The Rise and Evolution of Kunqu Opera and Yiyang Opera?

The social factor for the formation of Yiyang Opera was that Yiyang Opera came into being at the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty, which is the unanimous understanding of drama historians at present. However, since the Southern Song Dynasty, after the Yuan Dynasty entered the Ming Dynasty, Yiyang was almost at war. There are both fierce resistance to the invasion of the Jin people and the struggle of poor farmers who are unable to survive because of heavy oppression; Some righteously saved the people in peril, and some resolutely fought back against the enemy and the rebels. At the end of Yuan Dynasty, Jiangxi was even more plunged into war. In 1338, in the fourth year of Yuan Shundi to Yuan Dynasty, an uprising broke out in Yuanzhou, Jiangxi Province in response to the "White Lotus Sect". In February of the twelfth year of Zhengzheng (1352), the "Red Scarf Army" organized by the "White Lotus Sect" launched an anti-yuan battle in Raozhou and Xinzhou. The uprising of "White Lotus Sect" lasted for several decades. "Jiangyou was the first soldier and Liejun collapsed." Countless people lost their families and were displaced in riots and wars. "It is rare to protect their hometown, restore their prosperity, and prosper the latter." In the Ming Dynasty, Yiyang suffered a lot. "The soldiers in the land are frequent, and the officials and the houses are swaying." Between Zhengde and Germany, "at the turn of Jiangxi, Guangdong and Huguang, thousands of miles are chaotic." "In the second year of Zhengde, Ding Mao, Pan Tai, the magistrate of Yugan County, violently challenged the people, and Yu Ganqi, Wang Haoba and others gathered in Yaoyuan to make a riot and robbed Yiyang." "In the fifth year of Zhengde (151), Yao Yuan stole it and will commit Fuyang." Until the seventh year of Zhengde, "the chaos was rampant, and Yiyang recruited soldiers and looted residents." The unrest in which officials forced the people to revolt spread to Guixi, Qianshan, Leping, Dexing and Poyang. In the 14th year of Zhengde (1519), Jiangxi people suffered from the rebellion of Zhu Chenhao, the king of Ning. Zhu Chenhao sent people around to buy furs, make armor, build weapons, practice soldiers' courage, and collect bandits and thieves in Poyang Lake area, plotting to make trouble. Wang Shouren sent troops to counter the rebellion, and the war affected the whole Ganjiang Poyang Lake area. UNESCO experts praised the "Yiyang Opera" for its incessant wars and disasters, forging the indomitable character of the people in Yiyang and its nearby areas. In the case of unbearable, "urging the levy will rely on strong resistance and become accustomed to it." The mood of resistance is increasing day by day. "Since the year of Ernian, people's hearts are not ancient, and those who are honest are arrogant, and those who are simple are embarrassed. The habit of bullying and cheating has invaded Xing, which is based on endless prison lawsuits and thieves' growth, depending on the past." Yiyang, born in honest and frank, hates evil, and has a tradition of daring to resist exploitation and oppression. Cheng Youshou, a native of Xin 'an, Yiyang County in the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, said: "Yi Wu Wan Yi is still a seal of ancient hundred miles, and the ancestors' high winds and solitary festivals are full of vitality, and the mountains and rivers are in Jiangyou." The so-called "high-spirited and solitary, awe-inspiring and lively" is another interpretation of Yiyang people's nature, honest and frank's hatred of evil, and their courage to do and be brave. Yiyang Opera and Kunqu Opera were born out of Southern Opera, but the social background of Yiyang Opera and Kunqu Opera is quite different. Although the original Kunqu Opera was also: "The village is a ditty, and there is no palace tune and no rhythm, just taking its abnormal farmers and scholars to sing smoothly." However, the Kunqu Opera has been carefully crafted by scholars in the study, and has undergone artistic processing such as gathering friends with intellectuals, tapping on the sandalwood board, carefully pondering, slowly grinding the words and carefully packaging. The harsh social reality of Yiyang and its surrounding areas in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties determined that Yiyang Opera could not be shallow and low-pitched, soothing and