A Research About Shang Deyi's Art Songs

With the persistent pursuit of music and superb knowledge in both Chinese and Western culture,Mr. Shang Deyi, a contemporary well-known composer and educator, wrote a large number of various types of music. He mainly engaged in creating vocal works and attained outstanding achievements in art songs, especially in coloratura songs composing and researching. Mr. Shang Deyi grew up in an multi-ethnic environment which is rich in folk music.Influenced by what he constantly saw and heard, the seeds of music were sown in his heart. In 1950, Mr. Shang Deyi was admitted by the Fine Arts department of Beijing Normal University , yet the dedicated love of music and tireless efforts allowed him to transfer to the Music Department and lead him to a professional music career. During the years in university, he was hungry for Western composing techniques and learned from musical educator Mr. Zhang Xiaohu the insights of how to integrate the traditional and folk way of harmonizing, accumulating rich foundation, which had a tremendous impacts on his lifelong musical creation and establish his own distinctive features. Upon graduation, Mr. Shang taught in Changchun city at Jilin College of Art, where he continued to study the West, while taking nourishment from folk music, published some instrumentations and began the the creation of coloratura art songs. During the Cultural Revolution, his coloratura song "Millenarian Tieshu flowered" aroused great deal of vibration throughout the whole China and made him a good beginning.That was a ground-breaking contribution in the field of coloratura. Since then, his excellent art works steadily flew out and have been widespread, such as "Came the Spring of Science", "" Spring Breeze Waltz ", "Bell-ringer of the Notre Dame de Paris","Joy of Torch Festival " and "Homeland Always in My Heart". In the early nineties of the last century, when in his sixties, Mr. Shang went all the way back from the Northeast to his second hometown--Lanzhou, where he had been parted for over forty years, starting his new creating journey of the Northwest life theme and style as a wandering son from afar feeling homesick.Through collecting folk songs in the Northwest, creating and teaching, he extensively contacted and knew about the Northwest culture, art and landscape. The ancient and profound culture there gave him strong creative inspiration and impulse so that he and a well-known lyrics writer Mr. Shao Yongjiang colaborated a lot of excellent musical works. The mixed choir "Desert Night" of this period earned him the first ranking of the first Golden Bell Award, and subsequently the mixed choir "To a Beautiful Place" won a Golden Bell Award for a second time. " Desert Night ", " Longing for Tibet "and others had been performed by overseas choral groups. That was another climax of Mr. Shang's creation career. It can be said that Mr. Shang's fruits are famous both at home and abroad and have made an outstanding contribution toward the prosperity of Chinese musical creation and the development of vocal music.This thesis involves three parts: the first part is titled by "Persistent Pursuit of Music, Fruitful Achievements of Art", introducing the composer, Mr. Shang Deyi's life and his major achievements, emphasizing his unique status in the development of creating of Chinese Art Songs; the second part, "The Creative Features and Style in Mr. Shang's Art Songs", analyses Mr. Shang's creative style from the following aspects: the creative concept that suits both refined and popular tastes, the creation of the coloratura that is of Chinese characteristics, the musical images that are vividly depicted and the lingering charm that no words can express; in the third part, "the Interpretation of Mr. Shang's Art Songs and Singing," the writer analyses Mr. Shang's two representatives: "Millenarian Tieshu flowered" and "Desert Night", probing into the songs' art approach and singing skills from the perspective of how to perform vocal music, in hope of helping better the present creation and performance of art songs.