Identifying Peking Opera Roles Through Vocal Timbre: An Acoustical and Conceptual Comparison Between Dan and Laosheng

Abstract

Chinese jingju (Peking opera) typically distinguishes several stock character types differentiated by narrative function, appearance, and vocal timbre. Though aspects of jingju music and dramaturgy have been thoroughly mapped by scholars, the contribution of timbre to the differentiation and characterization of dramatic roles has not been theorized. Here we sampled 20,000 excerpts of a cappella recordings of dan (woman) and laosheng (old man) singers from a large corpus. We analyzed the acoustic characteristics of the two roles both qualitatively and computationally, extracting and comparing relevant acoustic descriptors including spectral centroid, roughness, inharmonicity, and spectral fluctuation. We found statistically significant differences between the roles in spectral centroid (controlling for differences in fundamental frequency), roughness, and spectral flux (16­00­–3200 Hz). Lower normalized spectral centroid and reduced roughness in dan timbre is semiotically congruent with this virtuous and gentle female role; higher normalized spectral centroid, roughness, and spectral flux in laosheng timbre are congruent with an elderly, powerful, and educated man, indicating the contribution of vocal timbre in communicating identification and narrative information to audiences. These timbral attributes also reflect traditional Confucian ideals for music, gender, and age. These patriarchal and filial hierarchies are reiterated through Peking opera vocal timbre, displaying the effectiveness of music, and timbre specifically, in reflecting and reinforcing cultural and societal scripts.

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