The East Asian Musical Cultural Circle of Instruments Ecological Genealogy

The East Asian musical instrument being the research object, this essay holds the view that the distribution category of the instruments of the same type and of the same shape can be regarded as edges of the formation of musical cultural circle. Sorting out the history of the spreading of the musical instruments in East Asian countries, this paper justifies that the shapes and categories of chordophones, aerophones, membranophones, and idiophones in East Asia have very distinctive common features, and that traditional Chinese musical instruments have important position and influence in East Asia. Various types of the East Asian musical instruments being compared, this paper expounds that the eventual formation of the contemporary East Asian instrumental ecological lineage is the cultural re-screening of various musical instruments in localization process in the long-term musical practice under the influence of natural factors and multiple cultural background such as humanitarian environment, a reconstruction, restructuring and multiplication to adapt to national aesthetic orientation.