Category: Contemporary Issues in Sound Art

Yang Hongguang (2018) points out that ‘The Veil’ (2005) is an important exploration of the use of traditional Chinese musical elements in foreign film music.
The Veil’ (2005) is a significant exploration of the application and practice of traditional Chinese musical elements in foreign film music.
In addition, the Xi Pi introduction of the second scene of the Peking opera ‘Yutangchun – Su San Qi Jie’, heard at 16’31” in the film, ‘Yutangchun with tears of sorrow ……’, is transferred to the Xi Pi slow movement ‘Remembering…’. …”, Su San’s sorrowful reproach for her unfaithful husband and her sorrowful lament for her fate are profoundly “analyzed and interpreted” by Charlie, who is used to love affairs, thus setting the stage for Katie’s infidelity and driving the narrative process of the film. Although the Chinese opera songs serve as a far-fetched illustration of Charlie’s compulsion, Katie eventually finds her way back to the spirit of self-redemption and true love in her exile in the epidemic-stricken town of southwest China. However, as a whole, the film still shows a divide, a contrast and even a dislocation between Chinese and foreign musical cultures in its use of traditional Chinese musical elements, and this creates a dramatic narrative.

I chose this film for E2 for the simple reason that although it is not as well known as The Last Emperor or Kung Fu Panda, it is still a film that finds innovative ways of thinking about the integration of Chinese musical elements into Western cinema. My excerpt is from the opening scene of the film plus the arrival of the two main characters in China. I chose this sequence because there is no dialogue throughout and I could simply deal with the original sound of the film. Secondly it is very graphic, with a lot of back and forth. Because I made the music first and then searched for the film, there was a lot of misalignment at first when I was working on the sound and picture combination, but then I adjusted the drums a bit. I adjusted the drumbeat so that the classical sound was in sync with the water drops in the picture and also modified the melody. So in the final product you can hear the guzheng, erhu and pipa, instruments that are often used in Chinese soundtracks in western films. You can also hear black pipes, drums and pianos, which have a Western character. However, the ambient sounds at 1:54 at the end of the video were added by me at a later stage, in fact I wanted to mute all the sounds and add only the music. However, when I sent the music-only version to my friends, they said it felt strange, like the music was hovering over the video, and suggested I add some ambient sounds to make sure the music was connected to the picture. I followed their advice and after adding some background sounds it became much better.

There are a number of things I need to improve on for this assignment. The first thing is that I think I should have added more Chinese elements to the piece. I did add traditional Chinese instruments to the piece and the audience will notice the very Chinese sounds when they hear it. But I think the Chinese elements are a bit superficial this time. It doesn’t seem to give the audience a strong sense of China-related images when you look at the melody alone without the added effect of the traditional Chinese instruments. This is something I need to improve on and I need to strengthen my skills in this area. In my free time, I need to work more on the melodic side of things. I need to make sure that I can do better on my next assignment than I did this time and make progress.

In terms of some future plans I guess I’ll be more from fitting in a career related to arranging music. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and I’ve been studying with that in mind. Ever since I settled on it in the second half of my second year of university I’ve wanted to keep working in that direction. I set myself another requirement to write one piece a month, not strictly music of course, just some of my own exercises to link some chord combinations. I’ve also been taking some online classes to make sure I’m learning things in the right direction.

