Piano Transcriptions of Chinese Traditional Music from the Cultural Revolution Period: Political Constraints, Artistic Freedom and Implications for Performance

The Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 was a period of extreme tension in China’s long history of national political control over culture. As class struggle was identified as the main conflict in society, the piano, as an instrument from bourgeois culture, was largely rejected. However, through the work of the Chinese pianist Yin Chengzong, who used the piano to accompany a Model Opera authorised by the government (The Piano Accompaniment to The Red Lantern) and arranged revolutionary music for the piano (The Yellow River Piano Concerto), the piano found a way to survive in China as a tool to serve politics. Its fortunes then revived in the 1970s when the government started to request composers to arrange piano transcriptions of pieces from traditional Chinese culture to meet the demands of populism and nationalism.

The aim of this thesis is to illuminate the historical situation of Chinese piano music and transcriptions in the social and political context of China led by the proletariat government, especially in the decade of the Cultural Revolution. From a musical point of view, this thesis specifically chooses five piano transcriptions arranged during this period—Autumn Moon over the Calm Lake by Chen Peixun, Red Lilies Glowing on the Mountain and Colourful Clouds Chasing the Moon by Wang Jianzhong, Music at Sunset by Li Yinghai and The Story of a Cowherd by Dan Zhaoyi—and analyses their specific musical materials to examine how composers realised the expression of national identity in their piano music in terms of the connection between piano versions and the original versions of traditional works, traditional Chinese culture, philosophy and aesthetics. Meanwhile, due to the lack of government instruction in specific compositional techniques, some scope for the composers' individual musical creativity is observed. Ultimately, the theoretical research in this thesis will be presented through practical piano performance, with an approach of culturally informed performance embodying the expression of national identity in Chinese piano transcriptions which was both a political and a musical goal.