Music Appreciation of China and the World

Author: edited by Zhu Jingxiu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2009-08-06
Features: Music appreciation is a required course for music majors. Music appreciation enables students to widely engage with various musical works, experience and understand music through practice. It helps students accumulate outstanding works from both China and the world, enhancing their knowledge of music appreciation. Additionally, music appreciation serves as one of the important pathways to broaden students' artistic horizons and improve their artistic qualities. The recreational and educational functions of music have gradually become a common consensus, and people fully recognize the significant role of musical art in current quality-oriented education. Therefore, appreciating and participating in music has gradually become a trend for modern people, especially contemporary youth. However, for music majors, we believe that music appreciation courses should not merely be purely knowledge-based but should also incorporate "skill-based" elements. This means not only helping students (experience music) and accumulate musical language through engagement with musical works but also cultivating their ability to independently analyze and appreciate music, as well as mastering the basic "skills" and methods of music appreciation. In light of this, the structure of this book does not follow the conventional order of analyzing and explaining individual works, but instead focuses on systematically presenting knowledge and methods of music appreciation. It is divided into chapters and sections, providing detailed explanations of fundamental expressive techniques in music, the expressive significance of musical forms, basic classifications of vocal and instrumental music, the characteristics of various genres, the role of music in the performing arts, and the stylistic features of common musical schools. At the same time, it incorporates numerous examples of outstanding musical works from both China and the world, emphasizing the integration of theory and practice, as well as the complementarity of knowledge and musical scores. This allows students to not only widely engage with famous musical works from China and the world but also deeply understand the (essence) and expressive techniques of these works, while gradually mastering the knowledge and methods of music appreciation, achieving a dual success of knowledge and "skills." In teaching this course, the principle of equal emphasis on theoretical instruction and aural appreciation should be implemented, with a focus on cultivating and enhancing students' active ability to analyze and appreciate music. In terms of teaching arrangements, the curriculum should be based on the expressive techniques and stylistic characteristics of music, with a focus on the classification of vocal and instrumental music and the teaching of genre characteristics, progressing step by step and gradually deepening.