A Different Drum— Instrumentation. Traditional Chinese orchestras differ from Western Traditional Chinese Music orchestras in that they feature a raditional Chinese music dates prominent plucked-strings section and How Do I Say It? back thousands of years and they usually lack brass sections (large dizi: DEE-tsi sounds different from Western wind instruments like trombones and T tubas). Like Western orchestras, sheng: shung music thanks to these features: (rhymes with “young”) Chinese orchestras feature percussion, Tone. Chinese language requires erhu: AIR-hu woodwinds, and bowed-strings sections. precise but subtle variations in speaking pipa: PEE-pah tones to say a word as well as to Individual Instruments.Although zhonghu: JONG-hu distinguish among different words Chinese instruments may bear yangqin: YAHNG-chin sharing the same vowels and similarities to Western instruments, the Yan Huichang: consonants. For example, the simple construction, tone, and the way they are Yan Hway-chahng word “ma” has multiple meanings in played make them uniquely Chinese. suona: SWO-nah Mandarin Chinese, depending on its The photos on this page tones—high, rising, falling, or low. show some of the most Chinese music also employs fine traditional and popular variations of single tones, creating Chinese instruments. sliding tones (similar in sound effect to country music’s pedal steel guitar). Musical Scale. Chinese traditional music is composed around a musical scale of five out of the seven notes normally used in the Western scale. The The dizi, Chinese five-note, or pentatonic, scale a bamboo corresponds roughly to the black keys flute on a piano. This scale enables composers to create distinctly different melodies The most and harmonies. popular, but also most challenging Pitch. Older, traditional Chinese instrument to string instruments produce high- learn, is the erhu. pitched sounds. In earlier small Notice that, in ensembles, lower-range contrast to the The pipa, or Western violin, Chinese lute instruments were the erhu only has not needed. two strings and a drum-shaped body, and the bow hair is interwoven The , a sheng with the strings. pan pipe or mouth organ

Winds—including flutes and reed Creating Chinese instruments, like the s heng Orchestras String Instruments Played with a espite China’s long history of Bow—including instruments like the performing music, traditional erhuand the viola-sounding zhongh u , D Chinese orchestras are relatively important Chinese instruments with new. The push for developing a distinctly origins not native to China Chinese performing arts repertoire came with the establishment of the People’s Republic String Instruments Played by Hand— of China in 1949. In the years following, including stringed, lute-like instruments The is a reed Chinese orchestras began to mirror the that are played upright (the pipa being suona instrument that operational style of Western orchestras, the most traditional) as well as flat- backed instruments (like the yangqin, sounds something such as having a baton-waving conductor like a trumpet. and divisions of instrument families. a Chinese dulcimer) played on a table using bamboo sticks To expand their repertoire, orchestras added new instruments with lower pitch Percussion—including drums ranges to balance the high pitches of the and cymbals more traditional instruments. Orchestra music initially focused on folk music, but in the last twenty years, Chinese orchestras have developed and performed new works. Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra (HKCO), founded in 1977, incorporates traditional and modernized Chinese instruments.

Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, conducted by Yan Huichang, features 88 musicians, and plays both traditional and contem- porary full-scale orchestra pieces.