High-pitched mountain songs penetrate the mountains and swirl in the ears of the audience for a long time. The majestic symphony spans time and space and deeply shakes the audience's heart. On December 16th, conducted by Wang Linlin, the permanent conductor of the China Symphony Orchestra Choir, the China Symphony Orchestra brought the "Southwest Music and Painting" Symphony Chorus Concert to the audience at the Beijing Concert Hall, a collision of national primitive ecology and modern symphony.
As a concert of original works by the China Symphony Orchestra, this concert takes "Celebrating the Comprehensive Construction of a Moderately Prosperous Society and Realizing the First Centenary Goal" as the theme, extracts the traditional folk music, folk songs and original ecological music elements of The three provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Southwest Sichuan, and presents a beautiful symphonic picture with southwest style and national characteristics to the audience.
The first half of the concert's orchestral "Southwest Suite" was opened by Zhang Dalong's "Three Orchestral Pieces". The three pieces are based on the Yunnan folk song "The Great River Rises and The Sand Falls", the Guizhou Buyi Mountain Song "Gu Xi Luan" and the Sichuan Qiang Folk Music Dance "Guozhuang Dance", and the whole work exudes a strong musical temperament of the southwest ethnic minorities.
The orchestral variation "The Great River Rises and Falls" describes the love story of the local ethnic minority youth in Yunnan. The whole song uses the timbre characteristics and harmonic language of various instruments of the symphony orchestra to express the humorous, funny and vivid love story between young men and women.
Compared with the melodious and delicate "Big River Rising Water and Sand Falling Sand", the second song "Gu Xi Luan" (Buyi means "Little Sister"),although it also describes the love story of ethnic minority youth, it is mixed with a little sadness and melancholy, which is a sharp contrast with the first song in terms of emotion. The whole piece of music, the melody is deep and gentle, full of brightly colored fresh breath, the Rich and Colorful Musical Style of the Buyi ethnic group is vividly reflected.
The orchestral music "Noisy New Year" shows the festive atmosphere of the Qiang and Tibetan compatriots in northern Sichuan celebrating the New Year with a continuous beating melody, and the jubilant and noisy mood runs through the whole song, which is in strong contrast with the first two pieces in terms of rhythm and style. Composer Zhang Dalong was deeply touched by the birth of this piece: "I have gone to the Beichuan earthquake-stricken area three times to experience life, during which time, the folk music and dance of the Beichuan Qiang ethnic group have left a deep impression on me. Among them, the rough and fierce musical style of 'Guozhuang Dance' is particularly touching, and the musical elements of the creation of "New Year" are also generated. ”
Three pieces of music with very different styles originated from the ethnic minorities in the three provinces of Yunnan-Guichuan, and the composer expressed themselves in the symphony of national music, so that the audience could feel the colorfulness and splendor of the music of ethnic minorities in the southwest region.
The second work in the first half is Zhang Chao's "Five Colors of Yunnan". Inspired by the folk songs of the Yi people in Honghe, Yunnan, the composer organically injects local ethnic music elements into the work, showing the distinctive national characteristics and optimistic and open-minded spirit of Yunnan in five different musical genres. For the five pieces of music with the theme of spring, summer, autumn and winter, Zhang Chao used symphonies of different styles, colors and moods to paint five brilliant pictures to the audience:
The first painting of "The Fugue of Spring" - spring buds break the ground, the earth awakens, and mountain flowers bloom.
The second painting is "Summer Humor" - summer is hot, insects are playing, full of fun.
The third painting is "Autumn Caprice" - during the autumn harvest, people's hearts are happy and joyful.
The fourth painting is "Winter Fantasy" - the winter solstice is silver, the sun is drunk, and the earth is like a dream.
The fifth painting is "The Whirlwind of Spring" - the reincarnation of the four seasons, the return of spring to the earth, and the renewal of vientiane.
In the second half of the concert, composer Zhu Jiahe brought a very "special" work to the audience - the symphonic chorus "Sichuan Qingyin Caprice". The reason why it is special is because this work vividly and skillfully presents the national intangible cultural heritage "Sichuan Qingyin" in the form of symphonic chorus music.
Traced back to the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Sichuan Qingyin is a kind of rap art sung in the Sichuan dialect, developed on the basis of seasonal small songs and Sichuan folk songs, and widely popular throughout Sichuan. Most of its themes are closely related to people's lives, and the language and tunes are rich in the local atmosphere of Sichuan, so the musical style and content form are also very rich.
