A contemporary history of the Chinese zheng /
This book traces the twentieth- and twenty-first-century development of an important Chinese musical instrument in greater China. The zheng was transformed over the course of the twentieth century, becoming a solo instrument with virtuosic capacity. In the past, the zheng had appeared in small instr...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Hong Kong :
Hong Kong University Press,
[2023].
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| Summary: | This book traces the twentieth- and twenty-first-century development of an important Chinese musical instrument in greater China. The zheng was transformed over the course of the twentieth century, becoming a solo instrument with virtuosic capacity. In the past, the zheng had appeared in small instrumental ensembles and supplied improvised accompaniments to song. Zheng music became a means of nation-building, and was eventually promoted as a marker of Chinese identity in Hong Kong. Ann L. Silverberg uses evidence from the greater China area to show how the narrative history of the zheng created on the mainland did not represent zheng music as it had been in the past. Silverberg ultimately argues that the zheng's older repertory was poorly represented by efforts to collect and promote zheng music in the twentieth century. This book contends that the restored "traditional Chinese music" created and promulgated from the 1920s forward, and solo zheng music in particular, is a hybrid of "Chinese essence, Western means" that essentially obscures rather than reveals tradition. |
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| Physical Description: | xvii, 231 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages [197]-211) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9789888754342 9888754343 |