In the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "artistic songs" are defined as "songs of serious artistic significance, which are created by professional composers and are different from folk songs". In the New Harvard Music Dictionary, "art songs" are further interpreted as "songs written for chamber music concerts to distinguish them from folk songs and pop songs". Traditionally, music is written for poetry, and the lyrics are very literary, which is different from most folk songs and pop songs. The accompaniment of art songs is formulated and created by composers, not improvised by performers. "Western art songs originated from romantic songs in Germany and Austria in the19th century. China's artistic songs were created on the basis of drawing lessons from foreign artistic songs from the beginning, and at the same time, they were combined with our national language, national temperament and national emotional expression. According to the general definition, China's artistic songs are the products of western music, which have only a history of nearly a hundred years in China. The birth of modern art songs in China is influenced by western art songs on the one hand, and the new culture movement in China on the other. After the New Culture Movement, a group of artistic thoughts with China's learning skills, advocating individuality, freedom and emotional expression were combined with China's traditional culture and art in their creation, which made China's artistic songs. Generally speaking, art songs are the carrier of music art with a high degree of integration of poetry and music, which not only contains poetic literary elements, but also has strong lyricism and singing of music itself. Therefore, China's artistic songs, like the indomitable Chinese nation, have elegant, delicate, subtle and rational personality characteristics, and often use musical language to describe the external environment and atmosphere. The tune of the song is fresh and beautiful, and the combination of lyrics and songs is like China's traditional Chinese painting. The combination of music and China's poems shows the musicality of a language and creates an artistic beauty that can only be understood but not expressed.

China modern art songs, which originated in the early 20th century, are the treasures of China music culture. From its birth to today, China's art songs have produced a large number of works welcomed by the people at that time in various historical periods in China. Most of these works have distinctive characteristics of the times and rich connotations, which vividly reflect the real life, thoughts and feelings of the times. Realistic creative thinking has always been the dominant thinking of China composers in creating artistic songs; It is always the main theme of China's art songs to borrow the past to write the present, reflect the times and praise the motherland's great rivers and mountains and beautiful life. In the early days, Zhao Yuanren, Huang Zi and others' artistic song creation practice took nationality as the goal, constantly absorbed excellent western culture, drew lessons from western composition techniques, and boldly practiced the nationalization of China's artistic song creation. Therefore, the creation of artistic songs with China national characteristics is the direction pursued by modern composers in China. In the nationalization of China's art songs, "Make the past serve the present, and make foreign things serve China", we inherit and carry forward the excellent musical cultural heritage and valuable experience at home and abroad, and dig deep into the essence of China's traditional culture and national aesthetic taste. At the same time, we can learn foreign music creation techniques and experiences from the authoritative Chinese core periodical catalogue retrieval network of the core periodical network, from which we can get rich music creation nutrients and inspiration. Professor Luo Yifeng once summarized the essence of China's art songs as follows: with obvious chamber music, elegant intrinsic interest, creation rather than folk songs, exquisite form and small scale, controlled singing voice, poetic realm and profound emotion, personal expression and aesthetic pursuit. It is pointed out that the "human discovery" of China's artistic songs is the foundation of his philosophical existence; "Internality" is the element of his aesthetic character; "Small narrative" is the starting point of his creation; Exquisiteness is the expression of its elegant culture.

China people pay attention to implicature, so does music performance. Generally speaking, China likes to put the theme at the end of his music creation, as described in a poem, "However, we called for it a thousand times before she started to walk towards us, still hiding half of her face behind her guitar.". Western music is unrestrained and belongs to an open style. The theme appears at the beginning, and then the specific content is slowly expounded, which is shocking.

In the whole western culture, no one can get so many performances in art like Jesus Christ. As far as music is concerned, Jesus Christ, who is broad-minded, resolute, tolerant and modest, and has made selfless contributions to mankind, has become an aesthetic image expressed by musicians from generation to generation and an eternal aesthetic ideal in music.

Western music began to explore the motivation, collection, theme, phrase, paragraph, various forms and genres of music from ancient Greece. That is to explore their own meaning and their role in the structure, and explore their expressive ability. , pay attention to the study of music from the inside of the music structure, and explore the expressive force and aesthetics of music. Therefore, western art songs have clear content, concise techniques, quick creation and straightforward expression. They can quickly capture instantaneous emotions and make a musical work with distinctive personality complete, vivid and touching in a relatively short period of time.

Formal logic has greatly promoted and influenced the development of western philosophy and science since it came into being in Greece. It is precisely because of the relatively developed formal logic in Greece that the musical forms of western music art in later generations have been consciously developed after entering professional creation. Folk songs have one section, including single and complex two-section forms and three-section forms, including Rondo, Variations and Sonata forms. Not only is the genre structure diverse, but also he is good at expressing various emotions, thoughts and contents in various forms.

