Singing of Mianyang Ancient Painting Opera

Its singing mainly comes from local folk songs, minor tunes, fishing drums and Taoist music. Many vocals are permeated with folk songs, and some still retain their original forms. At the same time, it also absorbed some tones and qupai of Chu opera, Han opera and Han altar ditty, which enriched the singing of this drama. There are four main tunes, namely Gao Qiang, Qi Shui, Gong and Siping, and there are more than 200 kinds of minor tunes. The lines of the play don't have to rhyme, but use the local spoken language and two-part allegorical sayings. Has an active, lively and humorous artistic style.

The popular "Gao Qiang" and "Ai Qiang" evolved from the folk songs popular in Maozui and Zhengchang, such as Grassland Qu, Grassland Qu, Grassland Qu, Fishing Drum Qu, and Singing Shadow Play, with high-pitched and simple voices and strong local flavor.

According to different occupation, age, gender, personality characteristics, timbre, vocal range and range used, the same vocal cavity forms different singing styles. Taking the main theme as an example, in order to show Zheng Dan's dignity and femininity and Hua Dan's beauty and charm, his vocal music is gorgeous and euphemistic; When expressing the elegance of teenagers, the gentleness of the elderly and the vitality of horns, its range is relatively broad and rich; When the clown is humorous, exaggerated and grotesque, the range is narrow and the melody is simple. In addition to the common characteristics of paying equal attention to lyric and narrative, the singing function of the main cavity also has its own emphasis on specific performance: some are lyrical, some are good at narrative, some can express a variety of feelings, and some can express a single feeling to the fullest. The main cavity belongs to the plate cavity. The lyrics are mostly seven words and cross-sentences. The traditional singing form is "singing with people, accompanied by gongs and drums". Singing is high-pitched and simple, with a wide melody range and a lot of melody jumps; Both men and women use the combination of "local voice" and "falsetto", and the close cooperation of "singing, helping and playing" has formed the unique singing style of ancient painting and drama. The main cavities are high cavity, sad cavity, water cavity, water rhyme, Siping cavity, gong cavity and resurrection cavity.

High-pitched tunes come from the singing of weeding in the field. Farmers often use high-pitched tones and melodious melodies to express their feelings and relieve fatigue because of the need of continuous heavy work when weeding. When the ancient painting opera house absorbed it as the main cavity, it retained this high-pitched and loud feature. Because of its beautiful melody and strong lyricism, men, women and children can hum, so people call it Hu Ya. Such as "skull cavity", which means high and open; "withered six tones" means that the tone of meaning is very high, and the tone of singing "six" is generally good; "Tied for Six Tunes", because the singing is slow, the lyrics fall once every six sentences; "Stacking skeletons" means beautiful and pleasant. In addition, there are other names, such as "Skull Flower Drum" and "Skull Team", which is one of the most representative vocals of Huagu Opera. Gao Qiang is good at expressing various feelings; Such as joy, anger, thinking, sadness, fear, shock, etc. When it is soothing, it is like running water, and when it is passionate, it is tense and intense! Therefore, there are many differences such as "hi Gao Qiang", "sad Gao Qiang", "fast Gao Qiang" and "slow Gao Qiang".

This aria is bold and unconstrained, with a soft female voice. It is also flexible and malleable in sentence arrangement and line processing. Actors can arrange flexibly according to their own voice conditions and the needs of characters' thoughts and feelings. Therefore, it is one of the most representative vocals in Jingzhou ancient painting drama, which is generally used for the singing of this drama. Because Gao Qiang is good at expressing deep grief and indignation, it is used as a key aria in many plays.

Sad tune is a high-profile (from the original tune to the subordinate tune) anti-tune singing method, which is specially used when female characters are sad. Its vocal range is wide, and its singing is similar to the crying of rural women in Jianghan Plain, while "Yo-Ouch" and a large fluctuation of drawling (called "Wu Ziqiang" by artists, which means non-orthography) can better express grief, depression and pain. Because Gao Qiang is good at expressing deep grief and indignation, it is used as a key aria in many plays. For example, the lyrics of Qin Xianglian's long sentences in Sanguantang are handled with high notes and sad sounds, and the singing is euphemistic and sad, which appropriately shows the feelings of the characters in the play.

Weishui is a kind of singing method with lyric and narrative as its main functions. Its plate is rich and changeable, and can accommodate long lyrics. For example, "Visiting Friends" and "Persuading Gu" are all more than 70 sentences. In particular, The Story of the White Sail has very few words, and more than 600 lyrics of the whole play are all sung by Shuiqiang. Among the artists of ancient paintings, men are afraid of "visiting friends" and women are afraid of "drunkenness", which shows that the contents of these plays are complex and varied, and there are many lyrics. The whole story is unfolded by singing. Because of his kind and fluent singing, Qinshui is familiar with helping others to persuade, telling sad stories like tears, being sad and euphemistic when worried about loneliness, and being impassioned when arguing. Therefore, it has its unique advantages to express complex drama plots and portray different characters with water cavity.

