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Chinese Music 中国音乐
The film of Qin Song is a good example to show the great Chinese music in Qin Dynasty. The movie tells an epic drama about China's first emperor Qin Shihuang (221 BC) who struggles to make his childhood best friend, then China's greatest composer, succumb to his will and compose a grand anthem to his exploits.
Music of China appears to date back to the dawn of Chinese civilization, and documents and artifacts provide evidence of a well-developed musical culture as early as the Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 BC).
The Imperial Music Bureau, first established in the Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC), was greatly expanded under the Emperor Han Wu Di (140-87 BC) and charged with supervising court music and military music and determining what folk music would be officially recognized. In subsequent dynasties, the development of Chinese music was strongly influenced by foreign music, especially that of Central Asia.
Chinese opera is a popular form of drama in China. In general, it dates back to the Tang Dynasty with Emperor Xuanzong (712-755), who founded the "Pear Garden", the first known opera troupe in China. The troupe mostly performed for the emperors' personal pleasure.
To this day operatic professionals are still referred to as "Disciples of the Pear Garden". In the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), forms like the Zaju (variety plays), which acts based on rhyming schemes plus the innovation of having specialized roles like "旦" (female), "生" (male), "花" (painted-face) and "丑" (clown) were introduced into the opera.
The dominant form of the Ming and early Qing dynasties was Kunqu, which came from the Wu cultural area, and evolved a longer form of play called chuanqi. Chinese operas continue to exist in 368 different forms now, the best known of which is Beijing opera, which assumed its present form in the mid-19th century and was extremely popular in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).