It's about "Lamentations", a song that mourns the old man's departure and makes people want to cry.
At the time of mourning, no one cared who made this piece of music, only subconsciously felt that they did not hear the movement of folk instruments such as sheng, pipe, flute, and flute, all of which were foreign drums and trumpets, which should be created by foreigners, right?
However not also.
This classic work of mourning and mourning was created by the hands of Chinese, and was created by the eighth route army cadets of Yan'an Luyi during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, on the basis of drawing on the folk music of the anti-Japanese base areas!
Yan'an Luyi
Copyright law has only begun to gain attention over the years, otherwise, with the song played about 2 million times a year, the composer's copyright fee alone would undoubtedly be enough to reach an astronomical number!
So far, however, the piece has not benefited any of the parties. When the song was played, there was no composer's signature.
Why?
One reason is that the people of that era, idealism is supreme, everything they do is for the liberation of the country and the nation, they are all dedicated to revolutionary work, where is there any "copyright consciousness"? Another is that, although in recent years, more than one composer has claimed to be the originator of the piece, none of them have been able to testify to the surviving stave manuscripts, and there are still doubts and disagreements.
Who is the composer of "Lamentations"?
When it comes to composition, we can't help but mention the background of the times.
When the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression broke out, a large number of enthusiastic young people from all over the country and even overseas rushed to Yan'an to seek a way to save the country. After refueling and charging at the Lu Xun Art Institute in Yan'an, a propaganda and cultural team was formed to rush to the front line of the anti-Japanese resistance.
The famous composer Mr. Liu Chi is one of them.
Composer Liu Chi (1921-1998)
1. Liu Chi, a native of Xi'an, Shaanxi, joined the Red Army in 1936, and after 1939 was admitted to the third phase of the Music Department of Lu Xun Art and Literature College in Yan'an, where he studied composition and conducting under the great musician Xian Xinghai, and entered the music research room as a graduate student and teaching assistant after graduation.
He once said that he had an experience in Yan'an Luyi to the effect that he, Zhang Lu and Guan Hetong found Chang Mao'er, a well-known artist at that time, in Mizhi County, and listened to the teacher Fu play "Fengfeng Bell" with a whistle. This piece of music is affectionate, tragic, has distinct regional characteristics and extremely strong simple feelings, they are deeply shaken, engraved in their minds, and can never be forgotten again.
After that, Liu Chi and others adapted according to this song, played by a variety of folk music, and used as mourning music at the ceremony of Genghis Khan's tomb and the ceremony of welcoming Liu Zhidan's tomb, which became the prototype of "Mourning Music". In 1956, Liu Chi once again processed it into a memorial music for a double orchestra and gong in the music creation of the movie "Shangganling", which has become a common mourning music at funerals in China today.
The above is the first statement, composing (or adapting): Liu Chi and so on.
There is a second theory: composer Marco and other collective creations.
Marco the Musician (1918–1976)
2. Marco, a native of Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, came from a Christian family and entered the Department of Chemistry of Henan University in Kaifeng in 1935. Under the influence of the "12.9" movement, he participated in the local salvation movement, and went to Yan'an in the winter of 1939 to work in the music department of Lu Xun Art Institute.
Marco was an excellent musician who grew up in the struggle of the Chinese revolution. He wrote more than 500 musical works in various genres during his lifetime. Among them, the works with widespread mass influence are: the song "Don't Let the Devils Cross the Yellow River", "The People's War Song", "Nanniwan" and the opera "Husband and Wife Literacy".
According to his recollection, after the death of Liu Zhidan, a general of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army and one of the founders of the Soviet Union in northern Shaanxi, Mao Zedong gave the literary and art workers in the border areas a task - to quickly compose a funeral music for Liu Zhidan's memorial service. Therefore, the Yan'an music workers, mainly Marco, quickly collected materials, and finally combined the main theme of the northern Shaanxi folk song "Embroidered Lotus Bag" and "Pearl Rolling Curtain", and adapted and created the wind song "Public Sacrifice Liu Zhidan", which is the original form of "Mourning Music" that has been used to this day.
At this point, there is a third theory: Luo Lang adapted it.
