The shadow play has already developed for almost two hundred years in Taiwan. The locations of the troupes are limited. Only four of the shadow play troupes exist by the official culture performance, with the folk plays diminishingly. The research methods of this dissertation are in the way of historical methodology and fieldwork. The historical methodology builds up the manuscripts, references and the projects of shadowplay. The fieldwork establishes in the observation of the performance and the interviews of the puppeteers and players.
This dissertation analyzes the singing-style (vocal music) and background-chamber music (the instrumental music). About the singing-style, there are four goals in this dissertation. One is to build up the complete repertory. Second is to describe the distinguishing characteristic, including extending and making melody by onomatopoeia. Third is to discuss the skill of the puppeteers. The puppeteers learn by the way of joining and listening. And the skill is good or not can be judged by the learning repertory, the singing, and judgments of audiences. The fourth is to discover the origin of the singing-stylein the comparing ways, including compared with Nanbriqu(南北曲), Kunqu(崑曲) opera, Ch’ao drama (潮劇)and the Ch’ao-tiao(潮調) glove puppetry.
About the background-chamber music, there are three goals in dissertation. One is to discover the scores in the manuscripts including two-four system tablature(二四譜) and Gongche Pu(工尺譜). The scores not only increase the repertory, but also prove the origin of the background-chamber music. Second is to build up the repertory. Third is to discover the origin of the background-chamber music by analyzing the learning ways and scores in depending upon notation. Undoubtedly, the learning ways and scores also provides the most direct evidence for the origins. This dissertation demonstrates that the shadow play both use Ch’ao-tiao music and Beiguan(北管) music for the background-chamber.