Da Lu Zhi Yin
Wen | Wang Ruobing
The earliest famous musicians in Chinese history were two Assassins, Jing Ke and Gao Wanli. One of them sang tragically and desolately, causing people to shed tears; one was so skilled in hitting that even Qin Shi Huang was intoxicated by his soul-snatching performance, and almost lost his life.
The story of Jing Ke's assassination of the King of Qin takes place in 227 BC, six years before qin unified the six kingdoms. When Jing Ke and Gao gradually left the two heroes to say goodbye, Jing Ke sang a song "The wind is Xiao Xiao is easy to be cold, and the strong man will not return once he is gone", and Gao Gradually left to send off for his friend. The history books record in detail how the singing of Jing Ke and the performance of Gao Wanli on the occasion of the two brave men rushing to the Xianyang Palace on the north bank of the Wei River to practice the mission of assassinating the King of Qin were transferred from poignant and sad to high-pitched and exciting. Jing Ke improvised the song "Easy Water Song" that we are familiar with. The lyrics of "Yi Shui Song" only have a few sentences in the full text: "The wind is xiaoxiao, the water is cold, and the strong man will not return once he is gone; the tiger's cave will enter the Jiao Palace, and the sky will exhale into a white rainbow" a few sentences. But we don't know what the song that Gao gradually left to build a send-off for Jing Ke that day was called. Jing Ke left a generous and tragic heroic song for future generations, and Gao Wanli's music in the Xianyang Palace made Qin Shi Huang intoxicated and obsessed with playing, so that we can still vaguely feel that there was a string music called Zhu more than two thousand years ago that was so wonderful and moving!
The history books' account of Gao Wanli's unprecedented performance in the Xianyang Palace is somewhat incomprehensible: after Gao Wanli won the trust of the King of Qin in the Xianyang Palace, in order to assassinate Qin Shi Huang, more than twenty kilograms of lead were inserted into the abdominal cavity of the building, which did not affect the performance effect of the building! This instrument, called Tsukushi, was later lost. Although archaeologists found the actual object in the tomb of The Western Han Queen Yuyang in Changsha a few years ago, I am afraid that not many people have understood its playing skills.
But another of China's oldest instruments, not only was born in the Wei River Basin six or seven thousand years ago, but its way of playing has never been forgotten from ancient times to the present. This is the original instrument that has been excavated at the Dadiwan site and the Banpo site in the Weihe River Basin and can play a low and melodious natural sound: 埙.
埙 is a rural child who lived in the Areas of Tianshui, Pingliang and Guanzhong in the Wei River Basin and the Jing River Basin in the early years, and everyone can use a lump of mud to make and play an instrument. In ancient times, the original 埙 was only used for the ritual of worshipping ancestors and ghosts, and later gradually became a popular musical instrument for the primitive ancestors to entertain themselves. With the development of playing skills, this kind of blowing instrument, also known as "wow" in the countryside of the WeiHe River Basin, even ascended to the hall of elegance and became an indispensable instrument for the performance of court music in successive dynasties.
Since there are instruments that can be played, there must be music that can be played by instruments such as Xi, right? Although the writing of the Dadiwan and Banpo eras is still in the process of being conceived, and human beings have not left us with tools such as musical scores to record the performance of tunes, we can know from the legendary records of Fuxi and Nüwa, which are most likely the ancestors of the Dadiwan people and the ancestors of the Banpo people in the mythological sense, that the primitive ancestors who lived in the Weihe River Basin six or seven thousand years ago not only had a flute that could be played, but Also Fuxi also created the earliest string playing instruments for us - qin and ser.
Ancient music and dance were born from the ritual sacrifice of primitive humans to drive away ghosts and worship gods. Wushan County, in the upper reaches of the Wei River, was once a place where the Qiang, Qiang, Tubo, Xiongnu and Han peoples were entangled for a long time in ancient times. A kind of whirling encouragement circulating there is actually a dance performed by the Western Shepherds and Qiang people who used to live in the upper reaches of the Wei River when they sacrificed to the gods. Perhaps the level of civilization of the Qiang people at that time could only reach this point, and the only instrumental music used by the rotary encouragement was a sheepskin drum made of sheepskin that resembled a fan. The performers beat the drums, danced at the same time, and with the powerful drums and footsteps, issued the shouts of "Hi Hi" and "Woo Woo"; perhaps, this desolate cry was the ancient Qiang people's blessings and prayers to the heavens and the earth, the gods and ancestors.
