Chinese national music has a long historical and cultural heritage of thousands of years, if you compare it to a long river of history, Chinese national musical instruments are an important tributary of this long river. Of course, there are not only indigenous instruments, but also some foreign instruments that have been Sinicized. Today we will talk about which of the national musical instrument families are imported instruments.
"The King of Plucking" - Pipa
Speaking of pipa, many people will regard it as a national musical instrument native to China, in fact, the pipa has a long history and complex development history, which can be described as a "mixed-race" of central plains instruments and western musical instruments.
Instruments with the name "pipa" in ancient China did not refer to today's pipa, but to various plucked instruments. The shape of the lute at that time was different from that of today, with a straight neck, round speakers, and an irregular number of phonemes and chords. This kind of pipa was called "straight pipa" or "Qin pipa" at that time, in fact, it was the predecessor of "Ruan" in today's mainland folk musical instruments.
▲The horizontal holding pipa in the murals of the Jin Dynasty
From the Han Dynasty to the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Quxiang pipa was introduced from Persia to the mainland through present-day Xinjiang, and the literature refers to this pipa as "Hu Pipa". It is four-stringed, four-phase (columnless), and is played horizontally with plucked bullets. After its introduction to the Central Plains, it was combined with the direct lute to gradually form the current form, and "pipa" also became a special name for this instrument.
"Yangqin" - Yangqin
The dulcimer is a universal and popular stringed instrument with a wide range of worlds and distinct national characteristics, originating in ancient countries such as Persia and Assyria. In China, the yangqin is also known as the yangqin, the percussion, the percussion, the butterfly violin, and so on. The specific time of its introduction to China is generally said to be the eighth year of the Ming Dynasty (1580), which was first popular in the coastal area and gradually spread to the interior.
Through hundreds of years of historical evolution, the yangqin has carried out a meaningful sinicization evolution in many ways. The mainland yangqin is now a self-developed 402 piano type. The percussion tools have also been modified, using bamboo to make mallets, unlike the wooden mallets in Europe and Southwest Asia, which can highlight the crispness and clarity of its tone.
Whether it is the shape and performance of the yangqin, or the improvement and creation, after several decades of vigorous development in the new era of China, it has reached a considerable height in terms of nationality, technology and personal style, and has truly transformed from a "foreign qin" into a Chinese instrument with distinct national characteristics - the yangqin.
"Folk music representative" - Oh wow
When it comes to Oh Na, everyone must think of the movie "A Hundred Birds and a Phoenix", which tells a story about the old artist of Oh Na. Because of its outstanding tone, it always occupies the "C position" in folk weddings and funerals, ceremonies and other ceremonies. Interestingly, this "native" instrument in our eyes did not originate in China, but was also imported from Persia and Arabia.
In the Ming Dynasty, there was a record of Qi Jiguang in ancient books, and qi Jiguang, a famous general of the Ming Dynasty who was familiar with the Ming Dynasty, used it in military music. In his "Ji Xiao New Book Wu Beizhi" recorded: "Whoever holds the trumpet flute is a trumpet trumpet." "However, the most important thing to mention is the story of Zhu Zaiyu, the ninth grandson of Zhu Yuanzhang.
Zhu Zaiyu concentrated on reading and almanacing, and opened up a wide range of frontier disciplines. As early as the twelfth year of the Wanli calendar (1592), he had already proved that the interval of the uniform scale could be taken as the root of the twelfth power of two (i.e., the twelve mean laws), decades ahead of the Europeans. On the basis of the eight-tone hole, the "eye tube" was developed, which made great contributions to the development of national wind music in the mainland.
"Leader of Chinese music" - Erhu
Erhu, Banhu, Gaohu, Zhonghu, Dahu, Low Hu, etc., were all developed on the basis of foreign musical instruments Xiqin. The Song Dynasty scholar Chen Yang recorded in the "Book of Music" that "Xi Qin Ben Hu Le Ye..." The Tang Dynasty poet Cen Shan's poem "The Chinese army put wine and returned to the guests, huqin pipa and qiang flute" contained in the tang dynasty, indicating that huqin had begun to circulate in the Tang Dynasty, and it was a general term for Chinese and Western stringed instruments and plucked instruments.
In the 1920s, the bold innovation of the musician Mr. Liu Tianhua made Erhu ascend to the hall of elegance. He drew on the playing techniques and techniques of Western musical instruments, scientifically positioned the erhu as five positions, thus expanding the range of the erhu, establishing a new artistic connotation, and making the erhu the most influential, widely circulated, most representative and most Chinese temperament and charm of the stringed instrument in the mainland.
▲Liu Tianhua
These external factors have been "run-in" with the inherent traditions of the mainland for a long time and have been integrated into the tradition, which also fully reflects the inclusiveness of Chinese culture, so as to broaden the foundation of the Chinese national music culture and make the mainland national music develop.
In this issue of "Art Garden Live", you will enjoy a wonderful national concert, which includes classic folk music performances and beautiful song singing, as well as the perfect combination of opera and folk music, showing the unique charm and splendid culture of Chinese national music with rich and diverse performance forms. We also invited musicologist Jin Xuedong, zhao Cuncai, cellist Luo Lini, and Huqin player Zhang Xiuling to be guests in the studio to enjoy this concert of classic songs.