The Development of Chinese Classical Music

Music is the language that human beings cannot live without, and it is also the sublimation of the human soul. From the earliest music distilled by primitive man's constant resistance to the threats of nature and his long and hard labor, to the rich and colorful music systems of countries all over the world nowadays, it can't be said that it is a miracle of civilization.

In the long historical process of five thousand years, the history of China's civilization has shown an extremely brilliant and splendid page. China is one of the earliest ancient civilizations in the world, and its music has a similarly long history. Long before the invention of writing, when our ancestors evolved from apes to human beings, in order to enable the existence of living individuals and the continuation of the race, music was nurtured along with the use of tools and the production of language in the two most basic productive activities that human beings must engage in: labor and reproduction. As a matter of fact, the walking of the left and right feet, the beating of the heart and the pulse are the simplest rhythms; and the monotonous language of the primitive man, as long as there is a change in the tone of the voice, also contains the element of melody. During the Spring and Autumn period, the wave of a hundred schools of thought in China collided with a bright spark, while Europe was in the midst of barbarism at the same time, and while Chinese music was welcoming the dawn, European music was still wandering in the long night.

During the Zhou Dynasty, the government set up a music institution under the general supervision of the "Da Si Le". The main courses of instruction were music and virtue, music and language, and music and dance. The so-called music and virtue are the ethical and moral concepts of "harmony, godliness, filial piety and friendship"; the music and language are the ritual and behavioral norms of "Xing Dao, satirical recitation and speech"; and the music and dance include the music theory of the big dance and the small dance, the recitation and dance of the music poems, as well as the performance of the music and dance of the six generations. The music and dance include music theory such as the great dance and the small dance, the recitation of music and poetry, dance, and the performance of music and dance of the six dynasties.

The six generations of musical dances are said to be six epic musical dances that have been handed down through the ages, including the "Yunmen Da Reel" of the Yellow Emperor, the "Xianchi" of Yao, the "Dashao" of Shun, the "Daxia" of Yu, the "Daxingan" of Shangtang and the "Dawu" that recounts the whole process of the war of the Zhou Emperor Wuwang against the Zhou Empire. During the Zhou Dynasty, they were used in the court for major ceremonies such as sacrifices to heaven and earth, mountains and rivers, and ancestors. Especially "Da Wu" and "Da Rhyme", which is regarded as the theme of extolling the virtues of literature and morality, were often performed in the ceremonies of the Son of Heaven's great sacrifices, rituals, and old age. The "Fei Dance", "Huang Dance" and "Jing Dance" were entertaining dances in the court.

The court of the Zhou Dynasty, in addition to music and dance, the court also used for the son of God's ancestor sacrifice, the big shot, depending on the school and the two rulers to meet and other important ceremonies, such as the music of the ceremony, such as the Song, Ya; and concubines in the palace feast sung in the room music, without bells, chimes, only the zither, serpentine accompaniment. This reflects the music has been separated from the original music and dance. In the court of the Zhou Dynasty, there were also performances of the music of the four barbarians from Qin, Chu, Wu, Yue and other places, indicating that there was a certain degree of exchange of customary songs and dances of various ethnic groups.

From the above literature, we can learn that the music culture of the Zhou and Qin dynasties is an important coordinate of the high development of Chinese music. This series of achievements also lies in theoretically laying the foundation of China's ancient musicology.

The Qin Dynasty, which unified China in 221 B.C., as a centralized state, had set up the Music Office, an official office specializing in the management of music, in order to meet the needs of political unification and integration of cultural management. The Western Han regime, established by Liu Bang, also expanded the organization and functions of the Music Office. At that time, the government attached great importance to folk music, so that the Music Office went out to collect "Zhao, Dai, Qin, Chu's eulogy", and the music of the Western Regions, the Northern Di and other remote ethnic groups. In the extensive collection of folk songs around the basis of the musician Li Yannian for the Concordance Lieutenant, lifting Sima Xiangru and dozens of other people, this collation, processing, fill in the lyrics adapted for the palace rituals, banquets and music. According to "Han Shu? According to the record of "Art and literature", 134 folk songs were collected at that time, and 75 pieces of "Zhou Ballad Songs and Poetry Songs" and "Henan Zhou Songs and Poetry Songs" which may be accompanied by music scores.

