The National Cultural Park is a major cultural project promoted by the state. The construction of the national cultural park is a major decision-making deployment of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core, and a major project to promote the prosperity and development of culture in the new era.
In the process of building the National Cultural Park, the majority of literary and art workers have given full play to their professional advantages, created a large number of stage art works, and demonstrated the core value connotation of the National Cultural Park with a variety of art forms and creative means that audiences in the new era are happy to hear, so that cultural relics can speak, history can speak, and culture can speak.
Concert "The Great Wall":
Through ancient and modern times, play the symphony of the times
Liu Miao
From the Spring and Autumn Period, through the Qin and Han Dynasties, and the Liaojin, to the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, up and down for two thousand years. Cross the steep mountains, through the wasteland, cross the Han Sea, through the cliffs, and traverse 100,000 miles. The Great Wall is a cultural totem in the hearts of every Chinese. Around the Great Wall, there have been countless literary and artistic works. Among them, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's 2021 key funded plays, the 2022 National Arts Fund large-scale stage plays and works creation funding projects, and the concert "The Great Wall" created and performed by the Central Chinese Orchestra depict the blood history of Chinese civilization with gorgeous national music and show the cultural self-confidence of the Chinese nation.
The concert was conducted by conductor Tang Muhai, composers Guo Wenjing, Zhang Qianyi, Hao Wei and Wang Danhong, and specially invited the China Academy of Arts as an academic support unit, the National Art Museum of China as a visual support unit, and also received strong support from the Great Wall Society of China.
Through the integration of artistic expressions such as diversified and diversified national instrument solos, ensembles, concertos, solos, choruses, etc., the concert demonstrated the profound historical and cultural heritage of the Great Wall and the heavy artistic atmosphere of folk music, so that the audience could fully feel the unique charm of the collision of culture and art.
▲ The scene of the concert "Great Wall" (Photo by Lu Xu, reporter of this newspaper)
The concert performed the landmark works composed by Liu Wenjin, former director of the Central Chinese Orchestra and leader of national music, the third movement of "Great Wall Caprice", "Loyalty To the Soul Sacrifice" and the fourth movement "Distant Look", with songs and sighs, comforting the unknown soldiers and expressing the noble feelings of the great people. In order to echo the classics and recreate the classics, the Central Chinese Orchestra created four new movements "The Great Wall", "Inside and Outside the Great Wall", "The Great Wall of Flesh and Blood" and "Ode to the Great Wall", using musical notes to outline the majestic and thick Culture of the Great Wall.
"Ten Thousand Miles of the Great Wall" composed by Wang Danhong is the opening song of the concert. The music opens with majestic war drums and low trumpets, and as the music progresses layer by layer, the lines of the Great Wall's mighty shores slowly emerge.
In the course of history, the Great Wall has long been a symbol of order-building, peace and national integration. Zhang Qianyi's "Inside and Outside the Great Wall" integrates a series of folk song materials, showing a picture of the multicultural integration of the north inside and outside the Great Wall, and also showing the open and inclusive mind of the Chinese nation.
Guo Wenjing's work "The Great Wall of Flesh and Blood" belongs to the avant-garde school, and in the first movement, the confrontation between guzheng and strings is selected, and the way of pulling the kite is an exploration in timbre.
Hao Wei's work "Ode to the Great Wall" is magnificent, adding singing and horse-head piano accompaniment, singing the praises of the Great Wall on the stage. "The horsehead piano breaks through the traditional playing methods such as the pentatonic mode and the seven-tone scale, which is very leapfrogging. At the same time, the composer organically blends the melody of the song, the depth of the horse's head and the harmony of the band. Horsehead violinist Zhang Quansheng said.
In the gorgeous music of the concert, the calm and magnificent majesty of the Great Wall, the vastness of the Golden Iron Horse, the tragic and desolate picture scroll, the will of the people to form a city, and the open and inclusive mind are in front of you. Zhao Cong, director of the Central Chinese Orchestra, said that using Chinese instruments and Chinese music to show the Chinese spirit and Chinese courage is the original intention of the Central Chinese Orchestra to create and rehearse "The Great Wall". "The Great Wall is a monument and wisdom crystallization of the ancient culture of the Chinese nation, symbolizing the blood inheritance and national spirit of the Chinese nation, and has far-reaching historical and cultural significance." As a Chinese music sung from ancient times to the present, folk music is a treasure of Chinese culture. The concert "The Great Wall" uses the way of crossing ancient and modern times to make culture and art collide passionately, playing the symphony of the times. Zhao Cong said.
