Chinese Music and Musical Instruments

Book excerpt: With dozens of color photographs and insightful text, Chinese Music and Musical Instruments describes in detail the musical instruments with which a Chinese folk orchestra is equipped and their working and sounding principles. There are as many as a thousand different kinds of musical instruments in China. Only a tiny portion of them are used in an orchestra. The selection of musical instruments for an orchestra depends on how well they complement one another. A Chinese folk orchestra is composed of four sections: wind, plucked, percussion and bowed. This book is also devoted to the description of the development of classical Chinese music and the introduction of some music-related tales of profound significance. Chinese music is a big family composed of various distinctive types of music: Chinese folk music played at weddings, funerals or in festivals an fairs. The religious music played in religious services conducted in Buddhist and Taoist temples. Court music, which reached its zenith during the Tang Dynasty. The scholars' music based on Confucian thinking was the embodiment of the musical life of academia and refined music of this kind is still prevalent in today's society.