Development history of national vocal music

China is a country with an ancient culture, and many legends about music have been circulating in China since ancient times. The origin of the development of national vocal music art in China can be traced back to ancient times. The development of social economy has promoted the germination of culture and art. The early vocal music art is often related to religion and witchcraft, but its content reflects real life. For example, the vocal music "Playing Songs" during the Five Emperors' period: "Breaking bamboo and continuing bamboo, flying soil and chasing meat." The lyrics are only eight words, but they reflect the real life scene of ancient people preying. Although a complete vocal art form has not been formed in ancient times, music has sprouted. With the development of society, the reform of social system and the improvement of people's living standards, music forms have also developed by leaps and bounds. By the Zhou and Shang Dynasties, large-scale music and dances had been produced, such as Daxia and Desert. From primitive society to slave society and then to feudal society, the bud of music gradually developed and formed, and a group of professional singers specializing in singing appeared. The forms of songs in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period are more diverse. In addition to the Book of Songs composed of a large number of northern folk songs handed down from generation to generation, there are also nine songs sung by folk in southern Chu and Chu Ci written by Qu Yuan. At the same time, Xunzi's Xiang Cheng Pian is also the originator of China's rap music.

After the Qin Dynasty unified China, a music center with the Han nationality as the main body gradually formed in the Central Plains. In order to consolidate the rule of political thought, the Han Dynasty imperial court set up a special music institution-Yuefu, which learned about the dynamics of local people by collecting and recording folk songs, and at the same time processed Yuefu folk songs for their entertainment. As a result, the folk singing art has become professional, and a large number of folk songs have been handed down. The development law of art is always from simple to complex, and musicians are constantly pursuing more changes in their forms of expression. Therefore, with the processing and arrangement of Yuefu folk songs, the northern folk rap music Song Xianghe also evolved into Xianghe Daqu, and the Han Dynasty became the first heyday in the history of music development in China.

The development and construction of music culture needs a unified and relatively peaceful historical environment. Sui and Tang Dynasties were a period of political, economic and cultural prosperity in the history of China. The ruler's love for art promoted the rapid development of national vocal music art, and the large-scale song and dance form that appeared in the Tang Dynasty was called "Daqu of the Tang Dynasty", which greatly enriched the musical expression forms. Among them, the music and vocal art in the left and the inner parts have reached a considerable height. During this period, professional music education institutions appeared, such as Liyuan, which also played a positive role in promoting the development of national vocal music art in Tang Dynasty.

"Strong women in business do not know how to hate the country, but still sing backyard flowers across the bank." The change of dynasties did not weaken the law of music development. The music culture of the Song Dynasty inherited the rich and colorful traditional arts such as the folk songs of Han Yuefu and Tang Daqu, and made new progress in street poetry, Quyi, Zhu Gong tune and Song Zaju, especially in the development of lyrics and songs. With the development of the city, rap music has a richer expressive force in the performances of song halls and washe goulan. The development of culture and art in Yuan Dynasty is a new peak of culture and art in China ... The development of commercial economy, the prosperity of commodity economy and the improvement of living standards make people have new requirements for cultural life. The preference of the citizen class greatly promoted the development of the art of Yuan Zaju. During this period, many theoretical works about singing also appeared.

The opera music of Ming and Qing dynasties flourished on the basis of the musical remains of the previous generation and became the mainstream of national vocal music art at that time. Because China has a vast territory, and there are different operas with different voices in different regions, various forms of opera have been developed, from the musical style of opera to the formal structure of drama, with new development. Kunqu Opera, Peking Opera and other representative plays have strict requirements on the pronunciation of lyrics in order to achieve the exquisite aesthetic feeling of close combination of sound and rhyme. Such strict vocal training has trained a large number of outstanding vocal talents for China's vocal art.

