A Brief Analysis Of Zhang Teng 's First String Quartet "Totem"

Throughout the long history, splendid diverse ethnic cultures appeared from the soil of the Chinese land one after one. Being of strong vitality, these ethnic cultures were passed down through the inheritance and development of generations. Due to its special geomorphic environment and historical reasons, over 20 ethnic minorities gathered in south Yunnan. South Yunnan became the province of the largest number of ethnic minorities in China, and diversified ethnic cultures were more mysterious and abundant.Since the preacher’s introduction of classical western music into China, classical western music has risen and fallen in Chinese cultural soil for almost one century. In such a country as China with original culture of great creativities, the collision and fusion of foreign culture and native culture is always a topic worth pondering on.ZHANG Zhao’s string quartet No.l "Totem" is the result of the collision and fusion of Chinese and western cultures. Totem, being rooted in south Yunnan ethnic cultures, applies the most classical string quartet in western chamber music to compose. It is the scarce quartet works of abundant national deposits.The author attempts to expound Totem’s social evaluations from the perspectives of works position, social influence and the list of awards, and separately conducts works analysis on the four movements:Singer, Musician, Wizard and Drummer. Then, the author briefly describes the most classical western chamber music "string quartet", and elaborates Totem as the exceptionally excellent representative of the "foreign used by the Chinese" genres. At last, the author diverges his thoughts and briefly talks about the differences of Chines and western views of artistic value from the two aspects of "the personal tragedy tendency in western culture" and "the collective optimistic spirit in Chinese culture".