This dissertation is devoted to studying the specifics of synthesis of Chinese and European music traditions in Shang Dei`s vocal legacy (1932 – 2005).
The creative personality of the unique genius started forming under the influence of the „first golden age” in the history of Chinese art song. The first stage of the major part of his career was motivated by the revival of China; the second one was inspired by the ideas of Chinese ars nova. The third period of Shang Dei`s work coincided with the „second golden age” in the history of Chinese art song.
Shang Dei`s vocal legacy as an encyclopaedia of Chinese vocal music is divided into the following genres: ode, romance, vocal ballad, hidden vocal cycle in songs, ballads and coloratura arias.
The peculiarities of innovation in the composer's interpretation of genre varieties of Chinese art in the vocal legacy of Shang Dei Novation in the field of the genre-based Chinese art song are supplemented by discoveries of the composer in the fields of content and form-making, selection of poetic and literary sources. The genre discoveries of the composer led to discoveries in the national style of vocal lyrics: the composer style of Shang Dei, depending on the content and purpose, found his embodiment in the odious-hymnal, ballad-narrative, grotesque-theatrical, intimate-lyrical, color-textured, „flower” manifestations The innovative approach to the national vocal art has given the principled emphasis on the poetry of the composer's contemporaries, as well as prose works of both European (V. Hugo) and national (Lu Xin) origin.
Innovative findings of Shang Dei are manifested in the entire vertical artwork. In the ballet genre, the composer for the first time in the history of Chinese vocal art appealed to: prose writings, presented in the form of a poetic statement; a European romantic source, briefly translated into Chinese; the theme of a „little man”, covered with absurdities, suppressed by a riot, cruelty; introduced into the musical dramaturgy of the „French Ballad” a system of leitmotifs-symbols (bells, fate, author's narrative, love / hate, dance of the deceased Beloved); grotesque musical tricks, the principle of theatricality, through which the theme of the alienation of a ballad hero from the crowd was revealed.
Consequently, the specificity of the synthesis of national and European traditions in the vocal heritage of Shang Dai – „best among contemporaries” – is to spread the Westernization process to the genre-style spheres of European art, which had previously not been the subject of the interest of Chinese composers. After undergoing adaptation phase in Shang Dei's vocal work, „European borrowing” has gained the qualities of the national components of Chinese musical culture.
This synthesis of Chinese and European music traditions in Shang Dei`s vocal legacy is so natural because he welcomed spreading westernisation among various genres and styles of Chinese art. Maintaining the prominent role of German romantic Kunstlied, the composer heavily relied on the traditions of Italian belcanto in his Chinese coloratura arias; his Chinese vocal ballads made extensive usage of the figurative world of V. Hugo`s novels and artistic interpretation of the content of Lu Xin`s prose, whose creative method was formed under the influence of M. Gogol. European borrowings after their introduction to Shang Dei`s vocal art became essential components of Chinese musical culture.