Gannan tea picking drama "One Man's Long March":
Practice ideals and beliefs with your life
Jana
In October 1934, the commanders and fighters of the Central Red Army, whose average age was less than 30 years old, set out from Yudu, Jiangxi, like a red iron stream, passing through 11 provinces, crossing 18 mountains, crossing 24 major rivers, and walking through barren grasslands, traveling 25,000 miles. It was not until October 1936 that the three main forces of the Red Army met the division and the Long March ended in victory. Among the many stage art works that express the Long March, the Gannan tea picking drama "One Man's Long March" is undoubtedly a very special one.
Produced by the Propaganda Department of the Ganzhou Municipal CPC Committee, the Ganzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television, Press, Publications and Tourism, and performed by the Gannan Institute of Artistic Creation, "One Man's Long March" tells the story of a young groom named "Mule" in the Gannan region during the Long March of the Central Red Army, who was hired by the horse team of the Central Bank of the Soviet Union, and the black mule he drove was killed in the Battle of Xiangjiang, and the broken box fell from the black mule -- a large amount of gold appeared in front of his eyes, but he kept his promise, was not moved by gold, and under the desperate cover of the Red Army soldiers, he carried gold to break through alone He resolutely embarked on the touching story of the difficult road of catching up with the Red Army troops. The play highlights the growth process of "Mule", as a representative of the Hakka masses in Gannan Province, stressing faith and re-commitment, constantly climbing spiritually in the unremitting "walking" and "pursuit", and finally practicing ideals and beliefs with his life.
▲ Gannan Tea Picking Drama "One Man's Long March" (Courtesy of Gannan Institute of Art Creation)
The protagonist "Mule" is taken from two real prototypes from the revolutionary era: Xingguo County, Su District, once there was a "man with a waist of Wanguan (13 gold bars) begging rice" Liu Qiyao, and there was a Red Army porter Zhang Yihua in Xinjiang Village, Chijiang Town, Dayu County. The image of the "mule" integrates the deeds of these two revolutionary heroes, abstracts the traditional morality rooted in the depths of the national soul, and places it in the historical background of the Red Revolution.
"In those glorious years, countless 'mules' were running towards the revolution and to Yan'an. Obviously, this is a realistic work, but it is a high degree of condensation and abstraction of countless grassroots characters in the revolutionary years, interspersed with allegories and even magical plots, giving birth to the wings of imagination, romantic colors, finding universal cognition in the individual, and finding a certain balance and integration of art and reality. The audience believed and was in awe. Liu Fei, executive director of the Jiangxi Literary and Art Critics Association, said.
Zhang Manjun, the general director of "One Man's Long March", is a well-known artist who grew up and matured from Gannan and then went to the whole country, and has created many excellent plays on revolutionary historical themes. The drama is another red-themed drama of Zhang Manjun after the Gannan tea picking drama "Red Trilogy", "Mountain Song Love", "Eight Sons Join the Army", and "Forever Ballad". And all this is largely due to her birth in this hot land. In her words: "I was born here, grew up here, and connected with the mother and child of this land." ”
Screenwriter Sheng Heyu not only talks about the feelings of home and country in his writing, but also has a solid background for life. The lead actor Yang Jun sang and danced well, and it is worth mentioning that he was born in Ruijin and is a descendant of the Red Army. In this drama, traditional Chinese virtues and revolutionary culture are blended, refined and sublimated, with rich connotations and touching people's hearts. The whole drama not only retains the original ecological artistic characteristics such as the traditional dwarf step, fan flower, and single water sleeve of gannan tea picking opera, but also keeps the integrity and innovation, integrates a variety of artistic elements, and enriches the expressiveness of gannan tea picking drama.
"One Man's Long March" was the first time to integrate the use of shadow puppet props on the stage of the Gannan Tea Picking Drama. The shadow puppet props are externalized into the images of black mules and red-maned horses, and then combined with the human form and body to achieve the puppet interpretation on the same stage. At the same time, a large number of props such as the moon, stars, and small trees are also used to create a flexible stage time and space. The setting of the small folk music band on the stage is unique, not only undertaking the performance function, but also playing the role of the accompaniment, while also interacting with the actors and the audience on the spot, and then promoting the development of the plot, which is eye-catching.
