The music of three hundred years ago was Beethoven and Mozart, and the music of twenty or thirty years ago was Faye Wong and Li Zongsheng. But the music that is popular now is the "divine comedy" on the short video platform.
Throughout the evolution, one cannot help but lament that music is in decline, aesthetics are decaying, and art is finished.
However, Tian Yimiao, a composer and doctor of compositional technology theory, feels that the vulgar trend of mass music aesthetics is actually a false proposition.
Composer, Doctor of Composition Technology Theory Tian Yimiao
"Musicians of every generation feel that this audience is not good, in fact, every generation is the same." She told the South Wind Window reporter.
The more popular the music is and is liked by a wider audience, the simpler the melody is and easier to remember. Even Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven wrote "pop music" and dance music, at a pace faster than the heartbeat.
Beethoven's "Country Dance" is paired with ballroom dance, just like Jay Chou's "Compendium of Materia Medica" with Liu Qihong's gymnastics, so that the hypothalamus and pituitary glands secrete dopamine in a brisk rhythm, and the exhaled air is stained with roses.
Whether it is Europe three hundred years ago or China today, human nature is universal—they all want to love, pursue happiness, and fear death. And music is the eternal carrier of these thoughts.
Around 1802, a classical illustration published in Paris depicted Ludwig van Beethoven, set against the backdrop of the forest, and the first few bars of his fourteenth sonata, the Moonlight Sonata
In this sense, pop music and classical music are actually no different. Tian Yimiao wanted to break the tree on the high wall between pop music and classical music.
In 2010, she launched the "Listening to Classical Music in T-Shirts" lecture series and was invited to speak across the country.
Pulsating notes, no difference between vulgarity or elegance. Everyone can enjoy classical music, it doesn't hurt to wear a T-shirt to listen, there is no formal and psychological threshold, any music is worthy of us.
In 2016, with the help of media technology, Tian Yimiao put the lecture on the Himalayas. She tells the story of the composer in the paid audio program, telling the story of the composer, telling the story in a soft voice, with an audience of nearly 560,000 and more than 40 million views.
This value is comparable to the sales of some pop artists' albums, and Tian Yimiao himself was surprised. Now, she says, is the best time for classical music.
It is difficult to become a song queen song
You may have seen Tian Yimiao on TV. Capable short hair, a pair of gentle eyes, elegant conversation.
Over the years, invited as a judge, she often appeared on music variety shows. Such as "Singer", "Sound into People's Hearts", "I Am a Singer-Songwriter", and "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves", in recent years, the more popular programs, Tian Yimiao has basically been.
Tian Yimiao in the program "Sound into People's Hearts"
She said that she studies classical music, but she also needs to know what kind of music young people like today, know what they are listening to and singing.
It's just that pop music is getting harder and harder to understand.
In 2021, the annual "Top Ten Golden Songs" and "Top Ten Popular Songs" selected by Tencent Music Entertainment Group were in an uproar. People think that the golden song is not classic. The popular songs are familiar, but they are all on fire in the vibrato, as a short video soundtrack of more than ten seconds, they spread through the crowd like a virus. Some music lovers are pessimistic about this, concluding that there are no more golden songs, only divine comedies, and directly shouted: "The Chinese music scene is over." ”
"Top Ten Hot Songs of the Year" selected by Tencent Music Entertainment Festival
Tian Yimiao felt that it was necessary to look at these phenomena calmly.
She analyzed that the current spread of popular music presents two major characteristics. First, Douyin is grasping the popular trend of music; The second is that there is a disconnect between the singer and the spread of the song. Traffic singers lack representative works, and no one knows who sang the Internet celebrity songs.
At its root is the decline of popular music.
The late 20th and early 21st centuries were the heyday of popular music. The Heavenly King and the Queen of Heaven are full of talents. The grand occasion of the Chinese music scene is still held in the palm of the hand by music fans, and from time to time they take it out to rub and reminisce.
Faye wong
But Tian Yimiao said that the current popular songs, the current singers, "are actually not worse than the older generation."
"It's even getting better, better than before." She stressed, "People like Shan Yichun, Mao Buyi, and Xilin Nayi Gao are very talented. It's just that I missed the golden age of pop music, and it is difficult to become a queen of songs anymore."
People have more entertainment options, no longer just the singers who have been signed by the record company, listening to songs recommended by music radio stations.
It's the algorithm that gives singers in college dormitories, on bar stages, on pedestrian streets, and in golden concert halls the same degree of hearing as pop singers. Songs are pushed directly to a single mobile terminal, bypassing the checks and screening of record labels, music critics and radio anchors.
Singer Jing Xun became popular after uploading a roadside singing video on a short video platform
"Entering the Internet era, the spread of music began to differentiate. The original marginal, niche culture has gradually risen, and true pop music has become more and more niche. Tian Yimiao said that this is determined by technological change and is an irreversible trend.
