Traditional Chinese Music and Instruments

Traditional Chinese Music and Instruments

Peter Tang Chinese Ensemble

This program is designed to give the audience a visually and aurally inspiring experience of traditional Chinese music and culture. The members of the Peter Tang Chinese Ensemble are the Philadelphia area’s leading proponents of traditional Chinese music, each of whome has earned highest distinction in performance in China.

For generations, China’s harmony, cultural spirit and aesthetic sense have been expressed through its unique performing techniques and wonderful music. While students explore the centuries-old melodies from different parts of China, the music will evoke a vivid picture of the rhythms of Chinese life, which are fundamentally different from those of Western life. Some goals of this assembly are: to introduce students to traditional Chinese music as part of the world’s cultural repository; to demonstrate how history and geography have shaped the development of traditional Chinese music; and to teach the different categories of Chinese instruments.

The variations of rhythm, beat, tone quality and embellishments in traditional Chinese music are highly distinctive and quite unlike their Western counterparts. This is mainly due to the unique sounds and playing styles of traditional Chinese musical instruments, as well as the five-tone (pentatonic) scale that characterizes much of Chinese folk music. Chinese musical instruments are divided into four categories based on the method by which they are played: bowed-strings, plucked-strings, woodwinds and percussion. Together, these instruments create the harmony and distinctive sounds of traditional Chinese music. Ancient Chinese people classified the instruments by the eight kinds of materials they used to make them: silk, bamboo, wood, stone, metal, clay, gourd, and hide.

Peter Tang leads the ensemble on the Erhu (Chinese Violin) and is joined by Juneling Huang on Guzheng (Chinese Zither), Xiannian Xiao on Yangqin (Chinese hammered Dulcimer), and Sandra Guan on percussions and narration.

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