Form & Compositions of Ensemble Music

Traditional Chinese ensemble instrumental music has diverse origins, and forms of arrangement, performance and transmission. Generally speaking, geographic origin is its most distinguishing characteristic: Percussion and wind ensembles native to the northern region include Xi'an percussion and wind, Shanxi Province's badatao, the orchestras of central Hebei Province, southwest Shandong Province's percussion and wind, Liaoning Province's percussion and wind and the shipan music of Luoyang City. Native to the south are the gongs and drums of eastern Zhejiang Province, the shifan gongs and drums of southern Jiangsu Province(Fig. 2-4) and Fuzhou, the longchui of Quanzhou and the shiban of southwest Fujian Province. In the string and wind category are the Southern Tunes of Fujian, the poetry accompanied on string instruments of Chaozhou, Guangdong Music, the string and wind music of south of the Yangtze and the northern string music.

The distribution of the artistic groups which played the various types of Chinese folk music was connected with the system of managing music of the feudal imperial court. Generally speaking, the locations of the imperial capitals in ancient times are the centers of the transmission, orchestras and maestros of folk music today. For example, Xi'an percussion music dates from the days when Xi'an was the capital of the Tang Dynasty; the Daxiangguo Temple music of Kaifeng emerged when that city was the capital of the Song Dynasty; and the Zhihua Temple music of Beijing and the wind orchestra music of Hebei Province have associations with the days when Beijing was the capital of the Liao, Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. Hebei's Chengde City, which is not far from Beijing, was the summer retreat of the Qing emperors, and local musicians can still play the court music of that time, despite the fact that the dynasty disappeared long ago. This makes it easy to understand how so many farmer-musicians can have such comparatively high artistic attainments. This is an important component of the Chinese people's musical artistry.

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