The singing voice is melodious and elegant, the posture is beautiful, and the charm is strong. Like an orchid, it is fresh and elegant, emitting a delicate and mellow fragrance. This is the Sichuan Yangqin.
Sichuan Yangqin, also known as "Sichuan Qinshu", is spread in the Han areas of Sichuan Province, and is named for the use of Yangqin as the main accompaniment instrument. According to legend, during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, Sichuan has appeared with the accompaniment of the yangqin rap performance, when the performance of a single person playing their own singing, mainly speaking, supplemented by singing, singing is relatively simple, when speaking white also use wake wood, so it is called "drum yangqin".
The traditional Sichuan Yangqin is performed by five actors divided into five professions: sheng, dan, net, final and ugly, which is called "five square people" in the jargon. Performances are generally based on sit-down singing, but can also be performed standing. The actors sang on the field and played their own instruments to accompany them. When there are many characters in the repertoire and there are not enough to be assigned, you can sing multiple characters by one person.
The Yangqin singing cavity includes two types: the provincial tune refers to the Yangqin singing cavity in Chengdu, which is divided into "major key" and "moon tone" (also known as "Yue tone"), and the major key belongs to the plate cavity, with "one word", "fast one word", "second stream", "three plates" and other plate styles. The moon tune belongs to the song card body, there are nearly twenty song cards such as "Moon Head" and "Stacked Broken Bridge"; the state tune refers to the Yangqin singing cavity outside Chengdu, which belongs to the plate cavity, with "clear plate", "second-rate", "third plate" and other plate styles.
The music of the Sichuan Yangqin genre pays attention to the change of strength and speed, not only considering the strength and weakness, the contrast between fast and slow as a whole, but also often making such a comparison between music sentences. The speed often adopts a slow-fast or slow-fast-slow layout, and all kinds of performances are clean and neat, easy to retract, suppressed and frustrated, and rhythmic.
Sichuan Yangqin "Three Sacrifices of the River"
The most significant feature of the Sichuan yangqin is "sitting on the ground to convey affection", the previous yangqin performers generally sat on the stage and walked less, but the repertoire they sang was often fascinated by the fans because of the strong story and full of charm.
Another feature of Sichuan Yangqin is that it is extremely expressive, and can play a variety of musical images such as wind and rain, thunder, and rolling waves. The accompaniment is mainly played by the yangqin, which is called the "three major pieces" together with the Jinghu and the three strings, and is called the "five squares" together with the bowl and bowl and the drum board. In addition, the accompanying instruments also include erhu, huai drum, etc., and can also be added according to the needs of the plot, such as flute, gaohu, ruan, cello, etc.
The period from 1912 to 1949 was the flourishing period of the development of the Sichuan Yangqin, and representative famous artists such as Li Liansheng appeared. Li Liansheng is good at singing tragic and generous songs such as "Fisherman's Farewell" and "Weeping Peach Garden", and he used the "Wave Eye Three Plates" when performing "Huarong Dao", which achieved excellent results and was popular all over the place. The successors Li Decai and Ye Nanzhang also had outstanding performances, and also contributed to the development of Sichuan Yangqin.
The traditional repertoire of Sichuan Yangqin includes hundreds of "Breaking into the Palace", "Drunken", "Qiujiang", "Boat Society" and so on, and the internal compilation and printing of "Sichuan Yangqin Dictionary" and "Sichuan Yangqin Singing Anthology" reach as many as 13 volumes.
Yangqin art carries the history and culture of Bashu and has great value for sociological and cultural research.