Music Mind And Language In Chinese Poetry And Performance

"Poetry puts intent into words; singing lengthens words"--this is one of the earliest Chinese comments on artistic expression. Poetic language extends the reach of a sentiment beyond the individual, and musicality extends the reach of poetic language, not only across a room, but across geography and generations. The "extended mind thesis" (EMT) views minds as extending beyond individual nervous systems to include material and social environments. Music, Mind, and Language in Chinese Poetry and Performance: The Voice Extended offers a comprehensive overview of the interwoven histories of traditional Chinese poetry and performing arts. It employs cognitive and quantitative methods such as EMT, and a database of over six thousand traditional melodies, to describe cyclical, continuous interactions between social minds and material artifacts. From the ancient Canon of Poetry to the song-lyrics (ci) of the late medieval period and the dramatic arias of Kun and Beijing operas, Casey Schoenberger introduces the rhythms, melodies, pronunciation, and grammatical stylistics of the major Chinese verse and performance traditions. In doing so, he gleans insights from cognitive neuroscience, digital humanities, musicology, and linguistics to explain not only the trajectory of Chinese arts, but also bigger phenomena, like vernacularisation and improvisation.

Playwriting in many forms flourished during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Shorter theatrical genres in particular offered playwrights opportunities for experimentation with both dramatic form and social critique. Despite their originality and wit, these short plays have been overshadowed by the lengthy masterpieces of the southern drama tradition. A Topsy-Turvy World presents English translations of shorter sixteenth-to-eighteenth-century plays, spotlighting a lesser-known side of Chinese drama. Satirical and often earthy, these mostly one-act plays depict deceit, dissembling, reversed gender roles, and sudden upending of fortunes. With zest and humor, they portray henpecked husbands, supercilious and lustful monks, all-too-human sage kings, disgruntled officials, and overreaching young scholars. These plays provide a glimpse of Chinese daily life and mores even as they question or subvert the boundaries of social, moral, and political order. Each translation is preceded by a short introduction that describes the play’s author, context, formal qualities, and textual history. A Topsy-Turvy World offers a new view of a significant period in the development of the Chinese theatrical tradition and provides insight into the role of drama as cultural critique.

Bringing together new research on Chinese literature and music by twenty-two scholars, on topics ranging from Tang poetry to women's writing and the internet, this collection pays tribute to Wilt Idema as a leading scholar in a field of tremendous scope and diversity.

The first volume in English to examine the fu, one of the major genres of Chinese literature, from its origins up to the late imperial era.

Claimed by some to have been compiled by Confucius in the 5th century BCE, the Book of Songs is an ancient anthology of Chinese poetry. Produced using traditional Chinese bookbinding techniques, this newly-translated edition is a selected anthology of 25 classic poems presented in an exquisite dual-language edition.

This book brings together fresh research from experts on contemporary Chinese poetry, built upon one of the most glorious poetic traditions of any civilization in the world yet historically neglected by scholars in English. This comprehensive volume offers readable and provocative treatments of many of the most important Chinese poets of our age.

This treatise discusses Bright Sheng's four vocal chamber works: Three Chinese Poems, Two Poems from the Sung Dynasty, Three Chinese Love Songs, and may i feel said he. It will provide an interpretation of the texts and traditional Chinese literary concepts embodied in them, followed by stylistic analyses of Sheng's musical settings. Sheng's interest in using music to bridge cultural gaps and connect audiences with diverse backgrounds will be highlights in this document. Bright Sheng's vocal chamber works demonstrate his embrace of cultural elements from both Eastern and Western traditions. His distinctive musical language mixes the Chinese culture with which he grew up and the American culture he has known since moving to the United States. As Sheng explains, "Why shouldn't my music reflect that [mixture]? People acknowledge 'artistic license'; I embrace 'cultural license'-the right to reflect my appreciation and understanding of both cultures in my work." The first chapter is an introduction to Bright Sheng and his compositional approach. The subsequent chapters present analyses of the selected works, interpreting the texts as well as how Sheng's musical settings reflect significant cultural elements and text meanings.

Traces one the most important genres in early Chinese literature through a series of modes connoting varying social milieus, from folk to literati

Singing Mandarin repertoires is an arduous and intimidating task for most non-native singers due to two main challenging aspects. Firstly, the Chinese language is difficult to read and pronounce because the Chinese language is comprised of characters or symbols that do not seemingly provide any pronunciation information for the words. In contrast, most western languages are made up of letters, which are spelled phonetically. Second, there are rarely reference books or audiovisual resources about Chinese music compositions and composers on the international market, making it more difficult for Western singers to learn and sing Chinese repertoires. This dissertation will, via a singer’s perspective, explain the Mandarin pinyin system's pronunciation rules and translates them to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Additionally an analysis and investigation of the four historical stages of Chinese art songs and the correlating content characteristics. The inclusion of sixteen well-known Chinese art song repertoires composed by Yuanren Zhao, Qing Zhu, Zi Huang, Shande Ding, Luobin Wang, Yinghai Li, and Zaiyi Lu will offer specific examples for inclusion and application Chinese art song for Westen classical singers. Each song was presented with a brief introduction, performance analysis, word-for-word IPA, and text translations.