Inheritance And Innovation

This thesis is mainly focused on the career of Tan Xiao Lin, the first Chinese composer who applied the western modern composing skills to Chinese music, and his composing experience, leading works etc. By summarizing the multi-voice parts skills of his later works, we can have a further understanding of how he transformed himself from a traditional Chinese musician into a an innovator with modern composing skills and how he apply the Hindemith theoretical system to create much more great music with Chinese characteristics, and developed his own style.The whole thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is an introduction of Tan's career, composing skills and his leading works, and then an analysis of his contribution to Chinese musical field, his status in the Chinese musical history;In the second chapter, Tan's innovation from the base of the Chinese traditional musical culture is analyzed in detail;The third and forth chapter are the key parts of this thesis, Tan's inheritance and development to the composing manner of early Chinese professional composer is studied in the third chapter, the forth chapter is the fully analysis of his works which created by the new composing skills he learned from Hindemith in the United States, the symphonic feature of his later works in the term of chordal structure and sequence, and how he used the 20th century's new composing skills creatively to produce lots of music with Chinese folk characteristics. The origin of the composing theory and manner of his, later works and how he handled the dialectic relation of the inheritance and innovation are expatiated in those two chapters. The fifth chapter mainly focused on his status in the music with Chinese characteristics. Especially in the field of multi-voice parts music with Chinese folk characteristics, he plays a role of the connection of the preceding and following in the history of Chinese musical composing. The author try to understand how Tan use the Hindemith theoreticalsystem creatively and develop his own style by analyzing the multi-voice parts skills of his later works, and then summarize the multi-voice parts composing skills with Chinese folk characteristics. Through the conclusion of his theory, we hope that we can draw up some guiding principles which can be followed and achieve some exercisable ways in this area.Anyhow, the outstanding status that Mr. Tan holds in the Chinese modern music history is undoubted. The analysis of his works and the summarizing of the multi-voice parts skills of his works are with great values both theoretically and practically, which will help us to understand the connotation of Chinese traditional multi-voice parts skills theory correctly and develop our own folk multi-voice parts music while studying the western theory of multi-voice parts skills.