What are the characteristics and profile of music in the classical period?

While we talk about European classical music as a kind of world culture, it is often easy to overlook the fact that it also contains many national factors

Both classical and romantic composers had difficulty in severing their ties with their respective national cultures, so their creations should first be

national, and then be regarded as global. The integration of national identity in creation can be said to be the same goal pursued by human artistic creation.

Keywords European Classical Music National Characteristics Classical Music School Romantic Music School Folk Music School

I. National Characteristics in Music Culture Concentrated in Ethnic Folk Music

National characteristics in music culture are factors that have always existed in music history. The music of any era, any country and any composer

has its own national characteristics. In essence, the national characteristics of music are determined by the cultural characteristics that objectively exist in different nations and countries. Because each nation

has its different language tones, different life interests, different psychological qualities and different characteristics of folk music and cultural accumulation. So the music of the national

characteristics of the more durable, more concentrated in the traditional folk music.

In professional music creation, the performance of national characteristics is not only limited to the musical language and expression methods, but also in the content of the subject matter and genre form.

In the musical language, it is mainly reflected in the extensive use of national folk tones or the processing and re-creation based on national folk tones.

In terms of performance

methods, the use of national popular creative techniques, expression techniques. In terms of the content of the theme, it reflects the real life of the nation and praises the people and

their heroism. It also reflects the memory of the glorious history of the motherland, glorifies the motherland's great mountains and rivers, and embodies not only the aspirations and character of the nation, but also expresses

the traditional styles and artistic preferences of the nation. In terms of genre and form, the same conscious inheritance of national traditions, to meet the aesthetic habits and special interests of each nation

.

In the works of European classical music professional composers, due to the historical background and the performance of the pursuit of the aesthetic ideal of the differences between the various eras, various music

schools, various composers musical works embodied in the national characteristics of the situation is different.

Second, the classical school of music national characteristics is the natural flow of enlightenment consciousness

European classical composers Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven are widely used in the creation of the rich and colorful folk music materials.

"Father of the symphony", "father of the string quartet" Haydn (1732--1809) and the German and Austrian folk music

Music tone, syntax, and the sound of the music. p>The tone, syntax, structure and style of music are closely linked. For example, the second movement of Symphony No. 94 in G major (Stunned), the theme, the second movement of String Quartet in F major, Serenade, the square phrases, simple harmonies give him a simple style, fresh features. Its symphony third movement minuet

music, the fourth movement of the bright dance style is also characterized by German and Austrian vernacular music.

The "musical prodigy" Mozart (1756--1791) was a composer of operas and symphonies. He used German and Austrian folk

style popular songs and Protestant chant tones in his opera The Magic Flute, which was a great success. He was a master of melody and was able to combine Austro-German folk tunes with Italian lyricism

in order to create Mozartian, sing-song, poetic and beautiful melodies.

Beethoven (1770--1827) was a classical masterpiece and a romantic pioneer. The advanced social ideas of the bourgeois revolution became the core of his

composition, and Beethoven was the first musician to combine the art of music with the destiny of mankind. He loved nature, he loved life, he loved

listening to rural musicians play music, and embodied this in his creations, in the Symphony No. 6 in F major (Pastoral), Symphony No. 8 in F major

all appeared to be the simple image of the German-Austrian country band playing folk dance music. The "Ode to Joy" in Symphony No. 9 in D minor (Choral) is full of the earnest, simple and passionate feelings that characterize German folk songs. According to Romain Rolland, Beethoven often quoted folk melodies when he expressed the same feelings as the masses, such as love, friendship, wedding

ceremony.

European classical composers in the music of the national folk factors, is their enlightenment consciousness of the real life of a natural outflow.

They were close to

real life, "to the folk", "back to nature," the specific manifestation of the aesthetic thought. It embodies the spirit of the times during the period of bourgeois ascendancy: rebellion against

feudal bondage, firm optimism, the courage to struggle for the spirit of democracy and profound humanitarianism, and a high degree of perfect harmony. Therefore, it can be said that the classical music

in the national folk characteristics of the general, and no other meaning, is the enlightenment consciousness and democratic spirit of the natural flow and reflection.

Three, the romantic music is y rooted in the foundation of their respective national music traditions

Romantic music composers Schubert, Weber, Chopin, Brahms, Verdi and others are y rooted in the foundation of their own national music traditions

Beyond that, the art of music emphasizes the national characteristics.