Pan Caijun, vice president of Tencent Music Entertainment Group, revealed in an interview with the media that in the past, 30,000 songs could cover 90% of the users' playback, but now, this number has reached the level of hundreds of thousands.
"Over the years, the acceptance and aesthetic degree of Chinese users' music have broadened a lot, and this is the change." He said.
Classical music has long since broken the circle
People's attention is becoming more and more distracted, and pop music is becoming more niche. At the same time, it has created another spectacle: classical music, which originally had only a few enthusiasts, has captured the ears of more listeners under the differentiated dissemination of the Internet.
For more than ten years, Tian Yimiao has been immersed in this wave and has a distinct perception of the change in water temperature.
In the early years, she wrote reviews of classical music and collected books, which sold an average of between 5,000 and 10,000. Looking at the entire publishing market, books on classical music have sold nearly 10,000, which is a good result that exceeds expectations.
Tian Yimiao in class
In 2016, Tian Yimiao moved his position online, recording audio programs and speaking classical music, with nearly 560,000 subscribers. Compared to the sales of books in that year, this is more than 50 times the magnification effect.
She is not the only one who has devoted herself to promoting classical music, but it has been different from generation to generation, but in different forms. Tian Yimiao said that his predecessors lectured in the university and went to the theater on weekends to hold seminars. Speaking year after year, month after month, the audience that may enter the university and enter the theater is still a minority, and it is still those intellectuals and elites.
With the help of media technology, Tian Yimiao walked out of the campus and the theater, towards a wider, more complex and sinking crowd, along with classical music.
She lamented: "Now is the best time for classical music. ”
When the reporter asked her how classical music should break the circle, Tian Yimiao decisively replied: Classical music has long broken the circle.
"Right now, we're talking about a nascent singer, maybe only a few people know, only fans know. Talking about Mozart and Beethoven, everyone knows. On the contrary, classical music is easier to promote and more acceptable. ”
Tian Yimiao tells about Beethoven
In her opinion, the threshold for appreciation of classical music has always been overestimated.
Classical music not only has exquisite musical forms, but also carries universal human emotions. A hundred years ago, composers pondered the tests of human nature, the dilemmas of life, the seizure of value, and hundreds of years later, their reflections are still valid.
Life is nothing more than life, old age, illness and death, and hatred and hatred. That's what everybody can hum, and that's what goes for classical music.
Just like opera, people feel elegant and unattainable as soon as they hear it. But in fact, Mozart's classic opera "Don Juan" is about an ethical drama, and the story unfolds no different from the idol drama. The two young men pretended to join the army, disguised themselves as rich Turkish people the next day, and came back to pursue each other's girlfriends to see if love could stand the test. A series of unpredictable jokes, in ornamental notes and arias, uncover the layers of truth about life.
However, unlike popular music, classical music has been screened by time, and these movements that have survived after the big waves are sharper and more timeless in their emotional expression.
Classical music has become more timeless after the baptism of time. The picture shows the movie "The Biography of Mozart"
In classical music, there is a "lost aristocratic spirit". "In fact, it is a battle against the weakness of human nature," Tian Yimiao wrote in the music commentary, "human nature is greedy, selfish, fearful, lazy, and the aristocratic spirit requires people to overcome these and overcome themselves."
This is the spiritual value attached to classical music.
It is as if Bach's music is a three-dimensional, majestic musical building, in the layered, tightly woven melody, there is a kind of free order, teaching people to hear solemnity, indifference, rigorous self-denial.
Beethoven spent his life fighting, fighting against his own deaf fate, fighting against sonatas. There is a poignant and immortal heroism in his music.
Mozart's music is just as good as his people, fresh, intimate, playful, laughing, fun. He wrote operas, caring for the joy and helplessness of secular life, writing symphonies, intertwined with human sweat and tears. His music is born to question and break the rules and red tape of the world.
Mozart's music and life are intertwined. The picture shows the movie "The Biography of Mozart"
Another example is Chopin, who was a true romantic. Born in a chaotic world, he wrote trenches with a mournful melody and a steel helmet stained with mud with a crisp piano tone. Chopin wrote in his diary: "Why can't my piano become a war drum?" A hundred years later, his First Narrative in G major and Heroic Polish Dance remain the spiritual strength of the Polish people.
Tian Yimiao said: "Better music will open up the boundaries of our emotional experience and lead people to explore deeper into the spiritual world." ”
She believes that classical music is a kind of education for the public.
Immersed in the aesthetic code of classical music, the music listened to is elegant, and one "does not say ugly things and do ugly things". Tian Yimiao wrote: "Some weaknesses as a human being can be overcome to some extent. ”
I don't understand and don't dry goods
In 2020, Tian Yimiao resigned from the composition department of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and devoted herself wholeheartedly to the popularization of classical music. The latter is more like a task given by the times than teaching in a school, something that must be done by oneself.