Although in the eyes of some music scholars, Sichuan Qingyin is a "genre with a strong embrace, it can be said to be eclectic in terms of repertoire and music." But sometimes, this musical feature with a high degree of freedom can also become a "double-edged sword." As Zhu Jiahe himself said, "Sichuan Qingyin is originally a form of quyi rap, which is more free and casual. So, how can it be organically combined with the rigorous and grand art form of symphonic chorus? ”
Faced with this extremely challenging creative problem, Zhu Jiahe gave his own answer. While selecting three clear-tone sub-sections such as "Cuckoo Cuckoo Cuckoo", "Picking Begonias" and "June 6", he perfectly solved this problem in the way of symphonic chorus and symphony orchestra responding to each other. In this way, it not only retains the original Sichuan qingyin, but also makes the original thin Sichuan qingyin become more three-dimensional and plump, effectively enhancing the appeal and artistic connotation of this work. More importantly, the symphonicized Sichuan Qingyin has really expanded its audience, which not only allows the audience to appreciate the life of the ancestors of Shudi, but also enables the permanent survival and continuous development of Sichuan Qingyin, a national intangible cultural heritage.
Like Sichuan Qingyin, Yang Fan composed the second song "Poya Song Book" in the second half - the basis for the creation of love songs is also derived from the national intangible cultural heritage - the Poya Song Book of Zhuang in Funing County, Yunnan Province.
In Funing, a variety of love songs are an important way for people to express their feelings. In the view of Yang Fan, a young composer of the China Symphony Orchestra, "This is an ancient, love-related ' sound of nature' from the mountains. As the title of the work goes, 'Love Songs', the choir and the symphony band are like lovers, they have no primary or secondary, no attachment, but each other as part of each other. In order to enable the audience to feel this harmony and naturalness more intuitively, the whole song is not sung in the traditional Zhuang language, but replaced by natural syllables such as "eh" and "ah", in order to be integrated, from the inner voice. The whole song is soft and natural, and the cycle is stacked, successfully evoking the most innocent and beautiful memories of love in the audience's heart.
The last piece of the concert was "You're in Our Songs" by Hao Wei – a chorus with a female vocalist for an orchestra.
Compared with the Sichuan Qingyin, which originated in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the Poya Song Book formed during the Eastern Han Dynasty, the material of this piece is also quite historical. Its musical material comes from the most classic "Song of Cicadas" in the Guizhou Dong nationality song. The great song of the Dong nationality can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and the patriotic poet Lu You of the Southern Song Dynasty also wrote for it the words "Men and women gather and step on the song, when the gap between the farmers arrives, one or two hundred people are Cao, holding hands and singing, and several people blowing sheng in the forerunner". In 1952, with the discovery of the multi-voice folk song Dong national song, the prejudice of the international musicological community that "there is no polyphonic music in Chinese national music" was completely shattered. In 2009, the Great Song of the Dong nationality was inscribed on unesco's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
The "Cicada Song", which is referenced in this piece, is one of the most representative folk songs of the Dong people to imitate the sounds of natural beings. The whole song is composed of three main parts, such as the wind in the mountain forest, the cicada in the mountain forest, and the song in the mountain forest. In order to "imitate" the mysterious multi-voice singing method in the Dong songs, composer Hao Wei "tried to 'imitate' the female chorus and orchestra", and at the same time replaced the lyrics of the Dong songs with the self-created onomatopoeia of "咿咿呀呀". This is a useful attempt by the composer, and the whole work uses wind, cicadas and songs as the medium to show the audience a moving scene of the Dong people working hard in the terraces in the early summer and singing the "Song of cicadas" in unison.
In the whole performance, under the outstanding conductor of Wang Linlin, the large orchestra and the choir cooperated tacitly and naturally, and controlled the southwest ethnic music with different forms and contents to the point of no difference, once again showing the superb artistic standards and strong comprehensive strength of the China Symphony Orchestra.
When the last note of the concert fell, the audience immersed in the beautiful picture of the Great Southwest gave all the applause and applause to the actors of the China Symphony Orchestra.
The heavenly terraces listen to ancient songs, only because they are in Yun guichuan. At the end of the show, the unfinished audience said that after enjoying such a very national music feast, they very much hoped to "go to Yunguichuan for a walk, see the magnificent rivers and mountains of the motherland, and taste the local national music and special cuisine." Today, when the integration of culture and tourism is getting closer and closer, such a performance that originates from music and is higher than music actually explores a new way for the future development of cultural tourism integration.
Cultural self-confidence, the foundation of the country, the roots of culture, the soul of the nation. At the end of the year and the cold winter, Southwest Music Painting, this is a wonderful national symphony blockbuster presented to the audience by the China Symphony Orchestra with love, heart and affection.
(Photo: Shi Lei)
Editor-in-charge: Jia Tingyi