Music Features And Playing Skills On A Zuhua Xiang Dulcimer Music

Dulcimer, as a kind of hammered string instrument with typical Chinese national characteristics, has both the unique national character and the extensive worldwide character. Its art is continually developing and perfecting along with the hundreds years of history evolution which gets rid of the stale and brings forth the fresh. At present, our country has achieved great development and progress in the aspects of dulcimer play, musical instruments reform, works creation, dulcimer teaching, etc. Currently, among the world dulcimer systems, our country’s dulcimer art has become an indispensable part, and it has the typical national art style and presents a vigorous vitality. In the development of dulcimer art, we can clearly see the spiritual soul of Chinese nation, and it’s just because it is based on such long history of Chinese culture that makes dulcimer art stand tall among the music of the world.Dulcimer has dominated an important position in Chinese musical arts, and its further promoted position is formed right after the founding of new China, which has become one of the most representative musical arts with Chinese national characteristics. In the process of long-term spread, it gradually penetrates to the folk and has become an indispensable part in Chinese people’s life. By merging with different regions and nationalities’ musical forms, a lot of new genres are emerged, and it is developed and innovated on the basis of carrying forward the tradition. Different regional dulcimer music styles are influenced by their specific performance techniques, and different cultural backgrounds and traditional music arts create many new dulcimer music styles, which promote its constantly perfecting and developing. In the process of dulcimer art’s development and evolution, its work creation also constantly rise to a new peak, the shape and structure of dulcimer musical instrument also has a lot of change, and its performance and expressive force are even better. The reform of musical instruments not only enhances the dulcimer’s performance and expressive force, but also stimulates the creation enthusiasm of the dulcimer music artists, which brings the player’s individual abilities into full play, and eventually transforms the musical performance form from accompaniment to solo, and makes dulcimer as a solo instrument steps into a higher and larger musical art stage. Meanwhile, the role of dulcimer in music ensemble, accompaniment and repetition has been enhanced; especially it plays an important role in the modern national chamber music performance and orchestral ensemble.The prosperity of dulcimer art works has promoted the excellent development of art performance, the numerous excellent dulcimer works are only matched by dulcimer playing techniques with extremely artistic expression, in this process a lot of new dulcimer playing techniques are born, which has greatly enriched the artistic connotation of dulcimer playing and strengthened dulcimer art’s expressive force and infectivity. However, what we need to know is that by comparing with piano, violin, erhu, gu zheng and other more mature instruments, dulcimer’s music works creation and playing techniques still exist some imperfections, so we should deeply research and discuss the connotation and characteristics of dulcimer art and create more excellent works, explore more expressive and infectious playing techniques. This requires us to combine theory and practice together, composers and performers closely cooperate, then we can create more works with artistic connotation and play more touching music, and promote dulcimer art achieves even greater success.This paper researches and discusses the creative thinking, style characteristics and significance and value of Mr. Xiang Zuhua’s dulcimer works, and gives an exploration and analysis based on our country’s dulcimer art’s development history, which clearly shows the positive significance and profound influence of Mr. Xiang Zuhua’s dulcimer works; as to Mr. Xiang Zuhua’s dulcimer art contribution, the fair and objective evaluation is made, so as to provide theoretical basis for future dulcimer art development.The content of this paper is mainly made up of the following four chapters:The first chapter has introduced Mr. Xiang Zuhua’s dulcimer music art career and elaborated the influence of traditional culture on his creative ideas.The second chapter has elaborated the creation thinking modes of Mr. Xiang Zuhua’s dulcimer works. The thinking mode is “based on tradition, widely adopted and accepted” and “proficient in every aspects, point line combination, taking everything into account, arranging in a crisscross pattern”.The third chapter has analyzed his dulcimer music works’ creating style and playing techniques by combining with the relevant dulcimer works of Mr. Xiang Zuhua.The forth chapter has analyzed the contributions of Mr. Xiang Zuhua to dulcimer playing techniques and dulcimer music creation.