A Guide to Chinese Art Songs from 1970 to 2010

This study aims to provide a repertoire guide of Chinese art songs for the pedagogy and research of musicians. The world is becoming more open to accepting and embracing different social and cultural elements, and diverse musical styles and repertoire are now being showcased internationally. There are more opportunities for musicians who wish to perform their homeland's music in public concerts around the world, and repertoires from different languages (e.g., Japanese, Spanish, Russian, and Czech) are more widely seen. However, there is still a lack of repertoires in other languages not very common internationally, and one of them is the Mandarin-Chinese art songs. This study starts with an introduction to the development of Chinese art songs and then exclusively features Chinese art songs composed from 1970 to 2010. Most of these songs were original works, and some were originally unaccompanied. For each song in this study, the writer will include title, title translation, poet, composer, piano arrangement, publisher, year, difficulty level, voice type, range, tempo, duration, background, voice characteristics, piano, and accompaniment. The Appendix contains the lyrics of each song, English translation, and Pinyin. It helps non-native speakers to improve the pronunciation of the lyrics. Chinese art songs are now a hundred years old. In the past century, human's musical life has changed dramatically in forms and ways where material, technical and mental revolutions have profoundly changed the concepts and practices of artists. Chinese art songs have their unique charm based on different cultural backgrounds. This essay aims to encourage non-native speakers of Chinese to learn Chinese art songs. By providing a guide to Chinese art songs from 1970-2010, non-Chinese singers can better understand the texts and better connect with the emotions represented. This guide provides a resource for singers interested in exploring Chinese art songs for performance, personal enrichment, or language learning.