In recent years, a large part of the erhu's repertoire has been arranged for performance on the violin and vice versa. Given the difficulties involved in transcribing the music of plucked or woodwind instruments for the violin, the erhu has been the most popular choice for transcribing Chinese music for the violin. However, the erhu and violin are radically dissimilar instruments based on different principles. Pipa music is an essential part of traditional Chinese music from as early as 202 BCE, and the instrument's repertoire represents a large portion of East Asian music aesthetics, and this context should be considered to successfully transcribe pipa music for violin. This dissertation talks briefly about Chinese music history and its categories and also focuses on the history and development of the pipa as well as its repertoire categories to provide context for the following musical examples. I use existing transcription examples from different categories of pipa music as an avenue to discuss how to transcribe pipa music for the violin. Even though the violin has some limitations for use as a plucked instrument, the instrument can still make use of several different kinds of techniques in order to play the music in a way that can represent certain features of the pipa while retaining the violin's characteristics.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of 10 minutes of daily exposure for 10 weeks to a Chinese Music Curriculum and its effect on generating positive cultural attitudes towards the Chinese people, improving tonal discrimination skills, singing accuracy of tonal patterns, and accuracy of singing Chinese lyrics for third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students, compared to a comparison group not receiving the Chinese Music Curriculum. In an elementary school in Miami-Dade County, Florida, 6 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade classes were chosen and randomly assigned to either an intervention or a comparison group. A Chinese Music Curriculum was developed for the intervention group and implemented by classroom teachers. Meanwhile, the comparison group received normal academic instruction and a weekly music class by a music specialist. Pre- and post-tests were administered to both the intervention and comparison groups: (1) Children's Attitudes toward Chinese (CATC), (2) Intermediate Measures of Music Audiation-Tonal (IMMA, Gordon, 1982), and (3) Tonal Pattern Performance Measure (TPPM). The Chinese Song Performance Measure (CSPM) was administered to the intervention group only in order to measure students' abilities for accurately singing the Chinese lyrics of a simple Chinese song, "Little Rat." Data were subjected to a mixed Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) statistical analysis, item analysis, and Pearson Product-Moment correlation. The results demonstrated that the CATC survey was a reliable and valid measure to assess children's attitudes toward Chinese people. The overall effect of the Chinese Music Curriculum was significant in combination of the three outcome measures: CATC, IMMA, and TPPM. The follow-up individual examination revealed that children's attitudes toward Chinese people and tonal pattern singing accuracy were significantly improved, but tonal discrimination skills did not improve. Grade was found to influence children's singing accuracy of tonal patterns with fifth graders outperforming the third and fourth graders. All participants in the intervention group were able to sing a Chinese song with over 70% accuracy of the Chinese lyrics.

In Chinese contemporary piano music, large-scale piano compositions featuring innovative polyphonic musical languages are rarely found. Chang-Lei Zhu's Ballade for Solo Piano represents his development of contrapuntal techniques passed on from J. S. Bach and Dmitri Shostakovich in their polyphonic works for solo keyboard or piano. This study focuses on an analysis of Zhu's Ballade as an idiosyncratic composition that makes a significant contribution to the Chinese contemporary piano music repertory. Comparative analysis is made of Zhu's Ballade and J.S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 and 2, as well as Dmitri Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues for Solo Piano, Op. 87. Zhu, a living Chinese composer born in 1976, uniquely writes the twenty variations of his Ballade based on the opening theme, a single melody in ten subphrases. This research lays out the close relationship of the opening theme with twenty variations in the Ballade. This study also illustrates how Zhu is an innovative voice in Chinese contemporary piano music literature. This comparative study constitutes the first scholarly study of Zhu's Ballade. Chapter 1 is an introduction to my comparative study. In chapter 2, comparisons on selected excerpts are conducted between Zhu's Ballade and J.S. Bach's WTC, Books 1 and 2, as well as Dmitri Shostakovich's Op. 87. Taking into consideration the pedagogical function of the Ballade, this study includes how the work can be used in Zhu's Ballade in piano pedagogy as an addition in chapter 3.

The Sound of the Prairie Land (Caoyuan Zhige) for viola and piano by the Chinese composer Qingwu Guan (b. 1938) has become one of the most popular works in the growing Chinese repertoire for viola. It also exists in another version for viola and viola ensemble, arranged by the Chinese violist Wing Ho, who also expanded the viola part with the composer's approval. The pentatonic work was highly influenced by the landscape and music of Inner Mongolia, a province of China next to the Mongolian border, and incorporates the music of an ode by the Inner Mongolian composer Alatengaole (1942–2011) called Sincere Wishes for a Long Life to Chairman Mao. Guan remains a strong supporter of Mao, the first chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. The work makes use of some performance techniques of the Inner Mongolian two-stringed fiddle called morin khuur, which has a similar tone to the viola: three kinds of slides, grace notes, imitations of a horse's neigh, and the representation of horses galloping across the prairie. The background of the work, understanding of the musical structure, and information about morin khuur techniques presented in this dissertation should aid performers in interpreting the work more authentically.