What are the characteristics of the guzheng in Henan?

From the text recorded in the Records of the Grand Historian and the Book of Han, the guzheng has been quite commonly developed in the Qin and Han Dynasties. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, Emperor Guangwu built the capital of Luoyang, and the Northern Song Dynasty built the capital of Bianliang (i.e., Kaifeng today), both in Henan Province, and in this area has long been popular with the folk music of "Zheng Wei Voice", the Qin zheng flowed into Henan Province with the relocation of the capital and the local folk music of "Zheng Wei Voice" was fused and developed into a famous Chinese zheng in later times. The Qin zheng came to Henan with the relocation of the capital, and fused with the local folk music "Zheng Wei Voice" to become the famous Zhongzhou ancient tune. A big feature of the performance of the Henan zheng is that the right hand starts from the place close to the zither code, and plays it in a flowing way to the place close to "Yue Shan", while the left hand makes a big vibration, which makes the music performance very dramatic and effective. In the Henan zheng, this technique is called the "traveling swing". The traditional use of the zheng can be summarized in a poem passed down from folklore: the name finger is tied to the stake and the four fingers are hanging,

the hook is shaken, the picking set and the strings are lightly manipulated,

knowing that there is no other way to use the left hand,

the pressing of the vibrating hand and the kneading hand are at ease.

Particularly in the left hand of the slippery press (the left hand presses to the pitch, slightly back a little when playing the string, meet the sound quickly sliding up, Min Yue no trace), small tremolo (tremolo fine tight), slippery tremolo (edge edge tremolo), big tremolo (tremolo broad, moving and moving with feeling) and other strokes are the most distinctive. In the use of fingering, whether it is a long shake of the beads, staggered ticking, or the poignant and desperate go chanting, sad and bleak heavy trembling, and tunes and tunes as one, tracing the mood, delineation of the subtle. For example, in the song "Playing Wild Geese", the use of various fingerings is very expressive, and it combines the three characteristics of narration, object and lyricism in one, which is another characteristic of the Henan zheng. The scale of Henan zheng is characterized by many changes and fewer clear horns, close to the three-point loss and gain law of the seven ancient scales, but the two changes in pitch are not absolutely unchanged, and they are often pressed higher than the palace and levies, which can be said to be "seven tones and six laws to serve the five tones"; the tunes of Henan zheng are very strong in singing, and there are a lot of big jumps in the melody in the fourth, fifth, and sixth degrees, and they can be seen in the freshness and fluency in the staccato and majesty of the melody. The zheng has a strong singing character, with many big jumps in the fourth, fifth and sixth degree in the melody, which is fresh and smooth, and the frequent use of the upper and lower slides of the major second and minor third degree is especially suitable for the resonant and subdued tones of the Zhongzhou zheng, which makes the zheng music have a simple and pure flavor.

In terms of playing style, no matter whether it is slow or fast, and no matter whether it is joyful or sorrowful, the zheng does not intentionally pursue a clear, elegant and delicate style, but is characterized by its richness and simplicity, and by its deep inner generosity and impassionedness. In Fu Xuan's "Zheng Fugue. In Fu Xuan's "Zheng Fu. Preface", the evaluation of Henan zheng music is "high and low, wonderful skills are difficult to work".

The repertoire of Henan zheng comes directly from folk rap music and opera music. Henan zither is a folk rap music with a long history, which declined after the Qing Dynasty, only Nanyang area is still very prosperous, so it is also called Nanyang drum zither. Its important parts are the "plate song" with lyrics and the purely instrumental "board head song". The zheng is one of the important accompanying instruments, and at the same time, it is also played independently from the rap. The representative repertoire of the zheng school in Henan is almost without exception the board-head songs and plate songs of Henan tunes. In the past, when artists met each other, they used to play a piece of plate-top tune to meet their soulmates, and the story of Bo Ya and Zhong Ziqi was renamed as "High Mountains and Flowing Water" (高山流水). Plate-top tunes are evolved from drums, and most of them are relatively short, fresh, lively, and unique, such as "Scissors Cutting Flowers" (剪剪花), "Full Boat" (满舟), "Folding Drops" (叠落), and so on. But there are also "dock" like more than three hundred boards of the big song.

Banhouqu is an ensemble piece played with strings, and at the same time, it is also a solo piece of zheng, pipa, and sanxian, which is very similar to the "butqu" of the Han and Wei phase and music. Folk performance, mostly in the drums before the song ensemble or solo play one or two songs, tuning the strings and live fingers, called the opening or the stage; or in the singing section, play a song, used to change the atmosphere. In the last half-century, the big tune tends to decline, the board head of the song often appear in the form of a solo.

The traditional repertoire of the guzheng in Henan is often called "Zhongzhou ancient tunes" or "Zhongzhou ancient songs", such as "Crying Zhou Yu", "Sighing Yan Hui" and "Su Wu's Homesickness", etc. In Henan tunes, some of the short tunes are played by the guzheng, and some of the short tunes are played by the guzheng. In the process of passing down the Henan Quzi, some short songs have gradually formed a form of "Minor Key Quzi" which can be performed on the stage with the division of roles, and today it has become a very famous type of opera, "Henan Qu Opera". The original minor key tune was relatively simple, but later, the melody developed; the zheng was important in the accompaniment, and gradually had its own personality in the performance, the combination of the two. The combination of the two formed its unique beauty in music.

Henan Guzheng's score collection, Weihui Fu Wang Huangshi in the Republic of China in the ninth year (A.D. 1920) publication of the "Drum Tune of Zhongzhou" lithographic book, the work of the foot score, including the "world the same" that is, "High Mountains and Flowing Water") "cry Zhou'", "stacked fall "The music of the drum tunes was published in a stone-printed edition. In the 1920s, Wei Ziyou compiled the manuscript of Zhongzhou Guzong (Ancient Tunes of Zhongzhou), which was a work-rule score, not printed but widely copied, and contained dozens of tunes such as "The World's Greatest Generation" and "Guan Suo". Wang Shenwu published "Guzheng Solo Songs" (Liu Jiagui's notation, Henan People's Publishing House) in 1958, with thirty-seven pieces of plate head music and fourteen pieces of songboards. Cao Dongfu's score was once organized as "Selected Zither Songs", and in 1981, Cao Dongfu's Zither Songs (edited by Cao Yong'an and Li Bian) was published by People's Music Publishing House, with a brief score, containing twenty-two board-head tunes and eight adapted and composed tunes. In 1986, Mr. Cao published Zhongzhou Guzheng Songs Anthology (Chinese Music Supplement), which contains twenty pieces of music and twenty pieces of plate head music***.