The large-scale music and dance "Cloud Gate", which is composed of songs, dances and music, produced by the Yellow Emperor, is also created for the sacrifice of tribal totems. When the Yellow Emperor made Cloud Gate, the totem was still a cloud, and by the time the Yellow Emperor arrived in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River from the Wei River Valley, the totem of the Yellow Emperor's tribe had developed into a dragon. In this way, at the time of the production of Cloud Gate, it is possible that the tribes under the yellow emperor were still living in the Wei River Valley.
The "Shao Le" that appeared during the Shun Emperor period is probably the most mature symphony in ancient China, right? Otherwise, how could King Wu of Zhou choose to play "Shao Le" as the grand sound of this unprecedented solemn and grand ceremony at the founding ceremony announcing the birth of Western Zhou held in Hojing? Later, the Qin and Han dynasties, which established their state in the Weihe River Plain, also included "Shao Le" as the first of the temple music, becoming the longest-running and widely spread ritual music in Chinese history.
Developed into the Spring and Autumn Period, "Shao Le" has become a comprehensive performance art integrating poetry, music and dance, and its performance and performance methods are not only grand and magnificent, but also should have a shocking artistic charm. Otherwise, after Confucius listened to "Shao Le" in the Qi kingdom, how could he have issued an exclamation of "not trying to be happy as for Si Ye"? After being conquered by "Shao Le", Confucius even studied and studied "Shao Le" for a period of time. When Sima Qian recorded confucius's concentration in studying Shao Le in the "History of Confucius's Family", he used this sentence to describe Confucius's state of fascination: "Learn it, March does not know the taste of meat." ”
The Western Zhou Dynasty was an era when the Chinese ritual music system was born and developed to the extreme. Western Zhou Lile was both a hierarchical system and a way of ruling and educating people. The Western Zhou ritual music system was very cumbersome, and royal travel, sacrifices, and diplomatic exchanges required the corresponding level of music; the common people were married and mourned, and the grand masters and scholars also had to play music that matched their identity and occasion. The Western Zhou royal family even formulated a room music for the harem concubines to drink at the banquet, for the palace concubines to sing at the banquet.
It can be seen that around the 10th century BC, the palace neighborhoods in the capital city of Feng, a tributary of the Wei River, had musical performance ceremonies of various specifications almost every day. In the Heyday of the Western Zhou Dynasty, there were more than 1,400 musicians ready to play music for various ceremonies of the royal family. These musicians not only played, but also conducted music research, making the Western Zhou Dynasty an era of highly developed and popularized ancient Chinese music art. Music researchers and performers at that time had already proposed the five-tone eight-tone theory. The five tones are the scales, namely gong, shang, horn, sign, and feather; the eight tones are also instruments used for performance, which are eight kinds of gong, sheng, drum, pipe, string, rock, bell, and zhao. Every year, the Zhou royal family held the Sacrifice of Heaven and Earth, the Sacrifice of Mountains and Rivers, the Sacrifice of Ancestors, as well as the Ceremony of Internal and Foreign Affairs and various celebrations, and these musicians poured out and solemnly played the prescribed repertoire. On this occasion, it is generally a large-scale music and dance, either solemn and solemn, or soothing Qingyue, and there are many instruments played at the same time, almost equivalent to the later symphony. As for the grand situation of the folk song and dance style of the Western Zhou Dynasty, we established a system of collecting styles from the Western Zhou Dynasty, and organized personnel to collect popular folk songs from all over the world, and we can know a little bit about it in the "Wind" of the "Book of Poetry" compiled by Confucius later.