Schubert (1797-1828) was familiar with Austrian folk music from his childhood, and his compositions made extensive use of folk songs,

customary dances, marches, and the tones of popular songs in life. This folk form of song has become the basic "skeleton" of Schubert's songs, because of which many of his famous songs have become popular folk songs, such as "The Wild Rose", "The Trout", "The Bodhi Tree", etc.

This form of song has become the basis of Schubert's songs.

This kind of popular and simple songs, in turn, became the main constituent of Schubert's instrumental works. Professor Qian Renkang said, "The song-like melody, song-like weaving

body, and song-like musical thinking also played an important role in Schubert's symphonies and chamber music compositions, and became an important feature of Schubert's later Romantic music

compositions." (Musical Arts, No. 1, 1979). Commenting on Schubert's musical composition, Dvorak said, "Perhaps the most characteristic of his

Unfinished Symphony and Symphony in C Major ...... are the song-like melodies that abound, and his use of songs in the

symphony and their transplantation so skillfully that Schumann would not only have to say that these orchestral voices resemble human voices now." (Music in Translation, No. 6, 1981)

Thus, popularity and ethnicity prevailed in his compositions and became his distinctive compositional features.

Weber (1786--1825), the founder of German Romantic national opera, premiered his national opera "Free Shooter" (also translated as "Magic Bullet Shooter") in Berlin in June 1821, which was so warmly received by the audience that its tune became a household name.

The song became a popular song, and goods sold in the market were also trademarked with the name of the opera, such as "Magic Shot Beer" and "Magic Shot Women's Clothes". The play is based on the folklore of the "Black Hunter", which is widely circulated in Germany and Czechoslovakia

and the stage shows an authentic picture of the North German forest folklore. Mozart and Beethoven have contributed to the development of German folk opera, but their "Magic Flute" and "Fidelio" are not yet complete in their "ethnicity", although they use German lyrics, and

music with German characteristics, but depicts oriental myths or Spanish stories, while "Free Shooter" has a strong folkloric character. The "Free Archer" is a traditional style of

singing opera" with strong folk music (hunter's chorus, girl's ballad, and allemande dance of the villagers) and German speech, which is very successful in depicting the remote villages and forests of Germany, as well as the expression of the German people's thoughts and feelings.

Chopin (1810-1849), the poet of romantic music, was a Polish patriotic pianist, composer, and a pioneer of national music in Central Europe, whose

works were extremely original and nationalistic. Mazurkas and Polonaises were composed throughout his life, and he raised these two genres of Polish folk dance music to the level of the concert music genre.

He wrote 57 mazurkas and 57 polonaises. He composed 57 mazurkas, creatively using their characteristic rhythms and folk harmonies to give them a distinctive

folkloric color and Polish national temperament, making them poetic instrumental miniatures. Some of his works are imitations of folk bagpipes (Mazurka in C major, Op. 24bis), while others use alternating dominant chords to portray the sound of the folk musicians' playing (Mazurka in D major, Op. 33bis)

. He composed fifteen polonaises, which are completely free from dance, no longer showy and outwardly effective, but infused with serious ideological content, and became dramatic tone poems in the style of

unique, resolute, and bold marches. Chopin linked the Bonez with the battlefield, the army, and the glory of ancient Poland. Both

dance genres reflect a connection with the spirit of the Polish homeland.

The last German classicist of the heyday of Romantic music, Brahms (1833-1897), who had a

deep affection for folk music, was another master of the German-Austrian art song. The vast majority of his more than 200 solo art songs are lyrical in nature as folk songs

. Lyrics full of folk life, tone and rhythm are closely associated with folk music, simple and condensed, mostly in the form of folk songs originated

Section song. For example, "Lullaby" (OP.49 quater) is a nursery rhyme from a German children's picture book with lyrics in the form of a sectional song, a round dance tune, and a gently swirling accompaniment. Another example is "Vain Serenade" (OP.84 quater), a folk song from the Lower Rhine region

chosen in four stanzas, with a melody close to the rustic style of German folk dance songs. Eternal Love (OP.43 no.1) is set to a Slavic

folk song. Brahms's 21 Hungarian Dances in 4 volumes, composed and published in 1869 and 1880, absorbed the tunes and rhythmic characteristics of Slavic and Hungarian

Liberian folk music and vividly expressed the rich Hungarian vernacular flavor and national character.

Verdi (1813-1901), the king of opera, was the most highly acclaimed opera composer in the European music world, and his belief was that "every man should preserve

the peculiarities of his people." (Levick, "Masterpieces of Foreign Music," Book III, page 325) His operatic melodies are rich in figurative, lyrical and dramatic

nature, and these melodies are mostly based on folk tunes, which are simple, popular, distinctive, and easy to memorize, and many of these tunes are widely sung once the new opera is staged. Such as "The Lady of the Camellias" in the "Drinking Song", "the woman loves to change her mind" (after being renamed "summer boating on the sea

" to become the creation of a folk song) on a popular, and the "Troubadour" in the "Flame Rising" has almost become a folk song.

