The Tentative Research On The Ming Dynasty Orchestra

The orchestra of the Ming Dynasty is an important field of the research on theancient orchestra in China, as well as the music culture in that period. In the MingDynasty, orchestra is divided into two parts, one serves the imperial court: the otherserves the people. The former one is mainly set up for the political activity of the rulingclass. It includes sacrificial orchestra, orchestra at court, orchestra at court feasts andhonoring orchestra. A specialized musical institution takes charge of setting up the systemand regulation, making musical instrument and composing music for the royal orchestra.The folk orchestra flourished as the type of the musical instrument gradually increased.Some of them inherit the traditional ancient art form, some extensively assimilate thenutriment from the local folk music of different areas and formed its own feature byreforming and creating the art form and the instrument. Taking the form of an ensemble ofChinese wind and percussion instruments, traditional stringed and woodwind instrumentsand traditional percussion instrument, these orchestra serves mainly on the traditionalfestival, wedding ceremony, funeral arrangements and religious activities. The MingDynasty saw a great concentration and development of the musical instrument. With afurther consolidation and development of the multi-national country, the culture exchangeamong different nationalities was more active so that various instruments of ethnicminorities broke the national boundary and were shared throughout the country. There arevarious way to record the music of the Ming Dynasty, such as a single record of the musicscore, a multiple record of the music score, a single record of the music type and musicscore, a multiple record of the music type and music score, the joint score of the song andthe music and the joint score of the dance and the music. Not only did the orchestralmusic of the Ming Dynasty interchange with that of the ethnic minorities, it also had acertain influence on that of Japan and the Western countries.