Chinese Lyrics Research Articles

Ancient Chinese Poem “The Song of Bride”: Features of Translation by A.A. Shtukin

The translation of A.A. Shtukin’s poem “The Song of the Bride”, which is part of the collection of ancient Chinese hymns and songs “Shijing”, is being considered. The relevance of the study is determined by the interest of Chinese researchers in the quality of translations of Chinese poetry into European languages, particularly Russian. There is noted interest from both Chinese and Russian researchers in the translation of the book “Shijing”, as it varies depending on the perception of foreign cultures. The features of A.A. Shtukin’s translation of the poem “The Song of the Bride” are highlighted in terms of the images he created and the linguistic specifics. It is pointed out that Shtukin’s translation of the poems from “Shijing” is recognized as one of the best. The analysis of the translation revealed the following characteristics: the preservation of the original work’s color through botanical metaphors, sound, and structural organization of the text. Some shortcomings in conveying the atmosphere of ancient Chinese lyricism from the perspective of native Chinese speakers who also speak Russian were also identified; the translation differs from the original in that it insufficiently conveys the atmosphere of ancient Chinese lyricism, which can be easily explained by the differences in worldviews among speakers of different languages.

Analysis of the Artistic Expression in The Pop Music Hua Tian Cuo

100 years ago the school music song was born. Chinese people quoted foreign tunes and added Chinese lyrics to sing them. 100 years later a large number of Chinese singers sang Chinese songs in European and American styles. This paper centers on the study of Wang Leehom's song Hua Tian Cuo, mainly exploring the artistic expression of Chinese style in his song.

종묘제례악 악장에서 단모음 /기/를 중모음 /긔/로 발음하는 용례에 대한 연구

In many cases of traditional vocal genres, the lyrics are sung in the way of pronouncing all the vowels and consonants composed of one syllable in a distinguishable way. When akjang (song lyrics in the form of a poem) of the jongmyo jeryeak (court music performed in the rites for royal ancestors) is sung, however, there is a tendency not to disjoint single vowels of a diphthong and final consonants of particular voiced consonants. This is speculated to be because the lyrics have a great meaning since they directly praise the virtues of the king. However, 'gi ' used in the lyrics of the jongmyo jeryeak 's akjang is sung as a single vowel 'gi ' or a diphthong 'gui ' depending on the case. It is not depending on Chinese characters, but is pronounced in two ways even if the same Chinese character is used. As a result of interpreting the meaning of the jongmyo jeryeak's akjang based on the Chinese dictionary Jeonun okpyeon in which diphthongs are written, four Chinese characters (其, 基, 幾, 機) to be corrected were found among eight Chinese characters of 'gi ' appeared 21 times in the lyrics of the akjang . When singing the Chinese lyrics 'gi' of the jongmyo jeryeak's akjang, correctly pronouncing as a single vowel 'gi ' or a diphthong 'gui' depending on the meaning would be the right way to inherit the tradition.

Feminine Imagery in Chinese Lyrics of the Six Dynasties

This article deals with the specifics of female imagery in Chinese poetry of the Six Dynasties period ( Liuchao ). The aim is to characterize female imagery in the works of the poets of this period and find out what changes these images underwent in comparison with previous epochs, and how the structure of these images differs in female and male poetry. The aim is to analyze the women topic in the works of the leading poets of the Six Dynasties period. The conclusion is made that in mens poetry of the mentioned period the female image remains idealized, unified and narcissistic. Male poets used a standard set of artistic means to portray female images. The woman was presented as an object of aesthetic pleasure, and appeared to the reader in an inseparable connection with her surroundings and boudoir objects. In this regard, the thesis of the emergence of the image of a beautiful lady in Luchao poetry is put forward. Nevertheless, in both womens and mens lyrics more individualized images began to appear and a departure from traditional gender stereotypes is obvious; the main change in Six Dynasties poetry is the development of self-awareness in female and male poems, both in life and poetry, and the increasing understanding of their own subjectivity. The female characters of the Luchao era turn out to be endowed with reflexivity and psychologism. Lyrics on womens themes developed both quantitatively and qualitatively.