euphemistic, and could not pursue elegance and exquisiteness. Yiyang Opera was not born in a scholar's study, nor was it used for fun before and after flowers, nor was it a pastime after a full meal, nor was it even sung at a banquet for dignitaries. Yiyang Opera is the drama of the lower class, the product of social unrest, and the struggle and cry when life is threatened. Is standing on the edge of the cliff, calling and saving those whose lives are hanging by a thread; It is the inspiration of life courage in the face of hunger and death; It is the sustenance of life ideal and an interpretation of life. The artistic style of Yiyang Opera is simple, not crude; It is passionate, not indifferent and sad; It is the control of the human soul, not noisy and vulgar; Wang Yang is wanton, not weak and frivolous. Yiyang cavity art is based on the rich humanistic culture of Yiyang (the whole Raozhou area) and the rich regional culture. Strong regional cultural characteristics and special humanistic spirit are the source of the vigorous development of Yiyang Opera. Yiyang dialect relies on strong visual and auditory impact to shock people's hearts. The sonorous gongs and drums, moving people with emotion, playing freely without restraint, and the help of "changing the tune", "misusing the local dialect", expressive and passionate, make Yiyang Opera gain artistic penetration and affinity beyond the limitations of dialect and local culture, as well as the penetration ability of integrating various local cultures. The widespread spread of Yiyang tune is caused by the massive loss of population. Tang Xianzu said in "The Temple of Qingyuan, a drama god in Yihuang County": "When it comes to Jiajing, Yiyang tune is lost, and it becomes Leping, which is Hui Qingyang." There are various understandings of this passage of Tang Xianzu. When we know the sufferings of Yiyang people in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, especially before and after Jiajing, we should draw a deeper conclusion about the so-called "Yiyang adjustment". The Wanli edition of Yiyang County Chronicle in Ming Dynasty explained that Yiyang people's livelihood was depressed and the population dropped sharply: "Yi people have lived together for hundreds of years, so it is appropriate to scale up." However, the version of the book, the inherent household exists and people go, and they die and migrate, and they are also in the world without a soil. " It is inevitable that people will migrate and flee in large numbers in the face of serious survival crisis, endless war and continuous famine year after year. Xu Wei's "Xu Wei's Narrative of Nanci", a unique Yiyang dialect, said: "Today's singers call Yiyang dialect because it is widely used in Jiangxi, Beijing, Hunan and Fujian ..." The "Narrative of Nanci" was published in the thirty-eighth year of Jiajing (1559), which means that Yiyang dialect has been widely spread all over the country around the thirty-eighth year of Jiajing. This seems to be in line with Tang Xianzu's statement that "Jiajing is the best and Yiyang is the best". During the Ming Chenghua, Hongzhi and Jiajing years, the people in Yiyang, Jiangxi Province and the whole Jiangxi region had the most difficult life, the most critical survival and the most difficult life, so they had to rely on their skills to eat everywhere and make "unprofitable business". Migration and escape have made Yiyang Opera extinct in its original place, but Yiyang Opera is still popular wherever people go. According to Fan Lian's "Notes in the Clouds" in the Ming Dynasty, "When the performers met in Jialong, there were Yiyang people who entered the county for the show, and they suddenly admired it, so Yiyang had a family in Songzhe. ..... "This historical material is the true record of Yiyang people who fled to Songjiang area to" eat a meal "and settled down. Due to the arrival of Yiyang people, "Yiyang Pear Garden" flourished in Jiangsu and Songzhou for a while. It was not because some intellectuals deliberately excluded Yiyang Opera from the lower class out of prejudice that Yiyang Opera would not decline in Jiangsu and Songzhou in a short time. A large number of fleeing people in Yiyang and its surrounding areas searched everywhere for a place to live. Some people passed through Leping and Fuliang in neighboring counties and entered the southern Anhui area, where they combined with the local Yu Yaoqiang, resulting in "Leping