MUS Talks | Pentatonic-style Music in 20-21st Century China
Theme：Pentatonic-style Music in 20-21st Century China
Language: Chinese
Speaker: Manjing Zhang
Host: Pengfei Yu
Date&Time: Oct.10, 2023 (Tues.) 19:00
Venue: Lecture Classroom 102, Teaching Building(MUS)
Abstract
Across the ancient and modern times, both Eastern and Western music have the use of pentatonic-mode as material, but the Oriental national pentatonic music is particularly unique and has become a beautiful landscape of the world music culture. Since the 1920s, in the initial stage of professional music creation in China, composers have consciously integrated pentatonic mode on the basis of Western composition techniques. After the 1980s, pentatonic mode harmony, pentatonic center and tone technique, pentatonic twelve-tone sequence and other techniques have been further applied. This lecture will appreciate the Chinese pentatonic style of music and the techniques involved in it, thus highlighting the cultural charm of the Chinese nation.
About the Speaker
Manjing Zhang(b. 1991) is a Chinese composer and pianist currently based in Xi'an, China. She is currently teaching at Xi'an Conservatory of Music. She holds degrees from Central Conservatory of Music(Beijing, China) (BM ‘15), Carnegie Mellon University (MM‘18), and the University of Minnesota (PhD ‘21). She also taught at the University of Minnesota as a teaching assistant from 2019 to 2021. Her primary instructors in composition include Xiaogang YE, Shuai Zhang, Wenchen Qin, Alex Lubet, and Reza Vali.
Zhang’s music has been programmed at international festivals such as Beijing Modern Music Festival, Chinese-ASEAN Music Festival, Space City New Music Festival, Digital Discovery Festival, Downtown Brooklyn Chamber Music Festival, NYC Contemporary Music Symposium’s concert, Music by Women Composers, and International Composition Institute of Thailand.