Hegel mentioned in Aesthetics: "All arts are more or less national, and they are closely related to a nation's natural endowment." The "natural endowment of a nation" referred to here is actually the spiritual characteristics of a nation's long-term cultural accumulation. For thousands of years, our ancestors created colorful and different styles of vocal music, and also created a variety of national vocal music singing methods. Folk song singing, opera singing and Quyi singing in traditional national vocal music art all have their own style characteristics. They are the treasures of our national music culture and the cornerstone of our national vocal music art building. The art of national vocal music has a wide range of mass, so the singing methods are mostly simple, natural, casual and simple. However, since ancient times, there is a lack of practical knowledge of human physiology and training, and a lack of practical grasp of human physiological functions in the education and training of singing talents in China. Therefore, due to the limitations of social and cultural development, these primitive national vocal music singing methods have not been summarized and sorted out, making them systematic and scientific. They have been passed down from mouth to mouth by folk artists, and they are in a state of natural circulation and self-destruction. 1840 The Opium War ended China's feudal society of more than 2,000 years and reduced China to a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society. 1898 The Reform Movement established new schools and offered singing classes. With the cultural invasion of western music, new music movements and school songs have emerged. At that time, the school music songs were basically the lyrics of western and Japanese songs, and only a few were new songs, such as Shen Xingong's Yellow River and Li Shutong's Spring outing.

After the May 4th Movement, under the impetus of the New Culture Movement, some groups composed of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois intellectuals engaged in professional music creation appeared. China's early new musicians absorbed and used western music culture for reference, and combined it with China's inherent national music tradition to create a number of artistic songs and school songs. The music works of this period not only reflected the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal spirit of the times, but also represented the progressive requirements of the people. Xiao's "Problems" and "Commemorating the May 4th National Anthem" have great influence. In addition to being young, there are many outstanding musicians who have returned from studying abroad. They are no longer satisfied with the creation of school songs or single-melody songs, and begin to boldly try to create and develop China art songs by using harmony composition techniques and combining traditional phonological rules. Zhao Yuanren's "Teach me how not to think about him" is called &; The most representative works of China' s artistic songs in the $ TERM era have a strong national flavor.

From the early 1930s to the mid-1940s, the creation of China's artistic songs flourished. Composers began to try in many ways in the writing of national style, resulting in a variety of artistic techniques and personality characteristics. On the one hand, Huang Zi, Zhu Qing and other musicians, supported by the idea of "art for art's sake" at that time, created a number of artistic songs with smooth and simple tunes, delicate and rich harmony, meticulous combination of poetic rhythm and melody, and distinctive national style. These works are full of emotion, sometimes optimistic and clear, sometimes sentimental, and the tunes are permeated with the sensitivity and drift of the alternation of old and new times, which shows the sense of hardship of intellectuals and young students before the changes of the times. Huang Zi's "Three Wishes for Roses" and Zhu Qing's "I Live at the Head of the Yangtze River" and other artistic songs have also played and improved the artistic expression of piano accompaniment. On the other hand, under the background of the Anti-Japanese War and the war, revolutionary musicians such as Nie Er and Xian Xinghai created a number of songs full of the sense of the times and nationality, which profoundly reflected the aspirations of the working people at that time. For example, Nie Er's "The Singing Girl under the Iron Shoes" and Xian Xinghai's "Singing at Midnight" are all excellent works with strong national style. At the same time, due to social unrest, the theme of songs in this period is relatively wide, and a large number of vocal works full of the sense of the times, such as praising patriots, praising nature, reflecting inner anguish and parting feelings, have appeared.

The rise of art songs in China has promoted the prosperity of vocal performance. Since $ TERM, a group of singers who have returned from studying abroad and students who have graduated from domestic music art schools, such as An, Ying Shangneng, Shi Yikui, Zhou Xiaoyan and He Lang, have held solo concerts in some big cities in China, spread the art of vocal music and started early vocal music education, which not only created favorable conditions for the development of professional music education in China, but also trained a large number of singers and vocal music educators.

