Study Of Luo Zhongrong Art Songs

Luo Zhongrong is an accomplished contemporary Chinese composer and one of the representatives of Chinese new music. Throughout his career, Luo wrote art songs that reflected his unique musical personality. Luo consciously fused Chinese characteristics with many new compositional techniques in his art songs, which provide valuable examples for the future generation to study the relationships between the music of old and new, and of Chinese and Western.The subject of this paper focuses on Luo's twenty-one art songs. The three areas; text, vocal writing, and piano writing, are analyzed through studying composer's background, the inter-relationship among his works, and techniques used. Specific opinions regarding the interpretation are given, in hope that they provide more information for those who desire performing these fine works.The texts of Luo's art songs reflect his philosophy and aesthetics. His melodic writing has a singing quality that continues the tradition of the conventional art song. Just as in the art songs of the second Viennese school, Luo's vocal writing emphasizes using innovative compositional technique, and aims at expressing the text content, not the virtuosity. In his piano accompaniment writing, Luo experimented with many new techniques that exhibit the same strict orderly ideals as the music of the German and Viennese composers.Luo Zhongrong's art songs are important manifestation of his musical character. They are unique works among the Chinese art song genre, and they are valuable achievements in new music compositions in China.