In terms of performance style, Guan's piano music is stable in rhythm, strong in fingering, flexible in luck, especially in the expression of chanting and rhyme, and is known for its thickness and strength and profound artistic conception. This is not only "because he 'turned to many teachers' and won the strengths of all, but also because he was diligent in exploration and unique in his own way, so that his playing skills were independent of many pianists, becoming the 'first person' in modern piano music.".
Mr. Guan Pinghu
Guqin music has always emphasized both sound and rhyme. Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, the pianist has taken the clear, micro, light and far as the ideal realm of piano music performance, guqin music has begun to change from more sound and less rhyme to less rhyme, and the technique of its left hand is more delicate and vivid, and the piano music with different content moods often relies on different characteristics of the bard to compose its artistic conception. "The vowels of the qinser are heavy and solid, and are used for chanting and turning and implicitly stopping." "The magic of chanting is all in turmoil, slow and rhyme.". Indeed, the decorative fingerings of the left hand of the guqin, such as chanting, 猱, nickname, note, teasing, summoning, bumping, up and down, are indispensable elements for the expression of the guqin's musical style and artistic conception.
Guan Pinghu is very demanding in the notation of the score, which is fundamentally different from the chanting of some contemporary piano people who play the score and only pursue the melody of the melody. Guan's method of chanting came from his teacher Yang Zongji. When commenting on Yang Zongji's piano skills, Yu and Qin of the Republic of China had Yun:
"The piano does not re-chant, it is no piano also." Therefore, the chant has a long, thin, slow and rapid flying wandering, and the double slightly back and forth are divided into falling fingers. There is also a difference between slow and urgent double swings. (Yang's) analysis is minimal, and the use is very different. Only from the guqin notation, but note its name, but do not specify its method. And now the manipulators have made up their own imaginations, or they have even trembled and trembled with big movements and small movements, and the reason why there is no good bomber in this life is also. ”
Youyun: "The syllables of the piano are all in the chanting, the essence of this piano learning, the most appreciated by the ancients, the students of later generations, every time they encounter chanting, but to refer to arbitrary turbulence and undisciplined, then why should the ancients divide the length and the short and the short and the slow and so on." It is a pity that the old genealogy has not been elaborated on here. Nowadays, Yang's fine distinction makes all kinds of chanting have a definite method, which scholars can seek in his "Qin Zhi Trivia", "Qin Mirror" and "Qin Mirror Supplement" fingering method. ”
For example, "yin", Yang believes that Zeng Tong's yin method has two kinds of "five yin" and "four yin". The playing method of the five yin is to "bring two or three points to the right of the emblem with the sound after the sound, follow the left two or three points of the lower emblem, then two or three points, and then two or three points, and then repeat to the end of the emblem position". The playing method of the four chants is "after the sound is obtained, the left two or three points of the emblem are brought under the tone, followed by the right two or three points of the upper emblem, and then the next two or three points, and the compound is up to the end of the emblem". Based on this, Yang Shibai then gave a detailed explanation of Yin's playing method. Such as "yin" one item, divided into
"Long Chant"
"Bard"
"Whispering"
"Reciprocal Chanting"
"Flying Yin"
These items are already recorded in the Five Knowledge Zhai, but Yang Shi has made new interpretations according to his own understanding. For example, "Long Yin" (号), Yang's interpretation is "with seven テ (吟) to get the sound after the sound of the right four or five points with the lower emblem left four or five points, Yu and the five テ (吟) the same". Not only that, Yang also annotated it as a soundboard and sang it out with the singing string method:
From the perspective of Yang's disciples, such as Yang Baoyuan and Guan Zhonghang, they all sang the chanting method with the string method. Guan Pinghu also learned from the Yang clan his methods of chanting, injection board, and singing strings. However, Guan Pinghu does not seem to approve of this method, according to his disciple Zheng Minzhong, Guan Pinghu never sings strings in playing, teaching and playing scores, nor does he use the method of chanting and injecting boards. In fact, Yang's method of injecting plates, at that time, some piano people believed that "all kinds of playing methods were forced on the board, so that the tone was out of nature, and the piano product was not high."
Compared with Yang Zongmu, Guan Pinghu's use of yinyi obviously pays more attention to the flexibility of its luck, increases the use of live hands, and pays attention to combining yinyu with the expression of musical mood in playing. On the one hand, the method of guanping lake is inspired by Huang Mianzhi and the fingering of the monk Wucheng, and on the other hand, it comes from the long-term playing experience of Guanping Lake. Take the song "Pingsha Falling Goose" as an example, this song Guan Pinghu is trained by Yang Zongji, but the recording of Guan Pinghu is significantly different from the recording of Yang Baoyuan, the son of Yang Zongji. Although Yang Baoyuan's playing is calm and steady, it is inevitable that it will be dull. Although the overall framework of Guan Pinghu's "Pingsha Falling Goose" is consistent with Yang Zongji's, it is very different from the dull and square rhythm of "Piano Studies Series Pingsha Falling Goose", and the chanting, cunning, nickname, note, bumping, and teasing of its left hand are very rich, as well as continuous up-down, forward-and-backward, and retreat-repetition, etc., thus forming a melodic line with a long rhyme, making the piano music very clear and faint.
Painting by Mr. Guan Pinghu
Another feature of Guan Pinghu's playing style is that its lower fingers are extremely vigorous and powerful, and its musical style is thick and strong, simple and dignified.
According to the guan disciples, Guan Pinghu never left armor because of his bad nails, and played purely with meat, which was one of the taboos of playing the piano. However, due to the long years of playing the piano, the left and right fingertips of Guan Pinghu have formed a thick layer of calluses, which makes the piano music he plays have a unique meaning of canggu and chun in tone, making its music vivid and robust, and showing a flexible feeling in calmness. Guan Pinghu's "Flowing Water" is the embodiment of this style.
- Resources -
Zhang Huaying, "Guan Pinghu Guqin Scoring Art Exploration"