CHINA STUDY QUESTIONS -- MUS 250 WORLD MUSIC

1. Describe ways in which Chinese music theory and cultural thinking has and has not influenced Chinese music. (Objective answers)

2. Describe your subjective reaction to listening to the piece for guqin, Ping sha lo yen, on the textbook CD, and the performance on the video (No. 17 Cotton Mill Shanghai Blues) shown in class.

3. What is the significance of the guqin in Chinese culture? Who played it and what ideas are associated with the instrument?

4. Describe your subjective reaction to listening to the excerpt from the Beijing opera, "An Island in the Sea" from The Drunken Concubine on the textbook CD.

5. Briefly describe Jingxi (Beijing opera, in textbook) and kunju (The Peony Pavilion, DVD presented in class).

6. Describe the impact of the 20th century on Chinese music culture, stressing both change and continuity.

7. Describe the pipa and its music.

8. Define, describe and give an example of at least three of the five strong generalizations one can make about Chinese music: a preference for heterophony; an emphasis on the pentatonic scale; a strong preference for duple meter and duple subdivision; a preference for high registers and thin timbres; and an emphasis on timbral nuance and detail.

David Meckler

MUS 250 World Music Cañada College