The formation of the Romantic school of music took place in the 19th century in the European countries national consciousness awakening, with the development of national liberation movement, in the history of music

there is the first such period, that is, to emphasize the national differences and national values in the process of the development of music and art, the national characteristics of the period of decisive influence

. The Romantic School, by its very nature, was influenced by folk music in terms of melodic tone and expression, and was y rooted in the foundation of their respective national musical traditions, emphasizing national characteristics and inheriting national traditions.

The Romantic School was the first such period in which national differences and national values had a decisive influence on the development of musical art.

Fourth, national music schools generally pursued and deliberately expressed national characteristics in order to stimulate national consciousness and

improve national awareness

Due to the influence of the French bourgeois revolution, and the ensuing revolutionary storms of the 1820s and 1830s that swept across the land of Europe, the various countries of Europe -- especially Russia and the Nordic countries -- were forced to take the lead in the development of their own music.

The revolutionary struggle against national oppression and for national independence was in the air, as the national consciousness and feelings of Russia and the Nordic countries, in particular, grew stronger and stronger

. At the same time, with the development of capitalism and the rise of Romanticism, various regions of Europe entered the period of the rise of national culture. The birth of the National School of Music

shows that national culture was beginning to flourish.

The National School was a branch of the Romantic School of Music, with aesthetic views and compositional methods in the same vein as the Romantic School.

They expanded the "individuality" emphasized by the Romantic School to "ethnicity", and developed "individuality" to the extent that each ethnic group had its own performance characteristics different from the others. The conclusion of the

The result was that the national and folk characteristics emphasized by the Romantic School became more prominent and comprehensive in the hands of the National School.

Glinka (1804-1857), the father of Russian folk music and the founder of the national school, composed and staged the classical folk

national opera Ivan Susanin in 1836, which is a "heroic tragedy of the motherland" full of patriotism and passionate historical themes. ". The composer used a rich collection of Russian folk songs, borrowed the forms of world opera art, and drew on the techniques of the German and Italian romantic schools to create the first Russian national

opera in a uniquely national style.

The Kamalinskaya Fantasia, composed in 1884, uses two popular Russian folk songs and dances - the Wedding Song and the Wedding Song.

The wedding song

From Behind the Hills, From Behind the High Hills, and the dance song Kamalinskaya were used as the themes, and the variations were developed in the form of symphonic music, which distinctly portrayed

Russian countryside life and customs and the Russian national character. It became the cornerstone of Russian symphonic music, as Tchaikovsky said, "All

Russian symphonic music was birthed from the Kamalinskaya Fantasia." Glinka attached great importance to drawing from Russian national poetry,

from Russian folk music. As his motto suggests, "It is the people who make music, and we artists merely arrange it

into tunes." Ancient peasant songs, Russian church tunes, songs of city life and dance music were an inexhaustible source of his creativity. In

harmony, he tried to avoid the strong vertical chordal four-part harmony method, and instead used the unique Russian technique of polyphony and polyphonic tunes. His creative practice paved the way for the Russian

Russian folk music to enter the advanced world of music.

Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), one of the few all-rounders of the romantic period, was a composer of great individuality. His musical language, in terms of technique

was influenced by Germany and France, and was characterized by cosmopolitanism. In his works, the European style of splendor and elegance prevailed over the Russian style of simple rustic colors.

In fact, his music is still rooted in the reality of the soil of the nation, folk, some works directly adopted and developed the Russian folk songs, dance music and urban

People's songs. The final movement of Symphony No. 4 is based on the melody of the Russian folk song "A Birch Tree in the Field". The theme of the third movement of the Piano Concerto No. 1 in [b]b minor is taken from another Ukrainian

Kranian folk song, "Come, Ivanka". Russian national themes and character were always present in his music, so that his music remains predominantly

individually Russian.

The most important composer of the Czech national school in the second half of the 19th century, Dvorak (1841-1904), published in the late seventies a two-volume set of 16

slavonic dances, and these contained polkas, skocinas, vulliants, otzmakers, polonaises, dumkas, and other Czech, Slavic

varkas, Polish, Ukrainian and many other national dance genres and is world-famous and widely acclaimed by the international music community. In the early nineties, during his tenure as director of the New York

National Conservatory of Music, he composed his New World Symphony No. 9 in E minor, which uses the tonal core of Indian folk tunes (but opposes direct quotations from the original folk melodies), but also skillfully weaves in the atmosphere unique to Bohemian music; expresses a deep love for the American Indian

and a deep sense of gratitude for the Czech homeland, and also a deep sense of gratitude for the Czech Republic. The work is structured, melodious, and rich in national style, and is a profound and accessible classic. Dvorak also holds an important place in the history of American art music

and is an international Czech national composer.

