The Fusion Of The Han Pentatonic Scales And Jazz Elements

Zhang Shuai is a young contemporary Chinese composer.He was born in1979.In the early 1990s,with the deepening of cultural reform and opening up society for foreign presence and musical culture as part of it,Chinese and Western civilizations started to gradually merge.There was notable trend of Western musical culture influencing Chinese composers and creating a new style within Chinese classical composition school.As a result of this process,in 1998 Zhang Shuai wrote Three Piano Preludes,which represent a unique fusion of Chinese traditional music and Western jazz.Each of the Three Piano Preludes has a distinct characteristic.In the first one the composer combines American jazz elements with pentatonic scales.The characteristics of these two styles that one perceives as being polar,nevertheless created an amazing amalgam of at first the Chinese charm and western jazz music.While the style of the second song is quite different from the other two.Its quiet,hazy and ethereal melody forms a sharp contrast with the first.The third prelude brings back the qualities of the first prelude,which makes this collection of preludes sound like a cycle.In the third prelude jazz and pentatonic elements are interwoven again,and Zhang Shuai uses rich variety of jazz rhythms and jazz semitones.It is my intend that this brief description of my thesis topic will provide general characteristics of Zhang Shuai's Three Piano Preludes.My ultimate goal is to give detailed description of creative ways Zhang Shuai blends diverse musical styles.I will also discuss challenges and innovations of the performance techniques employed in these preludes,so that the readers of my thesis become interested in promoting music of young Chinese composers.