I have finished a series of 6 posts about Chinese Music Classics of 20th Century. Now in this post, I removed review commentary and compiled all tables into a complete list.

This is a long list. Indeed, it’s somewhat controversial. But it is still a very good representative list of Chinese Music in the transitional and eventful 20th century. So I am sure you will get a comprehensive understanding of Chinese Music through this list.

Reviewing the above list, we can find it’s roughly objective and representative. Opening up the “classic” heart knot, this list is indeed helpful to establish an overall concept of Chinese music in 20th century.

As painstaking as these efforts are, we can take it as musicians’ “big show of the century”, or a “rewarding ceremony”. Now they are on stage, and we might give them some applauds.

Once the list was published, the Central Conservatory of Music was commissioned to collect information for later text, sound publication. Then the first published plan was on the “People’s Daily” overseas edition. On June 5 1993 in Beijing, the official awarding ceremony was held at the Great Hall of the People. Representative works from Mainland China, Hongkong, Taiwan were performed at the opening ceremony.

In previous sections, we have covered Songs, Choir and Operas. You probably had difficulty in enjoying them since they are all vocal music in Chinese language. Since today, the other sections are going to be mainly instrumental music. Hopefully it will be easier for you to enjoy them.

But the organizers made a fatal mistake to use the “classic” word. “Classic” has the meaning of artistic value. “Classics” are naturally formed. It is obvious that to generate “classics” by ballot would be impractical. Who votes? What criteria? In what way? there are endless questions. If we only selected “the most representative works of each era”, perhaps we can have a more objective identification criteria.