Military music conductor Luo Lang (1920-2015)
3. Luo Lang, formerly known as Luo Nanchuan, is an outstanding contemporary musician and conductor, and the main founder of the new Chinese military music industry. He was born in 1920 to an educational family in Dehua, Fujian Province, and later moved to Malaya. After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Luo Lang and more than 10 patriotic overseas Chinese young people set out from Hong Kong and arrived in Yan'an, northern Shaanxi, in August 1938.
In Yan'an, Luo Lang first entered The Northern Shaanxi Public School, and then was admitted to the Music Department of The Lu Xun Art Institute in Yan'an at the end of that year, and has been associated with music ever since. In May 1939, Luo Lang participated in the Yan'an Luyi premiere "Yellow River Chorus" directed by Xian Xinghai himself, and was one of the members of the band. In July 1939, Luo Lang followed the North China United Congress from Yan'an to the Jin-Cha-Ji base area behind enemy lines.
The basis for the "Lamentations" from Luo Lang is:
In the Jin-Cha-Ji base area in 1945, Luo Lang, then the music composer and conductor of the Anti-Enemy Drama Society of the Political Department of the Military Region, listened to the performance of a folk chanting artist nicknamed "Horn Turning" together with Zhang Fei, Xu Shu, and three others. One of the melodious pieces is said to be dedicated to funerals, and Luo Lang and others were quite interested in it, so they wrote down the score of this piece.
Originally a song, Luo Lang adapted it and used it for the first time in Zhangjiakou's ceremony to mourn the martyrs who died in Zhangjiakou in the same year. In 1949, the groundbreaking ceremony of the Monument to the People's Heroes was held in Tiananmen Square, and the central government approved it as a national funeral song.
The above three statements have their own reasons, but if the chain of evidence is separated, there are overlaps and differences. At a time when opinions are divided, another new statement appeared in the media, attracting widespread attention, and adding a sense of mystery to who the song was made.
On October 13, 2010, the "Literature and Art Daily" published an article belonging to the famous Tieyang: "My second uncle Yang Ge and "Mourning Music"", in a calm tone, conveyed a surprising message: the original version of "Mourning Music" was born in the Kangtou of the performance team of the Northwest Base Combat Drama Society, composer Yang Ge, then the head of the drama club and music conductor!
Painter Tie Yang (nephew of Yang Ge)
4. Yang Ge (1921-1981), born in a family with the surname of "Qu" in Zhao County, Hebei Province (changed his name after participating in the revolution), after the "July 7 Incident", he was studying at a university in Beijing and went to Yan'an. During his studies at "Lu Yi", he led the singing of "Yellow River Chorus", and the conductor at that time was the composer Xian Xinghai himself.
According to Yan Jizhou, a comrade-in-arms of the Northwest Combat Drama Society who slept with Yang Ge and later a famous director of the Bayi Film Studio, Yang Ge, who was responsible for music creation, attached great importance to local folk songs, and in the songs he wrote and several small operas, a large number of Northwest folk song elements were used: "New and Old Scenes", "The Day of Turning Over", "Battle of Fangshan"...
Yang Ge often had melodies in motion in his head, and even if he lay on the kang at night, his two hands were still in the air and kept drawing. He was conceiving, and the works at that time were all compared to paintings. In the face of the nephew of his old comrade-in-arms Yang Ge, who visited the door, Director Yan emotionally recalled the Zhengrong years of that year: "The composition of "Lamentation" is also Yang Ge, which was not originally called "Mourning Music", called "Funeral March", which was an interlude written for a small opera. After the performance, it first circulated in the northwest, then Yan'an, and then the whole country. ”
Director Yan also said with deep affection that every time he heard "Lamentation" sound, Yang Ge would appear in front of his eyes, and his two hands were drawing...
Director Yan Jizhou of Bayi Film Studio (1917-2018)
There is no doubt that Yang Ge, who never appeared in the literary and art circles after the founding of the People's Republic of China, was so accomplished in music creation at that time! What prompted him to leave the arts and enter a department that had nothing to do with music?
The answer seems to be able to find some traces from the review of the old comrade-in-arms Director Yan:
Yang Ge has a calm personality, giving people a sense of purity, coupled with his family origin, it is inevitable that he will be affected in the past movements. One of the most memorable is the "push and shove" movement. A group of people surrounded the "key people" to fight, pushed over, and pushed past; people also asked some inexplicable questions for you to answer, for example, someone asked: "You eat rice in the south, why did you run to the north to eat millet?" Whether rice is delicious or millet is delicious..." This means that if you leave the rice and don't eat it, and you just run to the revolutionary camp to find guilt, you must be a spy who has come in. Director Yan said that he and Yang Ge had been surrounded and pushed, although Yang Ge was already the leader of the drama club at that time, he was still a composer and conductor.
