"Erquan Yingyue" is an erhu song composed by Ah Bing, a famous folk erhu player in China. Since its inception, the song has not only been widely disseminated in the form of erhu solos, but also adapted into various instrumental pieces, which are well-known at home and abroad for its beautiful lyrical melody and deeply touching musical connotations.
Ah Bing, formerly known as Hua Yanjun, worked as a Taoist monk in his childhood, worked as a drummer in his youth, and became blind in middle age with eye diseases and had no money to treat, and has since been living on the streets and relying on selling art to make a living. Forced by his livelihood and love of music, he studied hard, kept improving, and widely extracted the essence of folk music, resulting in the omnipotence of blowing, playing and singing, and composing and performing more than 270 folk songs in his lifetime. There are six extant erhu songs, "Erquan Yingyue", "Listening to Pine", "Cold Spring Wind Song", and pipa songs "Big Waves And Sands", "Dragon Boat", and "Zhaojun Out of the Plug".
"Two Springs Reflecting the Moon" is the best and most widely circulated of ah Bing's musical works. The title of this song comes from the Huishan Spring in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, which was rated as the "Second Spring under the Heavens" because it was boiled and tasted by Lu Yu, the "tea god" of the Tang Dynasty. Before and after Ah Bing's blindness, he often came here to linger, and his heart was full of love for natural landscapes, but he felt that the moon was cold and the spring water was cold. So he borrowed the scenery lyrically, melted into the scene, poured out the bitterness, and then named it "Two Springs Reflecting the Moon".
The Collected Works of Ah Bing describes Ah Bing and his works this way: "After he went blind in both eyes... He uses musical images to depict the beautiful scenery he imagined he had witnessed in the past," but what he felt at the time was the darkness around him, which made him always exude a sentimental and desolate mood in the beautiful melody."
It should be said that the introduction of "Ah Bing's Song Collection" is quite accurate, but I think they are only half accurate, and half of them have not been able to say it, that is, the incomparable resentment of social reality and the uncompromising righteousness of the criminal and evil forces contained in "Erquan Yingyue"!
Imagine struggling and suffering in darkness and hardship for decades, tasting the bitterness and bitterness of the world. Although he lived like a year in the midst of hunger and cold, he was not poor in his ambitions, and in the face of bullying by evil forces, he never bowed to the knees of a slave, and always resolutely fought with the oppressed masses.
He Luting once commented on this famous song: "The elegant name of "Erquan Yingyue" is actually contradictory to his music. Rather than saying that the music depicts the scenery of the second spring and the moon, it is more profoundly expressive of the blind Man Ah Bing's own painful life. "Perhaps the above two points are the reasons why "Two Springs reflecting the Moon" can be widely circulated and the deep charm of touching!
When Ah Bing created "Two Springs Reflecting the Moon", he was already blind in both eyes. We can imagine how difficult it is for a blind man who is blind to live without a livelihood and has to walk the streets and alleys to play and sell songs...
Ah Bing had to go to the tea house every morning to collect various social news, come back to compose lyrics and music, and then sing in front of the tea house in the afternoon; at night, he would take to the streets and play music songs while walking to attract listeners and win coins for a day...
Perhaps it is the non-stop creation and performance caused by this hardship and hardship that has prompted the rapid improvement of Ah Bing's piano skills. It is said that Ah Bing's piano skills at that time were unparalleled, he could put the pipa on the top of his head and play it, and he could also use erhu to imitate the voices of men, women and children, sighing, laughing, and the sound of chickens and dogs.
Imagine such a superb piano skill, coupled with his infinite yearning for beautiful things and the resentment and bitterness that he can't desire, as well as his silent resentment and resistance to the ugly phenomenon of society, Ah Bing's ability to create such a world-class music as "Two Springs reflecting the moon" is a natural thing.
Ah Bing's friend Lu Xu once described the scene when Ah Bing played "Two Springs Reflecting the Moon": "The snow drifts down like goose feathers, and the park opposite the door is piled up with rubble and jade. The sound of desolate and mournful erhu came from the street...
I saw a disheveled old woman, holding a blind man with a small bamboo pole, coming from east to west on park road. In the dim light, I vaguely recognized Ah Bing and his wife. Ah Bing, with a small bamboo pole between his right flank and a pipa on his back, hung erhu on his left shoulder, whimpering and pulling, making a miserable sound in the snow of madness. ”
Can we imagine that without such unbearable suffering that accompanies Ah Bing all the time, he would have been able to create such a "desolate lament" and "a poignant voice"?
Ah Bing's "Two Springs Reflecting the Moon" is strictly speaking a traditional musical work, but it brings the advantages of traditional Chinese music to the fullest.
At the beginning of the music, after a short introduction, the melody is rapidly descending, like a sigh with mixed feelings, bringing people into a deep artistic mood. The theme music seems to make people see a blind artist carrying a bamboo stick, wandering and wandering on the bumpy road of life, and can't help but produce infinite sadness and desolation. The whole song is gradually unfolded under the many variations of the above tones, through which the musical meaning is deepened layer by layer, so that Ah Bing's own usually suppressed emotions are told to people over and over again.