Opera" and "Qingyang Opera". Some people continued to go deep into Fujian and Guangdong through Guixi and Yihuang, which promoted the reform of local operas. Others entered Hunan, Hubei, Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan and other places via Nanchang. Wang Shixing, who served as the deputy envoy of Yunnan Lancang during the Wanli period, saw with his own eyes the situation of "the whole province of Yunnan, caring for people". The refugees who fled everywhere spread the influence of Yiyang dialect all the way. Coupled with a strong homesickness complex, the lingering homesickness spread among the refugees and had to be resolved with a radical Yiyang accent. Since then, Jiangyou businessmen have joined in, which has strengthened the momentum of Yiyang Opera and expanded the influence of Yiyang Opera in various places. The flexibility and tolerance of "following the local customs without music", "changing the tune of songs" and "misusing the local dialect" made Yiyang Opera take root in the soil of various places, and the local operas derived from it gradually flourished, and Yiyang Opera became one of the sources of many local operas. From the beginning of the Ming Dynasty to the middle of the Ming Dynasty, Yiyang Opera has been distributed in Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Hunan, Hubei, Fujian, Guangdong, Yunnan, Guizhou, Nanjing, Beijing and other places for more than 1 years, and it has gradually changed under the influence of people's appreciation requirements and interests. During Jiajing period, Yiyang tune evolved into Leping tune in northeast Jiangxi, Huizhou tune in Huizhou and Qingyang tune in Chizhou. During the Wanli period, there was a "four-tone accent" that was "slightly changed to Yiyang, but it was accessible" (Gu Qiyuan's "Guest Redundancy"). In addition, it is generally believed that there are Yiwu Opera and Taiping Opera which are derived from Yiyang Opera. These operas all rose in the vast areas of northeast Jiangxi, south Anhui and southwest Zhejiang, which caused a prosperous situation of folk operas in the south. This can also be confirmed by the engraving and selection of songs in Jiangxi, Fujian, Zhejiang and other places during the Wanli period. For example, most of the repertoires published such as Eight Capable Plays of Brocade, Da Ming Chun, Ci Lin Yi Zhi, Jade Valley Tunes the Spring, Picking Wonderful Notes of Brocade, Autumn Night Moon, Group Music Selection and Various Tunes are singing Yiyang, Qingyang, Huizhou, Taiping and Siping Tunes. These tunes competed with the Kunshan tunes advocated by the literati, and gained advantages, just as Wang Jide's Qulv recorded: "Today, the Shitai and Taiping pear orchards have been around the world several times, but Suzhou can't compete with the other two or three". Qingyang cavity has the widest spread and the greatest influence among the cavities known as "fashion". Such as "Qing Opera" in Sichuan, Hubei, Henan and Shanxi, and "Qingyang" absorbed in Liuzi Opera in Shandong, all evolved from it. In the north, the "Beijing dialect" formed by the combination of Yiyang dialect and Beijing pronunciation had a grand occasion of "six famous classes and nine rotations" when it was performed in Beijing during the reign of Qing Qianlong, and it was adopted by the court to write "Kunyi Drama". Wang Zhengxiang and others made a standard work on it, and compiled a book "The New Twelve Laws of Beijing Opera Spectrum". Although the above Yiyang cavities have their own different development and changes, they still maintain the inherent characteristics of Yiyang cavity, so they constitute a kind of acoustic cavity system, which is called high cavity cavity system. By the middle of Qing Dynasty, when various local operas flourished, Gao Qiang became an integral part of the emerging multi-voice operas, such as Sichuan Opera in Sichuan, xiang opera Opera, Chenhe Opera and Qi Opera in Hunan, Wu Opera in Zhejiang, Jiangxi Opera and Ruihe Opera, and Liuzi Opera in the north. Some of them mainly sing high-pitched tunes. The mobilization of troops and the migration of immigrants in Yiyang Opera House in the early Ming Dynasty, the development of handicrafts and commerce in northeast Jiangxi and southern Anhui since the middle of the Ming Dynasty, and the trade between Jiangxi and Huizhou merchants all objectively contributed to the flow of operas and the spread of operas. Among them, the opening