The Pheasant’s Call and the Sound of Sympathy

This article examines how literati poet-painter Yosa Buson (1716-1783) composed an elegy that transforms the conventional trope of the pheasant as a figure for representing grief and grieving and Confucian moral and social values. I argue that Buson forges a new poetic form, representing feelings of grief and the process of grieving, mourning, and longing through the conventional trope of the pheasant. At the same time, Buson makes the pheasant an object of empirical representation, allowing the sound of the pheasant’s call to reverberate through the rhythm and repetition of poetic form. This reverberation sets into motion multiple lyric events where the poet simultaneously expresses his grief, mourns the deceased, and summons the dead by performing an incantation that enlists the reader to sympathize with the bird and the poet. I show how Buson’s representation of the pheasant is conventional by exploring its allusions to Chinese and Japanese poems that represent the pheasant. I also show how Buson’s poem and representation of the pheasant are products of his present moment in the late eighteenth century, examining how his elegy is informed by late imperial Chinese lyricism, scientific empiricism, philology and the theory of mono no aware (“to sympathize or empathize with the feelings of others”) in kokugaku (Native Studies). The article contends that Buson’s conventional and innovative representation of the pheasant’s call affords the ancient verb toyomu (to reverberate) a new form, mediating sympathy through the reverberation of sound in poetic form.

Photo Poetics: Chinese Lyricism and Modern Media Culture by Shengqing Wu

Photo Poetics: Chinese Lyricism and Modern Media Culture by Shengqing Wu

Automated Generation of Chinese Lyrics Based on Melody Emotions

Natural Language Processing enables computers to understand human natural languages and assists humans to perform many tasks. Recently, language research was gradually moving towards the field of natural language generation, and lyrics generation is one of these research directions. In the past, many studies have explored how to generate lyrics using seeds or prompt words. But, they usually ignored the relationship between music and lyrics and even melody emotions when generating lyrics. In this paper, we propose the Chinese lyrics generation system based on notes and melody emotions. In the first phase, a support vector regression model is trained to detect melody emotions. In the second phase, a sequence-to-sequence model is trained to generate lyrics using notes, melody emotions, and lyrics. Finally, we conduct the experiments and evaluate the detected melody emotions and the generated lyrics. Results show that the generated lyrics have fluent sentences, and the sentences are with connected semantics.

Preliminary study on lyrics intelligibility at different pitches in Chinese vocal music

Background: There is still no clear experimental data on the relationship between the intelligibility of Chinese vocal lyrics and different pitch.Aims/Objective: This study aims at investigating the intelligibility of Chinese sung words at different pitch.Material and methods: A word list is created and sung by eight singers at five different pitches (C5, F4, bB4, bE5, and bA5). The intelligibility of the words is tested by listeners with and without music background.Results: The average intelligibility score in the music-listeners is 84.9% (SD = 9.5%). The score at five pitches (from low to high) is 93%, 91.7%, 89.7%, 83.1%, and 67.1%, respectively. The average score is 77.4% (SD = 10.7%) in the non-music listeners. The average score is 87%, 86%, 79.8%, 76.8%, and 57.5% at five pitches, respectively. The ratio of unidentified sung words is 19.3% (SD, 4.3%) in female singers and 11.9% (SD = 1.5%) in male singers.Conclusions: The intelligibility of Chinese sung words declines gradually with increase in pitch, and the extent of decreases gradually elevating. Generally, the identified ratio of words sung by male singers is higher than that of female singers. The listeners who had no musical background have a lower intelligibility score than those with experience.

