Zhao Chonghua: Why did you create a national music with the spirit of the Chinese nation?
China News Service Chengdu, March 23 Title: Zhao Chonghua: Why create a national music with the spirit of the Chinese nation?
China News Service reporter He Shaoqing and Wang Peng
Chinese music emphasizes rhyme, Western music emphasizes rationality; Chinese music is extremely changeable and meteorological, Western music forms are rigorous and complex in structure; the beauty of Chinese music's wired freehand, Western music has a three-dimensional structural beauty...
For a long time, there have been many discussions about the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western music, and the debate between "Chinese body and Western use" or "Western body use" has also attracted attention. In the 20th century, the Chinese musician Wang Guangqi proposed to create a "national voice" with the characteristics of the Chinese nation, the National Music.
Why did you create Guole? Why can't Chinese Guole "force Xile to replace it"? What is the new meaning of Guole in today's China? Zhao Chonghua, dean of the School of Art Theory and Management of Sichuan Conservatory of Music, recently accepted an exclusive interview with China News Agency's "East and West Question" to make an in-depth interpretation of this.
The interview transcript is summarized below:
China News Service: When can Western music culture be introduced to China? What kind of development has it taken?
Zhao Chonghua: To answer this question, we must first clarify the difference between music and music culture, music usually refers to vocal music, instrumental music and other audiovisual music, focusing on music at the level of personal appreciation; while music culture covers music theory, music education, music system, music technology and other all-round cultural elements.
Judging from the history of Chinese and foreign music exchanges, the introduction of "Western music" in the usual sense to China can be traced back to Zhang Qian's mission to the Western Regions in the Han Dynasty, opening the door to cultural exchanges between China and the West. Music and dance were the focus of musical exchanges in this period, and musician Li Yannian created the "Twenty-Eight Solutions of New Sounds" based on foreign music, which is a typical example.
Through the Wei and Jin Dynasties and the Southern and Northern Dynasties to the Tang Dynasty, musicians introduced the music of various ethnic groups in the Western Regions such as Guizi, Xianbei, Shule, and Gaochang into the Central Plains, and after being transformed, they were performed in the court. Especially during the Tang Dynasty, there was a large influx of Western music, more than 70 kinds of Buddhist music and dance alone, and many foreign musical instruments "settled" in China.
In July 2011, at the Nanshan Zen Temple in Wutaishan, Shanxi, monks played Chinese Buddhist music. Photo by China News Service reporter Wei Liang
However, the real comprehensive and systematic entry of Western music culture into China was completed under the wave of "western learning and eastern gradually" in modern times. Music theory, music skills, performance, singing, music education, etc. were introduced to China in various forms, and entered the musical life of ordinary people through the production and development of early new military songs and school songs. At the same time, Chinese musicians such as Li Shutong, Xiao Youmei, and Wang Guangqi have taken the Aesthetics of Western music as a reference to explore the modernity qualities of Chinese music and contribute wisdom to the modern development of Chinese music culture.
In the process of "Xile Dong gradually" at the beginning of the 20th century, there were two distinct and mutually influential explorations in the Western body and the Western body. Preserving the humanistic spirit and cultural bloodline of Chinese music and integrating into the world's modern civilization has been the pursuit of Chinese musicians for hundreds of years.
The representative of the Western use of Chinese bodies is Liu Tianhua. He modernized the performance of national instruments to enable them to "compete" with modern Western instrumental playing technology. It now appears that the objectives in this regard have been largely achieved. For example, after the music played on the violin is adapted into an erhu piece, the playing technique is also completely competent. In addition, he also introduced the genre of modern Western music into Chinese folk music. At present, There are a large number of national music classics in China that use Western composition technique theory to write, such as the pipa concerto "Little Sisters of the Heroes of the Grassland" and the Erhu "Concert Etudes". Since the beginning of the 20th century, this path has been the main direction for the development of traditional Chinese music creation.
In February 2009, Zhang Hongyan, known as the "Queen of the Pipa", ended after performing the "Pipa Concerto" at the Kennedy Center for the Arts in the United States. Photo by Qiu Jiangbo, a reporter from China News Service
The representative figures used in Western sports are Xiao Youmei, Huang Zi, Xian Xinghai and other musicians. It is a path that attempts to infuse the spirit of Chinese into classic Western musical genres such as Western symphony orchestras, pianos, operas, and ballets. The predecessors tried to establish a Chinese music school similar to the Russian national music school represented by Tchaikovsky and others, so as to directly integrate Chinese music into the world system dominated by Western music genres. This road is the mainstream of Professional Music Creation in China, and the Yellow River Chorus and the Violin Concerto "Liang Zhu" are all successful cases.
If you look at it from the perspective of the history of Chinese civilization, "pluralism and unity" has always been the main feature of Chinese music. The strong national personality of the Chinese nation and the firm determination of Chinese civilization to integrate into the world have determined that the long-term tolerance and collision between tradition and modernity will be normalized. Chinese music will continue to advance along the above two paths, when the new classical works reach the extreme of quantity, there will naturally be qualitative changes, and the new development paradigm of Chinese music will be established again.
