The Difference Between Expressionist Music and Traditional Music

The difference between expressionist music and traditional music lies in their essence, form and characteristics.

1. The essential difference.

Expressionist music is the complete opposite of the old traditions in that it completely disregards the tonal laws of the past. The twelve semitones in the octave are given equal value, and the traditional concepts of dominant and genitive are discarded, thus giving absolute predominance to atonality.

The destruction of the old melodic trajectory makes the melody neither equalized nor repetitive, and thus merely a succession of distinctive tones. In addition, the rhythm is elusive and the beat is disregarded.

2. Formal differences.

In terms of form, Expressionist music was very free because it disregarded the inherited forms of closure, repetition and equilibrium. But it is based on a new theory to establish the form, but has a unique, flowing, unlimited development of the marvelous characteristics. In terms of counterpoint, there is a sense of leaving the traditional harmony and becoming a composite free melodic line progression, the so-called linear free counterpoint method.

3. The difference in characteristics.

Traditional music refers to the music created by the Chinese people using their own inherent methods and adopting their own inherent forms, and characterized by their own inherent forms, including not only ancient works produced in history and handed down to the present, but also contemporary works.

Expressionist music is characterized by the direct expression of the human spirit and experience, and its representative work, "Pierrot de la Lune," is the complete opposite of the old traditions; it completely ignores the tonal laws of the past, and opposes the objectivity of Impressionism, which believes that art should be neither "depicted" nor "symbolized," but rather, "symbolized. It rejected the objectivity of Impressionism, believing that art should neither be "depicted" nor "symbolized", but rather should be a direct expression of the human spirit and experience.

Expanded:

Traditional music, stretching over thousands of years contains many aesthetic character, it is the concentrated embodiment of a certain special essence of musical thought, is the crystallization of musical ideology. The thinking habits of a country or a nation have an inestimable role in the formation and development of its aesthetic consciousness.

Traditional Chinese music refers to the music created by the Chinese people using their own inherent methods and taking their own inherent forms with their own inherent characteristics, including not only the ancient works that have been produced and handed down in history, but also the contemporary works. It can be seen that traditional music includes "national music" but not "new music", but they are all "Chinese music".

In fact, "national music", "traditional music" and "folk music" are three different concepts: "national music" includes traditional music and new music. "Ethnic music" includes traditional music and new music; while "folk music" is only a category of traditional music. And China's national music is very rich, in addition to folk music, but also includes court music, religious music and literati music.

References:

Baidu Encyclopedia - Traditional Music

Baidu Encyclopedia - Expressionist Music