ZHAO XIAOSHENG’S PIANO BALLADES AS MUSICAL ARTEFACTS OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION IN CHINA
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32782/facs-2025-3-1-7Keywords:
piano ballade, composer, genre and style features, musical work, national features, ambivalence, ChinaAbstract
The aim of the article is to interpret Zhao Xiaosheng’s ballades as musical documents of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) that reflect political ambivalence, aesthetic resistance, personal trauma, and cultural memory, all within the boundaries of officially sanctioned expression. The study aims to explore the cultural and political context of thesecompositions, as well as their genre and stylistic features.Methodology. The article applies a historical-contextual approach to examine the sociopolitical conditionsof the Cultural Revolution and their influence on the musical environment. A genre-stylistic analysis is used to considerthe ballade as a synthetic form that merges European structural models with traditional Chinese formal patterns(especially qi–cheng–zhuan–he). An interpretive perspective reveals the symbolic content, allusions, and rhetoricalstrategies of musical expression associated with themes of trauma, loss, and inner resistance. Originality. This is the first study to consider Zhao Xiaosheng’s piano ballades as semantically rich musical textsof the Cultural Revolution, where musical language functions as a means of preserving creative identity amid politicalcensorship. The article interprets the Ballade in D-flat Major as an allusive musical monument to a repressed generation and the Ballade in D Gong Mode as a stylistic response to accusations of Western influence.Conclusions. Both ballades embody emotional and ideological ambivalence, balancing outward loyalty with innerprotest. Zhao Xiaosheng’s music emerges as a form of hidden resistance in which genre and stylistic tools function asvehicles of cultural memory. His works illustrate the transformation of Chinese piano art under the pressures of political repression and personal tragedy.
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