Chang'an City in the Western Han Dynasty has begun to show the beginning of an oriental metropolis that is about to have a major impact on the pattern of world civilization. At a time when the seeds of political, economic and cultural civilization in the Western Han Dynasty broke ground and sprouted, the music and art that further prospered and developed rapidly also became an important symbol of the Western Han society moving towards a comprehensive civilization. In Chang'an City, there is not only a music management agency dedicated to collecting folk songs and composing and singing them, but also a music organization dedicated to creating and playing music for the Imperial Suburb Festival and the Matsuri Matsuri Festival. After Liu Bang became the ancestor of Han Gao, yijin returned to his hometown, and when he sacrificed his ancestor in Pei County, Jiangsu Province, he also asked Tai Le to compose a song for his "Song of the Great Wind" and sing it at the ancestral temple.
"Song of the Great Wind" is an improvisational work made by Liu Bang in 196 BC when he pacified the rebellion of Tuobu and triumphantly passed through his hometown to set up a banquet in Pei County to entertain his early friends. That time, when Liu Bang sang "Song of the Great Wind", he also sang by himself. In front of his childhood playmates and relatives and friends, Liu Bang, who had been emperor for six years, was deeply intoxicated by his unexpected success, and he wanted to take this opportunity to show his old friends who once looked down on him with different feelings, so after a few glasses of wine, Liu Bang sang while hitting the building:
"The wind is blowing and the clouds are flying, Wei Jia Hai is returning to his hometown, and and the Ander warriors are guarding in all directions."
For Liu Bang, whose position was only equivalent to that of a township chief before the uprising, it was not easy to write such an imposing and heroic poem. Think about the time when the high-ranking friends are full of seats and the wine is hot, a small pavilion chief who used to be not good at reading, but also has no skills in business and farming, and only governs the land of ten miles, after walking out of his hometown for many years, he has become the emperor of all the people who worship, and the ups and downs of the world are really unpredictable! In the old friends of relatives and friends here, there must be some people who have also flashed such a thought: people cannot be disguised, and the sea is incomparable! Liu Bang's leisurely and self-satisfied appearance in front of everyone, his face full of slightly drunk, his eyes slightly closed, shaking his head and singing, must also be very funny.
Now tourists to Xi'an, go to the Tang Paradise to watch the "Tang Music and Dance", has become a contemporary people dream of returning to the Tang Dynasty. However, during the prosperous Tang Dynasty, the kind of Music of the Tang Dynasty, which integrated the music of the surrounding ethnic minorities, the music of the Han people in the past, the music of Buddhism and Taoism, was the entertainment consumption that the imperial relatives of Chang'an City, the literati and nobles, the common people, and the envoys from the Western Regions such as Dashi, Persia, and Guizi gathered in Chang'an could enjoy the entertainment consumption of Japanese and Korean students who gathered in Chang'an and casually walked into the streets and alleys. Sheng Tang's open and inclusive foreign policy and the worldwide influence of its culture have made many foreign intellectuals flock to Datang. After entering Datang, these cultural people from all over the western region and Asia also brought their own music and dance to Datang. Western musical instruments such as zhenzheng, pipa, sheng, flute, reed and cymbal appeared on the performance stage of various occasions in the prosperous tang dynasty. The embrace of Hu People and Hu Ji not only made the Gelou liquor shops throughout all corners of Chang'an City resound with the sound of exotic Hu Lehu, but also the grand situation in Chang'an City where imperial relatives, common people, and rich merchants and famous people competed to learn Hu Dance: "Tianbao wants to change every year, and the concubines all learn to circle, and there is Taizhen Wailu Mountain, and the two people are the most able to spin." (Bai Juyi's "Hu XuanNu") From the western region countries, Hu Xuan dance, Hu Teng dance, garnet dance, beggar han dance, lion dance, bowl head dance and other foreign songs and dances, popular Chang'an streets and alleys. The prefectures and counties outside Chang'an City also worked upward and downward, with special music management institutions to organize the performance of folk music, scattered music and hundred operas. According to statistics, at that time, there were more than 10,000 musicians serving the music institutions of the Tang Dynasty government alone. This does not include the domestic tricks that are raised in the homes of officials and eunuchs, the official tricks that serve the official offices, and the various musical tricks that are popular among the people. Almost in the entire Tang Dynasty, singers and dancers of various identities, literati and scholars who indulged in songlou liquor stores, court musicians who sang and danced, and folk artists who wandered the streets, in various parts of the Tang Dynasty centered on Chang'an, used different musical instruments, different voices, different languages and singing voices to jointly perform the Tang Dynasty music and dance that proclaimed the prosperity of the Tang Dynasty to the extreme.