During the Han and Wei Dynasties, the court introduced a number of folk songs and dances and a hundred plays. Among them, Han Gaozu ordered the musicians to learn from the "Chinese" and the "Chinese". People learned to "fierce and sharp" known as the "Bayu Dance"; initially performed at the Hongmen Banquet, "Xiang Zhuang dance sword, Xiang Bo to the sleeve of the iron" to protect the story of Han Gaozu, later evolved into a dance with a scarf to symbolize the sleeve of Xiang Bo's "Scarf Dance The "Scarf Dance" was later evolved into the "Scarf Dance" in which a scarf was used to symbolize Xiang Bo's sleeve during the dance. The "White Dance", in which a woman wearing a white cloth dress dances with long sleeves; and the "White Dance", in which a woman holding a cloth dress dances with long sleeves. The "White Dance" is a dance in which women wear white cloth and dance with long sleeves. The "White? Dance", in which the dancer sings and dances on and beside the drums, "Pan Odori", and so on. Baeksu is a general term for a variety of juggling skills, including the current dance of dragon lanterns, such as the "fish and dragon Manyan", as well as a variety of acrobatic magic.

During the period of the two Jin and North and South Dynasties, there were frequent wars and dynastic changes, and along with the social upheaval and changes, the interaction of ethnic migration expanded, and the music and culture of foreign races and regions exchanged widely with the music and culture of the Central Plains, which became an important period in the history of music, carrying on with the past and setting off the future. Among them, the Qing Shang music is the remnant of the traditional music of the Qin and Han Dynasties, and the Cao Wei regime first set up the Qing Shang Department, which was actually a variation of the Lefu. After the eastward crossing of the Jin Dynasty, these "old songs of the Central Plains" were exchanged with the music of the south, which made the Qing Shang music become a general term including the Xianghe Song and Drum Blowing Song passed down from the previous dynasty, as well as the Wu Song of the south of the Yangtze River, and the Western Sound of the Jingchu River, and it was the representative of the folk songs of the southern music house at that time. Most of the lyrics of the Northern Dynasty folk songs were preserved in the Liang Drums and Horns Hengblow Songs, a collection of Lefu poems, with a far wider range of subjects than the Southern folk songs, most of them reflecting the wars and people's sufferings, and were composed for the northern Wu, Xianbei and Han Chinese. Mulan's Rhetoric" is the most outstanding of the northern folk songs, singing passionately about the heroine Hua Mulan, who joined the army on her father's behalf. In the Northern Wei Dynasty, the Xianbei rulers used to order the court ladies to sing the "Song of the Real People", also known as the "Song of the North". "The above ancestor opened the tomb of the reason, down to the abolition of the rise and fall of the ministers, where 150 chapters, morning and evening song" ("Wei Shu? Music"). This kind of folk song, similar to the national epic, was accompanied by silk and bamboo, and there were also xiao and drums, which was a kind of drum-and-blow music, popular in the south during the Liang and Chen dynasties, and called "Dai Bei".

Sui-Tang reunification of the north and south, social stability and economic prosperity, for the development of music and art to create favorable conditions. The rulers of the Tang Dynasty were less culturally conservative and widely absorbed foreign musical cultures, which made music reach a peak of development. During this historical period, poetry was incorporated into the famous songs sung by music, and the fusion of literature and music became a feature of the development of Chinese classical music. Li Bai's Guanshan Yue, Du Fu's Qingming, Liu Yuxi's Bamboo Branch Song, Wang Zhihuan's Liangzhou Lyrics, Wang Wei's Yangguan Qu, Longtou Yin, and Liu Zongyuan's The Fisherman. Some of them have been passed down as folk songs for a long time, while others have been absorbed by qin artists and preserved in the form of qin songs. In particular, Wang Wei's "Yang Guan Qu", a seven-word stanza written to send off a friend who was serving at Yang Guan in the west, became a song often sung by people bidding farewell to their friends at that time and in the future because of the sadness of bidding farewell expressed in the technique of blending scenarios.

