ABOUT THE PROJECT 研究簡介

At first hearing, the words in everyday songs are often incomprehensible to listeners. Owing to discrepancies between verbal language and music composition, the semantics of the text can become lost in the musical sounds. More so than Romance languages, tonal languages pose a particular challenge for composers and listeners. Relying on pitch to differentiate word meanings, tonal languages are imbued with musicality; yet, ironically, their musical expressions are often limited by the pitch structure of the language. With more linguistic tones than standard Chinese, Cantonese poses still greater challenges for musical perception and composition. 

Drawing upon interviews, musical analyses, and empirical tests, this project defines linguistic constraints as a source of creativity in the ever-growing Cantonese choral repertoire written since the 2000s. With a stylistic spectrum reaching from the conventional to the avant-garde, choral music poses additional challenges not found in other genres, notably the issue of textual intelligibility where multiple vocal lines move simultaneously in different directions. Cantonese choral scores will be collected, and a database will be compiled based on stylistic, text-generic, and social criteria. The project also include perception tests in which participants listen to recordings of original and altered musical passages from the assembled works to determine their textual intelligibility. 
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Addressing the perceptual and creative aspects, this project will show how Hong Kong composers work with instead of against the linguistic constraints to create a new music that is at once comprehensible and expressive. This project is supported by the Early Career Grant from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council and the Direct Grant from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).
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初聽一首歌，往往不容易立刻把歌詞都聽得明白。歌唱與言語截然有異，故此文本配上旋律之後可能會變得難以辨識，而聲調語言的歌曲比起非聲調語言的歌曲，歌詞可能更難辨識，創作也因而更加困難。聲調語言運用聲調之高低差異去表達不同語義，本身充滿音樂感，但正因如此，要為聲調語言配上旋律，則受語言的音高結構限制。

這項研究將聚焦於千禧年代的香港粵語合唱曲目，透過訪問、音樂分析、觀察實驗，重新檢驗粵語創作的挑戰，探討這些作品如何將語言賦予的制約化成創意的泉源。粵語合唱作品風格森羅萬象，既有傳統，亦有前衛；而多聲部合唱中，各聲部的旋律常在同時間有相異的走向，此時聲調與旋律應當如何配合，才能令聽眾理解歌詞，是為研究的重點之一。研究過程將會收集樂譜，並建構資料庫，根據樂曲風格、文本體裁、社會功能等條件分門別類。研究方法包括聆聽實驗，即讓參與者聆聽不同的錄音，判斷原本的樂段和經修改的樂段，能否讓他們辨識歌詞，由此探討各種音樂元素如何影響歌詞的辨識。

這項研究計劃從感知和創作兩個角度出發，展示香港作曲家如何把語言本身的創作制約轉化為靈感，譜出易於理解而又變化萬千的音樂。本計劃由香港研究資助局的傑出青年學者計劃及香港中文大學的直接資助計劃提供研究資金。

RESEARCH TEAM  研究團隊

Principal Investigator 主要研究員: 
Prof. Kai-Young CHAN (​Assistant Professor of Music, CUHK)
陳啟揚教授 (香港中文大學音樂系助理教授)
[email protected] 
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Research Assistants 研究助理: 
Daniel LAU Lik-chi 劉力致
LAU Yik-long 劉奕朗
​SHUEN Lai Yin Larry 孫禮賢
WONG Ching Yin 黃正彥