Someone redpill me on Chinese opera please. I actually couldn't believe what I was hearing, it's literally cat level screeching for hours to the sound of pots and pants falling in the background.
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Compared to the Western opera standard which universally held as beautiful, is there something I'm missing here?
Thoughts?
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How did this 'art' even survive after the Chinese revolution?
She sounds like a dericate rittle flower, what are you talking about
You should consider the fact that Western opera sounds like aids to alot of Easterners
>redpill
dude white genocide lmao
The singers sound pretty skilled and have interesting voices. They also hit their notes spot on. It feels very stylized and artificial, but so does Western opera to me. You could probably get used to the form. I had to go through the same initial confusion before getting any enjoyment out of Gamelan music.
Can't imagine sitting through hours of this though.
I don't think this is even chromatic so no wonder everything sounds flat or sharp
>Sopranos screeching on a continuous note
>Skilled
when
you cant seriously be referring to all of it
Operas are a meme. Pseudo-patrician shit, I'd rather listen to radio classical.
Chinese =/= Japanese
I read an article that said alot of people that listen to Kunqu opera don't listen to the full performance, because if they did they would see there is also very soft parts and gentle pitches performed by different characters.
So I listened to a full show, from different parts of China (as they are slightly different), but the screeching was consistent all throughout. Those 'gentle' pitches were basically softer screams which transitioned back to the regular loud unbearable ones. So yes I mean all of it
I now have a new perspective on Yoko Ono
They're clearly precisely performed melodies with a very particular amount and style of vibrato. Were you saying soprano as an exaggeration? Only the woman sounds close to that range to me. Even then she seems to sing in more of a mezzo range for most of it.
>Since the Chinese system is not an equal tempered tuning, playing a melody starting from the lǜ nearest to A will not necessarily sound the same as playing the same melody starting from some other lǜ, since the wolf interval will occupy a different point in the scale. The effect of changing the starting point of a song can be rather like the effect of shifting from a major to a minor key in Western music.
Have you ever listened to microtonal music?
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>Western opera standard which universally held as beautiful
because Western aesthetics spread along with Western political and cultural influence, yeah
These things are a lot more subjective than you realize
Man this makes me homesick. My grandparents had this shit on literally all the time. I wouldn't even know how to begin explaining this shit to someone who's not Chinese.
It's not so much about making something beautiful, so much as it is about making something that's powerful and dramatic. (If it helps, I often make a mental connection to this stuff when I'm listening to Van der Graaf Generator/Peter Hammill.) Also this might be bullshit, but we tend to like things that are loud and noisy and remind us of festivals.
Also
>Western opera standard which universally held as beautiful
Fuck no. Everything you feel about our opera, my family feels about your opera.
The only microtonal stuff i've listened to is Ancient Greek music, so I understand what ur saying. That link you posted is incredible, I can see the comparisons between that and the Chinese opera.
That opened my eyes a bit more, never thought about it like that but it helped me understand it more.
Yeah basically I was exposed to this by street music, where alot of people would quickly just walk past the act and laugh or make a 'da fuq' face at their friends and just say how whacky this stuff was.
There's a few reasons why it's weird to unfamiliar listeners:
First Chinese isn't exactly known a beautiful sounding language, so if you're familiar with Italian/Spanish operas.. it's not the same
Secondly the Chinese musicology which incorporates microtonal type notes not found in classic western music.
Thirdly it's just a difference in culture type thing. Just like i'm sure there's some people out that that think Robert Plant belting notes in Led Zeppelin might sound screechy.
Japanese theatre (noh plays) are similar. East just has a different concept of time in music as well as a primary focus on timbre rather than harmony/polyphony.
ITT Hampus ditching off his tripname & realizing he fooled himself for years listening to foreign pseudo-patrician crap
People are clapping during the performance. Is this normal?
desu it's still better than Swans or Merzbow