A Study Of Musical Aesthetics In Traditional Chinese Chanting

As the art of sound, chant is an audio carrier for poems and articles’ learning, appreciation and dissemination. It contains musical tones, thus presenting a sense of musicality. There are certain rules that can be followed in the sound length and pitch level of chanting, usually in accordance with “prolonged sound at level tones while short sound at oblique tones”, “high pitch at level tones while low pitch at oblique tones” or “low pitch at level tones while high pitch at oblique tones”. Currently, chant is divided into traditional chant tune(usually handed down from masters to apprentices by mentoring orally, the paper mainly studies this type), new chant and analogously singing new chant.The first chapter of this paper discusses the definition of chant and distinguishes the difference between singing and chanting in method, function, direction, standard and other aspect. The second chapter discusses sound length issue. It is found that the phenomenon going against the principle “prolonged sound at level tones while short sound at oblique tones” account for about thirty percent ratio, which means the principle regarded as golden rule in the circle of chant is groundless. The author concludes an aesthetic viewpoint called “controlled freedom” from the perspective of phenomenon. “Freedom” vitalizes the chant and expresses the beauty of sounds and emotions. “Control” exactly ensures the standardization and artistry of chant. The third chapter discusses the pitch level and analyzes the relationship between neighboring level tone words and oblique tone words, the audio cavity features of the multi-tone words, the melodic interval of corresponding pitch of level tone words and oblique tone words. The author also puts forward some questions about Mr. Dexiang Qin’s theory “straight sound at level tone while shifted sound at oblique tone”. The melodic interval between each neighboring level tone word and oblique tone word and the total vocal range of each chant is not that large, to some extent, which reflects aesthetic characteristics fairness and peacefulness hidden behind the chant.The beauty of chant’s sound and emotion mainly lies in the comprehension of emotion. It comes from inner heart, changes easily, and has a certain degree of freedom. Therefore chant is also at a state of activity. The study on chant needs to be based on a large number of empirical investigations so as to discover laws from phenomenon. The thoughts hidden behind the phenomenon are answers to explain root causes. Based on empirical researches of the contemporary traditional genre of chant, the paper analyses the definition of chant, the sound length, the pitch level and reveals musical aesthetic thoughts behind parts of forms. This is also a long-term overlooked subject in the pre-research of chant.