An Analysis Of The Performance Of Pipa And High-pitch Pipa In The Pipa Chamber Music Work ’Fragrance’

In 2013, the young composer Lin Zhu accepted an invitation from ‘Yang Jing Chamber Orchestra’ and composed a Pipa quartet work named ‘Fragrance’. This work applies a tetrachord theme to vertical and horizontal parts with the intention of creating stereo sounds which imitate natural sounds. To perform this work, the parts need to be in high coordination with high unity across timber, volume, intensity and tempo. Furthermore, the dynamics in the work vary greatly. These characteristics of the music piece have caused many problems during rehearsals, and made the researcher realize problems that were overlooked or less thoroughly considered when learning the art of Pipa. Therefore an idea was conceived by the researcher that a comparative study of these two instruments, Pipa and High-pitch Pipa, from aspects of shape, pitch range, timbre or performance techniques may be possible in form of an analysis of this work accompanied by personal experiences of playing these two instruments, replacing qualitative and subjective opinions with quantitative and objective research.This paper uses a case study of the Pipa chamber music work ‘Fragrance’ to explicate the comparison of the performance of the Pipa and High-pitch Pipa parts. By showing the analysis and comparison, I hope that this will provide first-hand and detailed information for a growing number of Pipa chamber music initiates and the learners of Pipa and High-pitch Pipa alike, and allow deeper understanding of the High-pitch Pipa for Pipa learners and researchers from text.