Spring Festival Overture: a popular classic movement

The Spring Festival Overture is a popular piece by China's renowned composer and music theorist Li Huanzhi, an orchestral piece based on folk songs from northern Shaanxi Province. According to statistics, the Spring Festival Overture is one of the most performed Chinese orchestral works on the music stage. The piece is actually the first movement of the orchestral suite "Spring Festival Suite" by Li Huanzhi, and the author takes the traditional Chinese festival of Spring Festival as the theme. The melody of the piece is bright and beautiful, with a distinctive and enthusiastic tempo, reflecting with passion the deep feelings of the Spring Festival in Yan'an that year, and showing a picture of a warm and joyful scene of the people of revolutionary bases banging gongs and beating drums and singing and dancing in the Spring Festival.

"Spring Festival Overture" is a bright, bold and enthusiastic music, the introduction by the full orchestra of the grand sound unveiled the prelude to the folk festival songs and dances. The first section is simple, beautiful dance music. The middle section is a lyrical contrasting passage, with musical material from the Shanbei Yangge tune. The third section is a tighter reproduction of the music of the first section, which is more compact and enthusiastic, and ends powerfully in an atmosphere of jubilation for all the people.

The Spring Festival Suite was composed by Li Huanzhi in 1955-1956. The music is based on the tones and rhythms of the folk rice-planting songs of northern Shaanxi Province, with a bright melody that vividly expresses the scenes of the traditional festivals in which the people of China are bustling with joy, beating gongs and drums, singing and dancing.

The Spring Festival Suite consists of four movements, the first movement of the overture describes the Spring Festival people twisting rice-planting songs, the music added to the rhythm of the gongs and drums of the rice-planting songs. The theme consists of two pieces of northern Shaanxi folk suona, the music is cheerful and warm, the middle part is a melodious northern Shaanxi folk song, the theme is first played by the oboe, then repeated by the cello, and finally by the trumpet solo to push the music to the climax of the end.

The second movement of the love song is like a lyrical poem. The piece begins with a love song from the north of Shaanxi Province played by the English winds, like a young man walking and talking by the riverside in the moonlight. This love song is repeated six times, played by the violin and cello in the form of a dialog, and finally return to the beginning of the shadow.

The third movement, Pango, is a round dance, written by the author based on a weekend dance in Yan'an in those days, combining folk-style music with a modern ballroom dance group.

The fourth movement Lantern Festival is created with the tone of the northern Shaanxi folk suona song Da Pendulum Team, this part of the music shows the high skill of suona playing, the middle part of the middle part of the northern Shaanxi folk song picking pumpkins and running dry boat tune, the two tunes staggered, and the end of the part of the enthusiastic rice-planting drums and gongs rhythm reproduces the theme, the end of the whole song.

Second, about the author

Li Huanzhi, 1919 to 2000, China's famous composer, conductor, music theorist, originated in the formation of Jinjiang, Fujian Province, was born in Hong Kong in 1919. 1936 into the spring of the National Music College in Shanghai, under the Hsiao Youmei to study and advancement in the spring of 1938 to Yan'an, into the music department of the Luxun Academy of Arts. At the end of his studies, he continued to learn composition and conducting from Xian Xinghai in the advanced class. After graduation, he stayed in the school as a teacher. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, he traveled from Yan'an to Zhangjiakou, where he served as the head of the Music Department of the College of Literature and Arts of the North China Union University. Since the founding of New China, he has been active on the music front, serving as the head of the Music Troupe of the Central Conservatory of Music. Li Huanzhi was a hobbyist of folk music since childhood, and enthusiastically participated in the music activities of the school, and began to compose songs after 1935, such as "Lament for the Sheep" and "Yellow Flower Song". After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Li Huanzhi actively participated in the anti-Japanese rescue song movement, and cooperated with Po Feng and other poets in anti-Japanese songs, such as "Xiamen Singing", "Defend the Motherland" and so on.

