On The Origin And Development Of Chinese Art Songs And The Thinking Of Today 's Definition

Art songs are a unique genre stemming from the long development of music, which originated from the Classicism Period of music. Its genre has taken shape in the late 18 th century to early 19 th century and has been popular among people in a number of countries.The unique genre of art songs, combined with literature and music, is closely related to the blossom of poetry; Poetry is created by litterateurs away from earthly matters concerning description or imagination, while musicians picture the emotion of poetry via musical language. Consequently a unique form is born which integrated literature and music complementarily; art songs should be similar with poetry which expresses deep subjective emotions; from the perspective of artistic performance, art songs reflect individual, subjective and inner willingness in a way of description, lyric or imagination, demonstrating the distinctive features of art songs, i.e., being individual and liberal. The accompaniment composition of art songs gains equal position and recognition to singing compared with previous experience. It was far beyond background accompanying and emotion foreshadowing that it pays more attention on supplement to vocal music performance and mutual integration as an inseparable part of the whole creation. Meanwhile, this ode of oneself resulted in non-political feature in art songs.Art songs in China becomes a perfect match with China’s long, flourished poetry culture.“Poetic emotion and musical significance” in China has a time-honored tradition of musical culture. In the ancient times, scholar-bureaucrats were in seclusion in mountain forests, who had a carefree life with an instrument named “Guqin” and their versatile talents focusing on the scenery. Art songs from other countries bear emotions which are similar to Chinese culture of guqin. Since the May 4th Movement, in China, art songs have experienced a development from “imitation” to “exploration”. Generations of composers have made bold explorations to create art song with Chinese musical characteristics.However, the definition of art songs are becoming increasingly obscure, and the opinion of art songs in broad sense and narrow sense even emerges, which results in discussions about the definition of art songs. Therefore, the author chooses this topic to conduct a research with intensive theoretical and realistic sense.