The theme music for Mulan (1998), which opens in parallel with the ink and landscape scenes, is in the key of G, based on traditional Chinese musical elements and forged by the orchestra and chorus. In the passage where Mulan meets the matchmaker (6.07), the tempo of the Main Title is increased by a factor of 1.7, and this gives rise to the song Honor to us all. The use of Xuanxu tune, chorus, reprise, solo and unison singing in the song not only reflects the traditional Chinese music concept of composition and structure, in which the core tone remains the same but the overall tempo changes gradually, but also the use of various forms of Xuanxu tune, chorus, reprise, solo and unison singing in the song makes the traditional Chinese music elements, in terms of technical vocabulary and sound concept, become certain structural elements, and in the background The use of traditional Chinese musical elements, both in terms of technical vocabulary and acoustic concepts, has been elevated to a certain structural element, and in the background they are involved in the plot and the dramatic conflict, thus highlighting an innovative quality in terms of stylistic expression that is different from that of the 80s. The film’s Chinese story is structured in a way that still reflects the artistic style of Disney’s animated films. For example, although the traditional Chinese musical elements are orchestrated to create a three-dimensional and full-bodied sound world, thus allowing for a deeper exploration and enrichment of the traditional culture, the strong blues style of the film and the modern rock music grouping also convey an imaginative and pan-Chinese humanistic context. In addition, the first half of the film focuses on four songs embedded in the narrative, which are sung by the female protagonist alone, as well as in mixed chorus, male and female vocal rounds, and in the form of a harmony between the main song and the chorus. These song-like and musical genre designs bring the film closer to the traditional Hollywood song-and-dance genre, while at the same time allowing the ancient Chinese traditional music elements to confront and compromise with them, gaining new modern qualities and audiovisual aesthetics.

Panda Po is the theme music of GongFu Panda. It is a very lyrical
It appears at the end of the film that the master and the disciple are
at the end of the film when the master and disciple are sharing buns under a peach tree. The music is a very lyrical piece of music.
Chinese flavor and the self-sufficiency typical of agrarian societies.
The film is full of Chinese flavor and the typical self-sufficiency of an agrarian society. The pulsating notes and lightly plucked strings
quietly transport us to that welcoming place, with the jumping rhythms of the yangqin pounding and the plucked strings of the lower register. The plucked strings immediately transport us back to the beautiful and peaceful valley of peace.

A series of lightly plucked notes and yodeling variations slowly introduce the second appearance of the main melody The main theme is reproduced with the addition of marimba, a Western percussion instrument, whose The “tinkling” sound of the marimba, like a gurgling stream of water The “tinkling” sound of the marimba, like the flow of water, is matched by the joyful flow of the yangqin, giving us a the valley of peace. At the end of each phrase, there is a sub-spin played on the yangqin with the typical Chinese folk song in the form of a reply.

In the section that follows, the composer uses Chinese opera-style small hits (hang cymbal, small gong, ringing board) and powerful drums to make this section witty and jumpy without losing its grandeur, and the lead instrument has been changed from a yangqin to a more dexterous small clapper flute, rendering this vigorous and continuous vitality very charming.

The bass of the overture is replaced by the yangqin, which plucks the strings throughout, and adds the humorous and mischievous gong from Chinese opera. In the second half of the piece, the first section is repeated, with more varied orchestration, for example, the beautiful strings replacing the yangqin and adding a contralto structure, with a fuller and more expressive mood than before, gradually bringing the piece to a climax. The piece returns to silence at the end, stopping with the initial plucking of the strings, as if you have just heard a seemingly mundane but infinitely meaningful story, and you feel as if you have not yet finished. It is worth noting that in this short score, the composer uses a melodic technique typical of traditional Chinese music – the ‘fish biting its tail’ – which is prominent in the main melody of the four phrases. The “fish bites the tail” refers to the structure in which the ending note of the previous melody is the same as the first note of the next melody, also known as the articulation and the succession, which is a form of traditional Chinese music structure. Musical language (musical language consists of many elements: melody, rhythm, meter, tempo, intensity, range, timbre, harmony, polyphony, modulation, tonality, etc.). The ideological content and artistic beauty of a piece of music can only be expressed through a variety of elements) is closely connected, with a neat and tidy syntax. This is very typical of Chinese compositional thinking, and is used in a large number of famous Chinese songs such as ‘The Moon in the Spring River’ and ‘The Night of the Flowers and the Moon’.

Directed by Bertolucci and written by three composers, Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Byrne and Su Cong, The Last Emperor tells the story of Pu Yi, the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, from his accession to the throne in 1908 until the Cultural Revolution, a period of almost sixty years. The film features many Chinese folk songs and operas, such as “The East is Red”, “Lullaby” (a northeastern folk song) and the Peking Opera “An Tian Hui”. Here I will mainly analyse the film’s ‘Lullaby’（around 27‘）.

