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A Contemporary History of the Chinese Zheng

Online ISBN:
9789888754380
Print ISBN:
9789888754342
Publisher:
Hong Kong University Press
Book

A Contemporary History of the Chinese Zheng

Ann L. Silverberg
Ann L. Silverberg
Austin Peay State University
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Published online:
21 September 2023
Published in print:
12 January 2023
Online ISBN:
9789888754380
Print ISBN:
9789888754342
Publisher:
Hong Kong University Press

Abstract

A Contemporary History of the Chinese Zheng traces the twentieth- and twenty-first-century development of an important Chinese musical instrument in greater China. The zheng was transformed over the course of the twentieth century, gaining an identity as primarily a solo instrument with virtuosic capacity. In the past, the zheng had most typically appeared in small instrumental ensembles and supplied improvised accompaniments to song. Zheng music became a means of nation-building, and was eventually promoted as a marker of Chinese identity in Hong Kong. Ann L. Silverberg uses evidence from the greater China area to show how the narrative history of the zheng created on the mainland did not represent zheng music as it had been in the past. Silverberg ultimately argues that the zheng’s older repertory was poorly represented by efforts to collect and promote zheng music in the twentieth century. This book contends that the restored “traditional Chinese music” created and promulgated from the 1920s forward—and solo zheng music in particular—is a hybrid of “Chinese essence, Western means” that essentially obscures rather than reveals tradition.

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