The lyrical features of Qi Shui are mostly reflected in the "starting board" and "adagio", which can also express a variety of feelings. Adagio is often followed by a long narrative. This lyric adagio is connected with narrative adagio and allegro, with ups and downs and sharp contrast, which conforms to the public's appreciation interest and aesthetic habits.

Defeated rhyme is a variant singing method of Qishui Opera, which is gloomy and sentimental, and mostly narrates the unfortunate past and lovesickness in different places. Its mode and scale are the same as those of Qishui Opera.

Siping is the only aria expressed in the form of Qupai in the main cavity, which consists of four sentences: beginning, bearing, turning and combining, so it is called Siping. Its melody combines rigidity with softness, which is suitable for expressing different emotions such as joy, melancholy and missing. Although there is no variety of plate changes in Siping, due to the flexible melody rhythm, according to the gender and age differences of the roles, a variety of professional singing methods have been formed, which can better express various characters' personalities. For example, "Female Siping" is euphemistic, lingering and colorful, mainly expressing the emotions of young women, such as joy and worry, and is also suitable for minority singing, with tough tunes and romantic and unique images, commonly known as "Juvenile Siping". "Male Siping" is bright, bold, straightforward and decisive, which is suitable for showing the character of middle-aged men. Old Siping is vigorous and simple, and it is good at depicting the image of the lower-class elderly working people. "Ugly Siping" is humorous, and the tune is simple and straightforward, dedicated to the clown.

The uterine cavity is a special kind of sad cavity, which can be used by both men and women. The tune is deep and sad, and it is mostly used for middle-aged and old people to tell painful past events and express their sad feelings; In traditional Chinese opera, it is dedicated to ghosts wandering and telling grievances. Compared with beating gongs and drums, the tune is deeper and more desolate, which often gives people a feeling of horror! Generally, the two kinds of vocals are used separately in the drama of plot and emotional needs, and can also be sung back and forth. For example, an aria of the White Snake vividly shows the sadness of playing gongs. In addition to the four main tunes, there are minor tunes, which are divided into three categories: single-card, special-tune and interlude, and are also an indispensable part of Mianyang ancient painting opera singing.

A single brand is the tone in which a person sings and dances, expresses emotions with a tune or tells a story. It is like a performance of folk art, with gorgeous costumes, singing and dancing, and can freely enter and leave the role. Artists call this form of performance "solo play" or "flower drum". For example, western opera, ten fingers plum opera, forty-two opera and so on. , gradually developed from a specialized tune to a multi-purpose tune with certain plate changes. Compared with ordinary minor, its playing function has been strengthened, and its structure has gradually developed in the direction of plate change. In addition to repeating the upper and lower sentences, the aria has a more lyrical head (starting from the board) to guide and the end (ending from the board) to perfect its form. In particular, the close combination of its musical tunes and language tones makes singing and reading integrated and very harmonious, which is also the characteristic of Mianyang Huagu Opera.

Special minor is the dramatization of folk minor. Special tune is mainly used for small plays, generally a script with one word and the title is also the title of the script. Many special songs are exclusively sung, such as Embroidered Pocket, Fanfan, Zhao Lang, Busy Four Seasons and Begging for Money. In singing, the tune basically maintains the lyric style of folk minor, but according to the development of the plot, there are many changes in singing methods, such as compression, extension, flexible lining, cavity lining, fragment repetition, sentence repetition, etc., which make it more in line with the needs of ideological content and characters' feelings. In a play, if the artistic conception is diverse, it can be expressed in several minor tunes, with one song as the main theme (usually the title of the play) and others as the auxiliary, such as Standing on the Flower Wall, Double-throwing Bamboo Shoots and Mending the Back.

Episode is a chorus in ancient Chinese opera. That is to say, copying the popular folk tunes and the vocals of other folk arts and operas intact is to insert the tunes, local folk arts and the vocals of other operas in the play to express the feelings and psychological state of specific environment and specific characters, which mainly plays a role in enriching the singing color. For example, "Arabian Nights": Li Tianfang was scared before dawn, so he sang bravely; "Beauty Bottle" sings for fairies; The story of "Pass the Customs" sung for an artist girl. Through this form of "play in play", actors can improvise various tunes or other operas and operas according to their own wisdom and conditions to arouse the interest of the audience. Therefore, "interlude" plays an important role in the singing of ancient paintings. The traditional singing method of ancient paintings and operas is "singing in harmony with people, accompanied by gongs and drums", and the lyrics are mostly seven-character and cross-sentence. The singing rhythm is lively, the melody is beautiful, the lyric narrative is full of local flavor, the singing content is close to the lives of ordinary people, and it is lively, which reflects the wishes and demands of the broad masses of the people, which is also an important reason why Mianyang Huagu Opera is deeply loved by the broad masses of the people. Therefore, people in Mianyang, regardless of sex, age, like to hum some tunes of ancient paintings and operas when walking and working, so there is a saying that "there is no strength to work without humming ancient paintings and operas".