Pentatonicized Twelve-Tone Music In Contemporary Chinese Music:Compositional Developments After The 1980s

Pentatonic scales have always played an important role in the development of Chinese contemporary music.It is also a defining feature of the traditional Chinese music.After the Chinese economic reform,in the 1980's,various new composition methods and related theories were introduced to China.This introduction created an intense collision between the Western new music language and Chinese traditional music.At this moment,most of the Chinese composers attempted to combine the twelve-tone technique with pentatonic scales,developing a hybrid and rich language.Luo Zhongrong combined pentatonic and Twelve-tone technique,Chinese critics called this language "Pentatonicized twelve-tone music." This development is one of the important stages in the history of Chinese contemporary music.The current research on "Pentatonicized twelve-tone music" has been conducted by Chinese composers and scholars,who focus on the following aspects:(1)analysis and Classification of Luo Zhongrong's music work;(2)analysis of repertoires which are based on "pentatonic in twelve-tone" from the 1980's and beyond;(3)examination of how the Chinese composers created "Pentatonicized twelve-tone music" by detailing various compositional techniques.This existing researches primarily focuses on the specific works without considering the historical development of this unique technique.This thesis attempts to break the previous scholars'exploration and analyese of the individual works in the study of "Pentatonicized twelve-tone music".I wish to treat these works' as a developmental process in the perspective of history,to trace the development of"Pentatonicized twelve-tone music" from the 1980's to the 1990's.