Music is the expression of national life, and it must have national characteristics. Therefore, China's national music must be based on China's ancient music and folk songs (European music evolution).
Music should express people's feelings, not those of some intellectuals.
③ Emphasize the social function of music, and think that the use of music can arouse the fundamental thoughts of the Chinese nation and complete its cultural revival movement.
④ The construction of new music in China also needs to learn from the scientific methods of western music. On the other hand, after the May 4th Movement, western romanticism and expressionism music aesthetics also began to influence China. The thought of Zhu Qing, a music theorist, has this characteristic. He has written Lehua and General Theory of Music, systematically expounding a series of musical aesthetic problems such as the essence, content, form, creation, performance and function of music. His proposition is that music is "the language of the soul" or "a world language of the soul" (that is, "the language of the upper world"); Music is the expression of the mind, a subjective creation, and has the function of improving the human mind. While attaching importance to the emotional content of music, it emphasizes the ideological and spiritual nature of music and the significance of life experience to creation. Its disadvantage is that it ignores the national characteristics of music. After 1930s, among the pioneers of proletarian revolutionary music, Xian Xinghai was one of the first musicians who tried to observe music problems with Marxism. In the late 1930s, he wrote a series of papers, such as "On the National Form of China Music" and "Several Problems of the New Music Movement in China at the Present Stage", focusing on how to develop the national music and pop music in China and how to treat the national form of music. Its claim is generally:
① The development of workers' and peasants' music in China is the most basic starting point for creating China's national form. The direction of new music is popularization, nationalization and artistry.
② Content determines form. New social reality, new national thoughts, feelings and life, that is, new content, inevitably require new music forms to adapt to it.
③ There is an inheritance relationship between the new form and the old form. New forms can only be produced on the basis of transformation, processing, change and development of old forms. Therefore, we must pay attention to the exploration, arrangement, criticism and research of the inherent national folk music.
④ We should refer to western forms and methods, but we can't copy western music. ⑤ Emphasize that national forms are the reflection of national life traditions and lifestyles; The national form should have its own unique style and style.