Inheritance And Innovation Of Chinese Traditional Music Pitch Elements In Contemporary Music

In this dissertation, it chooses "pitch elements" as the starting point from a number of elements in the writing of Chinese contemporary music and traditional music. From a composition theoretical perspective, it summarizes the exploring in this aspect and the successful experience of contemporary Chinese music during recent30years. And it puts emphasis on studying the inheritance and innovation of the pitch elements of Chinese traditional music in the writing of contemporary music by analyzing the smallest cells of the composing elements in music, such as a single note, a traditional melodic line and its composing elements, and multiple parts writing.For many years, due to the influence of western music theory, we have not only ignored the "tonality" of a single note in our traditional music, but also have tried to "unify" it by using the western flat tone and the twelve-tone equal temperament. It leads to that the original characteristic of Chinese music has been ignored, blurred, even removed. Through rediscovering the single note of Chinese music and its significance of representation, we find that it exists a "general difference" between Chinese and Western music, such as the basic cells that are the composition of music. Many contemporary Chinese composers broadly represent the charming and unique single note of Chinese traditional music in the creative writing of contemporary music. They dig it up from the simple inheritance of the single note pattern in Chinese traditional music to the further development of the concept of the single note, the tonality of the single note and the varied timbres in the writing of contemporary music. Thereby, it has been developed from a single melodic line to a harmonic space.In comparison with the inherent Chinese lingering charm of the single note, the traditional Chinese melody that is made up of single notes has more intuitive, more integrity and the significance of representation. As a "mother tongue" in music composition, it gives composer an unfailing source of inspiration. The contemporary Chinese composers represent the Chinese style and the lingering charm in their compositions through different ways of quoting the Chinese traditional melody and its composing elements. It could not only be similarity in appearance but also beyond appearance to reach the acme of perfection. Composers recreate the Chinese traditional melody and turn it into a modern musical language, which adds more intimacy feelings. It expresses composers’ ideas and their emotions in depth, as well as makes the audiences to identify the works. It has a unique expressiveness and effectiveness.The multiple parts writing is an important technique in the writing of professional music. However, Chinese music did not have a polyphonic and harmonic system when it encountered Western music at the first time in the early20th century. We did not discover and probe into the harmonic phenomenon in our folk music as well at that time. The contemporary Chinese composers cannot catch the systematic technology of the harmonic technique from Chinese traditional music. Thereby, when absorbing the concept and the writing technique of contemporary Western music, it becomes a new subject that how can we make it adapt to the inherent Chinese pitch elements in the harmonic technique. On the one hand, the contemporary Chinese composers has rediscovered the polyphonic and harmonic style from Chinese traditional folk music; On the other hand, they have looked for a polyphonic and harmonic language with Chinese music style from the technique of contemporary Western music, while continuing the local transformation of the technique of classical Western music. It has undergone a qualitative change on the hard coordination problem of the music vertical and horizontal relations when we just learned from the western harmony in tonal music.In this dissertation, from a music theoretical perspective, it tries to explore the pitch elements of Chinese traditional music, the concept of contemporary music, the inner relations of the technique between traditional and contemporary music, and its combinations with several possibilities. It not only organizes and summarizes the using of pitch elements in Chinese traditional music, but also analyzes the significance of representation of pitch elements in the writing of contemporary music. It includes many works from the aged, middle aged and young generations of Chinese composers, which span different periods of Chinese contemporary music.