Xian Xinghai’s Cantata and Yin Chengzong’s Piano Concerto “Yellow River”: Compositional, Thematic, and Genre Transformations

Section 2. Dynamics of Search and Transformations in the Musical and Cultural Space of the 20th and

Abstract

Statement of the problem. A typical feature of 20th -century Chinese music, particularly instrumental music, was the emergence of a vast number of arrangements and transcriptions of the same work for different instrumental ensembles. An example of an original rethinking of transcription as a genre within the national tradition is the “Yellow River” Piano concerto, based on the eponymous patriotic cantata by Xian Xinghai themes. The outlined feature of 20th -century Chinese musical culture has not yet become the subject of a specialized comprehensive study. Despite the considerable number of works dedicated to the two aforementioned landmark pieces, they have not been consistently examined in the context of the development of the transcription genre in the Chinese context. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The purpose of the article is to explore the transformations of thematic content and the compositional structure of Xian Xinghai’s Cantata “Yellow River” during its adaptation into the Piano Concerto, in the context of transcription genre development in 20th -century Chinese music. The disclosure of the chosen theme involves the use of genre, stylistic, semantic and comparative analysis (to identify the specifics of the transformation of the initial artistic idea, composition and thematicizm of the Cantata in the process of creating the Concerto), analytical methods of theoretical musicology (to consider the formal, textural, and harmonic features of each of the works). The scientific novelty of the research is determined, firstly, by the insufficient coverage in scholarly works of the issues regarding thematic connections between Xian Xinghai’s Cantata “Yellow River” and the eponymous Piano Concerto, as well as of the transformation of musical material during its transfer to another genre sphere; secondly, by the vector of studying these works in the context of the development of the transcription genre in Chinese instrumental music of the 20th century.

Research results. During the creation of the Concerto “Yellow River”, the material of the Cantata underwent a stylistic, compositional, genre, imaginative and semantic transformations. The stylistic transformation is associated with a departure from the modernist aesthetics of the original towards a complex of expressive means of romantic origin. The compositional transformation is associated with the reduction of themes and sections, a different arrangement of caesuras, and the addition of music material that was not in the Cantata. Imaginative and semantic transformation consists in the transformation of lyricalepic, pastoral images of the original into purely lyrical and even dramatic ones. The genre transformation of the original material is due to the very fact of its transfer from the sphere of vocal music to instrumental music and is associated with its acquisition of virtuoso concert features.

Conclusion. Considering the degree of proximity and distance from the original, the principle of operating with borrowed material, we note that the first two parts of the Concerto are transcriptions of the parts of the Cantata of the same name, which, while preserving the general framework of the form. While the third and fourth parts are rather paraphrases of the themes of the original, since the initial material becomes the basis for a different compositional structure. The “Yellow River” Concerto is closer to a concert fantasy, based on the free use of themes from the works of other composers or of folklore origin, given the atypical for a European romantic concerto structure of the cycle and each of the parts.