Huang Study From Art Songs

As a kind of singing musical form, artistic song is a typical representation of Europeanromanticism in the 18th century. Austrian and German composers such as Franz Schubert andRobert Schumann first renewed this musical form. Then many other European composersimproved and refined the subject, artistic style, structure and techniques of artistic songs,making it one of the most important representations of musical culture. Influenced by westernmusical thought, artistic songs began to appear in China in 1920's, which not only absorbedthe European musical achievements but also speeded the development of traditional Chinesemusic. Chinese artistic songs appeared, developed and matured from the early 1920's to thelate 1930's.HuangZi, one of the important representatives in musical history of this period,contributed a lot to the development of Chinese professional music in his short life. Mr.HuangZi's composition is mainly about vocality, of which his lyric songs are most artisticallyvaluable. QianRenkang said that "he contributed so much in the newly exploited field ofChinese music" in his The Life and Composition of HuangZi. HuangZi was good atcombining poetry with musical language both in the form and content of music《Sixiang 》《Chunsiqu 》,《Meiguisanyuan 》 are all his magnum opuses. HuangZi's formaleducational experience both at home and abroad ensured that his composition was endowedwith not only the techniques of European artistic songs but also the bright nationalcharacteristics and styles. His artistic songs play an important role in the present musical lifeas well in the future development of Chinese artistic songs.In this paper, the analysis of the artistic characters and singing styles of HuangZi'sartistic songs is stated in four chapters. The first chapter is mainly about the factorsinfluencing his composition of artistic songs. In this chapter the author tries to find thefoundation of his composition through the study of his life, his aesthetic thoughts and thesocial background. The second chapter, which is the principal part of this paper, refers to theanalysis of HuangZi's artistic songs. According to different content, his opuses are dividedinto three types, i.e., lyric songs, poetic songs and realistic songs. Besides, there is theanalysis of theform structure,tonality, aesthetic characteristics, singing techniques, etc. Thethird chapter states the composing characteristics of HuangZi's artistic songs. His richknowledge of Chinese traditional culture and modern western musical theories andcomposing techniques made his composition of artistic songs a perfect integration of theoriental and western music culture. Thus, this chapter states respectively the influence ofEuropean composing techniques, his experiment and attempt of music nationalization and thecomparison of his contemporaries such as QingZhu and ZhaoYuanren. The last chapterstudies the singing styles of HuangZi's artistic songs. Coordinating the theoretical studieswith teaching practices, the author interprets singing styles from the perspective of aestheticprinciples and singing requirements.。...