During the Song Dynasty, the urban economy gradually prospered, and the civic class expanded. The center of gravity of social music activities from the court to secular. The Northern Song Dynasty has appeared in the public music activities, "hook bar", "tour shed". Suitable for the public and the literati interest, such as lyrics and music, rap music, opera music has been particularly rapid development.

The Song Dynasty was also an important stage in the history of China's music and literature. The Song Dynasty was the golden age of lyric songwriting, with more than 800 commonly used lyric tunes, some of which were derived from traditional and contemporary popular folk songs and ditties, such as "Remembering Jiangnan" and "Liu Qingniang"; others were from some passages of the Tang Dynasty's song and dance compositions, such as "Yang Guan Quotation," "Pouring Cups in Preface," "Song of the Water," "The Sound of the Voice," and "Order of the Laughing Man," etc.; and ethnic minority and imported music, such as "Bodhisattva Barbarian," "Su Shu Shou," "The Song of the Buddha," "The Song of the Lord," "The Song of the Lord of the Sea" and so on. Bodhisattva Barbarian" and "Su Mou Zhi". The Song Dynasty literati not only created a large number of words and songs, but also according to the style of the subject matter can be broadly divided into two categories: the euphemistic school and the bold and free school. The content of the words of the euphemistic school is mostly the expression of the feelings of men and women of love and parting, the style is weak and soft, pay attention to the rhythm and tune of the tune with the close relationship with the music of the lyricist Liu Yong, Zhou Bangyan as a representative. The bold school of lyrics and music has developed the expression of the word content, breaking the too strict sound boundaries, the style of robust and rugged, the genesis of the Northern Song Dynasty Su Shi, followed by a number of Southern Song Dynasty patriotic lyricists such as Xin Qiji, Chen Liang, Zhang Shuxiang, Yue Fei and so on, after the disaster of Jingkang. Yu Zhi Bao of the Song Dynasty compared the two schools of lyrics in his book Blowing Swords: "Liu Langzhong's (Liu Yong's) lyrics are only about seventeen or eighteen girls, with red toothpicks, singing the song 'On the banks of the Yang Liu River, the wind and the waning moon'; Su Shi's lyrics must be about the Guanshi men, with copper pipas and iron nickel plates, singing the song 'Going East of the Great River'. 'The Great River Goes East'."

Song dynasty part of the lyricist know music also often create their own new words and tunes, this new song is called "since the song". Jiang Kui of the Southern Song Dynasty is the most representative of the authors. He wrote fourteen of his own songs, including Yangzhou Slow and Almond Blossom Sky Shadow, which are contained in White Stone Taoist Songs, with a note on the "common character score" (the ancient Gongshi score), and are a precious legacy of Song dynasty lyric music. Jiang Kui's own lyrics and music are all in one, with a style of euphemism, lyricism, freshness and elegance; he is delicate in the treatment of melodic method, structure, modulation, transposition and other skills; his works mostly use the seven-tone scale, with the fourth and seventh tones occupying an important position, and he often quotes elevated shang, zheng, or Gong and other variations of the tone. This gives the tunes a unique and far-reaching flavor.

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with the prominent development of handicraft industry and commodity economy, the music of the citizens gradually became the main ingredient of music and art. Self-indulgent folk songs, folk songs and dances, as well as rap and opera music of a commodity nature, all gained unprecedented artistic achievements in history during this period.

