A Study On Contemporary Chinese Dulcimer Textbooks(1949-2012)

Textbook is an important carrier of teaching and a stable factor in the process. To some extent, activities of both teachers and students in teaching process are subject to it. Dulcimer textbook is the key link between dulcimer teaching and learning. With the development of dulcimer art, reformation and evolution have come to the dulcimer textbooks. They improved from simplification to systematization, oral instruction to textbooks, and single traditional melodies to integrated musical styles, all of which enrich the aesthetic value of dulcimer art. The two interact with each other. Through the study process, the author finds few specialized research on dulcimer textbooks.Therefore, this thesis tries to find the evolution of dulcimer textbooks, enrich the culture, and provide referable suggestions for discipline development from a different dulcimer research perspective, which focuses on collecting, reorganizing, and analyzing dulcimer textbooks with historiographical approaches. The textbooks of People’s Music Publishing House and Shanghai Music Publishing House are collected for specific analysis, comparison, inquiry to summarize the principles and characteristics of textbook compilation, expose existing problems, and investigate the reasons from the multi-angle, and offer suggestions and countermeasures to dulcimer textbook innovation. Specifically, the whole paper will be illustrated into the following chapters:The introduction briefly introduces the reasons, background and significance of the previous study. Overall, the related research is less than other subjects.Chapter1is the main part of the thesis, which offers a related literature review of the history of dulcimer, Chinese music and music education. The author collected more than140dulcimer textbooks from the budding period1920s to the present21st century and analyzed the mode manifestation of them under the historical background. Furthermore, this chapter offers some suggestions for future development of dulcimer textbooks on the basis of analyzing the developing trends of them by combining the whole and individual cases.Chapter2focuses on methodology of the study——quantitative research. According to the questionnaires and interviews to both teachers and students from some colleges in Wuhan, the usage of contemporary dulcimer textbooks.The textbooks of People’s Music Publishing House and Shanghai Music Publishing House are collected for specific analysis.Chapter3summarizes the characteristics and inadequacies of contemporary dulcimer textbooks and analyzes them from three aspects:social factors, textbook users and writers.Chapter4draws a brief conclusion of the thesis and states some suggestions to future dulcimer textbooks writhing in view of multiculture and new curriculum.