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Imitating traditional Chinese instruments to make piano works have a Chinese style is a common creative technique in Chinese piano music. For example, composer Zhao Yuanren uses appoggiatura to imitate the hua (glide) of the guqin in the piano work “Hua Ba Ban and Xiang Jiang Lang”. This paper will use the philosophy of imitation and Bandura’s imitation theory as the theoretical basis and use the method of comparative analysis to analyse how the composer uses different composition techniques to imitate different music elements of traditional Chinese instruments. Finally, this paper find that the methods of imitation are roughly divided into four categories: direct imitation, synthetic imitation, symbolic imitation, and abstract imitation. The culture of Chinese national musical instruments has been reflected onto the piano, which means that through the transformation of musical instruments, Western musical instruments have the sound of the East. It hopes that pianists could gain a deeper understanding of the imitation of Chinese national instruments in Chinese piano works, so as to better interpret these works.

SummaryMicrodeletion of a 3Mbp region encompassing 45 protein-coding genes at chromosome 22q11.2 (22q11.2DS) predisposes to multiple neurodevelopmental disorders and is one of the greatest genetic risk factors for schizophrenia. Defective mitochondrial function has been hypothesized to contribute to 22q11.2DS pathogenesis; however, which of the six mitochondrial genes contribute to neurodevelopmental phenotypes and their underlying mechanisms remain unresolved. To systematically test 22q11.2DS genes for functional roles in neurodevelopment and behavior, we generated genetic mutants for each of the 37 conserved zebrafish orthologs and performed high throughput behavioral phenotyping using seven behavioral assays. Through this unbiased approach, we identified five single-gene mutants with partially overlapping behavioral phenotypes. Two of these genes,mrpl40andprodha, encode for mitochondrial proteins and, similar to what we observed inmrpl40andprodhamutants, pharmacologic inhibition of mitochondrial function during development results in microcephaly. Finally, we show that bothmrpl40andprodhamutants display neural stem and progenitor cell phenotypes, with each gene regulating different neural stem cell populations. Combined, our results demonstrate a critical role for mitochondrial function in neural stem and progenitor cell populations in the developing vertebrate brain and provide compelling evidence that mitochondrial dysfunction during neurodevelopment is linked to brain volume and behavioral phenotypes observed in models of 22q11.2DS.

This thesis explores the notion of ‘in-betweenness’ through transcultural thinking in my compositional practice as a commentary to my portfolio of compositions. My thinking has been inspired by Tim Ingold’s philosophical idea of ‘wayfaring’ as a way to navigate processes by which insights emerge from collaborative investigations. My portfolio makes an original contribution to music by engaging with Malaysian Chinese and Indigenous cultural materials in fresh ways with a focus on music and dance collaborations with Indigenous Malaysian references, aural/oral traditions in Hakka poetry, and traditions of pattern making related to Borneo bead work. These projects have enabled me to deepen my experience and understanding of notions of entanglement and of how highly diverse elements can be unified through collaboration, presenting a series of case studies that also vary in style and the modality of discussion used. The discussion focuses around four main aspects related to intercultural exchange and collaboration: the value of negotiation, the meaning of ambiguity, strategies for navigating cultural meanings, and processes of cultural and musical transmission. Through these, I gain insights into the perception and practice of cultural exchange to find a new creative threshold for opening up new cultural dialogues in my compositional work.

Formed by different layers of patterning of knots with colours and shapes, Linangkit1 refers to one of Sabah’s traditional Indigenous forms of embroidery. This paper discusses how these patterns are being transformed into musical materials as a way to extend my compositional practice to develop ideas for pitch and rhythmic organization and formal ideas, and as the basis for my fourth collaboration with the dancer Tang Sook Kuan building on the earlier experiences with gongs described in my earlier project called Interbreathment2.