Details of Dunhuang sheet music for ancient music of Dunhuang

The Dunhuang sheet music is a pipa accompaniment score for secular song and dance music of the Tang Dynasty. ***There are 25 pieces of music, the names of which are: "Pink Fiddle", "Pouring Cups of Music", "Rush Quiz", "Changsha Woman's Guide", "Spreading Gold Sand", "Yizhou", "Water Drums", etc. The notation used is the so-called Banquet Music Minus Character Score, which is similar to the shape of the lute. The symbols used for notation are the so-called Banquet Music Minus Characters, which are similar to Japanese kana. For example: one, human, work, only, seven, children, work, ten, on, etc.; next to the score characters, there are several symbols that may indicate the value of time or sentence breaks. The back of this batch of sheet music was copied with scriptures, and the experts, based on the handwriting and the original volume, determined that this was done to copy the scriptures, and three sheets of music copied by different people at different times were randomly glued together.

From the 1930s of this century, the earliest committed to the study of Dunhuang ancient genealogy interpretation, is the Japanese Lin Qian San, followed by Chinese Ren Er Bei, Yang Yin Liu, Rao Zongyi, Zhang Shibin and so on. They basically solved the problem of the pitch of genealogical characters through painstaking research work.

In the early 1980s, Ye Dong published an article entitled "Research on Dunhuang Scores," and translated 25 pieces of music into performance recordings based on his own research, which aroused strong reactions at home and abroad. Since then, a group of domestic researchers, including Chen Yingshi, He Changlin, Guan Yewei, and Xi Zhenguan, have risen to prominence, and the academic air has been unprecedentedly active. Chen Yingshi's new translation of the score was performed by the Shanghai Ancient Orchestra in 1988. Xi Zhenguan's new translation was recorded in 1992 and released at home and abroad. Each of their translations has made progress on the basis of their predecessors.

Xi's translation is accompanied by recordings of poems from the Tang Dynasty, which tell us more directly that Tang Dynasty songs are elegant and simple, with a variety of styles and unique tones. For example, the sixth "urgent tune" and the ninth "urgent tune" are martial songs full of masculinity; the twelfth "pouring cups of music" and affectionate, simple and sincere. The fifteenth song "slow tune heart matter son" is euphemistic and affectionate. The sixteenth song "slow song Yi Zhou" is long and poignant. The 18th song "Water Drums", which is arranged for female chorus, is solemn and dignified. The twenty-second song, "Spreading Gold Sand," seems to have a Zen-like feeling.