1. Theory about the Value of Music Broadcasting
When we are heading for 21st century, radio stations face a problem: how do we decide the direction of radio music? We try to approach it by using theory about the value of music broadcasting, which bases on theory of literary transmission and theory of music value.
We mainly apply Theory of Literary Transmission in the study of transmission of music information including its history, methods, tools, process, effects, etc. The core of the research is the following: the developing rule of broadcasting rule of broadcasting of music information and its relationship with both humanity and society, the interaction of information and the objects, media's influence and status; then proceeding to deepen the broadcasting value of music information and to fulfil modernization of media.
Theory of Music Value is applied in the research of the concept, substance, component, form and evaluation of the value of radio music. The research's focus is to penetrate into the relations between humanbeing and the surroundings when music value is being shaped, to discuss the relations of value between people and music, to demonstrate the structure of value in music and its determinants; thereupon, to explore radio music's essential functions, to extend the limits of audience and to improve their aesthetic standards and value standards.
Music program is the main carrier of music information. The judgment and selection of value in music broadcasting run through the program's organization, management, planning, reporting and editing, manufacturing, feedback, etc. For those devoting themselves in radio music, Theory about the Value of Music Broadcasting is the essential part in the structure of current radio music culture. As diversification and high technology being used in modern transmission, people set higher and more perfect demands on music information, programs and sound. So how to decide the value of radio music becomes the task for next century.
2. Alteration in the Concept of Value
The high development of technology makes possible for rapid renewal of transmission tools. Actually, a technological system itself is a system of value, and the changes in it will alter the concept of value. On one side, people have to accustom to new technology and new knowledge and then establish new system; on the other side, new tech-system, as the most active factor of productivity, not only changes people's mind but establishes new productive mode and living mode, finally changes the entire social culture,social institution and the individuals.
Music imperceptibly influences people. Radio music, with the aid of high technology,spreads new information, new programs and sound. It not only creates modern and concentrated cultural background but makes a varied life. Something making sense today perhaps will lose its value tomorrow or be replaced--it is the uncertainty and instability that radio music is going through. At the 80's, science and technology were vitalized. With quickening life pace, the 70's soft songs were taken over by rock and roll. People were not contented to have radio only and new-style recording machines began to popularize. From 1990, stereo "walkman" and high-tech family surrounding Hi-Fi are so popular as well as computer Internet and information high-way. People not only want to listen but want to see things at home and abroad, those newest and best. The changes in media tools brought uncertainty and instability to people's value.
But we still carry on with the value handed down from long times ago, just as technological achievements. Things that even though lost their practical functions sometimes can make a fresh start as a new value - for instance, people duplicated an ancient Chinese instrument named Serials Bells and created a new dance based on it for performing. This unearthed art again makes people touched. It expresses the thoughts and value standard of our ancestors, and it is always the reference for new creation. The innovation of science and technology as well as of value possess the character of duplexity--you can not say "Change it!" and then change it all. So is in the practice of radio music: the duplexity is a very important factor; it can give an advice to those making unintelligible policies.
3. Forms of Value's Substance
The substance of value in radio music manifests itself in two aspects: audience's need of music and the quality of value in music itself. People's need of music turns it from isolated electric wave to the substance interacted by subjective and objective influence. This substance has two characters:
(1) Carrier of ideological value
Radio music is a kind of sound culture and spiritual product conditioned in modem science and technology. The culture and spirit inside radio music and sound are the real value.
(2) Dual carrier of direct and indirect value
Direct value means external value contained in material, form, etc, for example, the complicated musical form and tremendous structure, which have to express themselves by internal order. Indirect value, however, means inner value derived from past experience and objective association, which is expressive and function. It is the regular value inside music and sound.
To grasp the characters of value's substance is very helpful to see through the phenomena and essence of value. For example, if we want to investigate how music works. What easily come to our mind are listening rate, total sales, top board, box-office value. All these are the phenomena of the substance and just as a series of reference, but not the basis measuring the value of music. Spiritual product can only be testified by spiritual power. Music and sound, as the carrier of spiritual value, can only display its force and fulfil its value with time passing.