of the commercial road is particularly closely related to the popularity of Yiyang operas. But what is more important is Yiyang tune itself, which meets the needs of the masses in the content of the repertoire and is easy to be mastered by the masses in the artistic form. The main manifestations are as follows: ① Yiyang dialect inherits and develops the tradition of folk art creation of "making orders at will" and "singing smoothly" when singing in Southern Opera. Ming Ling Mengchu said in Tan Qu Zaza: "Jiangxi Yiyang Tuqu, with long and short sentences and high voices, can enter the cavity at will." This is the characteristic that Li Tiaoyuan said in Drama Talk that "there is no music score in the direction, only following the local customs". This shows that Yiyang Opera also sings a set of Qupai, but it is not as strict as Kunshan Opera. It can be free from the norms and constraints of fixed music scores, which makes the artist's practice of creating a cavity have great flexibility; It is also convenient for them to absorb the local accent, enrich the singing tunes and adapt to the appreciation habits of the masses. For example, the couplet used in "Gu Chenghui Holding a Candle" is composed of Qupai (in Yunfei) and folk song (Nocturnal Song) which appear alternately and are used repeatedly, and are sung from one watch to five watches. ② Yiyang dialect can "misuse the local dialect", that is, dialect is adopted instead of "Mandarin" as Haiyan dialect. Therefore, "the natives in all directions like to hear it" ("Guest Verbal Words"). This makes it gradually combine with the local language and pronunciation everywhere, thus becoming a localized sound cavity. ③ Yiyang Opera has always adopted the practice of transplanting and performing legendary scripts such as Kunqu Opera (Jing Zhi Ju Shi Hua by Zhu Yizun in Qing Dynasty), and inserted popular rhymes and essays with the expression of "rolling" to make it easier for the masses to understand. The above three points reflect the law of combining Yiyang Opera with the needs and hobbies of local people in the process of its spread and development, which is also the artistic reason why it is bound to change with local pronunciation and folk art every time it spreads to a place, and finally forms a local high-pitched opera. The history of the formation of Kunqu Opera has a long history. It originated in Kunshan at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and has a history of more than 6 years of Kunqu Opera "Qiu Jiang" stills. Since the Song and Yuan Dynasties, China's operas have been divided into North and South, and Nanqu has been sung differently in different places. At the end of Yuan Dynasty, Gu Jian and others sorted out and improved the original tone of Nanqu, which was popular in Kunshan, and called it "Kunshan tune", which was the embryonic form of Kunqu opera. During the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, Wei Liangfu, an outstanding opera musician, reformed and innovated the melody and singing method of Kunshan Opera, absorbing the advantages of southern tunes such as Haiyan Opera and Yiyang Opera, giving full play to the beautiful and distant features of Kunshan Opera, and absorbing the rigorous structure of northern tunes. By using the singing method of northern tunes, with the accompaniment instruments of flute, flute, sheng and pipa, he created a delicate and elegant "Shuimo Tune" which integrates the advantages of northern and southern tunes. Liang Chenyu, a native of Kunshan, inherited Wei Liangfu's achievements, made further research and reform on Kunqu Opera, and made Kunqu Opera appear in the form of cantata. Finally, Kunqu Opera was able to be beautiful and far-reaching in the atmosphere without big gongs and drums, and its melody was more beautiful. Reform of Accompaniment Instruments In the past, Xiao and Guan were the main instruments in Nanqu accompaniment. In order to make the singing of Kunqu Opera more appealing, he brought together flute, Guan, Sheng, Qin, Pipa, Killer and other instruments to accompany the singing of Kunqu Opera and achieved success. At the end of Qin Long's life, he wrote the first Kunqu legend "Huansha Ji". The performance of this legend has expanded the influence of Kunqu Opera. Scholars compete to create legends with Kunqu Opera, and more and more people are learning Kunqu Opera, especially geisha. Chen Yuanyuan, who is famous in history, can sing Kunqu opera.