In August 2015, the San Francisco Bay Area Chinese Choir sang "Yellow River Chorus" at the Flint Performing Arts Center in Silicon Valley. Photo by Liu Dan, a reporter from China News Service
China News Service: Historically, what are the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western music? Why?
Zhao Chonghua: Wang Guangqi creatively divided world music into three major music lines: Greek music, Persian Arabian music and Chinese music. Different geographical environments and national personalities will inevitably create different musical aesthetics, and aesthetics reflected in musical forms can form different musical systems.
The similarities and differences between Chinese and Western music can have many answers from different angles, but the reason for these similarities and differences, as Wang Guangqi said, stems from the difference in scales. That is, the root cause of the difference between Chinese and Western musical styles lies in the five-tone scale system of Chinese music and the large and small tuning scale system of Western music.
The difference in aesthetic orientation between Chinese and Western music is even more obvious. The linear thinking of Chinese music is fundamentally different from the three-dimensional thinking of Western music. Just like the difference between the Suzhou Garden and the Palace of Versailles. Changing scenery and advocating nature is the consistent pursuit of Eastern art, and the logic and speculation presented by Western art have been continuously strengthened since the Renaissance and have become its prominent characteristics.
The discipline of Western musicology was gradually established after the middle of the 19th century. The study of music Chinese has already formed a unique system in the long history. While integrating with modern times, inheriting and developing China's inherent musical academic tradition is a problem that Chinese musicology must face. For a simple example, Chinese music philology not only introduces Western positivist methods and library science classification systems, but also cannot be separated from academic research methods such as editions, catalogs, proofreading, compilation, and falsification in Classical Chinese Philology.
At the same time, the research methods of Western ethnomusicology fieldwork have high reference value for Chinese ethnomusicology research. In 1979, the Ministry of Culture of China and the Chinese Music Association co-hosted and edited the "Five Integrations": "Chinese Folk Song Integration", "Chinese Folk Instrumental Music Integration", "Chinese Quyi Music Integration", "Chinese Opera Music Integration" and "Chinese Piano Music Integration". The folk music investigation activities of Chinese scholars not only provide a reliable documentary basis for traditional music research, but also preserve many precious memories that are about to disappear for mankind.
From the perspective of human music as a whole, different ethnic music has its own characteristics and there is no distinction between advantages and disadvantages. Respecting the musical culture of all ethnic groups and not measuring and evaluating other ethnic groups according to the characteristics of one ethnic group has become a consensus in the academic circles. In today's world and society, multicultural coexistence, between cultures "each beautiful, beautiful beauty", in order to achieve "beauty and coexistence, the world is the same", we should have such a temperament and vision.
In September 2014, the National Tour of "Impression Chinese Music" by the Central Chinese Orchestra was performed in Hangzhou. Photo by Li Chenyun, a reporter of China News Service
China News Service: Why does Wang Guangqi think that Guole "must be created by ourselves" and "cannot be forced to replace it with Xile"? What characteristics should the ideal Chinese national music have?
Zhao Chonghua: There are complex reasons for the formation of the spirit of Chinese, but there must be some factors that are necessary. To study the nationality of Chinese music is to find out these factors. The idea of Chinese music put forward by Wang Guangqi in the early 20th century is music that created the "national nature" of the Chinese nation and embodies the national spirit. In addition to the Confucian tradition and its core musical ideas, it also comes from the musical ideals he germinated in the comparative study of Chinese and Western cultures.
Today's China has long since come out of the plight of poverty and weakness for a hundred years, and the reality of China's music development has also undergone tremendous changes. The Chinese music of the new era should adapt to and express this change, and create works full of national self-confidence and cultural self-confidence, showing the national spirit of Chinese and conforming to the traditional aesthetic tastes of Chinese.
There is no need to dogmatically stipulate what kind of music belongs to Chinese national music, "Pinghu Autumn Moon" played on the piano is Chinese national music, and the flute concerto "Sorrowful Empty Mountain" is also a Chinese music. Today, in the 21st century, China, with 56 nationalities, is building a national music system based on the foundation of the chinese national music and cultural traditions. As long as it is a music that expresses the spirit of the Chinese nation, conforms to the traditional aesthetic characteristics, and embodies the Chinese style and Chinese spirit, it belongs to the Chinese national music. (End)
Respondent Profiles:
Zhao Chonghua is the Secretary of the Party Committee and Dean of the School of Art Theory and Management of Sichuan Conservatory of Music, the Deputy Director of the Institute of Higher Education, the Leader of Academic Technology in Sichuan Province, a member of the Steering Committee of the Teaching Of Art Theory in Colleges and Universities of the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, a standing director of the Chinese Art Theory Society, and the secretary general of the Sichuan Music and Literature Society.
Source: China News Network