When I passed the grass of the campus after work, I saw a group of students rehearsing Chinese songs, listened carefully to a few sentences, it turned out to be Li Shutong's "Farewell", a standard pronunciation of "outside the long pavilion, the side of the ancient road" made me surprised by the wide circulation of this song at the same time, but also aroused my endless nostalgia.
It is generally believed that this song was written in 1915 when Li Shutong bid farewell to Xu Xianyuan.
Li Shutong was a master of traditional Chinese studies in the "Twenty Articles Shocking the Sea", and was also a famous artist, who befriended Xu Xianyuan, Yuan Xilian, Cai Xiaoxiang and Zhang Xiaolou, and was known as the "Five Friends of Tianya".
In 1915, Xu Xiangyuan, who fell in the middle of the family road, had to leave Shanghai and go to Beijing to earn a living, in order to bid farewell to Xu Xiangyuan, Li Shutong wrote this popular classic song "Farewell", since "Farewell" was created, it has been widely sung for the Chinese people for more than a hundred years, with far-reaching influence, and also with the Chinese people across the ocean, spread to foreign countries.
The lyrics of "Farewell" (according to Feng Zikai's hand-copied version):
Outside the long pavilion, beside the ancient road, the grass is green.
The evening wind blows the willow flute, and the sunset is outside the mountain.
The end of the sky, the corner of the earth, the knowledge of the half-scattered.
A scoop of turbid wine is all over the place, don't dream cold tonight.
The lyrics of this song are short, but there are many images contained in it, so the emotions are gentle and delicate, which has the essence of "mourning but not hurting" as stated in the "Preface to Mao's Poems", or this is the reason why this song has been popular for a hundred years and has endured for a long time.
Fu Zonghong said that Li Shutong's "Farewell" is "a typical modern lyric structure in terms of formal system"; and "it strictly follows the three-part musical 'technical' model common to modern songs, so its structure reflects the formal beauty of modern poetry."
According to Fu Zonghong, this song should be the earliest popular song in China, but the history of Chinese music says that Li Jinhui's "Drizzle" is the earliest popular song in China, because Li Shutong's "Farewell" is not original, but based on the existing song.
On closer inspection, Li Shutong's "Farewell" is indeed not original, the song is composed of a song from the United States, and the lyrics are based on the lyrics of a Japanese song.
"Farewell" is based on a song written by an American composer named John Pound Otway in 1851, which translates into Chinese called "Dreaming of Home and Mother", and the lyrics are roughly as follows:
Dreaming of home, dear old house! My childhood and my mother's home;
Often when I wake up sweetly looking, I have been dreaming of home and mother;
Home, dear home, happy home in childhood, when I played with my brothers and sisters,
It was the sweetest joy when I was roaming the hills and canyons with my mother,
Dreaming of home, dear hometown, my childhood and my mother's home,
······
Because the melody of this song is beautiful, the lyrics have obvious sad colors, which is very in line with the sentimental psychology of people who had to leave their hometown because of the war, so it spread throughout the United States during the American Civil War and spread to Japan at the end of the 19th century.
In 1907, Japanese musician Inu Tong Qiuxi re-filled in the Japanese lyrics for the song "Dreaming of Home and Mother", named "Travel Sorrow", at that time, this song was very popular with the Japanese, the lyrics translated into Chinese:
The west wind rises, the autumn gradually deepens, and the autumn is moving.
Alone sighing and drifting, the cold light shines alone.
Remembering the homeland, thinking of the past, Gao Tang reads his parents.
Where to find the country road, feel the dream of new.
"Travel Sorrow" was published in the "Secondary Education Singing Collection" compiled by Genichiro Yamada in the 40th year of Meiji (1904), and the lyricist Inu Kokukei worked at Niigata Girls' High School and deeply missed his hometown relatives who were far away in Kyushu, so he wrote this poem "Travel Sorrow".
Li Shutong's "Farewell" score was first found in 1927 in a book "Fifty Songs of Chinese Famous Songs" compiled by Qiu Mengjian and Feng Zikai.
Carefully comparing Li Shutong's "Farewell" and Inuyasha's "Travel Sorrow", the moods of the two songs are extremely similar, but the artistic conception is obviously superior.
"Travel Sorrow" expresses a straightforward and simple sad feeling; while "Farewell" has a deep artistic conception, vivid image, strong emotions, and the combination of lyrics and songs is very appropriate, which can be described as seamless, showing a subtle and elegant beauty, which can be said to be one of the most classic lyrics in China.
Images such as "Long Pavilion", "Ancient Road", "Yerba Buena", "Evening Wind", "Flute Sound", "Sunset" and so on form a group of images.
The "outside" of the "long pavilion", the "side" of the "ancient road" and the "sunset mountain outside the mountain" push the space away from the person to the deeper and farther. Fan Zhongyan's "Su Mu Sha" cloud: "The mountains reflect the slanting sun and the water, and the herbs are merciless, and they are even more outside the slanting sun." "Mountains outside the mountains" are the same as "more outside the slanting sun", although they cannot be seen, but "it" is in, in a vast space.
"Long Pavilion", "Ancient Road", "Herbs", "Evening Wind", "Flute Sound", "Sunset" and other image groups, coupled with this infinite and vast space, the whole song creates a kind of melancholy and lingering farewell feelings, bringing countless uprooted travelers and wanderers into the deep and poignant artistic conception of the West Wind, Willow Silk And Flute Sound of the Ancient Road, resulting in a kind of "eclipsed soul" detachment, which makes countless Chinese people obsessed.
Especially in the 1970s and 1980s, this "Farewell" was used as the theme song by the movies "Early Spring february" and "Seongnam Old Things", making it more singing.
Because Li Shutong's "Farewell" is too classic, it has attracted many celebrities to continue and rewrite it. Among them, the most interesting is Li Shutong's disciple Feng Zikai.
Since its popularity, "Farewell" has been sung by many primary schools at that time as a graduation song to express their reluctance to separate their classmates and leave their alma mater, and this scene has been mentioned many times in Lin Haiyin's "Old Things in Seongnam" (Lin Haiyin also sang this song when he graduated from Beijing Primary School).
Feng Zikai believes that it is not appropriate for a group of energetic and innocent primary school students to sing such a sad and poignant song, so he decided to change the lyrics to a little more vigorous, the tune remains unchanged, and the lyrics are changed to "You Chun":
On Sunday, the weather is sunny, and everyone goes to spring.
After passing through village after village, there are good scenery everywhere.
Peach blossom red, willow green, cauliflower like gold.
There was a clap of hands in the singing, one after another.
Although the style of the lyrics adapted by Feng Zikai is very suitable for children's vigor and happiness, because the lyrics are too simple, compared with Li Shutong's "Farewell", whether it is semantic or artistic, it is simply not the same. So before it could be sung, it quickly disappeared.
In addition to Feng Zikai, there are many people who try to rewrite and continue to write (some people think that Li Shutong's "Farewell" lyrics are too short) to pass "Farewell", but they can't catch up with the status of "Farewell" in people's hearts, so most of them are lonely and nameless, which shows the artistic charm of Li Shutong's "Farewell".
To this day, as the original music of "Farewell", "Dreaming of Home and Mother" has been little known in the United States, Japan's "Travel Sorrow" will occasionally be sung by some nostalgic Japanese, and Li Shutong's "Farewell" is not original, but blue is better than blue, "Farewell" has long become a well-known classic song in China, glowing with stronger vitality.