Liu Cong's Art Song Singing Research

Liu Cong's works involve symphony, orchestral music, instrumental music performance, symphony chorus divertimento and art songs. Among all of them the last ones are his main creative direction. Since 1994, he has created large numbers of art songs, such as“Love for Homeland”,“Liederspiel”, “Birds Singing in the Wind”, “How Much do You Love ”, “The Wet Dream” and so on. He roots his songwriting in the national tradition and absorbs lessons from western schools of advanced elements.The creation of tonal transformation is his great advantage.The music personality of his works is full of poetic beauty of Chinese traditional culture, which embody the eternal pursuit of truth and the feelings of compassion.There're various types of subjects in Liu Cong's art songs, which mainly include homesickness, environmental themes, ancient poetry and Buddhism theme. His works have won the prizes of the national art songs such as Chinese Music Golden Bell Award for several times, being used as provisions by many famous singers. A large number of his works have been selected as teaching materials in art colleges, having produced important influences on contemporary vocal singing and teaching practice.The purpose of the thesis is to focus on these works from the perspective of singing system and find out the laws and characteristics with the method of generalizing. Finally, better ways can be found for second creation of vocal music singing after deep excavation.The full text is divided into five parts:Introduction Part intruduces the formation and development of art song genre, process, and the development of Chinese art songs.The first chapter introduces Liu Cong's biography and his works.The creation techniques of Liu Cong's art songs are analyzed in the second chapter and it is divided into four aspects just as follows: Firstly,the analysis of melody. Secondly,the analysis of tonality.Thirdly,the analysis of harmony and musical form The last part is the analysis of speed and rhythm..The singing skills of Liu Cong's art songs are introduced from every aspect in the third chapter. It is divided into five parts: Firstly, timbre and dynamics are introduced. Secondly, the pronunciation and enunciation are descibed. Thirdly, breathing and resonance are introduced. The last part introduces playing and performancing with the piano accompaniment. From the above four aspects, the skills of singing Liu Cong's art songs are respectively introduced. Example analyses in particular songs are also included.The specific analysis of sining Liu Cong's art songs are descibed in the third chapter from six of his representative art songs as follows. They are lyrical art song “Please Don't Say”, “In the Verdant Valley”, “View”, “How Much do You Love”, “Autumn Winds have Broken My Hut”,“Song of Picking Lotus”. Detailed discussions are from following aspects: the song creation background, creative features and the singing skills.In this paper, the author will sum up and analyze Liu Cong's art song singing. The songs created by Liu Cong have been innovated on the basis of inheriting national music innovation, playing a rather important role in the development of contemporary Chinese art songs. His works request a high standard of singer's singing skills and comprehensive artistic quality.The author expects a big improvement in vocal singing and teaching and also hope valuable datas can be provided through the thesis for later research on this topic.