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Final Recital - Xinjiang Dance No.1 第一新疆舞曲 Ding Shande

1,613 views · Published 28 June 2013 · 4:11 · Indexed 8 November 2026

Channel: eveeludbrook · 2013 · Music

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This was part of my final recital for my undergraduate music degree at the University of Sheffield.

Ding Shande was born in 1911, and studied at the National Music Conservatory in Shanghai in 1928. When he returned to China in 1949 after studying composition in Paris, he composed Xinjiang Dance No.1 (published 1950), using the melody of a dance piece called 'The coachman's song" by Dai Ailian. This was based on the folk music of the Uyghur people who live in Xinjiang province in the West of China, whose music was influenced by the Arabic modal system. The exposition and recapitulation are based on the dance's melody, so only the middle section was completely composed by Ding Shande. He uses great dissonances and a variety of increasingly complex rhythms to imitate the Northwest borderlands' lively dance music and its beautiful tone colour, combined with a Western ternary form and composed for the Western piano. This piece is meaningful both in the way it combines Chinese and Western compositional features and in some way preserves the musical treasures of a lesser known people group.

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