This kind of unforgettable sports scene is not unfamiliar to those who have experienced the 1960s, which is a devastation and blasphemy of human conscience. Those who are hurt, especially young intellectuals like Yang Ge, who are clean and emotionally sensitive, will inevitably leave a painful imprint on them for life. Therefore, once you have the opportunity to get out of this environment, you will not look back. Director Yan said that Yang Ge did a very good job, after the founding of the People's Republic of China, he entered the city, and the former Tuba Road has become the brain of a well-known figure, and it is inevitable that Zhang Luo will get together to meet, others have gone, he also served in Beijing but never attended. Later, he was transferred to the work of the Shaanxi Provincial Science and Technology Commission, interlaced like a mountain, and completely broke off contact with the literary and art circles.
Now it is no longer necessary to churn these things, what matters is whether Yang Ge did anything for copyright before he died? According to his nephew and painter Mr. Tie Yang, after the 1950s and 1960s, the literary and art policy went up and down several times, until the signature system of literary and artistic works was abolished, and the second uncle was impacted in the movement again and again due to the problem of family origin, and he himself was very far away from the literary and art circles. The idea of examining the Lamentations is self-extinguishing. Although in that eventful era " mourning " is still used.
Yang Ge refused to be with the literary and art circles, not only because he had been "pushed" and for other reasons: once Director Yan was ordered to write a script called "Lost Foot hate", fabricating a young man with a background in Shanghai who came to Yan'an, and after a struggle, he was forgiven. Director Yan asked Yang Ge to play the young man who had lost his footing, and Yang Ge said to Yan Director: "You are making things up, I will not act!" ”
From this, it can be seen that the young Yang Ge's strong personality, whether in real life or in artistic creation, nonsense is something he cannot tolerate. Director Yan Jizhou did not shy away from talking about these things with deep affection, and also included the understanding between comrades-in-arms.
5. At this point in the story, the source of "Lamentation" has finally sorted out several seemingly independent but intertwined veins. But which composer's byline should fall on? I believe that you, like me, still find it a little difficult. This is because " Lamentations " is not an ordinary work, its weight and place in the history of music is extraordinary, if it falls on the head of the non-creator, it will make it unbearable. Therefore, it is necessary to be cautious in judging this matter, and it is absolutely impermissible to rush it.
It is believed that no matter who the final signature is, it cannot change the fact that "Lamentations" was originally a wild flower, it sprouted in the soil of northern folk, infiltrated the elements of "crying" in folk songs and local dramas such as Qin, Jin opera, Hebei Zizi and other singing voices, and has already had a considerable foundation after generation of folk wind artists, but it is "raised in the deep and unknown". I was fortunate to meet a hot-blooded young man from Lu Yi who had both musical talent and modern composition literacy, and appeared in front of the world again, which was already washed away by the heavenly beauty of the lead, the desperate lament and the choking of the little widow on the grave completely ceased to exist, replaced by a tragic and solemn, broad and affectionate, although sad, but also gave people a kind of hope and strength of the magnificent work, called a great music!
"This song should only be in heaven, sprinkled with the spirits of the earthly sacrifices"
"Lamentation" can become a classic of the Chinese music scene in today's form, condensing the essence of folk art of past generations, infiltrating the painstaking efforts of several Luyi teachers and students, whether signed or not, they have left a precious imprint in the process of the music from folk to the palace, and they are all memorable proud sons of the Chinese music scene!
Mr. Luo Lang, who has conducted the performance of "Lamentations" on major occasions many times, once said: "In the final analysis, this piece comes from the land of our nation. ”
This is by far the most comfortable and acceptable explanation for the world.
(Note: The information of the musician Yang Ge is derived from the "Literature and Art Daily" Tie Yang on October 13, 2010: "My second uncle Yang Ge and "Mourning Music")
About author:Dou Weihua, a member of the Chinese Writers Association, once worked for the Hebei Writers Association. Now living in Beijing, he writes small articles on civilian ecology from a grassroots perspective. Welcome to follow.