China Central Radio Station's foreign music program "Essence Disc"in FM channel and the national music program in Music Channel of Guangdong Radio Station are both an-hour-long and high-graded music column programs with first-rate music and sound. Their inner value can not just be showed by numbers of listening rate and sampling investigation. These programs educate a lot of music fans while these fans push the programs forward. In Guangzhou, super sound fans emerge in large numbers through these years and demand more and more high-standard music works and sound. The enlarging team and the exchanging activities demonstrate the dual value of the two civilization constructions.
4. Criterion of the Evaluation
The evaluation of music is a subjective human ideological activity in presupposition of the scientific knowledge and reasonable requirement of society. The criterion is so definite that it not only reflects people's attitude to the value of music but decides how music works establish relations of value with subject. The criterion of evaluation includes two basic contents: one is social development's demand of music; the other is advanced public's requirement of music.
Radio music defined its function and position long ago in China's social life and inside the public. For the first, radio as a media tool has always bridged the gap between the government and the public; second, music often acts as propagandist and guide of government's cultural policies and principles in our country. The most apparent function of radio music is at education and propaganda. In fact, to the society or individual, radio music objectively should be multi-functional--it depends on how you understand, how you decide and how you scientifically grasp the relations of value. To solve this problem. it is important to know the two characters of the evaluation of music as follows:
(1) Experience in evaluation
The experienced determination is mainly by sense. People turn on the radio and choose their favorable music programs by instinct and experience, generally not by the rational analyze and judgment of the programs' form, structure and art skill. At first, experience tells him what is nice and what he wants to listen. This kind of experience is not mere subjective judgment, but the judgment based on practice and formed according to the law of the unity of opposites--it had been trained for a long term by the repeating of the same programs. Turning on the radio is not like buying tickets--at instant choice can only be made by individual experience and instinct. It is neither reasonable nor subjective, but purely experienced.
(2) The imaging functions of the evaluation.
The value factors of music are principal the expression, two of the factors need imaginations. One is the audio subjects, which is the hearing expressions consisted of formless series body depending on the time procedure and personal memory. The other is the implying signals in music, which are the underlines inside and culture of the musical work. The music themselves are the results of the artists' creativity, they have to be finished by the re-creativity with the admirers' imaging abilities.
The musical works need the third creativity. The means that the final creativity of authors and performers depends on the experiences and imagination of the admirers. While the same programs may sound quite different when listened in the concert hall or in the personal audio rooms. Take the New Year concert for example. When it is listened in the opera hall, the listeners are usually wearing suite with flowers, emerging in the atmosphere of quiet, tastefully and solemn, the general feeling is highly privileged. If it is listened live at home, where is simpler and quieter, the experiences and imaginations of the third creativity would take a greater function and more inside into the music. This is the foundation of multi-functions and diversity of broadcasting music, which has the specific criteria of its value evaluation.
5. Composition of the format of value
People need the diversity of music and /or audio. How much degree the people need the music and /or audio, how many ingredients the value formats are. The main ingredients contain two categories: vertical and horizontal columns.
The above vertical column includes: the appreciation of the beauty, understanding, morality, religion, social utilities and practical utilities etc. All of them make up a value network centering on the appreciation of the beauty. This nucleus emerges inside the every form of musical value, and itself composes the elements of other values. The musical value theory points out that the musical appreciation of the beauty surmounts the reality knowledge, a deeper mental requirements than moral persuasions. The field of the appreciation of beauty, such as beautiful and ugly, high and low, noble and contemptible, is richer and more live than the field of moral evaluations, such as good and bad, good fortune and disaster,being able to make the feeling inside the heart into a particular image of beauty.
Although the appreciation of beauty is thought to be the nucleus of music, we couldn't ignore its other values. Particularly in the recent decade, a new scientific discipline, "musical therapy", is booming up. It composes the appreciation of beauty and the practical value of music into a miracle. For example, a CD series titled "a good musical therapy", co-produced by the Records Company of Guangdong Province and Zhongshan Medical University, includes six compact disks, each containing 8 to 10 pieces of famous songs, named "exciting music", "quiet and pressure relief music", respectively. I feel very good that this series of nearly 60 pieces of world famous songs, which could be heard everyday on the radio, are valuable classics of beauty, and now make up a highly specific beautiful and practical value in development of musical therapy.
