The Lore Of The Chinese Lute

Download or read book The Lore of the Chinese Lute written by Robert H van Gulik and published by Orchid Press. This book was released on 2021-05-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lute, ch'in or guqin is one of China's oldest and most revered musical instruments. Records indicate that it has been a favourite of the literary classes for more than 2,500 years; Confucius himself was a great lover of the instrument. Over the centuries, it became representative of the life, taste and pastimes of the Chinese literati. In addition to its contributions to solo and orchestral musical arrangements, a wealth of symbolic meaning accrued to the lute over time. Not only was knowledge of the instrument reserved for the literati; its study was believed to be conducive to meditation and to facilitate intellectual enlightenment. While a significant body of literature has been written on the lute in Chinese, the present monograph is the first to assemble a broad picture of the instrument and its cultural significance in English. The author, a renowned Sinologue and linguist, studied the playing of the instrument under one of the most famous lute masters of his age.

Download or read book The Lore of the Chinese Lute written by Robert Hans van Gulik and published by . This book was released on 1940 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Chinese Nail Murders written by Robert Hans van Gulik and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1977-11-15 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Judge Dee and his helpers investigate a series of murders despite pressure to solve them quickly.

Download or read book A Contemporary History of the Chinese Zheng written by Ann L. Silverberg and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-12 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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, becoming a solo instrument with virtuosic capacity. In the past, the zheng had 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. “Ann Silverberg’s book provides a history of the Chinese zheng zither, with a focus on the rise of solo music since the mid-twentieth century across the three sites of mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Existing English-language studies mostly omit consideration of Hong Kong and Taiwan, so this account enriches current perspectives on the multiplicities of Chinese musical history and identity.” —Jonathan Stock, University College Cork, Ireland “Professor Ann Silverberg’s insights and approach are long awaited in the studies of Chinese music. I am particularly impressed by her coverage of the situation in Hong Kong and Taiwan. This book is a wonderful contribution to zheng music. It also inspires and enhances the studies of other Chinese musical instruments and Chinese traditional music.” —Yu Siu Wah, independent scholar

Download or read book The Lore of the Chinese Lute written by Robert Hans van Gulik and published by . This book was released on 1940 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Lore of the Chinese Lute written by Robert Hans Gulik and published by . This book was released on 1940 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio written by Pu Songling and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2006-05-25 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Strange Tales of Pu Songling (1640-1715) are exquisite and amusing miniatures that are regarded as the pinnacle of classical Chinese fiction. With their elegant prose, witty wordplay and subtle charm, the 104 stories in this selection reveal a world in which nothing is as it seems. Here a Taoist monk conjures up a magical pear tree, a scholar recounts his previous incarnations, a woman out-foxes the fox-spirit that possesses her, a child bride gives birth to a thimble-sized baby, a ghostly city appears out of nowhere and a heartless daughter-in-law is turned into a pig. In his tales of humans coupling with shape-shifting spirits, bizarre phenomena, haunted buildings and enchanted objects, Pu Songling pushes back the boundaries of human experience and enlightens as he entertains.