The Ming Dynasty's Zhuo Ke Yue even compared the folk songs with Tang poems, Song lyrics, and Yuan operas, calling them "a perfect ear for my Ming" (Chen Hongzhu's "Cold Night Record"). Because the literati improved their understanding of folk literature and art, the culture of collecting folk songs gradually took shape. For example, Feng Menglong in the Ming Dynasty compiled and published two collections of folk songs, Gui Zhi Er and Shan Song, collecting more than 800 lyrics; in the Qing Dynasty, more than 10,000 collections of folk songs were published successively, and among them, Li Tiao Yuan's collection of Yue Feng included folk songs of the ethnic minorities in the south.

The folk songs and dances of the Ming and Qing dynasties were also very rich, and the more common Han folk songs and dances included Yangge, flower drums, tea picking, lanterns, playing the Lianrong, running the dry boat, and bamboo horse lanterns, etc.; the folk songs and dances of the ethnic minorities included the Mukam of the Uighur, the Tibetan potshuang, and the Nangma, and the moon jumping of the Miao, and the playing of Dong in the mountains, etc. The folk songs and dances of the Dong were also very diverse, and the folk dances of the Uighur and Tibetans were also very rich.

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the development of Beijing opera and song also showed a brilliant historical stage.

After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the two styles that have long competed in the legendary theater are Eagle and Kun. The Yiyang cavity, which originated in Yiyang, Jiangxi Province, is a high-pitched and upright cavity. It doesn't use pipes and strings, only accompanied by gongs and drums, and adopts the common form of folk cavity, which plays a unique dramatic effect for depicting and rendering the atmosphere of the stage environment, and helping to delineate the inner activities of the characters, etc. Moreover, it is easy to understand because of the common words, and the cavity is free and flexible, and it has been long-lasting. Kunshan cavity originated in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province, Ming Jiajing before the circulation is not widespread, after Wei Liangfu, Zhang Yutang and others to improve the original Kunshan cavity on the basis of a wide range of absorption of the strengths of the North and South Opera cavity, the formation of a "delicate water grinding, a word several turns, clear and soft folding, mellow and fluent" of the new cavity, the new Kunshan cavity in the singing of the delicate lyrical and slow, turn the sound if the silk; The new Kunshan accent is delicate and slow in singing, with a silky turn of voice. In terms of rhythm, it adopts the "complimentary plate", slowing down the tune of one plate and three eyes by a factor of two, which is characterized by the "Man sound and Xu Duo"; in terms of melodic creation, it requires "acting in accordance with the words", and pays attention to the harmonization between the tune and the words; in terms of accompaniment, it has formed a new cavity. In terms of accompaniment, it has formed an orchestra with a variety of instruments such as sheng, xiao, pipa, sanxian, yueqin, and drums and boards, with the flute as the main instrument. After the reform, the Kunshan opera became a national opera with the title of "Songs from all directions must come from the Wu family", and many masterpieces such as Tang Xianzu's The Peony Pavilion, Hong Sheng's The Palace of Eternal Youth in the Qing Dynasty, and Kong Shangren's The Peach Blossom Fan appeared in the opera. In the Qing Dynasty, Xu Dachun's "Lefu Chuanxiang" summarized the singing achievements of the Kunsanqiang, which was an important treatise on the vocal music of opera at that time. After the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the Kunshan cavity due to the excessive carving of the lyrics, music, elegant and light, increasingly alienated from the masses and tend to decline, to the Jiaqing after the gradual replacement for the chaotic bomb.

The chaotic bomb since the end of the Ming Dynasty has been widely popular in the Qin Dynasty, the sound of the Qin Dynasty in Shaanxi Province, Gansu Province for the earliest, because of the clapper beat, so it is also known as "clapper cavity". The music of the clappers is a combination of a system of plates; the tunes are high and exciting, strong and rapid, and there are "happy sounds" and "bitter sounds" that express different emotions; the singing is commonplace, especially good at delineating the character and showing dramatic conflicts; and there is a citation of the two-stringed, hu hu la stringed instruments, mainly the bangdiao, moon qin and the flute. Moreover, it introduced an accompaniment band composed of two strings, hu hula stringed instruments, bangdi, moon zither and percussion instruments such as gongs and drums, and the repertoire of the opera was mostly historical stories, so it was quickly disseminated. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, there had been a variety of opera styles with more or less the same singing system, such as Shanxi Opera (now Jin Opera), Henan Opera (now Yu Opera), Hebei Opera, Shandong Opera, Sichuan Opera (i.e., play), Shaoxing Daban (or Chaoban), and so on.

