In the Danjiao of Peking Opera, although there are different genres, there are not a few Danjiao actors who can learn to sing a variety of genres. Of course, I am referring to the singing voice rather than the all-round of singing, reading, doing, and tableing.
I don't know if you have found that whether it is a Dan actor or a ticket holder in the industry, Mei, Zhang, Shang, and Xun can eat everything, but only very few can control the Cheng school singing method at the same time, generally speaking, the actors of the Cheng school only specialize in the Cheng school, and most of the actors who sing the Xun school only specialize in the Xun school, because these two genres have their own specialities.
First of all, let's talk about Xun Pai, his uniqueness lies in his performance. Xun Pai not only has the characteristics of running cavity, breath, speed and emotional color processing in the singing method, but more importantly, Xun Pai actors must have rich expressions, flexible movements, and good at conveying feelings, and these performance requirements raise the threshold of Xun Pai, so they are purely born in Qingyi, and generally do not easily cross to the door of Xun Pai.
Speaking of Cheng Pai, his difficulty lies in using qi and speaking. Everyone knows that the Cheng party has very strict requirements for spitting, and Cheng Yanqiu's emphasis on the beginning, abdomen, and end of the word is a big difference between the Cheng school and other genres. Other streamers are also very particular about spitting words, but in layman's terms, actors bite words like cats hanging mice, not to bite the mouse to death, but to hang and not let it run away. But Cheng Yanqiu's biting word, from the first vowel, bit the rat to death with a fierce bite, the momentum of the word head was absolutely large, and the head, abdomen and tail of the whole word were cut very clearly. Never make appropriate concessions on the bite word just because of the consideration of the relaxation of the sound. This point is that for actors who are accustomed to singing Mei, Zhang, and Xun factions, the charm of the Cheng school will often be "not adapted" or "not in place".
Another major reason why I did not dare to dabble in the Cheng Sect was probably the difference in the voice and method of using qi. All vocal music, including Peking Opera, opera and ethnic singing, does not pay attention to the use of qi, Chinese especially talk about "qi sinking Dantian", why does the bel canto singing method not require so much?
First, Cheng Yanqiu's voice was not enough, and second, this senior was extremely willing to learn and very good at learning. He was the first person in the opera industry to study Western voice in Europe. He learned not only the depth, sinking, closing, and releasing of qi, but also the position of sound.
Breath and sound are invisible, intangible things, vocal music students can not lie on the teacher to learn, in other words, to learn vocal music more to rely on their own understanding, can not "self-enlightenment" people, I am afraid that they can sing for a lifetime, but never sing well.
Cheng Yanqiu's "back of the head", that is, the voice line behind the pants seam, which is often mentioned in Western vocals. But he used it to the extreme, and most of the resonance points of the voice were used to the highest point, especially the vocal cavity with a higher vocal range, which was even more so, and the average actor could not do this extreme.
The transformation of the sound cavity requires free movement in all parts of the front and back, high and low, and so does Mei Pai and Zhang Pai. So the voice of an actor who sings well is loose, generous, and bright. However, Cheng's vocal method is more mainly based on vertical movement, using extremely high and extremely low breaths and vocal circuits to sing his pronunciation and characteristics that are different from all Peking Opera Danxing genres.
Yesterday, I had the privilege of eating at the same table with Mr. Bi Guyun, an old predecessor of the Peking Opera industry, thanks to the arrangement of Mr. Chen Yiming, a lover of Peking Opera. I put out these ideas and asked Mr. Bi for advice, but I didn't expect him to agree very much, and told me that in addition to learning Mei Lanfang, Xun Huisheng, Xiao Cuihua and Xu Biyun, he also learned the process of playing, and sang everything when he ran the dock. But once sang Cheng Pai's "Peacock Flying Southeast", the next day his voice was dumb, and he never touched Cheng Pai's drama again.
I was very touched to hear it, because I also had the experience of imitating anyone whose singing voice was not dumb, but imitating Cheng Yanqiu's singing meeting and dumb voice. Teacher Bi's words confirm my personal experience of Cheng Yanqiu's use of gas and voice, so today I dare to make this comment here, throwing bricks to lead jade, right or wrong, I hope that all experts will discuss with me!
(Picture and text from the Network)