Dulcimer Schools To Study

Dulcimer, distinctive one of the Chinese Folk pluck-string instruments, which is worldwide distributed and has many kinds of styles, has different names in different countries throughout the Asia, the Europe, the Americas, the Africa and the Oceania. Based on historical background, geographical conditions, social cultural, productive characteristics and performance styles, some comparisons and classifications have been made. As a conclusion, it can be divided into three major systems in the world: Europe dulcimer system, West Asia - South Asia dulcimer system and China dulcimer system.Dulcimer had 400 years of history in China since it had been imported from the West in the early 17th century. The earlier popularity of dulcimer during the people was for its beautiful shape, light body and bright tone color. During the long period of playing dulcimer, many folk music artists gave more attention to it, and they kept practicing it in all kinds of local folk dramas, traditional entertainment involving talking and singing music, and Quyi, meanwhile combined with them. After their practice, they created and adapted many Chinese folk music elements, and created dulcimer music clips and solo.As the only use of accompaniment by dulcimer could no longer meet the demand of people, the earlier musicians, who had had many experience of playing dulcimer and formed their own traditional and local styles, had many wonderful melodies and playing skills. More and more people like their performance. Now there are four main traditional dulcimer factions: Guangdong music dulcimer, Sichuan dulcimer, Jiangnan Silk dulcimer and Northeast dulcimer, which play an important role in Shandong qinshu, Chaozhou string poetry, Xinjiang Mukamu, Shanxi and Inner MongoliaErRenTai folk music and ethnic minorities.After the founding of the PRC, the cultural sector of government shows great attention to the traditional music and give many support. Instrumental art disciplines have gradually entered a new stage of development. During the past 50 years, dulcimer works in the creative arts, performing skills, musical instruments reform, theory and education research and international exchanges, have achieved remarkable success.During the evolution of styles, especially the usage from single to pluralism, it followed historical continuity and development, stability and variability, which are objective law. The future of development of dulcimer will have a long way to go. However, the current problem faced is the limitation of division standards and rules between traditional and modern dulcimer factions. The modern dulcimer factions should exceed the traditional mode of thinking, and find a more realistic and rational theory to redefine and identify the modern development trend of China dulcimer.This thesis consider the Chinese dulcimer factions as the research object, based on the historical materialist dialectics and scientific development concept, and specifically analyzed and explained music styles and techniques of dulcimer in the different factions and periods, and gave an evaluation of the evolvement and trends of dulcimer as a conclusion.