What does the name Jiangnan sizhu mean? What eight categories of sound-producing materials did the ancient Chinese recognize? (Explain as needed.) What musical instruments do the sizhu ensembles often include?

Question

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Answer 1

• The Jiangnan sizhu name means the "silk and bamboo music from the Jiangnan region in East China around the lower reaches of the Changjiang (Yangstse) River. . . . The phrase silk and bamboo refers to the two major categories of instruments used in this music, silk-stringed instruments and bamboo-tubed wind instruments."
• The ancient Chinese recognized the sound-producing materials of (1) silk, (2) bamboo,
• (3) metal (e.g., the bells of the Marquis), (4) stone (as in tuned qing chime stones), (5) gourds (hollowed out to make the body of a mouth organ), (6) earth (baked into clay ocarinas), (7) leather (stretched to make drum heads), and (8) wood (as in clappers).
• "In Jiangnan, the ensemble is flexible, but it often includes one or two of the following instruments: erhu two-stringed fiddle; sanxian three-stringed, long-necked lute; pipa, ruan four-stringed, round-bodied lute; yangqin hammered dulcimer; dizi transverse bamboo flute; sheng mouth organ and a percussionist who plays woodblock and clappers. . . . Sometimes, a zheng . . . [a] bridged zither with (usually) 25 strings is added, and in soft pieces a xiao bamboo end-blown vertical flute replaces the more effervescent dizi."