Investigating the Influence of Chinese Tones on the Melodic Pitch of Singing

When singing in tonal languages, there seems to exist a natural conflict between the pitch of a song’s prescribed melody and the tonal pitch demands of its lyrical content. How does a tonal language adapt to one of the defining characteristics of the adopted western musical tradition: a strong melody developed without regard for linguistic tonal features of its lyrical content? This paper reviews the existing literature on the topic and proposes a research design to further explore this question for Standard Mandarin Chinese. Overall, existing literature demonstrates that the tonal features of some languages such as Cantonese are not only negotiated by songwriters during the composition of a musical piece but also negotiated by singers while performing these songs. One notable and one-of-a-kind study by Murray Schellenberg and Brian Gick, specifically, finds evidence that Cantonese singers use microtonal pitch contour variation to reflect the rising contours of Cantonese linguistic tones. This paper discusses and evaluates the strengths of Schellenberg and Gick’s research model and proposes that future research into microtonal variation within songs of other tonal languages like Mandarin Chinese follow their example.