The composition "Versed in Both Literature and Martial Art" by the Chinese contemporary composer and pipa player, Sun-Jing, encompasses pipa's traditional civil and military art techniques, qualities and connotations in a novel language of the pipa. The composition merges both the traditional and contemporary styles without a story line. The pipa solo and the band's complex and varied tempo formation and musical texture, in addition to the performance techniques that are rich, florid and highly challenging, yet conforming to the pipa's language, are the motivations for this research. This research interprets and analyzes pipa's traditional civil and military tune performance techniques and characteristics to provide an in-depth understanding of the connotation and musical art that are implied by the composition. By conducting this research, one may elevate one's performance standard in the art of pipa.
This research includes data collection, data analysis, interviews, and composition interpretations. In recent years, Sun-Jing has composed a large quality of musical works. Since the musical works are all less than ten years old, there have not been any literary works or researches on Sun-Jing's compositions and biography, yet. Therefore, the author adopts interviewing techniques as the main approach in this research, in addition to the collection and referencing of traditional pipa's civil and military tune related literary works to support the analysis and interpretation of the musical composition.
From the research, it has been determined that the composition of the "Versed in Both Literature and Martial Art" as a whole, does not contain a storyline, but is mainly centered on traditional pipa's civil and military tune performance techniques and connotations, with the addition of contemporary composition techniques. By investigating traditional pipa's civil and military tune characteristics and interpreting the timbre utilization and performance style, the author hopes that this work may provide a reference for future performers of this composition.