Essential characteristics and specifics of students’ vocal training in Ukrainian and Chinese higher pedagogical institutions

Abstract

The article under consideration refers to the issue of revealing the specifics of managing and providing the prospective Music teachers’ vocal training in Chinese and Ukrainian higher pedagogical institutions. The comparative analysis results show that the students’ vocal training syllabus in Chinese higher institutions is predetermined by: artistic and aesthetic characteristics of national world outlook; specifics of modal and mental fundamentals of Chinese melos; phonetic-constituting, declamation and articulation characteristics of the Chinese’s vocal and speech culture; focus on the prospective vocal and performance vs. vocal and teaching activity. Vocal education in Ukrainian pedagogical institutions is based on the traditions of national singing culture and European vocal performance training schools. The goal of the article is predetermined by the fact that within the context of facilitating the Ukrainian-Chinese interaction, there appears an issue of interpreting the specifics of managing and implementing Music and Pedagogy major experts’ training in the aforementioned countries, alongside with considering the national and historical, mental and practical, socio-educational aspects of its focus. The foreign students’ grasp of vocal skills characteristics promotes their better adjustment to the conditions (factors), requirements and content of the training activity.Recently, the number of Chinese students obtaining professional Music education in most European countries has grown considerably. This tendency, on the one hand, is predetermined by increasing the role of global integration processes within science and manufacturing, humanitarian, culture and educational, information and technological, artistic interchange and cooperation domain; on the other hand, China is still experiencing the lack of teaching human resources, notwithstanding an increasing number of Chinese students studying in Europe, in particular, in Ukrainian higher institutions. When defining the national achievements within the field of Music and Teacher Training Education, Chinese scholars reveal certain key issues requiring immediate resolution, i.e.: insufficient education profiling and its re-directing from Music and performance focus to Music and Pedagogy one; the need of creating the environment for shaping the students’ music and general culture; the non-efficient implementation of advanced and innovation teaching technologies, in particular, of European background; solving the question of expanding and updating Psychology and Pedagogy syllabi, as well as perfecting the students’ methodological background. Substantial impact on the content and focus of students’ vocal training in Chinese pedagogical universities is implied via national solo singing traditions, the specifics of modal composition of music, alongside with speech culture characteristics. In accordance with European tradition, Ukrainian Vocal Pedagogy is targeted at the students’ implementing the whole complex of body resonators, which contributes to shaping the profound, consistent and well-flavoured voice production (sounding). Chinese lecturers focus the students on implementing chiefly head-register and nasal voice (resonators) securing the specific metal force and raucous timbre for both men’s and women’s voice; however, nowadays Chinese Vocal teachers implement quite effectively the methodology of shaping all the singers’ resonators (chest, nasal, cranial ones, and others). Ukrainian and Chinese Vocal teachers lay special emphasis on an important issue of diction functioning and sounds articulation. The Chinese’s speech specifics are related to the persistent work of the mouth cavity organs, especially the tongue and the lips. Special attention refers to distinct consonants articulation at the beginning of words. Ukrainian and European speech traditions, in their turn, require a distinct, full-toned (sonorous) and smooth sounding, while the verbal text specifics make a considerable concession to efficient vocalisation alongside with the aesthetics of the artistic voice presentation, etc.