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Sung-Jen Hsu(1941-2013) is a Taiwanese contemporary musician, who not only is a conductor, a pianist, but also a composer and an educator. He has made many contributions to the music education in Taiwan and has published numerous works, including nine solo piano pieces, seven vocal pieces, three pieces of chamber music and three orchestral pieces, and published three music textbooks.
The piano trio Folksong was written by Sung-Jen Hsu in 1995. This is a chamber music work written for piano, violin and cello. There are four movements in Folksong, which mainly apply different Taiwanese folk songs, such as Fulao folk songs Remembrance, Bird Whimpering, and Hakka folk songs Old Mountain Song and Ping-Pan. The melodic lines in each movement are clear and easy to understand; it not only retains the integrity of the original folk tunes, but also uses Western compositional techniques to present the piece in a new yet traditional style.
In order to understand Sung-Jen Hsu’s compositional ideas of Folksong, this thesis will be divided into five chapters. Chapter one is the motivation of the research, purpose, scope and method. Chapter two is a brief introduction to the composer’s biography, compositional style and musical philosophy. Chapter three is an introduction to the historical development, classification and characteristics of Taiwanese folk songs. Chapter four provides the analysis from the aspects of the musical forms, folk song materials, interval motives, canonic techiques and accents. The final chapter is the conclusion.
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