In the second half of the music, the repression is gradually lifted, and the flood of emotions that has accumulated for a long time bursts out, pushing the music to the climax violently, and the rhythm at this time is strong and indignant, fully demonstrating Ah Bing's unique artistic temperament and boldness.
This is Ah Bing's silent accusation against society! It expresses uncompromising stubbornness and fortitude towards the forces of darkness. The whole music is clearly layered and integrated, the melody is beautiful and simple and vigorous, and it is a rare masterpiece in Chinese erhu music.
Every time I listen to Ah Bing's "Erquan Yingyue", I seem to feel that the tune is like a sharp blade of steel, constantly swirling in my heart, and the sharp blade cuts and stirs my five internal organs one by one, making people's hearts tremble and ache unbearable Blood spilling everywhere...
I seemed to feel that the tune was like a thin and long twine of twine, pulling my heart and lungs deeply and tightly, and the twine tugged at me one by one, making people soft intestines break the mix of feelings, involuntarily cold gags...
Listening to Ah Bing's piano music, I seemed to see Ah Bing wearing a pair of blind glasses and a torn felt hat, described as withered, full of vicissitudes, full of patches of clothes and pants, cotton wool fluttering, hanging from his waist of his gray erhu, waving his arms and playing like a mesmerized...
Listening to his "Two Springs and The Moon", I clearly saw Ah Bing, the illegitimate son of Hua Qinghe, a Daoist priest of the LeiZun Temple, who was born with the right to family love. He lost his mother at the age of 3, followed his father to become a Taoist priest at the age of 8, was able to play a variety of instruments at the age of 12, and became a master of prayer and chanting activities in the Taoist temple at the age of 18...
Until the death of his father at the age of 22, he succeeded him as the head taoist of the Lei Zun Temple. However, due to careless dating, he became infected with the vice of prostitution and drug addiction. At the age of 34, due to the invasion of syphilis, he lost his eyes and lost control of the Taoist Temple. In order to make a living, he wore erhu on his back, took to the streets, and became a street performer... At the age of 40, the clan arranged for the rural widow Dong Caidi to take care of him, and the two lived together and depended on each other, and began a wandering career of street art and wandering...
The production of great works of art is often accompanied by unimaginable pain in life.
Ah Bing and his "Two Springs Reflecting the Moon" made me think of Beethoven and his "Symphony of Destiny", I thought of Cao Xueqin and his "Dream of the Red Chamber", I thought of Proust and his "Remembrance of Water Years"...
Ah Bing only created the erhu "Erquan Yingyue" after he was blind in both eyes and his life fell into a desperate situation; Beethoven also created the musical masterpiece "Symphony of Destiny" after he was deaf in both ears and fell into the desperate situation of feelings; Cao Xueqin wrote "Dream of the Red Chamber" in a difficult state of eating chaff and sleeping on adobe grass mats after his family road fell, the glory and wealth turned into a cloud of smoke, and the instantaneous gap made him fall to a desperate situation; Proust wrote "Dream of the Red Chamber" in a difficult state of eating chaff and sleeping on adobe grass mats; Proust was extremely ill-conditioned, and even life could not take care of himself. In order to prevent the cold, the four doors did not dare to go out, lying in bed all day, wrote his "Remembrance of the Four Books of the Year"...
It is said that the famous Japanese music conductor Seiko Ozawa burst into tears when he first heard the song "Erquan Yingyue". With tears in his eyes, he told others, "Music like this should be on your knees and listened to." How many cheap words of praise is this word of "kneeling" worth?
This word "kneeling", I think, is not only a praise, but more importantly, as a music master, I sincerely admire a late music master!
The famous folk musician Ah Bing died of illness in December 1950. After his death, he was buried in the tomb of the Taoist priest "Yihe Shanfang" at the foot of Xuanshan Mountain in the western suburbs of Wuxi. In May 1979, the tomb was destroyed, and the Wuxi Municipal Museum picked up the bones in situ and moved to the south of the "Erquan" in the eastern foothills of Huishan in 1983.
Ah Bing's cemetery, covering an area of 742 square meters, the main body consists of a tomb wall and a wing wall, resembling a musical bandstand. The old tombstone is now in the Wuxi Museum. Ah Bing will live with his famous erhu song "Erquan Yingyue" in the glorious annals of Chinese music!
Although Ah Bing is gone, the "Two Springs Reflecting the Moon" he left behind will always echo in the universe.
This famous song is the emotional condensation of Ah Bing's taste of human bitterness. The unique playing skills and styles displayed in the works show the unique charm of Chinese erhu art.
The song won the "20th Century Chinese Music Classics Award".
This honor, for Ah Bing, who has been uncertain all his life and has always lived in the wind, frost, rain and snow, should be an incomparably warm comfort for his spirit in heaven!