, a system of respiration prosody analysis has been built. On this basis, this research studies chanting with linguistic theories and experimental methods, exploring the relationship between language and music, comparing reciting and chanting in aspects of prosody, melody, phonation, and respiration, analyzing the relationship between prosody and respiration of classical poems and the change of syllable numbers, and the reason of the predominance of five-and seven-syllable poems and level-tone rhythmic syllables. Chantings in different dialects have been taken into description and comparison. This research also generalizes methods of chanting, in order to contribute to the teaching of chanting and the protection of Chinese traditional culture.The result shows that the differences between chanting and reciting of five-and seven-syllable poems lie in the division of feet, length series, and sentence-final lengthening. feet formed by pauses is the basis of rhythm and the minimal unit of it. In reciting, the foot structure of five-syllable poems is2+3and that of seven-syllable poems is2+2+3, the foot is composed by two syllables or three syllables (sentence-final position). In chanting, the foot structure of five-syllable poems is2+2+1, the length series is a three-foot "long-short-long" or "short-long-long"; the foot structure of seven-syllable poems is2+2+2+1, the length series is a four-foot "long-short-long-short" or "short-long-short-long". There are two sentence patterns in the chanting of Song poems and essays:one is for sentences with even-number syllables in which from left to right every two syllables form a foot; the other is for sentences with odd-number syllables in which the final syllable lengthens and form a foot by itself.The length of feet in chanting of classic poems, ci, and essays is obviously longer than that in reciting them, which is the most obvious characteristics of chanting. For checked syllables, another syllable is added after it to realize the lengthening. The high-low alternation of the tone value of syllables in a sentence is the basis of melody in chanting. The melody pattern of reciting is similar to that of chanting. Sentences with same rhythm pattern have same melody pattern. One can use same melody to chant each poem or ci with the same rhythm pattern.The difference of respiration between chanting and reciting is:in reciting there are two levels of abdominal respiration resetting, the first and the second level of respiration appears in alternation; in chanting only the first level of respiration appears. The resetting time of abdominal respiration is earlier than that of costal respiration. The signal appearance related to the boundaries of prosodic phrases is fragmental jitter or level section. The amount of aspiration in chanting is several times more than that in reciting. In reciting of ci, the first level respiration resetting only appears before the beginning of the first part and the second part. In chanting the first level respiration resetting appears before the beginning of each long sentence.The difference of phonation between chanting and reciting lies in that the sentence-final lengthening in chanting has a special phonation type. In chanting, the lengthening of level-tone syllables has a low pitch, high OQ value, and low SQ value. The lengthened syllable in chanting is more lax than that in reciting and has weak high-frequency energy. The lengthening of checked syllables has a high pitch and low OQ value, showing characteristics of creaky voice.The nature of change of syllable number in classical poems is change of prosody. Five-syllable poems add a syllable to each sentence of four-syllable poems in order to add a foot. Seven-syllable poems add a disyllabic foot in front of each sentence of five-syllable poems, shifting from three-foot to four-foot. The reason of five-syllabic and seven-syllabic classical poems have become the mainstream lies in the restriction of respiration and foot prosody. The rhyming syllables are mainly level-tone syllables because sentence-final syllables need to form a foot by itself, and level-tone syllables are easier to lengthen than contour-tone syllables.Two schools can be recognized from chanting of the four chanters. In chanting of chanters from Changzhou, Suzhou, and Jiangyin, the melody and the rhythm patterns are closely connected. The positions of "level-level" feet decide the segmentation of prosodic layers and the pattern of prosody. The second syllables of "level-level" combinations lengthen; sentence-final syllables have a drawl. In contrast, Mr. Pan from Wenzhou in his chanting has a fixed pattern of melody and syllable-lengthening which are independent from the rhythm pattern. There are also differences in the characteristics of drawl of the two schools of chanting.