The horizontal column of the format of musical value are some kinds of theory problems, such as the relationship between musical and economic value, elegant and vulgar, distinguishing the quality of audio equipment, ect. These elements usually mixed into some different values. Take the solo song "Crescent Moon" for example. It was a lyric and artistic song. Previously, it was often broadcasted on the radio. And now it turns out to be a representative of modern popular songs for a long time after it became known, suiting both refined and popular tastes. But a few years ago, the Flower City Press Published a cassette Songs of Qigong Master, sung by an "excellent qigong master" Di Yu-ming, having 11 pieces of songs including the Crescent Moon. Di Yu-ming is not so good at singing, but it is said that he created a mixture of Qigong and music that can transfer the superb energy of Qigong through the songs to get you rid of diseases, make you healthy and develop your individual potentials while you are enjoying these beautiful music. A friend presented me a cassette and told me: "to believe, be honest and it would work!" I listened to this cassette again and again, simply found it too bad to be accepted, to it left was its economic value of humble popular songs. It's thus clear that the musical reviews play a great effect on the quality and value of the musical products. In order to incarnate the true value of the music proper, we are to be aware of the value realization, to develop scientific musical criticism.
6. Selections of the value orientation
The value orientation is a principle of complicated and limited model. This principle has three main elements which effect each other: understanding, emotion and direction. The value orientation acts on the people and instructs them how to think and do. The value orientation of traditional music in order to develop modern socialist musical cultures. In 1988, wrote an article "The cultural quality of folk music", discussing the value orientation of folk music, and summarizing the combination of value orientation and cultural quality into four items: 1. the life proper orientation and its subjectivity based on nature; 2. the group proper orientation and its national quality based on family; 3. the etiquette proper orientation and its standard quality based on ethics; 4. the conformity proper orientation and its introversive quality based on individuals. These four items are expressions of the value realization of the traditional music, and,at the same time,are the understanding foundation of studying modern musical cultures and constructing new socialist music with Chinese characteristics. The traditional and contemporary, themselves are relationship of inheritance and development, discard and rebuild. To suit the needs of the musical cultural development strategy in the coming 21st century, the cultural construction of our broadcasting music has to choose a new orientation according to the changes of the entire system of cultural values.
In spring 1993, Hong Kong University held the National Music Thought Seminar in 20th Century. Afterwards, I wrote a musical comment dubbing in music for the Music world in Central Broadcasting Station, summarizing the above seminar. In that comment, I gave an example of a Vertical Bamboo Flute and Drum under Sunset, a famous traditional song in 15th century. In the 20th century, this song was adapted from the one by pipa solo into the one by ensemble of traditional instruments: Moonlight on the Spring River; and then it was adapted into a piano solo and then a symphony ect, entering the world music field from its brilliant history. I consider that it is also one of the simplest expressions connecting the traditional music with the world music field. It seems that broadcasting stations have also tried to do the similar things in organizing musical programs. Of course, you should firstly introduce the original pipa solo, then ensemble of traditional instruments, then the piano solo, and, at last, the symphony, shortening the distance between the traditional and the foreign music, seeking the recognition by the way known to the people all over the world.
The developing tendency of our national musical works in 21st century can be chosen on the basis of four expressions of traditional musical value orientations. They are: 1. The global orientation of life proper. Enrich the traditional music to praise the whole earth people who have mastered the modern high-tech, satellite video/audio transmitters and computer networks, other than merely praise Chinese people who have emphasized the life proper and wish to live in concordance with God. 2. The diversified orientation of the nationality proper. The music of the Han Nationality, a representative, of the traditional music, is the product of multi-national music merging together. To change the music from a native multi-nationalities to the global multi-nationalities, the obstacles are the cultural blocks inherent in every cultural origin, respectively. The safe and reliable way is that the music of every origin coexist, incorporate music of diverse nature, and let the time to tell which is the best. At present, guqin (an ancient musical instruments like zither), Beijing opera, ballet and symphony are all needed in the broadcasting music, but they should be the best. 3. The multi-functional orientation of the etiquette proper. The traditional music always unite etiquette with entertainment into one thing, stressing on the standardization and education of the music. In modern times, the peoples' need are diversified. The significance of the entertaining and disillusioning functions of the music and instruments are not to be underestimated. Just as the music therapists say that, the multi-functions of the modern music are usually presented as entertainment and disillusion. 4. The opening orientation of the conformity proper. The cultural conformity of the national music is the unitization of the different culture by assimilating, intermixing and reconciling each other. The musical nationality should be opening. Chinese music, entered and joined into the world market, is to give birth to new value with the changes of the entire traditional culture.