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An Ethnomusicological Perspective on Musical Style, with Reference to Music for Chinese Two-Stringed Fiddles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Jonathan P. J. Stock
Jonathan P. J. Stock*
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Extract

In a major publication of 1983 Bruno Netti identified the explanation of musical style as a central problem in ethnomusicological research. This essay is intended to offer a partial solution of that problem, seeking to define musical style as an abstraction of the matrix of cognitive and physical aspects which constitute human music-making. In the cognitive part of this equation I include the critically important role played by social context, concurring with John Blacking's statement that ‘the creation of a musical style is the result of conscious decisions about the organization of musical symbols in the context of real or imagined social interaction’. However, in this category, I accord equal recognition to the body of musical and music-related knowledge held by a musician or any other member of society, whether this knowledge is implicitly assumed or explicitly acknowledged, historically conditioned or geographically referent, abstractly theoretical or firmly practical. The ‘conscious decisions’ Blacking points to are indeed made in the actual or perceptual domain of social interaction, but they are also considered from the cognitive perspective of acquired musical thought. Physical ingredients which help form the concept of musical style include the limits and possibilities of the human body and its movement patterns and material factors such as the parameters of any musical instrument (size, shape, posture, potential playing techniques, etc.) and performance location.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 118 , Issue 2 , 1993 , pp. 276 - 299
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 Royal Musical Association

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References

An early form of this paper was presented at the European Seminar in Ethnomusicology, held in Geneva in the summer of 1991. I am obliged to several members of the audience for the constructive comments they offered on that occasion, especially Dr Francois Picard and Mr Steven Jones. Sections of the work presented also appeared in my Ph.D. thesis, ‘Context and Creativity: The Two-Stringed Fiddle Erhu in Contemporary China’ (Queen's University of Belfast, 1991). I wish to thank the panel of examiners, Drs Robert Provine, Martin Stokes and Ian Woodfield, for the many refinements they suggested. Research on this topic was carried out in Shanghai during the academic year 1989–90 and made possible by the award of a British Council/Chinese State Education Commission Scholarship. Writing up was facilitated by the award of a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship held at the University of Durham. I am grateful to the many fiddle players 1 interviewed in East China during that time and particularly to my erhu tutor at the Shanghai Music Conservatory, Prof. Wu Zhimin. Mr Kevin Dawe and Dr Bob Gilmore kindly read a later draft of this paper; their valuable comments were much appreciated.Google Scholar

1 Netti, Bruno, The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-Nine Issues and Concepts (Urbana, 1983), 235.Google Scholar

2 Blacking, John, ‘A Commonsense View of All Music‘ (Cambridge, 1987), 48.Google Scholar

3 Processes by which this is achieved in the comparatively well-documented genre of Jiangnan sizhu, or ‘silk[-stringed] and bamboo[-tubed instrumental ensemble] of the Jiangnan area’, are discussed by Alan R. Thrasher, ‘The Melodic Structure of Jiangnan sizhu’, Jiangnan sizhu 29 (1985), 237–63, with important contextual information furnished by J. Lawrence Witzleben, ‘Jiangnan sizhu Music Clubs in Shanghai: Context, Concept and Identity’, Ethnomusicology, 31 (1987), 240–60.Google Scholar

4 For a discussion of the Chinese national orchestra, see Kuo-huang, Han, ‘The Modern Orchestra’, Asian Music, 11 (1979), 1–43. Biographical information on several twentieth-century fiddlers is given by Terence Liu, ‘The Development of the Chinese Two-Stringed Lute Erhu Following the New Culture Movement (c.1915–1985)’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Kent State University, 1988), 98–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 See Ben, Wu, ‘How Music is Transmitted in a Typical Chinese Folk Musical Group’, I.C. T.M. UK Chapter Bulletin, 21 (1988), 5–12, and Steven Jones and Xue Yibing, ‘The Music Associations of Hebei Province, China: A Preliminary Report’, Ethnomusicology, 35 (1991), 1–29 (pp. 15–16).Google Scholar

6 The repertory performed by these musicians is discussed in Jonathan P.J. Stock, ‘Contemporary Recital Solos for the Chinese Two-Stringed Fiddle Erhu’, Erhu 1 (1992), 55–88.Google Scholar

7 See Baily, John, ‘Movement Patterns in Playing the Herati Dutār’, The Anthropology of the Body, ed. John Blacking, A.S.A. Monograph 15 (London, 1977), 275–330 (p. 275). Baily's article remains the key source on the subject; its influence may be detected throughout this paper.Google Scholar

8 My concern in this study is primarily with the larger proportion of fiddles constructed without a fingerboard. For an illustration and more detailed description of the erhu, see Jonathan P.J. Stock. ‘A Historical Account of the Chinese Two-Stringed Fiddle Erhu’, Erhu 46 (1993), 83–113. Brief discussion of other Chinese fiddle forms and their names will take place in Jonathan P. J. Stock, ‘A Preliminary Examination of Spike Fiddles Used in Chinese Traditional Opera’ (forthcoming).Google Scholar

9 A number of ethnomusicologists use ‘transnotation’ to refer to the process by which music preserved in the symbols of one form of notation is recast in those of another, reserving ‘transcription’ for the conversion of recorded or live material to written notation. Gongchepu, the form of notation employed in the original score from which Example 1 has been extracted, Jiang Tianyi, Xiaodiao gonchepu (Shanghai, 1922), 6–7, is further described below.Google Scholar

