Systematic Discussion and Rational Thinking of Vocal Music Education under the Current Social Background of China

Abstract

Vocal music education in the Chinese educational system has for a long time placed much importance on following the model of “Western Bel Canto”, but this may be about to change. Nowadays, with the rapid development of China's economic globalization and the integration of multiple cultures, the social background is changing dramatically, which brings great opportunity but also many challenges to vocal music education and teaching. This paper addresses a systematic discussion on the status and trend of vocal music education in the current social background of modern China, and gives rational thinking on how the new background reshapes the ideas and notions of vocal music education. Keywords—vocal music education; social background; multicultural integration; Chinese educational system; Bel Canto I. THE PRESENT STATUS OF VOCAL MUSIC EDUCATION FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF TRADITIONAL CULTURE AND MULTICULTURAL INTEGRATION IN CHINA The Chinese culture is one of the world’s oldest cultures, originating thousands of years ago. The area in which the culture is dominant covers a large geographical region in East Asia with customs and traditions varying greatly between provinces, cities, and even towns as well. With China being one of the earliest ancient civilizations, Chinese culture is extremely diverse and varying, and it has a profound effect in the philosophy, virtue, etiquette and traditions of Asia to date [1]. China has a long history, and the masses of working people created a splendid culture of our country. Working people in different historical background created excellent national culture, which has diverse faces and rich content, including not only literature and art, but also philosophy and religion. The national culture needs to be inherited and developed from generation to generation [2]. In modern China, however, the digitalization and multiplicity of cultural manifestations have been changed dramatically with the continuous development of social economy. With the social change and development, cultural diversity has been blended in people’s life, which can be considered as the multicultural integration of other nations and countries under the premise of inheriting our own traditional culture during the process of practice and social developing, and then creates a humorous cultural atmosphere, contending on the basis of our own culture supplemented by the other cultures [3]. Therefore, the importance to the penetration of these multicultural elements into our education should be highlighted and, in the new era, educational workers should also undertake an important responsibility of inheriting and developing our national culture. In recent years, music education and teaching have taken more and more attention in society. Music education is an important carrier of diverse cultural elements, and bears the mission of national cultural development. Multicultural integration leads to the diversified development of music. With the establishment and improvement of the modern education system, the music education embarks on the right track of cultural inheritance and integration, termed the multicultural music education (MME). Music preserves special meanings in MME since learning music from various cultures can help students to form worldwide perspectives. Facing the reality of a multicultural society, it is essential that we understand people in a more complete cultural way through musical, artistic and philosophical beliefs. Previously, many studies have emphasized the importance of MME in the music classroom within a multicultural society in modern China. In such a society the case of cultural traditions warrants particular attention in the field of music education [4]. However, for a long time in people's traditional ideas the foreign things are always better than ours. From the beginning of the 20th century, Chinese music education followed the Western music model. Due to external and internal factors, the development of the modern music education with respect to our traditional culture has slowed down. The influx of foreign music style has also a significant impact on our national music education, resulting in students with low interest in folk music learning, insufficient traditional cultural curriculum set by schools, and low attention to national music education from the society [5]. In vocal music, the curriculum is in accordance with Western Bel Canto with little Chinese traditional singing style in vocal music teaching. Today, the Bel Canto model is widely applied for vocal music education in China. Therefore, Western singing style is mostly used in school vocal music teaching [6]. However, in recent years many music institutes in China have carried out a series of educational reforms, ranging from vocal music courses to teaching methods. Changes have taken place Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 322 2nd International Seminar on Education Research and Social Science (ISERSS 2019) Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). 460 and, at the same time, we begin to realize that Chinese traditional singing style not only is highly artistic, but also represents an important section of our national culture, bearing the responsibility for heritage of Chinese culture. This inheritance could cultivate students to have national consciousness, to absorb good traditional culture for the future vocal music learning. These reforms have injected new vitality into vocal music education in modern China and, as expected, received good results for both the teachers and students [7]. II. THE COMBINATION OF VOCAL MUSIC EDUCATION WITH AESTHETICS AND PSYCHOLOGY IN CHINA In recent years, some other areas of vocal music education, such as the psychology and aesthetics of music art, have also been explored and practiced in China. These reforms have injected new vitality into vocal music education in modern China and, as expected, received good results for both the teachers and students. Psychology plays a critical role in music education, which focuses on students’ mental quality and learning power, and devotes itself to the prosperity of individual and society. Previous investigations have shown that positive psychology contributes to the improvement of cognitive ability and executive ability, which is conducive to physical and mental health and helpful to the formation of new social behavior, but negative psychology, is opposite. Therefore, it is quite important for educational construction to make students form a positive character and positive behavior model starting from the positive psychology [8]. Historically, scholars of various stripes have pondered the nature of music, who have proposed a number of theories concerning the origin and purpose of music and some have pursued scientific approaches to investigating them [9], resulting in a new interdisciplinary subject namely music psychology, which is a field of research with practical relevance for many areas and has a long history dating back to the end of the 19th century. It is a distinctive strand of psychology that has grown in strength over the past decades. Much of the research has been of interest and relevance to music education and covers a wide variety of musical engagement [10]. As in education more generally, psychology played a major role in music education through the development of psychometric tests to assess musical ability. One century ago Stumpf suggested a number of simple aural tests that music teachers might undertake to select students. Subsequently, a range of assessments has been developed that can be administered to groups of children of different ages and adults [11]. Similar to the development of music psychology in other countries, the emergence of music psychology in China paralleled the development of a nationwide educational system. The concept of music psychology emerged in China in the late 1980s when school administrative psychology, which emphasized the use of psychological theory and practice in school administration and management, was being introduced from Western countries [12]. Recently, music psychology has practiced for vocal teaching in Chinese educational system. It has gone through many stages, including introduction and imitation of research in Western countries, learning from others’ experience and reform, and getting independent from western psychology [13]. On the other side, to learn music culture we must explore the aesthetic value of music culture. There are many beautiful things in real life. The process of discovering beauty in real life is the process of elevating the aesthetic ability of people. For individuals, aesthetic education is very important. Aesthetic education is also an important part of music education. In the process of aesthetic experience, students will recognize the beauty in real life, experience the beauty of natural scenery and the truth, the goodness and the beauty of human nature, and enhance their own moral level and cognitive level in a subtle manner. Some witnesses drew attention to music as a language and urged the inclusion of music in the ordinary scheme of education on the same terms as language and literature, since it appealed to the same faculties of emotion and judgment and the same general aesthetic principles, while others laid much stress on the value of the fine arts in developing concentration of mind, accuracy of observation and a genuine appreciation of natural beauty and artistic achievement, and in stimulating the growth of the imaginative, critical and creative faculties [14]. Therefore, aesthetic education can reflect the humanistic nature of music education and can successfully accomplish the task of talent cultivation of music education. Nowadays, the aesthetic of vocal music education is also changing continuou