Composition of New Music for Zheng

[[abstract]]Zheng, also known as Guzheng, is a traditional music instrument, and, yet, capable of producing new sounds with widely varying styles of music. Therefore, the author adopted it as the research theme of this thesis study. Improvement of this music instrument was driven by social and cultural needs of each era. Better understanding of its characteristics was achieved through investigation of the instrument evolution, technique development and the scale system. Such understandings may be applied to the composition of Zheng music. Subsequently, the author analyzed the Zheng music of contemporary Taiwanese composers. Through research on music teachers’ works, the author was able to transform the learned techniques into author’s own music expressions. Using these elements, the author composed three Zheng music pieces as a demonstration of her transforming theoretical studies into creation of new Zheng music. This thesis comprises five chapters: Chapter 1 is the “Introduction,” which presents the motivation and purpose of this study as well as the sequence of the study and the structure of the thesis. Chapter 2 is the “History of Zheng,” which describes the evolution of the instrument, the playing techniques and its scale system. Chapter 3 is the “Analysis of Zheng Music by Contemporary Taiwanese Composers,” which allows the author to transform music phrases of other composers into music expressions of the author’s own. Chapter 4 is the “Composition of New Music for Zheng, by author” which presents the three compositions for Zheng ensembles of different sizes. Chapter 5 is the “Conclusions,” which summarizes the important findings of this study that may serve as the guidelines for future compositions.