Bartók (1881-1945), a representative of the Hungarian New National School, ethnomusicologist, composer, and educator, spent several

decades of his life collecting, organizing, and researching folk music, with great success. He and his fellow student and music educator Kodály (1882-196

7) shook the European music world with their thesis of "reconceptualization of Hungarian folk music". In order to compare and study folk music and to find out the "mother tongue" of Hungarian folk music, Bartók extended his folk song collecting activities beyond Hungary's borders: to Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Turkey, and North Africa. North Africa. More than 6,000 folk songs were collected and recorded, and nearly 2,000 were published. He worked out a set of systematic and scientific collection and analysis methods and made great contributions to the development of folk music. Utilizing the native Hungarian

Teutonic folk music material, he spent 10 years composing and writing a collection of piano compositions such as Dedicated to the Children and The Little Universe, which are of great educational

value.

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that the national music school generally pursues and deliberately expresses its own national characteristics, and they have a clear artistic goal

and act consciously, wanting to make music and culture become a means to stimulate the national consciousness and raise the national awareness. This was in the context of the new ideology and the struggle for national liberation

determined by the composers' national consciousness and their special feelings for their own country and nation.

Five points of revelation

From the analytical study of the national characteristics of European classical music, several points of revelation can be obtained.

1. All accomplished musicians who are loved by people all over the world can be said to be national musicians. Their works are characterized by the saying, "Only the national is the world." (Prof. Zhao Fēng@1). In spite of the differences in the characteristics of their musical centers, there are no exceptions to the rule that nationalism is the artistic goal to be pursued by all countries of the world in their professional musical creations. As Rimsky-Korsakov said:

"Music without ethnicity does not exist. In fact it is generally recognized that the music of all mankind is national in character."

2. Strengthen the study of European music culture and world music culture, emphasize the global significance of diversified music education, and contribute to paving the way for Chinese national music to go to the world

World. The "European Music Center Theory" in China's music industry, especially in the professional music education circle has a deeper impact, should spend a lot of effort to critique, change the concept, and correctly deal with the relationship between Chinese and Western music. In teacher training, the author believes that while strengthening national music education, we should also

strengthen the study and research of European and world music culture. Recently, an American music education expert wrote to me and asked: "I have heard that Chinese educators have the idea of learning

good mathematics, science and chemistry to go around the world, but now is there a need to learn the world's music culture in order to prepare for going to the world? Do you think this is a definite trend for the future?

"

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We should fully realize the global significance of the importance of diversified music education, and we should see the comprehensive and positive influence that the Western music theory, technique, and education system have had on the development of China's national music in the past few decades.

We should avoid criticizing the "Western music theory, technique, and education system," and we should avoid criticizing the "Western music theory, technique, and education system. It is important to prevent one contradiction from overshadowing another, and one tendency from overshadowing another, while criticizing the "European music

centrism" and strengthening folk music education. The study of European and

world music theories, performance techniques, skills, skills, and lessons learned in the creation of music is aimed at the development of our national music, in order to lay a good foundation for the further development of Chinese national music

music into the world.

3. Reforming the teaching of foreign music history, under the premise of being faithful to historical facts, from teaching materials to lectures should highlight patriotism, people's nature, democracy, and folk

ethnic characteristics of the main theme. They can't see both sides of the coin, only the historical contribution of the musicians, not

to the limitations of history. As a matter of urgency, we should organize our countrymen to prepare a textbook on the history of Western music with a novel point of view and a strong focus. The textbooks should promote the patriotism of foreign musicians who opposed feudal autocracy and foreign invasion, and the creative spirit of musicians who loved the people, loved life, loved folk art, inherited

traditions, and were brave enough to explore and innovate. While fully recognizing their historical contributions, it is also necessary to comprehensively and objectively evaluate their ideology

, aesthetic point of view and the historical limitations of their works.

To learn from the past, history is a mirror. "Use the foreign for the Chinese, the ancient for the modern", based on China, facing the world; based on the modern, facing the future

. Absorbing the excellent musical traditions of various countries, developing our national music, and letting Chinese national music further go to the world, this is the starting point of our study