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, the body of vocal and instrumental music composed and played by the Chinese people. For several thousand years Chinese culture was dominated by the teachings of the philosopher Confucius, who conceived of music in the highest sense as a means of calming the pass ....

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.... of pitch. A result of this philosophical orientation was that until quite recently the Chinese theoretically opposed music performed solely for entertainment; accordingly, musical entertainers were relegated to an extremely low social status. Melody and tone color are prominent expressive features of , and great emphasis is given to the proper articulation and inflection of each musical tone. Most is based on the five-tone, or pentatonic, scale, but the seven-tone, or heptatonic, scale, is also used, often as an expansion of a basically pentatonic core. The pentatonic scale was much used in older music. The heptatonic scale is often encountered ....