National opera "Ballad of the Canal":
"A Canal" has been sung for ten years
Liu Miao
A canal has been sung for ten years, and the river is used as a love rhyme. From April 14th to 17th, the original national opera "Ballad of the Canal" of the National Centre for the Performing Arts returned to the stage on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of its premiere, kicking off the National Centre for the Performing Arts Opera Festival 2022.
The opera "Ballad of the Canal" takes the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal as the background of the story, and through describing the fate of the characters in the play on the canal, it shows the good and evil life and death, righteousness and thin clouds witnessed by the canal, and praises the pure love and the human love of self-denial. Since its inception, the play has gone through five rounds of hot performances, and has been deeply loved by the audience with its ups and downs, elegant stage presentation and beautiful melody. In the play, singing sections such as "We are the flowing water of the canal", "Canal Ballad", "Brilliant Star Gaze", "Where are you, Red Lotus" are widely sung and have become classics in the hearts of the audience.
▲ Stills of the national opera "Ballad of the Canal" (Courtesy of the National Centre for the Performing Arts)
As the first original national opera of the National Centre for the Performing Arts, "Ballad of the Canal" brings together a team of domestic first-line artists such as composer Yin Qing, screenwriters Huang Weiruo and Dong Ni, and director Liao Xianghong. In the early stage of creation, the screenwriter and director went all the way north from the source of the canal - Hangzhou Gongchen Bridge, and conducted field collection of 5 cities along the canal, looking for valuable physical prototypes, and harvested a large number of vivid audio-visual images.
After 5 creative drafts and 14 revisions of the script, Huang Weiruo finally based on the humanistic background of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, presented a romantic and lyrical style plot story: during the Ming Dynasty, Qin Xiaosheng, a scholar in Jiangnan, Shui Honglian, a singing artist, and Guan Yanyan, a blind girl with children, worked hard to make a living on the canal. Huang Weiruo said: "Although this story is fictional, the character and emotions of the children of the canal are the true portrayal of the Chinese people, the most dazzling of which is the kindness of human nature. ”
Yin Qing composed delicate and moving beautiful music for the play. In terms of "narration" and "heavy singing", Yinqing has made a lot of explorations in the structure of the song according to the characteristics of Chinese four voices and ethnic singing, and strives to strengthen the dramatic expression of music. Among them, Lei Jia's singing of "Canal Ballad" and "The Afterlife Will Love You" and Wang Hongwei's singing of "Where Are You, Red Lotus" and other arias with strong emotions and embodying the integrity of canal children are extremely tense, embodying the true feelings of the world and the spirit of great love of the Chinese nation.
In addition, the chorus "We are the flowing water of the canal", which embodies the theme of the whole play, is melodious and beautiful, as if the thousand-year-old canal is telling the hundreds of states in the world; the "Pulling Fiber Song" and "Shipwright Winch Song" are breathtaking and moving; and the choruses such as "Colorful Dragon Boat" and "Soybean White Rice Peanuts" fully demonstrate the regional characteristics and folk customs of the north and south of the canal. Yin Qing believes that writing "canals" must have strength and epic sense, reflecting integrity, and writing "ballads" must be kind and good to sing, and both are indispensable.
In the director's second creation, Liao Xianghong inherited the excellent tradition of mainland national opera on the one hand, and on the other hand, borrowed from Western opera creation methods and techniques, and on this basis, achieved the unity of nationality, modernity, people-friendliness and worldliness.
It is worth mentioning that in the past 10 years of the performance of the play, each rehearsal has been continuously revised and improved, and strives to make the work more perfect. For this round of performances, Yin Qing spent more than two months to revise and arrange the score of the whole play, and presented the personal emotions and spiritual realm of the protagonists in the play in a more three-dimensional way with a more delicate, complete and abundant musical expression.
