The piano is now a very mainstream instrument, summer vacation, many parents will give their children a piano interest class. In the impression of many people, piano was introduced to China from the West. Many musicians in the West are piano masters, such as Beethoven and Mozart.
But the historical fact is that the piano was invented by a Chinese during the Ming Dynasty, this person is called Zhu Zaiyu, a relative of the Ming Dynasty royal family, and his father is a king of the clan.
Stone statue of Zhu Zaiyu
Looking at our Chinese dynasties, if we want to talk about strange dynasties, then the Ming Dynasty is definitely on the list. It is not that this dynasty is strange, but that it is strange to the emperors of this dynasty. You see that Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang was actually born as a beggar, Ming Chengzu Zhu Di, who was the emperor, also grabbed a job with his nephew, and Zhu Gaozi, the emperor, was a complete foodie, and the emperor's majesty was disregarded? Of course, there are many more, I will not list them one by one, but I think the operation of the Ming Emperor is really incomprehensible!
Zhu Zaiyu's father, Zhu Houlan, the King of Zheng Domain, was a die-hard fan of Confucianism. Although you are the king of the domain, you do not have the ugly face of those rich people, and you are a completely honest person.
"Honest man", well, when there is a tendon. During the succession of the Jiajing Emperor, Renxian reformed and the "Jiajing Zhongxing" appeared.
Jiajing Emperor
This was originally a matter worthy of praise, but I don't know which tendon of the emperor was wrong later, and began to ask the immortals, hi to the ground.
When everyone went up to the court to burn incense to worship the Yellow Emperor, Zhu Houlan was frantic in writing all kinds of letters. Even the emperor dares to be afraid, and the next thing is to cut your title, and then give me a good reflection in prison. Seeing that his father was imprisoned for no reason, Zhu Zaiyu, a fighter among the filial sons, moved out of the palace in a rage, built a small earthen house and set up a flag: The day my father was released from prison was when I returned to the palace.
Returning to the palace again, it was already 19 years later. These ten years have also made Zhu Zaiyu turn from indifferent to Qiu Fu, and I think it must be that his father's imprisonment has made the original teenager already familiar with the world. After the death of his father, Zhu Zaiyu, who was supposed to inherit the throne, resigned from the throne, and the government and the public called him "the stranger in the heavens".
It is not too much to call him so, as the Ming Dynasty of the Strange Royal Family, he has more or less inherited the gene of "Strange Flower", and his thinking must be different from ordinary people.
About three hundred years ago, the world's first piano was born, and its foundation was built on the "law of twelve averages".
This theory was invented by Zhu Zaiyu, and its alias is also known as the "twelfth equation law", which is a mathematical principle of instrument tuning, which divides an octave into twelve equal parts, and each equal part is called semitones, which is the most important tuning method.
The Twelve Laws of the West
A pitch octave is a frequency doubling (i.e., a double frequency). The frequency of the octave is divided into twelve equal parts, that is, divided into twelve equal series, that is, the frequency of each tone is the root of the 12th power of the 2 of the previous tone. Just like when we go up the steps, the height of each step is precisely equal. Say important things three times and be precise equal! Precise equality! Precise equality! Don't think it's enough.
At present, the world's known instruments are based on the "twelve average laws", which is generally considered to be "standard tuning" in the West. When we think back to the blowing and singing in costume film and television dramas, it is not difficult to find the difference between the rhythm and melody of its tune and modern music, which is precisely the most intuitive change brought to our musical enjoyment by the "Twelve Averages".
So how did Zhu Zaiyu complete the calculation of the twelve-average law? I believe that we all learned abacus when we were children, Zhu Zaiyu used the ninety-nine eighty-one double-row abacus he invented and created to complete the complex calculation of opening squares and opening cubes.
In our inherent understanding, abacus can only add, subtract, multiply, and divide. In fact, the abacus is far more powerful than we think, and addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are only its basic functions. In our opinion, the opening and multiplication operations that are very complicated can be completed with the abacus.
In the third year of Jiajing, the famous Jinshang mathematician Wang Wensu completed the world's leading mathematical masterpiece at that time, "Arithmetic Treasure Book", which talked about the content of many advanced mathematics courses in modern universities. The most well-known of them is calculus.
The book was later translated into the West by missionaries, and after Reading by Newton and Leibnizbay, the calculus algorithm was further systematized and spread in the West. Now many of our college students will complain about Newton and Leibniz when they are preparing for the exam, why they invented calculus such a "perverted" mathematics.
Terrible high calculus
In fact, these things, like pianos, are all things that we export to domestic sales in China.
Zhu Zaiyu thoroughly studied the mathematical principles of this kind of music, and wrote a voluminous "Complete Book of Musical Rhythms" for this purpose. The twelve-average law invented by Zhu Zaiyu has reached the pinnacle of perfection, and until now no one can overthrow it or shake it, and the algorithm he uses and the figures he calculates are still in use until now.
In the 17th century, Zhu Zaiyu's books on the Twelve Laws of Averages were brought to the West by missionaries, sparking a revolution in the music world.
Bach, the father of modern music, wrote the famous work "Twelve Averages Piano Song Collection" after him, which is recognized by Western scholars as a revolution in musicology and music physics, and a major invention in the history of world science. If so, if Bach is the father of the piano, then our Zhu Zaiyu is a veritable grandfather of the piano.
Zhu Zaiyu is so powerful, but in fact, music is only one of his strengths, and people pursue all-round development. In terms of calendar, he insisted on measuring the time change of the sun's transit every day, and through years of observation and calculation, he came up with a formula for calculating the specific number of days of the year. Experts have found that the error between the calculation formula and the measurement of modern instruments is only 17 seconds to 21 seconds.
Engaged in art, how can there be less dance? He also conducted a summative study of ancient Chinese dance, and he was the first in the world to propose the term "dance science", and prescribed four principles and eight items for it, and he also drew a large number of dance scores by hand.
Dance score drawn by Zhu Zaiyu
The Tianxia Taiping character dance score he composed is considered to be the predecessor of large-scale group exercises. Ancient Chinese music and dance were often connected, and he divided them into two disciplines. In music, a three-step teaching method is proposed, the first is that the teacher teaches singing, which can be learned by one person and learned by many. The second is that you can memorize the score and let the students look at the score to try it out. The third is instrumental accompaniment. And our current music teaching also follows this method.
In 1611, Zhu Zaiyu was buried at the foot of The Nine Peaks Mountain in Qinyang. And his lifelong wish is like the "Awakening Words" he wrote: there is a courtyard before death, and there is a hill after death, which is enough!