The Pihuang Cavity is another important voice cavity of the chaobang. The Pihuang cavity includes two kinds of cadences: Xipi and Erhuang. The former started in Hubei, which is the product of the combination of Qinqiang and local Han tunes, and has an agitated and desolate tone; the latter arose in Anhui, which was developed by the local blowing cavity, and has a euphemistic and gentle tone. In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the four Huiban classes entered Beijing, cooperated with the Han tune artists from Hubei, and widely absorbed the repertoire, tunes, and performance methods of Kunqiang, Qinqiang, and other vocal styles, as well as accommodated folk tunes, creating a new style based on Xipi and Erhuang - Pihuangqiang - and initially establishing the pattern of Peking Opera. The repertoire of Peking Opera was mainly based on historical themes, and new repertoires with anti-feudal, democratic and patriotic tendencies, closer to the life of the masses and suitable for the requirements of the times such as "Fishing and Killing Families" and "The Li Ling Monument" were successively staged; the Pihuang music, with its soaring and plaintive tunes, not only further developed and perfected its structure of the plate, but also solved the problem of dividing the cavities of men and women, so that each of the various trades in the cantata could be sung with better dramatic play; at the same time, it was accompanied by folk tunes, the Pihuang accent. At the same time, a more complete system of accompaniment has been formed, with the "cultural field" composed of huqin, strings, pipes, etc., and the "martial field" composed of drums, plates, gongs and cymbals, etc., as well as the "spectacle" in which the two combinations complement each other, closely matching the actors' performances. The "scene" is a combination of the two, which closely matches the singing, reading and playing of the actors. Because of this, Beijing Opera had become the largest opera in the country by the end of the Qing Dynasty. The Pihuang cavity is also ranked in the bangkang cavity, high cavity, Kun cavity, become China's modern emerging opera music representative of the vocal cavity.

Peking Opera, which had entered its heyday during the Guangxu period, faced the crisis of being seized and monopolized by the feudal rulers at the end of the Qing Dynasty, and was gradually detached from the people and real life. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic of China, the innovative Peking Opera of the "Sea School" rose in Shanghai. Its earliest representative, Wang Xiaonong, out of his dissatisfaction with the Qing government's mediocrity and corruption, humiliation and pandering to foreign countries, wrote and performed new plays such as The Party Monument, Weeping at the Temple of the Ancestors, and Scolding Yanluo, which attacked the current political situation, propagandized patriotism, and conveyed his deep sense of concern for the country and the people, as well as his own voice, drawing on the lengths of the two schools of thought of Wang Guifen and Sun Juxian, and creating a new accent of strong and mournful, strong and forceful words. After the Xinhai Revolution, he also presided over the Second Drama Improvement Society to carry out the opera improvement movement. Under the revelation of the opera improvement movement and "civilized opera", Shanghai's Xia Yuexan, Xia Yueyun and Pan Yueqiao also staged new patriotic anti-imperialist and revolutionary plays such as "Pan Martyrs Throwing Himself into the Sea" and "Negroes Appealing for Heaven", which further shaped the Peking Opera of the Hai School. In the early years of the Republic of China, opera improvement activities promoted the connection between the art of opera and social reality and people's lives; many new plays exposed the darkness of society to varying degrees and expressed the people's desire to free themselves from the feudal yoke; and some useful innovations were made in the singing, performance, stage equipment, costumes and other aspects. Zhou Xinfang, who succeeded him, carried forward the spirit of reform of the "Shanghai School of Peking Opera" and staged new fashionable plays such as "Song Jiaoren" before and after the May Fourth Incident.

