Chinese Culture Studies

zheng soon became nationally popular

The most significant musical historical events were importation and assimilation of nonindigenous music, expansion of Han musical style into southern China, new instruments, recognition of solo performance, earliest survival notation, maturity of music aesthetics by Xi Kang, and new conception of tonal systems.

The banquet music tradition for aristocracy known as yanyue had already been in practice during the ancient zhou dynasty.  This music nevertheless, was overshadowed by the court ritual-ceremonial music, which was subquently reconstructed during the Han dynasty and called yanyue or "elsgant and refined music".  It was not untile the Sui and Tang dynasties that uanyue or "banquet music" became the major court musical genre for the first time.  Yanyue was a court musical performance for the nobles and gentries during a state function and during days of festivity.

The emergence of industry (iron,

Changes in the arts and literature of this periodled to a new tradition in drama, music, fiction and impressionistic painting that dominated the development in the remaining periods of modern China.  The creation of a new style in popular music, dram and literature were mostly important.

major vocal genres: the poetic ci song, the art song, narrtive music, the zaju variety musical drama

The ci,

ci poem therefore was the "filling in" of words to a given musical modal sequence and rhythm scheme in irregular meter.

The Art Songs

The Narrative Songs

A lengthy historical or romantic tale was told through the alternation of narration and song

The Ming-Qing period was highly productive musically, resulting in developments that are important not only in this period but as high-lights in the whole continuum of Chinese music.

signficant musical developments of this period occurred in the area of urban centers such as Peking and Suyang (Suzhou and Yangzhou ) were entertainment in nature.  The source of this entertainment music was usually folk dervied, that is, from the farms and villages, but which was polished for city/urban consumption.

the important forms of urban music included the narrative genres such as tanci (not to be confused with southern tanchi), lianhualao ("The Falling Lotus"), and bajiaogu ("Eight-cornered Drum Song"). These were performed outdoors in the open areas of the marketplaces usually by travelling performing troupes. Their earnings were donations from by-standers.  These performances of musical instruments.  Loud instrumentation, such as the shifan ten varieties of gong and drum ensemble of the fengyang flower drum dance, was not popular in the open air.

The outdoor performances catered to the commoners, meanwhile the indoor performances catered to an audience made up of genry-officials and wealthy merchants.