Interpretation of "Harmony" in Xi Shan Qin Kuang

"West Mountain Qin Qing" was written by Xu Shangying, an ancient violinist in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties. It is a monograph on guqin music. This book concentrates the essence of Qin theory in past dynasties, and has an important position and theoretical research value in the history of China's music aesthetics. This is a very important musical work.

This book puts forward 24 aesthetic categories of guqin performance art on the basis of summarizing the previous Qin theory, that is, the so-called "twenty-four situations" and "environment" refer to the status of the piano, which means the status, taste and environment of the piano. It takes care of the whole material and mental state of the piano, including voice, timbre, artistic conception, psychology, taste, personality and manners.

These 24 conditions are: harmony, quietness, clarity, distance, antiquity, elegance, elegance, beauty, brightness, mining, cleanliness, smoothness, roundness, firmness, macro, fineness, smoothness, health, lightness, heaviness, delay and speed.

Every situation is an aesthetic thought extracted from the practice of guqin performance, which constitutes the development of guqin music form with "clear, subtle, light and far" as the main aesthetic concept since the Qing Dynasty. The spirit that runs through Xu Shangying's Twenty-four Situations is Confucianism and Taoism in China's traditional culture. Confucianism and Taoism are the two pillars of China's philosophy and the spiritual pillars of Guqin music in China's traditional art.

"The Land of Qin in the Western Hills" begins with "Harmony". "Looking back on the past, the mind is the most sacred, and the heart is connected with nature. Virtue helps the gods to manage the temperament of the whole body to manage the temperament of the world, so the first thing to make a piano is harmony." The heart of ancient saints is naturally connected with heaven and earth, and virtue can unite God and man. In order to adjust their own temperament, and then adjust the temperament of the world, Qin was created. For Qin, the most important thing is "harmony"

Why did Xu Shangying put "harmony" at the top of 24 situations, and wrote the most ink? Because "harmony" is the overall situation in the twenty-four piano situations, it is no exaggeration to say that all other situations must be based on it and respected with it as the leader.

Many situations in Xi Shan Qin Kuang are interrelated and seemingly contradictory, but in fact they are dialectical unity. Using "harmony" to guide various situations is to seek unity in contradictions. Harmony is the first aesthetic category in China's ancient music theory. In Archaean, "Heaven and Man are United", Confucius advocated the "golden mean" and pursued the elegance of justice and peace. In Song Dynasty, Fan Zhongyan thought that the way of neutralization was "to be quiet and clear, and to be harmonious and far away", which shows that Guqin music has always been based on the aesthetic principle of righteousness and harmony.

"Harmony" in Xi Shan Qin Kuang has four parts, namely, harmony of sound, harmony of string, harmony of meaning and harmony of meaning.

1, sounds and

"At the beginning of harmony, you should tune the strings and follow the emblem to argue and hear."

It can be seen from this passage that the most basic search for "harmony" begins with listening. First of all, we should shout a harmonious voice with the right tone. How to shout out a harmonious voice? One is to practice your fingers, the other is to listen with your ears, and to explore and feel the harmonious sound by practicing your ear strength.

2. chord sum

Chord harmony includes scattered harmony, pressure harmony, universal harmony and universal coherence.

Dispersion and harmony are the best, rigidity and softness are combined, and gains and losses add up. This is the highest state of chord harmony.

Press harmony for the second time, press left and stroke right, and adjust the pitch of each string on the Nine Emblems and Ten Emblems to make it correspond to the music rhythm, so that the pitch of each string coincides with the emblem position.

Pan-harmony: you can't press the quasi-emblem, you can only approach the harmony, not the real harmony, and you must use the overtone to distinguish and adjust it.

Harmonic overtones: If the overtones can't reach the harmony, then use the chords with pressure to cross-reference one by one, so that the timbre of each string can achieve harmony and perfection, and the sound emitted by this string can truly achieve "harmony".

Step 3 tie up

There are three things in the article: "I sum: the sum of string and reference, the sum of reference and sound, the sum of sound and meaning, and." Here, the author writes "harmony", which shows that only when these three states are harmonious can the highest state of harmony be achieved.

These three "combinations" should be gradual in turn. First, practice fingering skills to achieve the combination of chords and fingers, and often practice to achieve that the fingers are particularly seamless on the strings and cannot be separated from the strings.

Then it refers to harmony. First of all, we should understand the structure and rhythm of the music, and even practice the sound deeply and feel the charm repeatedly, so as to achieve the harmony between fingers and voice when playing.

Finally, the harmony between sound and meaning is realized. In the expression of music, meaning should precede the expression of sound. In actual performance, intention must guide the sound, so as to achieve harmony between sound and meaning. If you aim at the mountains, the piano will present a majestic mountain shadow, which means running water. Then the sound of the piano will flow like the water of the ocean, caressing the piano to the depths of interest, with flowers in winter and snow in summer. This is the holy land of "harmony".

4. Harmony between mind and nature

In the "harmony situation", I finally talked about "harmony in my heart". "I am fascinated, I am so happy, I know my heart and hands, and I can't speak for myself." It's too loud to hear clearly, and the ancient road is hard to recover. I'm not temperament, but I think it's skill. "The key to harmony lies in the cultivation of temperament. We should treat the piano with a fair and peaceful temperament, so as to enter the realm of "harmony", but we should only regard these as technical matters, and the piano track will gradually lose over time.

Harmony plays a very important role in China's music aesthetics, and it also starts with harmony in Xi Shan Qin Pu, which runs through the whole text. In China's ancient thought and literature category system, harmony has the status of meta-category, that is, everything in the universe and the world is harmonious. We take the piano as a Taoist instrument, slowly cultivate our body and mind, and strive to achieve harmony among the piano, people and music.