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."