Second, the aesthetic differences between Chinese and Western music

Cultural barriers such as customs and historical allusions are tangible external manifestations of cultural differences. And its internal and intangible performance is due to the difference of national psychological prototype. In the west, people prefer an ideology, namely religion and theology. Therefore, mysterious religion became the basis for the survival and development of ancient western society. Western culture is essentially religious culture. In terms of aesthetic mode, China's ancient aesthetic thinking mode was "emphasizing enlightenment but neglecting enlightenment", which advocated that the aesthetic subject should enter the psychological state of "enlightenment" to experience and create beauty, and required the aesthetic subject to understand the life implication and beautiful essence of all things in the universe in the seamless unity of "mind and object" and "scene".

The specific aesthetic differences between Chinese and western music are mainly manifested in the following aspects.

1. Due to the differences between Chinese and western music regions, nationalities and times, there are also differences between China's music aesthetics and western music aesthetics. The source of China's musical aesthetic thought is the musical aesthetic thought put forward by Confucianism and Taoism, and they all developed from many musical aesthetic viewpoints that sprouted before the Spring and Autumn Period. The development history of China's music aesthetics for more than 2,000 years has always been dominated by Confucianism and Taoism. Pursuing the harmony and unity between music and nature,

The harmony between man and the universe emphasizes "Tian Hong Yin Zhen". Oppose the bondage of life and music. Therefore, the aesthetic standards of China's music are: sensibility without wildness, desire without concealment. China's traditional aesthetics plays an important role in China's music creation. China's music pursues profound artistic conception, ethereal and hazy, with implication, indifference and ethereal as the top grade, lyric as the main feature, and profound artistic conception. The highest realm it pursues is artistic conception, and a beautiful artistic conception can leave a beautiful imagination space for the appreciator, and bring about the deepening of thoughts and the sublimation of emotions. There are two main schools in the development of western aesthetics, namely "heteronomy" and "self-discipline". The so-called "heteronomy" emphasizes that the beauty of music is influenced by musical forms (including emotional society), and it emphasizes a kind of content, which determines the form, that is, emotional music aesthetics; On the contrary, the "self-discipline theory" emphasizes that the beauty of music only comes from the music itself, and the internal factors determine the formal beauty of music, emphasizing the content of music.

2. Comparing the characteristics of musical works, China and the West show different characteristics in music because of their different ways of thinking. In short, China believes that "one song is multi-purpose-re-creation; The west is committed to special songs-focusing on originality. " The value orientation of "one song is multi-purpose" is to respect the style and appreciation habit of the original work. Only by changing a certain "basic tune" in the creation can the song be endowed with new connotation. Dedicated to Special Music aims at the individuality of the work, and its principle is not to repeat others or yourself, whether in the form of the work or in the creative techniques.

3. There are differences between China and the West in the way of composing music works. The creative way of China's traditional music works is characterized by collectivity and the integration of primary and secondary creation. The so-called collectivity means that the condensed labor in the work is not a composer's personal behavior. The so-called fusion of one or two creations means that the composer is a singer or a performer when he is creating. At the same time, composing music is also a process of singing or playing, and there is no division of labor between one and two creations, which is very improvisational. The creative way of western music works (mainly the works of western professional composers) has the characteristics of individualization and separation of creation and creation. Western music works belong to the composer's personal labor, which embodies strong personality characteristics. At the same time, the first and second creation are separated, that is, the composer's creation is only to complete the score.

Observing Chinese and western music from the aesthetic point of view, we find that China's music pays attention to the artistic conception and charm of works, emphasizes the wonder and charm of creation, pays attention to the implication and tact of expression, and likes the moderation of artistic forms. Western music has a strong religious flavor and moral education color from the beginning, and its expression form is relatively fixed, which often gives people a solemn and sacred feeling. With its own development, western music has gradually joined the atmosphere of life and reality, and its emotional expression is straightforward and intense, with strong emotional expression ability. In the 20th century, it was difficult for people to understand and accept the strange musical phenomena in the West. China's artistic song creation organically combines China's poetry and literature, China's folk songs with European traditional techniques, China's traditional music techniques and modern creative techniques to form colorful artistic songs with China's national characteristics and styles. At this time, European art circles were nourished by oriental culture, and gradually penetrated into European cultural tastes and life, and European composers' interest in China music began to show from exotic sentiments and themes. It has opened the cultural horizon of westerners and set off a "China cultural craze".

In short, with the increasing internationalization and diversification of cultural development, the pursuit of multi-level and high-grade spiritual enjoyment has become a social fashion, and the aesthetic value of artistic songs with fashionable taste and elegant manners has gradually attracted people's attention, making artistic songs enjoy unprecedented prosperity in people's spiritual enjoyment space. Due to different social and cultural backgrounds, there are differences in musical creation techniques and aesthetic standards. China's artistic song creation is blending with European culture in constant collision, learning from the essence of western music, fully affirming its locality, and gradually learning and making progress on the basis of maintaining its original style.