Specifics of the embodiment of European genre models in Chinese piano music as the basis of performance stylistics
Authors: Meixuan Song 
Published: August 2024

Statement of the problem. A performer who gives “new life" to a composer’s work lets the sound world of music pass through him. In this process, the genre-stylistic “inclination” of the work becomes a signpost on the way to the realization and improvement of its performance style. The article accents the significant of the relating the genre and performance stylistics. From this viewpoint, the Chinese piano works based on the European genre models are considered in the article. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The relationship between the genre and the performance style of the piano works of Chinese composers has been out of the focus of musicologists’ attention until today. The purpose of the article is to consider the specifics of the embodiment of European genre models (such as prelude, sonata, variations) in Chinese piano music as the basis of their performance stylistics. Achieving the goal required a systematic musicological approach and the involvement of historical-typological, musicalaesthetic, genre-stylistic, structural-functional, and interpretative research methods. Research results and conclusion. The samples of Chinese piano music (preludes, sonatas, variations) demonstrate that the specified group of works preserved their constant genre features, while the nationally directed means of expression were adapted to the norms of the European genre matrix, which in many ways contradicted the national ideas and mental foundations of Chinese musical art. The piano prelude genre has become very popular in the works of Chinese composers. All elements of the national musical style, closely related to the deep roots of Chinese musical and, more broadly, artistic thinking, are involved in the process of “concentrating” energy in miniature form with special laconic and aphoristic expression. The complex large-scale structure of the sonata genre promotes the principle of “activity”, offering the performer various musical ideas and emotions. The mental foundations of Chinese art were significantly adapted, especially in the first part – the sonata allegro, where tonal, figurative and textural contrast is the basis of the interaction of themes. New methods of folklore implementation, in which the role of language-creating and form-creating attitudes is growing, have a perceptible influence on the sonata work of Chinese composers. The European genre model of variations reveals new prospects for its development in combination with a freer national model of variations inherent in Chinese music. There is a peculiar “rational” approach to free variation, “ordering” according to the textural, tonal, figurative principle. Thus, the ccomposers try to “inscribe” national mode and intonation means of expression and performance techniques into the structure of the European genre. At the same time, under the influence of the Chinese traditional system of thinking, European genre models receive a certain “national” interpretation, although the features of a specific sample of the European genre remain as dominant, which determines the style of performing these composition. Such works – diverse and interesting – serve to develop the pianist’s performance skills and gain the widest recognition in the repertoire of many contemporary performers.