A Disintegrating Lyric? – Henri Michaux and Chinese Lyricism

This essay examines the perplexing triangular relation between Henri Michaux's ambiguous and attenuated lyricism, the French lyrical tradition, and Michaux's Chinese-inspired poems. I explore how Michaux's West-Eastern cross-cultural straddling relates to the way he renders the lyric problematic, and how this relation can help us re-read and perhaps unread the lyric (at least, its European understanding) in a comparative way. I first read some poems that are representative of Michaux's uneasy and disintegrating lyricism; then I consider how Michaux's poems that allude to Chinese and Far Eastern sources of inspiration reinstate his lyric voice, but in a new, ‘Asianised’ way. This raises the intriguing question of why there exists a coincidence between Michaux's ‘Chinese-style’ and his lyrical moments. Besides considering Michaux's Chinese influences and the Orientalist stereotyping of Chinese literary style, I argue that a stronger comparative approach to this question is to consider lyricism in the Chinese context and how shuqing (approximately translated as ‘lyrical’) writing – despite its very different conceptual framework – may shed light on Michaux's poetry and dislodge Eurocentric views of the lyric. Finally, I propose that Michaux's poetry marks the point of simultaneous lyric disintegration and reformulation. Although Michaux's Chinese-inspired dimension sustains certain lyrical moments, the transcultural aesthetics of his West-Eastern lyric in fact resists fusion and reconciliation, presenting instead a juxtapositional tension and splintering of poetics between Michaux's French and Chinese sides.

Just a Song: Chinese Lyrics from the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries by Stephen Owen

Just a Song: Chinese Lyrics from the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries by Stephen Owen

The Natural Beauty in English and Chinese Season Lyrics from the Perspective of Ecological Culture

The ecological and cultural awareness in seasonal lyrics can be seen in the comparison and analysis of the practical aspects of ecological culture construction. The importance of songs in disseminating ecological culture is self-evident. The English and Chinese lyrics about the four seasons are rich in content and the exploration space of ecological cultural factors is very large.

«КИТАЙ ФРАНЦА КАФКИ»: ПРИРОДА ПАРАДОКСА

The article studies the reception of China by the German-speaking writer Franz Kafka (1883-1924), which can be traced at different levels - from the author’s interpretation of the Chinese lyrics to “copying” the paradoxical component in the semantic space of a literary text that generates new meanings. Literary paradox as one of the dominant principles of poetics is studied by the example of the writer’s stories and letters, in which the image of China appears. The study analyses the devices that Kafka uses to create the image of China. It is revealed that Kafka’s reception of China is in ambivalent relation to the generally accepted European “Chinese discourse” of the early ХХ century.

英汉情歌歌词中爱情概念隐喻对比分析

英汉情歌歌词中爱情概念隐喻对比分析

Just a Song: Chinese Lyrics from the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries by Stephen Owen

Just a Song: Chinese Lyrics from the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries by Stephen Owen

A Study on Adoptive Style of Chinese Lyrics 詞(Ci) in Go-Ryu Literary Men

A Study on Adoptive Style of Chinese Lyrics 詞(Ci) in Go-Ryu Literary Men

Medievalism and the Academy, Vol. II: Cultural Studies by David Metzger (review)