In the tenth year of Yuan He, he moved to Sima of Jiujiang Commandery to the left. Next autumn, send a guest to Xiangpukou, smell the boat in the middle of the night to play the pipa. Listen to its sound, Zheng Zhengran has the sound of Kyoto. Ask his people, Ben Chang'an advocate daughter, try to learn pipa Yu Mu, Cao Er Shancai. She grew old and faded, and was commissioned as a Jia ren woman. Order the wine and make a few quick songs. Qu boycotted and compassionate, recounting the joys of his childhood, and now drifting and haggard, wandering between the rivers and lakes. After two years of being an official, he was at ease and touched by the words of the people, and he felt that he had the intention of moving. For long sentences, songs are given away, where six hundred and sixteen words. The fate is known as the "Pipa Line".
This is the preface written by Bai Juyi for the Pipa Line.
In the Tang Dynasty, there was almost an inseparable singing and love affair between poets and singers. Especially after the Middle Tang Dynasty, the trend of pleasure and lasciviousness became increasingly popular, not only the scholar class raised tricks, sang and danced for pleasure, went in and out of the Songlou liquor store to drink and chant, and the songlou at various levels sang the poems of popular poets, which was almost a fashion in the poetry circles of the Tang Dynasty and the entertainment consumption industry. The poet's interaction with the singer not only enriched the singing content of sheng tang music, but also made tang poetry the most representative of the prosperous scene of the sheng tang at that time.
The rise of a cultural peak is bound to be closely related to the advocacy of the people in power of the times. The flourishing of Tang Dynasty music is also closely related to the prevalence of religious music. Tang Taizong was not a lover of Buddhism, but he strongly supported the spread of Buddhism. On the day of Master Xuanzang's shaving, Emperor Taizong of Tang held a grand shaving ceremony for Xuanzang.
At the ceremony, Tai Changqing led the Nine Music of Taichang Temple, wannian county order and Chang'an county order each led more than 1,500 "sound cars" to accompany Xuanzang, monks of various monasteries, and hundred officials of civil and military affairs to the Great Ci'en Temple. Along the way, the music was overwhelming and the pomp was unprecedented. When he arrived at the Great Ci'en Temple, he also performed nine pieces of music, the big song "Broken Array Music" and various folk juggling.
Whether the "Neon Dress Feather Dance" that is being staged in Xi'an Datang Furong Garden can restore the glorious and elegant scene of the Tang Dynasty and the great country, I have not seen it, so I have no right to speak. However, the material of this song alone is taken from Tang Xuanzong's sleepwalking in the Moon Palace, and the noble concubine Yang Yuhuan is choreographed with a knife, which is enough to see the beauty and charm of the sound of the Tang Dynasty.
Of course, in the famous songs of the Sheng Tang Dynasty, there is also Zhang Ruoxuan's "Spring River Flower Moon Night".
That's another style.
——Originally published in the second issue of "Feitian" in 2022
About the Author
Wang Ruobing
Gansu Tianshui people. Writer, poet, senior editor, member of China Writers Association, Shaanxi Tourism Culture Consultant, Cultural Consultant of Zhongnan Cultural College of Xidian University, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Tianshui Daily, Vice Chairman of Tianshui Literary Association, Chairman of Tianshui Writers Association. His major works include the poetry collection "Huge Winter", the eight-episode documentary "Great Qinling", the "Great Qinling" long series of essays "Into the Great Qinling", "Looking for the Great Qin Empire", "The Legend of the Wei River", "Looking Up at the Taibai Mountain" and so on.