The lullaby is in the warm A-tone mode, but the music is more melancholic and intense because of the infiltration, alternation and transformation of the minor key colours such as feather and shang. The combination of this distinctive national tonal approach with the poignant images of life and death and the suppressed weeping of the voices makes for a powerful combination of sound and picture that is both sorrowful and joyful. Lullaby not only has a dominant and radiating structural effect on the music of the film’s many themes in terms of its core tones, modal techniques, spatial characteristics and narrative direction, but also metaphorically writes about Pu Yi’s life with the pain of parting from her father and baby. The film opens with a shadow-like empty shot from the perspective of a traveller, moving and moving through historical images of pavilions, eaves and pavilions, inked seals and brocades. In parallel with the above images, the core pitch patterns, spins and melodic lines in each phrase of the Main Title Theme can be found in the Lullaby, as well as the shifting trajectories revealed through the technical practice of pitch material splitting, modulation, modulation and synthesis. On the one hand, this theme music inherits the influence of the couplet structure and its tonal colours of the opera music panel, making the audiovisual combination full of elegant courtly rhythms; on the other hand, with the help of Western multi-layered compound rhythms, it breaks away from the traditional sense of metrical stability, periodicity and regularity, while highlighting the spatial layers of the royal garden in the image. The music is a unified rhythm that leads the audience into the legendary world of the protagonist’s swaying, enchanted life.

However, the music’s internal structure and external form, the multiple combinations of Western and Chinese instruments, the leading motifs and the design of the weaving patterns all reflect the dominance of Western composition. It can be said that the artistic pursuit of resemblance rather than resemblance and the aesthetic interaction between the composer and the director reflect the profound grasp of the traditional Chinese culture in the film, and also convey the aesthetic paradigm and creative interest of the integration of traditional Chinese musical elements in the Western perspective in the sound rhythm and the combination of sound and painting.

Among the various modes used in Chinese music, the pentatonic scale, which consists of five tones arranged in fifths – Gong, Shang, Horn, Zheng and Fe – is the most common. The pentatonic scale has a unique triad of major second and minor third, and the lack of Many Western musicians consider the use of the pentatonic scale to be a reflection of the Chinese style, due to its unique triadic grouping of major and minor seconds and the melodic flavour of the missing semitones. For example, in the unfinished Sonata in C major (D.480) by the 19th century Austrian composer Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828), the pentatonic scale appears in the thematic section of the first movement. The pentatonic scale in C (palace, quotient, horn, sign and plumage) uses a continuous triplet rhythmic pattern; in the unfolding section, Schubert shifts the piece to D plumage. The octave staccato in both hands, with several powerful chord tones in between, brings out the power and mood of the theme. Unfortunately, Schubert died of illness before the last two movements of the sonata were completed (there are some drafts of the third movement and the fourth movement has only reached the unfolding section).

Then there was the 20th century Russian-American pianist Alexander Zirpin (1899-1977). Zilpin not only organised a competition for piano works with a Chinese flavour, but also composed his own “Five Concert Etudes” (no. 52) with Chinese pentatonic scales and “Piano Exercises in Pentatonic Scale” (no.51). Zilpin uses the pentatonic scale as the basis for his melodies, incorporating Chinese folk songs, such as “Purple Bamboo Tune” and “The Pretty Lady”, in his compositions, so that Chinese folk music and Western music can be blended together, presenting a more complete picture than the traditional Western harmonic termination. The melodies in this piece are a blend of Chinese folk music and Western music, giving it a completely different acoustic colour than the traditional Western harmonic termination. In another of his works, Seven Songs – A Score of Chinese Poetry, he combines the rhythm of Chinese poetry with the pentatonic scale, using the technique of the rotary palette of Chinese folk music and the two-two-three structure of Chinese poetic chanting to create a work with a strong Chinese musical flavour. The mood of this work is like that of Chinese poetry, where the rhythm of silence is better than sound.