Aesthetic characteristics of twentieth-century Chinese women's music

Shi Tszya PhD in Art History Postgraduate student; Faculty of Arts; Lomonosov Moscow State University 119234, Russia, Moscow, Ramenki district, ter. Leninskie Gory, 1 jiashi0916@mail.ru

1. The concept of Chinese women's music

Chinese women's music, as a branch of China's traditional musical culture, has shaped its aesthetic characteristics in close relationship with gender culture, social ethics, and power structures. Since the establishment of the "system of rituals and music" in the Zhou era (XI–III centuries BC), "niuyue" (women's music) has become part of palace ceremonies and aristocratic entertainment. During the Tang and Song periods (VII–XIII centuries), with the growth of the urban class, women's music gradually moved from temple spaces to the folk environment, forming the aesthetic canon of "refined restraint" (婉约含蓄). This canon, on the one hand, was regulated by the Confucian concept of "music as a harmonizer of emotions", on the other hand, it reflected the beginnings of women's subjectivity in musical creativity, which manifested itself in such works as "Melody of Rainbow Robes" (霓裳羽衣曲, 718-720).

However, the aesthetic perception of women's music in traditional society has long been dominated by the "male gaze" (男性凝视). For example, Zhu Xi, in his Commentary on Shijing (诗集传, 1177), condemned female singing in Songs of the Kingdom of Zheng (郑风) as "depraved sounds" (淫声), which reflected the suppression of female musical expression by Confucian ethics ^{[15, pp. 24-44]}. During the Ming and Qing eras (1368-1840), this trend intensified: although Li Yu recognized the talents of women in Notes on Idle Moods (1671), he limited their work to the "amusements of women's rooms" (闺阁之趣), reducing women's music to a cultural symbol of "weakness" and "intimacy". In theatrical practice, in particular in stage productions and dramatic performances, there was a ban on the participation of women as performers. Despite the artistic necessity of female characters, their stage embodiment was carried out through the role of travesty, a practice in which male actors played female roles. This phenomenon led to the formation of a paradoxical situation: female images in theatrical art lost their authentic subjectivity, becoming derived from the male interpretation and reproducing exclusively those characteristics that were constructed by male actors ^{[9, pp. 127-174]}.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the transformation of Chinese women's music has been synchronized with the movement for the emancipation of women. Within the framework of the New Culture movement in 1915, the ideas of "modernizing national music" promoted by Liu Tianhua indirectly created conditions for women to overcome traditional performing canons. In the 1930s, composers Zhou Shuang (1894-1974) and Xiao Shuxian (1905-1991) introduced national patriotic narratives into women's work through works like "Songs of the Spinning Wheel" (1920) and "Songs of Resistance" (1931), marking the transition from "personal emotions" to "public speaking." After the 1970s, globalization and digital technologies put the aesthetic parameters of women's music in front of the double challenge of deconstruction and reconstruction.

The present study focuses on the key issue of "aesthetic features of Chinese women's music of the 20th century," focusing on the dual tension between "ethical discipline" and "breakthrough subjectivity," formed during the historical evolution of women's musical creativity. By analyzing the long path of transformation — from the ritual and musical system of the Qin era (III century BC) to the modernization of the 20th century - the work reveals how women's music, which initially served as a symbol of "Yin softness" within the Confucian cultural paradigm, evolved into an aesthetic phenomenon combining cultural authenticity with modern consciousness. Special attention is paid to identifying the deep interaction of the aesthetic features of women's music with socio-gender power structures, technological innovations and the awakening of subjectivity.

The study focuses on the breakthroughs of women's music of the 20th century in such aspects as the politics of timbre, microstructural innovations in musical form and the reconstruction of gender identity, analyzing its role as an "acoustic evidence" reflecting the modernization of gender representations in Chinese society. Using the example of women's music, the unique ways of modernizing traditional Chinese culture are explored, which provides a theoretical basis for gender-oriented artistic practices in the context of globalization.

2. Aesthetics of women's music in the system of rituals and music

The establishment of a system of rituals and music in the Zhou era (XI–III centuries BC) integrated women's musical activity into the philosophical concept of the "unity of yin and yang". In "Yue ji" from "Li ji" it is stated: "Music comes from yang, ritual is created by yin." Women's music (nyue), as a carrier of the "sounds of yin" (阴声), performed the ritual function of harmonizing yin and yang in the ceremonies of sacrifices and feasts. Zheng Xuan (郑玄）) in the comments to the "Zhou Rituals" (周礼, section "Chunguan") emphasized: "Eight rows of female musicians align the sounds of yin with the virtue of yang," demanding strict observance of the norms of "noble correctness" in performing practice. Even such works from "Shijing" (诗经) as "Guan ju" (关雎) and "Ge Tan" (葛覃), performed by women, pursued the goal of praising the "virtues of empresses" ^{[5, p. 270]}.

