With dozens of color photographs and insightful text, Chinese Music and Musical Instruments describes in detail the musical instruments with which a Chinese folk orchestra is equipped and their working and sounding principles. There are as many as a thousand different kinds of musical instruments in China. Only a tiny portion of them are used in an orchestra. The selection of musical instruments for an orchestra depends on how well they complement one another. A Chinese folk orchestra is composed of four sections: wind, plucked, percussion and bowed. This book is also devoted to the description of the development of classical Chinese music and the introduction of some music-related tales of profound significance. Chinese music is a big family composed of various distinctive types of music: Chinese folk music played at weddings, funerals or in festivals an fairs. The religious music played in religious services conducted in Buddhist and Taoist temples. Court music, which reached its zenith during the Tang Dynasty. The scholars' music based on Confucian thinking was the embodiment of the musical life of academia and refined music of this kind is still prevalent in today's society.

This accessible, illustrated introduction explores the history of Chinese music, an ancient, diverse and fascinating part of China's cultural heritage.

Western music reached China nearly four centuries ago, with the arrival of Christian missionaries, yet only within the last century has Chinese music absorbed its influence. As China and the West demonstrates, the emergence of “Westernized” music from China—concurrent with the technological advances that have made global culture widely accessible—has not established a prominent presence in the West. China and the West brings together essays on centuries of Sino-Western musical exchange by musicologists, ethnomusicologists, and music theorists from around the world. It opens with a look at theoretical approaches of prior studies of musical encounters and a comprehensive survey of the intercultural and cross-cultural theoretical frameworks—exoticism, orientalism, globalization, transculturation, and hybridization—that inform these essays. Part I focuses on the actual encounters between Chinese and European musicians, their instruments and institutions, and the compositions inspired by these encounters, while Part II examines theatricalized and mediated East-West cultural exchanges, which often drew on stereotypical tropes, resulting in performances more inventive than accurate. Part III looks at the musical language, sonority, and subject matters of “intercultural” compositions by Eastern and Western composers. Essays in Part IV address reception studies and consider the ways in which differences are articulated in musical discourse by actors serving different purposes, whether self-promotion, commercial marketing, or modes of nationalistic—even propagandistic—expression. The volume’s extensive bibliography of secondary sources will be invaluable to scholars of music, contemporary Chinese culture, and the globalization of culture.

The Chinese instrumentarium is unquestionably the largest and most diverse of any civilization, ancient or modern. Inscriptions on tortoise shells and cow bones from more than 3000 years ago recorded various instruments including drums, stone chimes, and panpipes. In this volume, Alan R. Thrasher discusses the evolution of Chinese musical instruments, detailing their construction, regional variations, and role in musical accompaniment.

"Playing Erhu: Bridging the Gap" was written for English readers who are interested in learning how to play the erhu, but could not find any erhu instruction books in English. The book covers: Assembly of the erhu; Reading staff and jianpu notation; Fingering charts for all common keys; Music symbols, terms, ornamentation; Exercises in staff and jianpu notation for each key; Annotated regional folksongs in staff and jianpu notation for each key; Internet access to recordings of all music found in this book as performed by the author.

The TENG Guide to the Chinese Orchestra is a seminal guide to equip composers, scholars and music enthusiasts worldwide with the necessary knowledge to work with Chinese musical instruments. The INSTRUMENTATION section outlines the history, physical attributes and performance techniques of Chinese musical instruments in detail. It also includes practical scoring advice for composers and reference charts for fingerings and chords. The ORCHESTRATION section contains systematic analyses of score excerpts from Chinese orchestra pieces spanning the last 60 years to demonstrate how Chinese musical instruments work together in an orchestra.