Towards Music Understanding: On "Conception" and Its Realization in Music Composition——In Tribute to Professor Qian Renkang's 90 Birthday
Yang Yand · Huangzhong-journal of Wuhan Music Conservatory · 2004
The article is a special tribute to Prof. Qian Renkang of Shanghai Conservatory of Music, the eminent Chinese music scholar, who commands quasi encyclopedia knowledge of music and will celebrate his 90th birthday in April this year. The author tries to formulate a theory of music understanding based on the idea of and its realization in individual compositions. He draws from his own experience as a listener and as a critic/analyst of music, and from western scholars, such as Zofia Lissa, Joseph Kerman and Carl Dahlhaus. The individuality of a piece of music comes from unique of its expressive intention, its music material and structural design, and this is closely related to artistic problems the composer wants to resolve. Applied this theory to analyzing three compositions, respectively by Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert, the author argued that in order to get better music understanding, the listener/critic/analyst should pay more attention to conception that emerges when a composer is trying to solve his problems, rather than to psychological process when a composer is composing.