However, archaeological finds demonstrate aesthetic breakthroughs in women's music. On a lacquered zither found in the Chu tombs of Xinyang (prov. Henan), depicts female musicians with dynamic poses and billowing sleeves, which indicates possible elements of improvisational dance in performance. The inscriptions on the bells from the burial of the Marquis and the state of Tseng (曾侯乙编钟) record the "Gu Xian zhi gong" scale system, proving the participation of female musicians in the development of acoustic standards. Their practice combined technical rationality and artistic sensuality ^{[6, p. 316]}.

The establishment of the Yuefu Institute in the Han era (III century BC – III century AD) contributed to the transition of women's music from the sacred space of temples to the folk environment. The "Treatise on Rituals and Music" from the "Hanshu" ("Book of Han") notes: "[They] collected songs at night, singing the melodies of Zhao, Dai, Qin and Chu," where female performers, through Yuefu poetry such as "Mulberry on the Road" and "The Mottled Thrush Flies to the Southeast", created a narrative tradition centered on individual emotions. Hanshu, 1st century). It is noteworthy that the images of "dancers with long sleeves" (长袖舞女) on stone reliefs from Xuzhou (prov. Jiangsu) demonstrate the poses of "raised sleeves and a curved waist" (翘袖折腰), which overcame ritual limitations and formed the aesthetic canon of "beauty through sadness" ^{[11, p. 348]}.

Music in the morphology of the findings from the Mawangdui Han tombs（马王堆汉墓）, such as tubes with the setting for Yu (竽律管) and the notation of "Sanchahe" (相和歌), indicate that women are complex modulation techniques — "introduction Shang, carving Yu, mixing with Luci" (引商刻羽，杂以流徵). These innovations correlate with the mention in the "Notes on the Western Capital": "Ms. Qi masterfully performed a dance with raised sleeves and a curved waist, sang the melodies "Going abroad" and "Entering the fortress", which confirms the contribution of women musicians to the transformation of folk music ^{[1, p. 316]}.

The improvement of the Jiaofang (教坊, Imperial Music Department) system in the Tang era (618-907) institutionalized the status of women musicians ^{[2, pp. 8-22]}. According to the "Notes on Jiaofang" (教坊记), during the Kaiyuan years (713-741), the number of court musicians reached 10,049 people, divided by skill into three categories: "domestic" (内人), "palace" (宫人) and "skilled string players" (搊弹家) ^{[14, p. 336]}. An analysis of the musical structure of the Qingbeiyue Dunhuang musical notation revealed the use of the "one string – four frets" tuning and the frequent use of Central Asian playing techniques such as "dian" (攧) and "zhuai" (拽), forming a contrasting structure of "swift passages like rain, slow as clouds" ^{[7, p. 257]}. These innovations correlate with the description in the "Scattered Records of Yuefu" (乐府杂录) of the style of playing by the famous pipa performers Cao Gang and Pei Xingnu, whose "playing rang like thunder" (拨弹如雷), symbolizing the transformation of women's music from a "ritual instrument" to an "artistic artifact."

The poetic works of the Tang poetesses Xue Tao and Yu Xuanji, dedicated to music and dance, deserve special attention. The lines "Dancing costumes rotate in search of new forms, not blindly following the customs of the crowd" (舞衣转转求新样，，) from Xue Tao's poem "About the first time wearing a new outfit" reveal the conscious desire of Jiaofang women for artistic innovation. This subjectivity is confirmed in Liu Yuxi's "Song of Tainiang": "Cinnabar strings are cut off for initiates, / Cloudy hairstyle, untouched in autumn, is kept secret", reflecting the musicians' awareness of the value of their own art.