Expert perspective
Highlight the core values of the National Cultural Park with stage creation
Yu Tao
In December 2019, the "Construction Plan for the Great Wall, the Grand Canal and the Long March National Cultural Park" was officially issued, marking that the National Cultural Park will open a new chapter in construction. In August 2021, the Leading Group for the Construction of the National Cultural Park issued the "Great Wall National Cultural Park Construction and Protection Plan", "Grand Canal National Cultural Park Construction and Protection Plan" and "Long March National Cultural Park Construction and Protection Plan", with the completion of the construction and protection plan of the Yellow River National Cultural Park, the national cultural park construction planning system with accurate positioning, distinctive characteristics, outstanding functions and connections is expected to take shape. One of the important goals of the construction of the National Cultural Park is to build important symbols of Chinese culture such as the Great Wall, further highlight the spread and influence of important symbols of Chinese culture, and significantly improve the level of inheritance and development of excellent traditional Chinese culture carried. It can be seen that when creating literature and art around the theme of the National Cultural Park, the focus and foothold lies in reflecting the core value connotation of the National Cultural Park, that is, reflecting the image of China and highlighting cultural self-confidence through literary and artistic works. Because of its characteristics, stage art requires more thinking and deeper understanding when achieving this goal.
First, make a choice between "big" and "small".
In the Context of Chinese Culture, the Great Wall, the Yellow River and the Grand Canal represent the Chinese nation and its national spirit, and the Long March represents the course of the Chinese revolution and the revolutionary spirit it has nurtured. Such a grand and thick connotation should be infused in a stage performance of about two hours, the creator must first choose between "big" and "small", is to make a grand narrative panorama of the magnificent history, or to pick up a wave in the torrent to micro-present, different choices determine the different forms, structures, rhythms and emotional mechanisms of the work, creators and performance groups need to fully consider the characteristics and expressiveness of art categories and dramas according to their own conditions and target appeals. Make the right choice between small.
Second, realize the conversion of "moving" and "static".
The Yellow River, the Great Wall, and the Grand Canal have a history of origin, construction, and shipping for thousands or even thousands of years, and the Long March has also been written into the red history of the Chinese revolution. These seemingly old, distant histories illuminate the ancient and modern from the depths of time, and the shaping of the country and the nation has not stopped to this day, and the construction of the national cultural park is precisely to reflect the image of China and highlight cultural self-confidence with these symbols, to explore the "movement" from "quiet", and to penetrate from "ancient" to "present". Stage art is the best means to remind and highlight the reality of history, reading history through books, the history in the text and in the mind seems to be static and used to look back; through the stage works to record history, history with a considerable and perceptible appearance is dynamic, it is accompanied by left and right, forever in the present. Stage works should profoundly grasp this characteristic of themselves, deeply understand the Chinese cultural spirit referred to by the important symbols of Chinese culture, the explanatory ability, influence ability and construction ability of China's practical path in today's China and the current world, and in the creation, they should not only show the past, observe the reality, but also look forward to the future, grasp the joints of ancient and modern times from the important components of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era, such as ecological civilization, building a new development pattern, and the community of human destiny, and refine the essence of the transformation of dynamic and static. At the same time, special attention should be paid to respecting the laws of art, and we must not replace image shaping with slogan propaganda and become propaganda materials for illustrated policies.
Third, "official" and "folk" narratives complement each other.
At the foot of the Great Wall, on the banks of the Yellow River, at the canal crossing, and during the Long March, how many years have flowed, how many rises and downs have alternated, how many changes have been experienced, and as many written records remain, there are as many oral and oral transmissions. Stage art has both the solemnity of the temple and the jokes of the rivers and lakes, two styles and two faces, which also have positive social significance and strong viewing needs, and the two cannot be replaced and cannot be abandoned. The official narration is excavated from historical materials, reproduced with historical facts, and has an epic temperament, while the folk presentation is publicized as folk, national and legendary, and the two types of descriptions jointly show the vitality and vividness of important symbols of Chinese culture, and work together to produce strong attraction and influence. If the creator can have both, not only the accuracy and rigor of the official narrative, but also the vividness and agility of the folk narration; both the accurate outline of the big background and the big era, and the exquisite depiction of small events and small people, can he give these inanimate cultural symbols in his works the soul and flesh and blood, and become the bearer and narrator of the spirit of the Chinese nation.
Stage art creators need to conscientiously study and comprehend the goals and significance of the construction of the national cultural park, and understand its background and future prospects from the perspective of China's exploration, chinese proposal and Chinese contribution for the development of the world, in order to better use stage art works to excavate the connotation of the national cultural park and contribute works with ideological content and artistic value, otherwise it can only be a hot marketing creation and a policy-based propaganda creation.
(The author is the full-time vice chairman of the Gansu Literary and Art Critics Association)
April 26, 2022 China Culture Daily
Special reports were published on the 5th edition
Editor-in-charge: Zhang Haining