10 See also Baily, John, ‘Recent Changes in the Dutār of Herat’, Asian Music, 8 (1976), 29–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Chen Min, personal communication of 22 April 1990. Ms Chen's inference is that as strong beats are ‘naturally’ played more loudly than weak ones, the volume of the yueju erhu player is limited to that of the slightly quieter ‘push’ on strong beats, with ‘pulls’ on other beats scaled down accordingly.Google Scholar

12 The first uncontested mention of horsetail bowed instruments in China is found in a fourteenth-century reference work, the Yuan shi (compiled 1369–70). However, earlier sources which may also refer to such an instrumental form have been found from the late eleventh century onwards; see Stock, ‘A Historical Account’. Detailed description of the theoretical modal structure already existing during this period may be found in Rulan Chao Pian, Sonq Dynasty Musical Sources and their Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass., 1967). Although many of these modes may have existed only as theoretical possibilities, acknowledged for the sake of completeness by court mathematician-musicologists, from surviving scores and contemporary performance practice there appears little reason to doubt that at least some of these modes have long been used on Chinese bowed instruments, both in the court and outside.Google Scholar

13 The upper ranges of these charts represent possibilities more used in contemporary recital solos than in certain traditional genres. However, on existing evidence, it is not possible entirely to discount the use of at least some of these higher notes by a proportion of traditional players, as, for example, the compositions of Abing, Sun Wenming and the huqin part of Rong Zhai's Xiansuo shisan tao of 1814 make clear. The former pieces are widely available in contemporary Chinese erhu music compilations. For Rong Zhai's piece, see Cao Anhe et al., Xiansuo shisan tao di yi ji (Beijing, 1955).Google Scholar

14 Example 4 has been transposed up a minor third to facilitate comparison with Figure 2 and Examples 2 and 3. As a result, a string tuning of d‘ and a‘ is common to all three examples.Google Scholar

15 Chinese notations of these pieces do not indicate every glissando that a player is expected to perform. Some are deemed so much part of the style of erhu performance that there is no need to notate them in musical scores. In Examples 3 and 4, and their ensuing analyses of glissando movements, I have incorporated these implied glissandi, which are often those associated with changes of hand position.Google Scholar

16 See also Thrasher, , ‘The Melodic Structure’, 243–4, 248–50. I am obliged to Prof. Chen Yingshi and Mr Steven Jones for providing a number of transcriptions of Liuban tunes in various metres. In performance each form of this theme would be decorated by the addition of a layer of trills, grace notes and glissandi. As with the ‘implied’ glissando mentioned above, these are generally not notated in Chinese transcriptions, and I have omitted them here since Example 5 contains enough structural and decorative levels to illustrate the argument contained in my text. For further discussion of this melody see Jinpei, Huang, trans. Alan R. Thrasher, ‘Concerning the Variants of Lao liuban’, Asian Music, 13 (1982), 19–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 The terminology applied in this melodic analysis is my own. Many of the contemporary Chinese names for various kinds of ornamentation were themselves created earlier this century from the translation of Western terms.Google Scholar

18 The issue of melodic retardation in classical East Asian Music has been raised by several scholars; see, for instance, Laurence Picken et al., Music from the Tang Court (Oxford, 1981), 5–14, Alan Marett, ‘Tögaku: Where Have the Tang Melodies Gone and Where Have the New Melodies Come From?’, Ethnomusicology, 29 (1985), 409–31, Jonathan Condit, ‘The Evolution of Yömillak from the Fifteenth Century to the Present Day’, Articles on Asian Music: Festschrift for Dr Chang Sa-Hun (Seoul, 1977), 231–64, idem, ‘Two Song-Dynasty Chinese Tunes Preserved in Korea’, Music and Tradition, ed. D. Richard Widdess and Rembrandt F. Wolpert (Cambridge, 1981), 1–39, and idem, ‘Uncovering Earlier Melodic Forms from Modern Performance: The Kasa Repertoire’, Asian Music, 9 (1978), 3–20; A significant difference in the contemporary Chinese situation is that multiple metrical versions of a melody coexist and may be linked together in performance. In the Japanese and Korean contexts, melodically expanded forms have entirely replaced earlier, more compact tunes.Google Scholar

19 See Kaufmann, Walter, Musical Notations of the Orient: Notational Systems of East, South and Central Asia (Bloomington, 1967), 69–106. Gong and che are the pronunciations of two of the characters used in this form of notation. Pu may be translated in this context as ‘notation’; in other instances it can mean ‘chart’, ‘score’ or ‘manual’.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., 77.Google Scholar

21 The source of the cipher notation of this piece is Jiang Fengzhi and Jiang Qing, Jiang Fengzhi erhu yanzou yishu (Beijing, 1987), 86–7.Google Scholar

22 Emile J. M. Chevé (1804–64) developed this notation to aid the tuition of sight singing; see Rainbow, Bernarr, ‘Chevé, Emile Joseph Maurice’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, (London, 1980), iv, 216. Cipher notation is now employed for almost all Chinese traditional musical instruments, the one standard exception being the seven-stringed classical zither, or qin. This instrument has its own highly specialized form of tablature which provides information not easily expressed in the simpler cipher format.Google Scholar

23 Stock, ‘Contemporary Recital Solos’, 57–9, 60–1, 66, 73–4.Google Scholar

24 Baily, ‘Movement Patterns’, 329. Nicholas Cook mentions the linkage between the recall of musical sounds and physical activity, commenting: ‘A great deal of the productional imagery employed by musicians is kinaesthetic in origin.’ See Cook, Nicholas, Music, Imagination, and Culture (Oxford, 1990), 95. Patterned performance movements thus assist musical recreation as well as generation.Google Scholar