The aesthetic practice of women's music, since the Sui and Tang eras (7th century AD), has consistently sought a balance between the normative prescriptions of the ritual system and artistic self-awareness. During the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing periods (960-1912), with the strengthening of the gender order within the framework of the neo-Confucianism of Cheng Zhu, women's musical creativity was enclosed in the framework of the "exquisite sounds of women's chambers" (闺阁雅音), and the space of its public representation was systematically reduced. Li Zhi's ethical imperative from the treatise "The Book of Burning" (焚书, 1590) — "Qin art is a limitation" (琴者，)) — directly linked women's music with moral precepts. While Du Lingyan's aria "A Dream in a Blooming Garden" from the play "The Peony Arbor" (牡丹亭, 1598), although it breaks through the shackles of Confucian ethics by means of musical expression, remains a prisoner of aesthetic constructions created by the male literary tradition.

This dialectical contradiction of suppression and resistance reached a historical turning point during the late Qing and Early Republic: the impact of Western modernity and the enlightenment impulse of the Movement for a New Culture jointly destroyed the structural framework of the traditional gender system. The inclusion of music in the educational curriculum of the Regulations on Women's Pedagogical Schools of 1907 marked the paradigmatic transition of women's music from the status of an "instrument of entertainment" to "subjective self-expression." Thus, the centuries-old shackles of "Yin refinement" imposed by the ritual-musical system began to weaken. In the maelstrom of technological revolutions and the waves of gender emancipation of the 20th century, women's music finally found a creative reconfiguration — from an "ethical appendage" to "aesthetic autonomy." This transformation represents not only the deconstruction of traditional musical semiotics, but also marks the opening of a new front in the cultural struggle, where women are using sound to win the right to discursive subjectivity.

3. The aesthetic construction of women's music of the XX century

The semantic choice of timbre in women's music of the 20th century has become an aesthetic practice with gender-political overtones. At an early stage (1920-1940), women's vocal compositions predominantly used the soprano range (c1–a2), imitating the dynamic characteristics of men's revolutionary songs. For example, in Zhou Shuang's interpretation of Huang Tzu's "Song of Eternal Sorrow" (长恨歌, 1932), the amplification of chest resonance created a "degenerated" expression. As noted by Ju Qihong, such a timbre strategy actually served as a "pass" for women into the dominant musical discourse ^{[10, p. 348]}.

In the 20th century, the use of timbre became an ontological breakthrough. Wu Man developed the technique of "flageolets with rotating fingers" ( 1995) in the pipa concert "Reflections on a Silent Night" (静夜思, 1995), transforming the metallic timbre of the traditional pipa into an ethereal sound. Zhou Haihong interprets this as "the conscious construction of female timbre aesthetics" — through prolonged vibrations of high-frequency overtones (3400-4200 Hz), a sound palette is formed, different from the "granular" timbre characteristic of male performers ^{[8, p. 260]}. In electronic music, Zhang Xiaofu deconstructed female vocal samples through spectral synthesis in "Chant" (1998), creating a unique "female frequency band" in the spectrogram as a digital representation of the gender identity of sound.

A microanalysis of the musical form reveals a deep aesthetic meaning in the preference of female composers for closed structures. Qu Xixian's vocal cycle "Flying Petals" (1982), built according to the ABACA rondo scheme, accumulates emotions through modal transformations (gong-zhi-yu, 宫-徵-羽) of the key motif (descending pentatonic G-E-D-C). In structuralist analysis, Yao Henglu defines this as a "mother narrative" — cyclical repetition creates a safe emotional container, contrasting with the conflicting paradigm of the sonata form typical of male creativity ^{[12, p. 402]}. Interestingly, this structural trend finds variations in instrumental music. In the cadence of the Piano Concerto (1999), Chen and the technique of "cellular derivation" transform a three-tone motif (C-E-F) through 78 modifications into an extended structure. This "generative form" destroys the gender metaphors of traditional structures, preserving the lyricism of women's creativity while modernizing compositional thinking.

The aesthetic construction of the subjectivity of Chinese women's music of the 20th century became the product of a double transformation — gender discourse and musical ontology in the process of modernization. From imitating tessitura to gain a voice to creative breakthroughs in timbre and form, this path reflects a paradigm shift from "lack of subjectivity" to "constructing intersubjectivity" (Wang Yingzi, 2018). Aesthetic value is manifested in three aspects: the reconfiguration of a gendered acoustic space through timbre politics; overcoming linear historicity with a cyclical narrative; and the creation of a new aesthetic paradigm that differs from both Western feminist art and traditional "female" creativity. As Ju Qihong correctly concluded, these practices "not only rewrote the position of women in musical history, but also rethought the very essence of Chinese musical modernity" ^{[10, p. 348]}.