In the special historical stage of modern semi-feudal and semi-colonial society, the Japanese invaders invaded, warlords scuffled, and the country was at a critical juncture, but folk vocal music art was still spread and developed among ordinary people in urban and rural areas. During this period, many excellent folk songs were produced, which mainly reflected the theme of people's longing for freedom and happiness, opposing war, loving life and praising love. From the late 1940s to the liberation of New China, China made bold attempts in how to inherit and carry forward the national cultural heritage and how to root in the national folk tones, and made remarkable achievements. Artists have collected and adapted a large number of outstanding folk songs in the new period and transformed them into China's national harmony. According to the requirements of piano accompaniment of art songs, piano accompaniment with artistic expression and special effects is matched to integrate melody and harmony, singing and piano accompaniment. This not only enhances the artistic appeal of these folk songs, but also endows them with new artistic life and value. Ding Shande's mayila, Sichuan folk song When will the Sophora flowers bloom, Li Haiying's Ga 'e Lee Tae, Tatar folk songs under the silvery moonlight, Sang Tong's Gadamer, Wu Zuqiang's Swallow, the rising sun on the grassland and the song of herding horses, etc. , are songs belonging to our national style. Because of its wide range and great emotional changes, it is very suitable for vocal music skills, has the taste of artistic songs and certain social influence, and is still widely used in our vocal music teaching.

Generally speaking, China's professional vocal music was still in its infancy in the first half of the 20th century. The tradition of Bel Canto in Europe and America was introduced into China, and a group of musicians began to learn vocal art according to the Bel Canto model, while trying to nationalize their own artistic songs. The anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolutionary movement and the climax of patriotism and resistance to Japan injected vitality into China's vocal music activities. Vocal music activities are integrated with the fate of the motherland and the voice of the people, which has trained many talents and produced a large number of excellent works.

After the founding of New China, the new era and the socialist construction in full swing inspired musicians' creative inspiration. They tried to absorb the rich nutrition of national music, groped for progress on the road of learning from western composition techniques and exploring the nationalization style of their works, and actively explored the theme and content. The works created in this period have distinctive national characteristics and rich flavor of life, which greatly promoted the development and perfection of vocal music singing art. If the previous national vocal music was still in its infancy, then the late 1950s and early 1960s were the period when China's national singing began to become professional. After the founding of New China, under the guidance of the party's literary policy of "letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend", some national singers and artists joined the national professional literary and art groups, and those with a certain cultural foundation were selected and sent to the Conservatory of Music for further study. In this way, the original national singing method has changed from a casual oral teaching to a period of refining, processing and sorting out the essence of traditional national music, and then conducting scientific and systematic professional training. Subsequently, national vocal music departments and national music research institutions were established in China's higher music colleges. At that time, the academic atmosphere of vocal music was extremely active, and many professionals in literary and art groups and music colleges launched a "foreign struggle" between inheriting national traditions and learning western Bel Canto. As a result of the debate, the development of vocal music art was promoted, and a number of national singers with scientific vocal methods emerged. Their singing is based on the traditional folk singing method, drawing lessons from and using the western Bel Canto singing method, and maintaining a strong national style. Such as, Guo and Cai. They learn from others in their constant singing, creating new singing methods for the new China national vocal music in the new period.

The ten-year catastrophe of the "Cultural Revolution" swept all cultures and arts, and the "model opera" has replaced the art of singing. The standard for measuring the art of vocal music is no longer beautiful lyricism or emotional expression. "Width, thickness and brightness" are the only mandatory criteria for judging "beauty". This rude violation of scientific requirements has hurt and stifled many outstanding talents, dealt a devastating blow to the vocal music art and vocal music art education just achieved in China, and plunged the newly prosperous national vocal music cause into the abyss. However, under Premier Zhou's earnest concern for art, there are still many musicians who have never given up their pursuit of music creation and never stopped their idea of creating artistic songs. Their artistic sparks originated from the bottom of my heart and spread all over the country, inspiring thousands of families and every beating heart. From the late 1960s to the 1970s, there were still some excellent songs in China, such as "The Lumberjack's Song", "I Love the Blue Ocean" and "Ode to Beijing". On the basis of national tones, these songs create a melody that is both solemn and majestic, but also affectionate and delicate. His artistic image is brilliant, his writing style is concise and his feelings are strong, which can be called a classic in the Cultural Revolution.

After the downfall of the Gang of Four, the literary stage of the motherland ushered in a new era of letting a hundred flowers blossom. New literary and art workers, full of pent-up passion for many years, enthusiastically devoted themselves to literary creation and performance, and immediately created a large number of inspiring and comfortable artistic songs such as Toast, Spring in Frontier fortress and so on. These excellent songs were sung by excellent singers on the stage, which expressed the people's cheering mood all over the country.