Before and after the May Fourth Movement, Mei Lanfang and others made outstanding achievements in innovation and reform of Peking Opera. Mei Lanfang, together with Wang Yaoqing and others, blended the strengths of Qingyi, Hua Dan and Dagger Horse Dan, gathered singing, acting, reciting and playing in one body, and created the line of "Flower Shirt", which made the art of Peking Opera Dan role perfect. In the Xinhai Revolution, he staged the fashion Peking Opera with democratic tendency such as "A Wisp of Hemp" and "Deng Xiagou", as well as the new costume plays such as "The Heavenly Maiden Scatters Flowers" and "The God of Luoshen", etc.; in the 1930s, he staged "Mulan in the Army", "Hate in Life and Death", "The Soldiers of Resistance to the Jin Dynasty", etc., which extolled the national moral integrity and were full of patriotic enthusiasm; in terms of the singing voice, he also carried out the creation of new development, and the singing voice is heavy, smooth and brittle with a sweetness and moistness, wide and round, with a graceful and elegant character. He also made new developments and creations in the singing style, which was heavy and smooth, brittle and sweet, wide and round, and had a graceful and luxurious style, which was known as the "Mei School"; in addition, he also carried out useful reforms on the body performance and accompaniment orchestra of Peking Opera and went to the U.S.S.R. and the Soviet Union for performances in 1928 and 1935, respectively, which was the first person who made the Peking Opera win the international reputation. Mei Lanfang deserves to be recognized as the master who pushed the art of Peking Opera to a higher peak after Tan Xinpei, whose masterpieces also include The Cosmic Front, The Drunkenness of the Concubine, and Farewell My Concubine. On the basis of the traditional five-tone scale, the seven-tone scale system is also gradually formed and developed

The seven-tone scale in ancient China: Gong, Shang, Jiao, Changwei, Hui, Fei, Changgong, that is, modern music C, D, E, F, G, A, B. In the Zhou Dynasty, there were already seven-tone scales and twelve rhythms. In the 6th century B.C., King Jing of Zhou (544-520 B.C.) asked a music official, Lingzhoujiu, what the seven-tone scale was and what the twelve rhythms were. In his answer, he cited the names of the Gong, Shang, Jiao, Wei, Wei, Yu, and Gong, and explained the relationship between each scale and the twelve rhythms; he also pushed forward the emergence of the seven-tone scale to the time when King Wu of the Zhou Dynasty replaced the Zhou Emperor (1O66 B.C.E.).

China's seven-tone scale is mainly based on the Ya music and Yan music.

Ya music generally refers to the music used in court rituals and ceremonies. It originated from the Zhou dynasty's rites and music degrees, and was used in the suburban society [sacrificing to heaven and earth], the ancestral temple [sacrificing to ancestors], the court rituals [court meetings, yanjian, guests, etc.], the shooting townships [rulers' banquets to the representatives of the populace], and the military ceremonies, etc. In later times, it was used to worship the sages. The activities of the later generations of the Zhou dynasty for the worship of the ancestors [e.g., sacrifices to Tai Bo and Kong] also imitated and applied the music of the suburban community and the ancestral temples. The ritual and music system of the Zhou Dynasty had strict hierarchical regulations on the ceremonies and repertoire for the different occasions mentioned above. The six pieces of music, which are said to have been made for the generations from the Yellow Emperor to King Wu of the Zhou Dynasty, were used for sacrificial ceremonies and major feasts personally presided over by the Son of Heaven and a few princes and lords, and were regarded by Confucianism in later times as the highest model of elegant music.

The Scales of Elegant Music: (also known as the Ancient Scale, the Old Scale, or the Traditional Scale)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Gong, Shang, Horns, Changing to Leung, Leung, Feather, Changing to Gong