MLRy 98.1,2003 163 may well be right about Caxton, but I am not at all sure what he is right about. Miranda Griffinhas an interesting essay on the gender politics of some of the fabliaux, but the relentless citation of Kristeva's Powers ofHorror (firstpublished in 1980) and the uncritical assumption that Kristeva is correct in her assertions, lead the essay into overstatements that reduce the multivalence of the fabliaux into a rather simplistic misogyny. So too, Anne Birrell (discussing early medieval Chinese lyrics) and Sarah Kay (on the unseemly American squabble over the 'New Philology', whatever that is) adopt the psychoanalytic mode firstin fashion in the 1970s and early 1980s. Despite the inherent interest of their topics, and the intelligence everywhere apparent in their essays, there is an odd sense oideja vu here. One would have liked to hear more about the materials (how many European medievalists know anything about the literature of fifth-and sixth-century China?) and the issues (questions ofeditorial method are given short shriftin Kay's survey) rather than having familiar and, to some at least, dubious assertions recycled yet again. As psychoanalysis enters its second century, and has now largely disappeared from the therapeutic scene, can we really think of it as new? What the other essays lack in fashion they more than gain in clarity and interest. Alfred Hiatt brings to light documents showing the late medieval effortsof Cambridge University to provide for itself an ancient, if factitious, foundation; Scott-Morgan Straker argues that Lydgate's Troy Book is a warning to Henry V about his imperial ambitions; Nicolette Zeeman has a solid account of Studie in Piers Plozvman; and Helen Cooper surveys again, with much good sense, Chaucer's relation to Dante? arguing in passing that the 'English Gaufride' who is presented as a historian of Troy in the House of Fame is not Geoffrey of Monmouth but Chaucer himself, and so linking that poem to the Troilus. To this reader the most satisfying essays were Ralph Hanna's bracing discussion of gender in Piers Plowman and David Wallace's intriguing account of the fifteenth-centuryLatin translation of Dante that ended up at Wells Cathedral. Wallace is a great snapper-up of unconsideredtrifles, and ifhis essay often reads like sixty details in search of an argument it none the less starts hares that others will want to chase (yes, that sentence is meant to read like Wallace's essay). On the other hand, Hanna's piece, the shortest in the volume, shows with brisk efflciency,and with corroborating evidence from a near-contemporary manuscript, that Langland's ambivalence towards learning is a function of a pedagogical discipline that created a 'particularly insecure' maleness. The historical specificity of Hanna's argument, its careful grounding in both text and context, and the clarity of its presentation make learning anything but punitive. Yale University Lee Patterson Medievalism and the Academy, Vol. n: Cultural Studies. Ed. by David Metzger. (Studies in Medievalism, io, 1998) Cambridge: Brewer. 2000. 246 pp. ?35; $60. ISBN 0-85991-567-0. By design, this volume conflates academic medieval studies with the idea, influence, and presence ofthe Middle Ages in later centuries. That conffation,conforming to the policy of Studies inMedievalism but by no means accepted by all scholars, here magnifiesthe inherent diversity of cultural studies (including race, gender, and postcolonial experience) to produce a volume in which unifying threads are exceedingly elusive. Several of the essays are useful surveys of scholarship. They include Louise D'Arcens's 'Europe in the Antipodes: Australian Medieval Studies' (pp. 13-40), emphasizing the effectsof a 'Northern Hemisphere bias' (p. 15); Louise Sylvester's 'ReadingRapein Medieval Literature' (pp. 120-35);and Clay Kinsner's 'The Female Mystics, Women's Studies, and the Negotiations of Discourse' (pp. 164-83). 164 Reviews Michael Bernard-Donals treats postcolonialism in 'The Manichean Problem in Post-Colonial Criticism; or, Why the Subaltern Cannot Speak' (pp. 41-63); Charles E. Wilson, Jr,discusses the African American experience in 'Medievalism, Race, and Social Order in Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Cafey (pp. 74-91); and Timothy Richardson considers Brian Eno's theory and composition?of ambient music in particular?in 'Brian...

Rhythm and Phrasing in Chinese Tune-Title Lyrics; Old Eight-Beat and Its 3-2-3 Meter

Rhythm and Phrasing in Chinese Tune-Title Lyrics; Old Eight-Beat and Its 3-2-3 Meter

A Folding Screen: Selected Chinese Lyrics from T'ang to Mao Tse-tung

A Folding Screen: Selected Chinese Lyrics from T'ang to Mao Tse-tung

A Further Collection of Chinese Lyrics and Other Poems

A Further Collection of Chinese Lyrics and Other Poems

Chinese Lyricism. By Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1971. 224 pp. Bibliography, Index. $9.00 (clothcover), $3.45 (paperback).

Chinese Lyricism. By Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1971. 224 pp. Bibliography, Index. $9.00 (clothcover), $3.45 (paperback).