In the new period of socialist construction since the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, with the tide of reform and opening up, the prosperity of building Socialism with Chinese characteristics and the increase of foreign cultural exchanges, China's cultural and artistic undertakings are also constantly changing and developing. The call of the Party and the country to carry forward the Chinese national culture and advocate serious and elegant art has pointed out the direction for the development of China's national vocal music art, added impetus, and created a good environment ... The vast number of literary and art educators have freed themselves from ideological barriers and spiritual shackles, demonstrated a new situation of China's national singing art through foreign exchange and further study and improvement, and ushered in a colorful new era spring. In this period, the national vocal music art highlighted the flavor of the times in terms of the difficulty and depth of creation, the understanding and skills of singing voice, the personality, demeanor and artistic expression of singing works, which added and developed the national color and stepped onto a new level. In vocal music performance and teaching, groups of internationally renowned vocal music teachers and world-class singers came to China to pass on classics and send treasures, which created good external conditions for vocal music teaching in China. Through exchanges, visits and studies with foreign experts, and through their own research efforts, a number of vocal educators, such as Shen Xiang, Zhou Xiaoyan and Guo Shuzhen, have gradually emerged in various conservatories and departments of music in China. These vocal music educators have a deeper understanding of the technical requirements, singing styles, aesthetic principles and teaching theories of the European Bel Canto School, especially the requirements and effects of vocal music skill training, which has opened up new ideas for vocal music teaching in China and greatly improved the quality of vocal music teaching in China. On the other hand, while learning from European vocal music technology, how to inherit and carry forward China's national cultural heritage, develop and improve China's national vocal music, and speed up the study of national vocal music theory and teaching theory has also become a common concern of vocal music educators. In the constant exploration and practice of vocal artists, the national vocal music singing in China today inherits the traditional artistic treasures of China, while boldly and fully absorbing the essence of Bel Canto, respecting scientific voice and innovating regularly; On the principle of maintaining our national language, national style and national spirit, we have made a bold attempt to sound the high-pitched area. After a long period of slow development, China national vocal music singing is running forward with a brand-new attitude. To sum up, we can see that the art of national vocal music has gone through the stage from the natural circulation of traditional vocal music to the stage of professional arrangement of traditional vocal music, and finally developed into the stage of combining traditional vocal music with western vocal music, during which the style evolution process is closely related to the social and cultural background. Different historical and cultural conditions will produce different forms and styles of national vocal music art. In the new period, China's national vocal music singing art is concerned and valued by the party and the state, and is welcomed and loved by the people. With the progress of the times, it has become the direction of our generation to study and explore the development of national vocal music singing art, create a new chapter in national vocal music singing art and establish our national vocal music singing art system.

Any successful national vocal music art must have three basic elements: distinctive national style, scientific technical methods and strong flavor of the times. Singers must be deeply rooted in the fertile soil of their own country and national music, and the songs they sing will have strong national style, national temperament and national characteristics. We are very different from western cultural traditions, such as different social systems, lifestyles and aesthetic requirements, different ways of expressing thoughts and feelings, and especially greater differences in language. These differences will inevitably make the style and temperament of singing art different. When drawing lessons from the useful things in western vocal music art and creating and developing our national vocal music singing art, we must first inherit and carry forward our excellent national vocal music singing art tradition, because it comes from the people and has a deep foundation among the masses. Only by adhering to the national style and color temperament, absorbing the essence of foreign music art, and enriching and enriching China's national vocal music singing art, can China's national vocal music singing art always have strong national style and national characteristics.

Great changes in the new era have brought new atmosphere to all aspects of society. The art of singing is the art of expressing with sound, and it is the expression of the singer's emotional response and subjective feelings to real life. Singers living in the new era must express the great changes and feelings of the times and society strongly and clearly through singing skills. That is to say, while maintaining the national traditional style of national vocal music singing art, it fully expresses the agitation feelings endowed by real life and the times, so that singing really has a distinctive flavor of the times and a strong national color.