The Terminology Of National Music

The term "national music" has been coined since ancient time,and it has still been widely used in recent time.By searching for the entry "national music" in several popular music dictionaries in mainland China,the present study identified a gap for the absence in almost all music dictionaries that were included in the present study,including the Chinese Music Dictionary by Chinese Academy of Art(Institute of Music),the Mainland Chinese Music Dictionary by Kang Ou,and the Music Dictionary by Wang Peilun.Only the Encyclopedia of Music contains the term "national music",and provides two related definitions for this term: 1.Ancient Chinese court music;2.Traditional Chinese music.However,the definition of "national music" in the Encyclopedia of Music has several shortcomings.Firstly,it fails to describe the diffusion of the new elements(i.e.the music types that are coined and discussed in the 20 th century)in and the gradual disappearance of the obsolete elements from the "national music"(i.e.the court music is no longer active in the Chinese context).Secondly,court music is part of the Chinese traditional music,and thus this clear-cut division between court music and Chinese traditional music is not without flaws.With an intention to explicate the definition of"national music",the present study made an endeavor to first analyze the evolution of the Chinese Character“?-Guo”(rising tone,meaning nation),including the perspectives in the emergence of ancient Chinese cities and the definition of“??-Guo Jia”(rising tone and flat tone,nation and family,together they mean country in Chinese).Thereafter,the present study further discussed the definition of"national music"in the Chinese contexts.In particular,the present study introduced the year 1840 as the line dividing ancient and modern China,and classified the literature into ancient literature and modern literature and the dictionary into music dictionaries and non-music dictionaries.With these endeavors,the present made comparisons of the definition for"national music"in ancient and modern China in an attempt to explore the evolution and development of"national music"from ancient to modern times.Integrating the previous analyses,the present study applied the varied perspectives on nation in the history to delimit scope of"national music"respectively in ancient and modern China.In the end,the present study came up with a relatively comprehensive definition of"national music".