Small-scale Instrumental Music & Chamber Music

This category includes Chinese and foreign solo and group instrumental music. The origin of this type of music can be traced back to four short compositions for the piano which were created by Zhao Yuanren in the period 1913-1919, which were the first piano compositions to emerge in China. In 1923 Xiao Youmei published his piano composition Raiment of Rainbows and Feathers Dance, which was a fairly professional piece of music. In the field of chamber music at this time, the leading works were Xiao's four-piece orchestral Night Music and Zhao Yuanren's work for flute and piano Wordless Song. Following these, the great master of national music Liu Tianhua produced erhu and pipa works which showed a spirit of creative exploration. His erhu pieces included Groaning in Sickness, Bird Calls on the Lonely Mountain, Moonlit Night, Fine Night and Brightness, and his pipa pieces included Song-and-Dance Prologue and Reform. Liu showed a high degree of professionalism, and lifted the two folk instruments to the level of professional solo instruments.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the creation of Chinese and Western solo and ensemble instrumental music underwent new development. He Luding's The Herdboy's Flute uses a fresh polyphonic technique to depict the naive innocence of a herdboy. Ma Sicong's violin pieces Inner Mongolia Suite and Herder's Song, and his Piano and String Quintet draw on folk melodies and stress national styles, making a pathbreaking contribution to China's violin and chamber music. This period also saw an important harvest of tunes produced by Ding Shande (Chinese Folksong Variations for the piano), Tan Xiaolin (String Terzetto) and Lu Xiutang, Liu Beimao and others, who wrote tunes for the erhu.

In the 17 years following the founding of New China, some 363 pieces of piano music were officially published, many of them outstanding. They included Ding Shande's First Xinjiang Dance and a piano suite for children, called Happy Holiday; Jiang Wenye's piano suite Native Soil; Chen Peixun's variations Selling Sundry Goods, and Drought Thunder; Sang Tong's Seven Inner Mongolian Folksongs; Luo Zhongrong's Sonata numbers one and two; Wang Lisan's Orchids; Jiang Zuxin's Temple Fair ensemble; Huang Huwei's Portrait of Sichuan; Wu Zuqiang and Du Mingxin's Selections from the Ballet 'The Mermaid'; Guo Zhihong's Xinjiang Dance; and Tian Feng's Gaoshan People Suite. All these pieces of music have a folk coloring. They are straightforward, short works, fresh and lively. The situation with regard to violin music in this period was more or less the same. The important violin works were Ma Sicong's Mountain Song, Mao Yuan's Early Spring and Sha Hankun's Herder's Song. At the same time, there appeared some solos for Western musical instruments such as the cello, obo, clarinet, trombone and flute. In the sphere of chamber music, there was Wu Zuqiang's Music for String Quartet, Qu Wei's String Quartet in G Major, He Zhanhao's string quartet Hero's Diary and Jiang Wenye's Happy Boyhood for quintet.

In the area of solo folk music, adaptations of traditional tunes were done by Feng Zicun (Joyous Reunion), Lu Chunling (The Partridge Flies) and Jiang Xianwei (A Trip to Gusu) for the flute; by Ren Tongxiang (A Hundred Birds Serenade the Phoenix) for the suona; by Yang Yuanheng (Grazing the Donkey) for the single flute; and by Zhu Guangqing (River Waters) solo for the double flute. Original compositions were turned out for the flute by Lu Chunling (Past and Present) and Liu Guanle (The Bird in the Shade); for the pipa by Wang Huiran (Dance of the Yi People) and Lu Shaoen The Five Stalwarts of the Langya Mountain); for the erhu by Liu Wenjin (Ballad of Northern Henan and Musing at the Sanmen Gorge), and Huang Haihuai (Horse Race); for the zheng by Zhao Yuzhai (Celebrating a Bumper Harvest), Wang Changyuan (Fighting Against Typhoon); for the banhu by Zhang Changcheng (Elder Brother Is Home From the Red Army), Guo Futuan (Shaanxi Opera Paizi Music), and Bai Jie and others (Lantern Festival); for the sheng by Hu Tianquan and others (The Phoenix Unfolds Its Wings), Yan Haideng (Shanxi Melody); for the zhonghu by Liu Mingyuan (On the Grassland); for the zhuihu by Ren Yiping (Eight-Beat Piano Book); for the liuqin by Wang Huiran (Silver Lake and Golden Waves); for the rewafu by Usmanjiang (Spring in the Tianshan Mountains); for the lusheng by Dong Dangan (Moonlight Emerges); and for the horse-headed zither by Xin Huguang (Refreshing Spring Water). Of these pieces of music, Liu Wenjin's erhu works Ballad of Northern Henan and Musing at the Sanmen Gorge, and Wang Huiran's pipa work Dance of the Yi People showed the greatest creativity, and had a great influence on later generations of composers.

At the beginning of the 1970s, there was a definite revival of minor instrumental music and chamber music. Pieces of good quality produced at this time included Spring Comes to the Yi River for the liuqin, Early Morning on Miao Ridge for the bamboo flute, and a batch of compositions for the piano and violin. In the field of chamber music, there was The White-Haired Girl for string quartet, and Seaport for piano quintet.

Chamber music creation made great strides in the new era. Ding Shande, Luo Zhongrong, Liu Zhuang, Wang Xilin, Lin Hua and Liu Nianqu ?all old or middle-aged composers ?continued to turn out works, while a turning point came in 1983, when young composers such as Tan Dun (First Symphony for String Quartet in Three Movements) won prizes at the National Chamber Music Contest. Prominent among the works turned out at this time were Zither Melody for string quartet by Zhou Long and Border Sketch also for string quartet by Li Xiaoqi. Composers in their 20s and 30s came to the fore in the Fourth National Musical Works Awards, held in 1985. The period from then until the 1990s saw a steady stream of creative and profound works produced, such as He Xuntian's Four Hours for string quartet, Chen Yi's Wind Quintet and Ye Xiaogang's Piano Quintet, which won prizes at the National Music Contest of 1988. All this showed that Chinese chamber music had made professional achievements and was regarded as of international standard.

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