Stepping out of the ivory tower, facing a majestic and uncertain water, there are many obstacles. At present, one of the problems that bothers Tian Yimiao the most is that she does not know who she is lecturing to.
While the Internet amplifies the volume of the speaker, it also blurs the portrait of the listener. Tian Yimiao found that most of the people who are willing to subscribe to the program are interested in culture and art and want to develop classical music into a hobby.
But in the comments and backstage messages, it is basically the parents of the piano child, anxiously consulting her children's professional learning problems.
Open offline lectures, the enthusiasts who come to participate are generally younger, but the majority of middle-aged and elderly people over the age of 50 or 60 who leave messages for consultation on social platforms are more than 50 or 60 years old.
The professional level and age level of the audience are not the same, which makes it difficult for Tian Yimiao to grasp the content of the course. Some listeners are just beginners and can't understand too professional and advanced knowledge; But if you always tell the story behind the music, some people think it is too simple, "no dry goods".
Tian Yimiao studies the theory of composition technology, but when telling the public, in order to more intuitively tell people where a piece of music is good, she tends to use poetry-like language to analyze and interpret.
However, Tian Yimiao herself also feels that music is actually difficult to describe by literature. Music is music, an art form that is very different from literature. To put it bluntly, a person who knows nothing about the theory of music technology cannot really understand music.
"Why is it stopped here? Why the chords that change here? Composing music has its own logic, and if you don't understand it, you don't know what the composer is thinking. "But on the other hand, if you don't understand the historical background of creation, you can't understand the emotions in music, and you can't fully understand the composition technique."
Stills from the movie "Immortal Truth"
The problem, she said, is that in the academy, students are stuck in the analysis of the song, not to understand the humanistic background of music. The layman, on the other hand, only wants to listen to the emotions expressed by the music and does not understand the logic. The technical and humanistic nature of music should complement each other.
Like Mahler's Symphony No. 5 in C minor, an 80-minute symphony, why is it called a great work? Why is it favored by so many conductors?
If you don't understand the intricate texture and sound layers, if you don't understand the social changes that Europe was facing at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, without one or the other, people will not fully understand Mahler, why the symphony is written so large and so obscure.
Useless "throwing stones"
While in Europe, Tian Yimiao found that many listeners, especially in Germany, would come to classical concerts with a general score.
"Their musical skills are very mature, and they have done a very good job in popularizing music education in society." Tian Yimiao said that this picture left a mark on her heart. Slowly, she thought, there will be more and more such audiences at concerts in China.
How? The fulcrum of leveraging the development of the classical music industry is the improvement of national music literacy and the promotion and popularization of music education. This is a business that needs to be managed for a long time, and Tian Yimiao feels that it has begun to bear fruit.
"60 children in 1 class, 40 have studied piano", and when they grow up, these "post-90s" and "post-00s" are naturally more likely to be interested in classical music. Her classical music course on the streaming charts is a good example of this.
Tian Yimiao
However, in the current music education, there are still some problems that are difficult to ignore. For example, too utilitarian.
Tian Yimiao gave lectures on the Internet and in various places, and was often asked: Is it useful to learn this classical music? Can I get extra points for further education?
There is a widespread anxiety about values in Chinese society, especially in the field of education. It seems that whatever you learn should be "useful.". Tian Yimiao desperately wants to tell people that real art is actually "useless".
She quotes Kant's definition of beauty as a pure beauty, which is free from concepts and stakes, and has a pure form that conforms to purpose and has no purpose. "If it is to write music reviews, to make papers, to boast, to cultivate sentiments, for various missions, music sounds like a taste, it is no longer open to you, no longer touching the heart." 」
Treating music learning too much utilitarianly will ruin children's interest and make children dislike music.
Music education is not only the education of piano playing technology, but also the education of aesthetics and emotions.
Tian Yimiao recalled that when she was a child, she sat in front of the piano and was helpless.
The piano teacher said, imagine that the key in front of you is a small pond, and your finger is a small stone. With a "bang", small stones fell into the water, splashing with a wonderful sound of water. Since then, Tian Yimiao has practiced "throwing stones" at home every day, which is very fun.
When a stone is lost, it is more than thirty years.
A few months ago, during the epidemic in Shanghai, Tian Yimiao was isolated at home. She hid in the world of keys and sheet music and had a relatively pleasant spiritual time.
Talking about this, she sincerely thanked these "useless uses" and gave her the strength not to be defeated.
The pictures in the text are partly from Visual China and partly from the Internet
Author | Yao Yuan, senior reporter of the South Wind Window
Edit | He Ziwei
Typography | Fifi