4. The duality of aesthetic characteristics of Chinese women's music

The aesthetic features of Chinese women's music, rooted in the interaction of the traditional cultural context and gender-power relations, show the duality of "ethical discipline" (伦理规训) and "subjective expression" (主体表达). Their core can be summarized as the dialectical unity of "Yin softness" (阴柔) and "elastic resilience" (韧性): the former reflects the Confucian regulation of female music forms, the latter implies cultural resistance through musical practices.

The traditional "Yin softness" of women's music is directly related to the gender division "male — external, female — internal". "Yue ji" from "Li ji" emphasizes: "Music is the harmony of heaven and Earth," which positions it as an instrument of social regulation. The ethical function of "ordering the inner chambers and harmonizing the family" was attributed to women's music, for example, the Han palace music "fangzhongyue" (房中乐) created an aesthetic of "tenderness and nobility" through smooth rhythms and pentatonics ^{[2, pp. 8-33]}. This orientation was institutionalized in the Tang and Song eras: Bo Juyi's lines from The Song of Pipa (琵琶行, 816) — "Every string is muffled, every sound is full of reflections" - became the canonical expression of emotional restraint "sadness without suffering".

The long-term restriction of women's music to private space has created an "introverted" aesthetic. In the novel Jin, Ping, Mei (1617), the episode with Li Ping'er singing "On the Mountainside" (1617) demonstrates that female performance was allowed only in the inner chambers or at feasts, while public ceremonies (for example, Confucian rituals) remained forbidden ^{[13, p. 47]}. This spatial segregation enhanced the aesthetic characteristics of "softness, subtlety, and depth." It is noteworthy that the "Yin softness" did not exist in isolation, but formed a complementary system with the "Yang masculinity" of male music. The culture of qin (琴) and se (瑟) illustrates this: the se (more often performed by women) creates an ethereal atmosphere with dense overtones, while the qin (male instrument) establishes a powerful foundation with open sounds. In ensemble works like "Three Variations of Yangguan" (Tang Dynasty) they form the aesthetic integrity of the "mutual generation of emptiness and fullness" ^{[4, p. 198]}. This complementarity reveals the deep principle of the "harmony of yin and yang" in Chinese aesthetics, providing modern women's music with a philosophical basis for overcoming binary oppositions.

5. Conclusion

The evolution of the aesthetic characteristics of Chinese women's music is essentially a story of the interaction of gender discourse and musical semiotics. This cultural practice reflects both the social power structures of specific historical periods and the agency of women in artistic creation.

Firstly, in terms of cultural power, the aesthetic parameters of women's music were in a dynamic contradiction between "discipline" and "transgression." Secondly, there has been a paradigm shift in the construction of subjectivity from "the Other's view" to "self-emancipation." A striking example is the vocal design of female roles in the drama Ming: Du Lingyan's aria "Gentle Steps" (步步娇) from the "Dream in the Garden" scene of Tang Xianzu's play "The Peony Arbor" (牡丹亭, 1598), where quartz upward jumps (sol-do-sol) form a "sigh motif" - a product of masculine aesthetic projection. The fundamental turning point of this objectification occurred only with the rise of women's composing in the 20th century. In the symphonic poem "Milo River", Xiao Shuxian transformed the technique of the "wandering tremolo" of the Zheng zither into the microchromatic vibration of strings, deconstructing fixed gender codes through acoustic instability. This practice enters into an intertemporal dialogue with the theory of "female utterance" ^{[3, p. 215]} by Luce Irigarey, proving the ability of musical language to create autonomous gender representations.

The aesthetics of Chinese women's music has historically developed as a dynamic confrontation between "ethical discipline" and "subjective breakthrough." The traditional ritual system, by integrating women's music into the philosophy of "yin-yang harmony," has formed norms of "gentleness" and "introversion," but internal tensions have revealed hidden resistance to gender hierarchies. Since the 20th century, aesthetic construction has shifted from "imitation of masculine discourse" to "reinvention of ontological language," where timbre politics and microformal innovations overcame binary oppositions, creating a paradigm with cultural authenticity and modernist consciousness. This process not only reflected the transformation of gender perceptions in China, but also redefined the content of musical modernity through "gendered sound production": women's music ceased to be "culturally Different", becoming a subjective force challenging discursive power through "elastic softness". Her aesthetic transformation demonstrates that gender narratives in music are both a product of power discipline and a medium of deconstruction of the cultural order.