In the 40s and 50s, he **** created more than 300 vocal works. Among them, the more prominent ones are "Ode to Youth", "March for Democracy", "Socialism is Good" and so on. He also composed the music for the movies "Stormy Weather", "On the Road of the Long March", "The Life of Lu Xun" and so on.

Over the past decades, based on the rich materials of Chinese folk and ancient music, combined with the requirements of the times, Li Huanzhi has created works that express the spirit of the new era while exuding a strong local flavor, which are y loved by people at home and abroad.

In 2007, "Spring Festival Overture" was launched into space on China's first lunar exploration satellite, Chang'e-1.

Third, the background of the creation

In 1943, the literary and artistic workers in the revolutionary base of Yan'an, inspired by the spirit of Mao Zedong's "Speech at the Yan'an Literary and Artistic Symposium", carried out a vigorous new rice-planting song movement, which became an important form of the Spring Festival celebrations for the Party, the government, the military and the people in the same year. In the early 1950s, Li Huanzhi made the Spring Festival Overture to show that the people of the revolutionary base area were singing and dancing together in the Spring Festival, as well as the unity and love, and the moving scene of mutual celebration and congratulation.

Fourth, the music appreciation

"Spring Festival Overture" uses the rice-planting songs and Shaanxi folk songs as the material, using the Chinese pentatonic scale compositional techniques. "Yangge is a representative form of folk song and dance in northern China. Dancers usually dress up as various characters and dance with props such as fans, handkerchiefs and colored silks. The performance is divided into three parts: crossing the street, big field and small field. Crossing the street is the rice-planting team marching in the street, according to the rhythm of the music performed by a number of simple dance movements; large field is a warm and red large-scale collective dance, often out of a variety of complex formations; small field is performed by two or three people with a simple plot of small-scale dance or song and dance drama. The song through the appropriate use of rice-planting tone and rhythm, creating a strong sense of rhythm, showing the people singing and dancing, drums and gongs are sounding the lively scene. The whole piece is a three-part structure with reproduction, consisting of three parts, preceded by an introduction containing two themes.

The first part of the opening introduction summarizes the cheerful mood of the whole piece, showing the scene of the rice-planting songs "crossing the street", starting with the full orchestra and gongs and drums, and reflecting the basic theme of the whole piece with smooth tones and bright rhythms, which is very cheerful, and the strong rhythms of the brass instruments strongly set off this theme; the second part of the introduction continues the warmth of the first part, which is composed of three parts. The second part of the continuation of the first part of the warm rhythm, by the woodwinds and the orchestra ensemble, using a combination of different instruments and different strengths and weaknesses of the "answer" approach, the formation of a question and answer, a strong and a weak contrast, echo each other, full of dynamics, so that the music appears more active.

The first part of the piece is a performance of the rice-planting song "Dafang" dance, with the first theme played by flute and oboe, and the strings pizzicato to show the rhythm of the dance, the alternation of timbres and rhythmic changes make the music soft and smooth, presenting the beautiful figures of the rice-planting song performers and their folkloric dance in front of us; followed by the connecting part. Immediately following is the connecting part, where the music synthesizes and develops the melody in the introduction, dynamic and jumping, played alternately by woodwinds and strings; followed by variations on the theme, with a denser, more resonant rhythm and a more enthusiastic atmosphere.

The second part of the piece is a performance of the rice-planting song "small field" dance, with a lyrical middle section, the melody is soothing and melodious, soft and friendly, the composer will be the northern Shaanxi rice-planting song "in February to play over the spring" melody into it, full of rich local colors, simple and affectionate, the theme is first by the oboe, the cello pizzicato strings. The third part of the piece as a conclusion, reproduces the introductory part and the theme of the first part of the piece, the music brings us back to the opening dance scene of the rice-planting songs "Dafang", the orchestra plays and adds percussion, and concludes the piece in an extremely enthusiastic climax, which expresses people's joyful excitement and joyfulness to the fullest.

? Oct. 10, 2021