长期以来,中华民族的传统音乐被分为五大类,即歌曲、歌舞音乐、说唱音乐、戏曲和器乐这样,民族器乐就被当做传统音乐五大类中的一类加以研究。然而,民族器乐是否仅为传统音乐中的一类?它在民族音乐整体中究竟占有什么样的地位?民族器乐的研究范围又是什么?这一系列具有根本性的问题几乎没有认真地讨论过,这无疑影响了研究工作的进一步深入。为此,想就这几个问题发表一些不成熟的看法。 For a long time, the traditional Chinese music has been divided into five categories, that is, songs, dance music, rap music, opera and instrumental music. As such, ethnic instrumental music has been studied as one of the five major categories of traditional music. However, is the national instrumental music only one kind of traditional music? What position does it occupy in the whole national music? What is the scope of the national instrumental music? The fundamental problems of this series are rarely discussed seriously This undoubtedly affected further research work. For this reason, I’d like to make some immature opinions on these issues.