Preserving the Expressive Style of Traditional Chinese Guzheng Music: Historically-informed and Practice-led Approach

Abstract

Music preservation has attracted considerable research interest in recent decades for its significance to preserving music traditions. Preserving music in different country settings faces different challenges. Preserving Chinese traditional guzheng music is particularly challenging due to the way in which it was transmitted, documented, aesthetically appreciated, and researched. The thesis aims to contribute to the preservation of the expressive styles of Chinese traditional guzheng music by combining the historically informed performance and practice-led research approach. On one hand, it integrates the Historically Informed Performance practice (HIP) into the study of guzheng music performance in a hope to address the limitations in the Chinese approach to documentation and expand notational understanding from a performance practice point of view by enhancing the accuracy of guzheng music nuances on the score, which is critical to the preservation of traditional guzheng music. On the other hand, it explores from a practice-led approach the issues present in the transmission of guzheng music by adopting a perspective rooted in the Chinese cultural context to look at what key musical elements were missing in the representation of traditional guzheng performance styles under the existing cipher notation method.

The thesis draws upon intensive guzheng training with guzheng master Professor Zhao Manqin on Henan zheng style and techniques along with my own reflections on the learning and practice processes. This thesis is supported by a video recording of four Henan zheng pieces.