Yangju Wealth _ Yangju Excerpts

What is the historical background of the merger of incense opera and flower drum opera?

A long time ago, Yangzhou people had the custom of putting incense cabinets in the hall. It is said that the incense cabinet is specially used to burn incense and worship the king.

In the early Qing dynasty, it developed from offering sacrifices to gods and burning incense to making incense parties that paid equal attention to performance and entertainment. When their performance develops to a complete story by singing, reading, doing and playing, it becomes a drama. Because it comes from incense, people call it "incense play".

Most of his plays are adapted from divine books, with as many as thirty or forty kinds of tunes. People in ancient Yangzhou liked singing and watching incense plays. By the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, there were nearly 30 Wannian stage dedicated to performing incense plays in Jiangdu.

There are two kinds of incense operas: inner altar and outer altar. There are many fairy tales in the inner altar, such as "Mu Lian saves mother" and "Qin Shihuang drives away mountains and blocks the sea". There are many folklore and historical stories in Waitan.

Yangzhou has been the hometown of flower drums since ancient times. Every town has customs such as playing flower drums, boating on the lake, fishermen catching mussels, pushing carts for the elderly, dancing dragon lanterns, walking on stilts, and sending Kirin on holidays.

Many folk artists are proficient in this skill. Flower drum is developed on this basis. From "fighting" and "stepping on doubles", it has evolved into "second small" and "third small", that is, the flower drum drama of Xiao Sheng, Xiao Dan and the clown. Ancient painting plays are very popular in both urban and rural areas of Yangzhou, and men, women and children will hum a few words.

There are two roles in ancient Chinese painting, namely "noodles" and "Baotou". Face is a clown, Baotou is Xiao Dan. During the performance, all the actors perform a collective song and dance, and then Xiao Mian and Baotou sing and dance, which is called playing or stepping on the opposite side.

This ancient painting drama was formed from 1736 to 1795. In the process of the continuous development of the people, it has also absorbed the repertoire of Anhui classes and other operas, and can perform more than 40 simple plays, such as visiting relatives, planting highland barley, borrowing wives, monks going down the mountain, boating on the lake and.

19 19, Yangzhou ancient painting opera was performed from the countryside to Hangzhou for the first time, which was a success and attracted the attention of Beijing opera circles. The next year, he once again boarded the Shanghai World Stage, causing a sensation in various amusement parks.

In order to meet the needs of the audience, the actors changed the lyrics in Huaiyang ditty, such as "The Blind King's Fortune Telling" and "The Little Nun Down the Mountain" into scripts. In terms of music, in addition to dressing table tunes, some tunes of Huaiyang ditty have been added.

The tune of Yangzhou Flower Drum is produced in drama and dance performances, with clear musical rhythm, suitable for portraying comedy characters, and cheerful, lively and humorous style.

Its representative tunes, such as the wheat planting tune in Husband and Wife Planting Wheat, the grinding bean curd tune in Wang grinding bean curd, and the fortune-telling tune in Fortune-telling for the Blind, are all important components of the music of Yangju opera.

At this time, the ancient painting opera has developed to the point of its heyday. For the first time, Hu Dahai, an actor, felt that the name of ancient painting drama was no longer suitable for the performance at that time. At his initiative, it was renamed "Huaiyang Literary Opera" to distinguish it from Huaiyang Big Class.

Huaiyang Opera established itself in Shanghai and began to recruit female apprentices. The first outstanding actresses were Xiao Lanzhen, Xiao, Chen and the famous Kunqu opera Jin Yungui.

The increase of actresses has played an important role in the further development of Yang Opera, because the singing of ancient paintings is only accompanied by silk strings instead of gongs and drums, so the audience calls Huai Yang Opera "Xiao Kai".

Although Xiao Kai is a kind of performance form that combines ancient painting and Qing Qu, it is different from ancient painting and Qing Qu. Early figures only had small faces and a bun, that is, an ugly one and a Hua Dan. Later, it developed into three guarantees and four sides, that is, three ugliness and four Hua Dan, with multiple angles on the same stage.

Most of the small opening plays are life plays, such as visiting relatives and cursing mothers, herding cattle on graves, blind people watching lights, and Taoist king beating the city god with demons.

From two big and two small plays, that is, planting barley, sighing in the fog, the little nun going down the mountain and the little widow going to the grave, the play has developed into a story of parting skirts, Meng Jiangnv and Liu Yin with complicated plots and many characters.

The small opening melody is relaxed and lively, euphemistic and melodious, mainly including big gong board, acacia tune, overlapping, green yarn fan and so on. The original actor who sang Huaiyang's big class changed to Huaiyang's literati drama, which was accompanied by martial arts gongs and drums, and Huaiyang's big class was accompanied by strings.

In the long-term performance practice, the two attract each other and gradually merge together, constantly absorbing the excellent aria of folk songs and Yangzhou Qingqu, and the content and form are becoming more and more perfect.

1920 or so, when Yangzhou ancient painting drama was performed in Shanghai, incense drama also arrived in Shanghai. When the incense opera was first performed in Xinmin Theatre, it was renamed as "Huaiyang Big Class", which had a great influence among the people.

Incense play is accompanied by gongs and drums, and the tunes include seven words, cross sentences, fighting, seven gongs, sissy, water bottles and so on. High-pitched, simple, rough and magnificent, the audience is commonly known as Huaiyang's big-scale drama.

Yangzhou incense is accompanied by big gongs and drums, not silk stringed instruments. There are more than 30 kinds of main tunes, such as seven-character singing, cross singing, boating in the wind palace, driving mountains and blocking the sea, and Lord Liu, all of which are rough, powerful and high-pitched.

In addition, Yangju also absorbed and transformed some tunes from folk songs and other operas, such as Playing Tooth Cards, Ten Cups of Wine, Yangliuqing, Wucheng Tune and so on. This has become an integral part of Yangju music.

At that time, Zhabei Xinmin Theater, Hongkou Changqing Theater and Taiping Bridge Tongqing Teahouse and other theaters specializing in drama opened one after another. In addition, the Huaiyang stage on Anakin Road also staged a big opening, and more and more actors came to Shanghai to sing.

The repertoires staged are mainly secular family themes, such as Pipa, Tooth Mark, Contract, Liu Yin and Sanyuan, which are called "Ten Plays and Nine Records". Makeup has also developed. Hua Dan wrapped her head in a veil and put on her costume; The performance imitates Beijing opera and can perform martial arts.

1935, huaiyang opera and huaiyang taipan finally merged formally, which was called "huaiyang opera" in history, and yangxi came into being. At the same time, the "Top Ten" jointly performed by Subei Xiang Troupe and Yangzhou Ancient Painting Troupe marks that the new drama has broken ground.

Although the early Yangju opera has a wide mouth and a narrow mouth, that is, a big voice and a small voice, the tune and cavity are the same. Since the appearance of actresses, Jiang Tengjiao and others have created a way of playing with the same tune and different strings to solve the problem of men and women performing on the same stage. At the same time, it absorbed the gongs and drums of Beijing Opera and Kunju Opera, played music cards and enriched the live music.

Yangju is rich in singing tunes, including Yangzhou Qingqu, Yangzhou Ancient Painting Opera, Yangzhou Xianghuo Opera and so on 100. Among them, Yangzhou Qingqu is dominant, among which Manjianghong, dressing table, cut indigo flowers and silver buckle are the main tunes of Yangju.

There are four ways to use Qupai in Yangju music: singing one more song, combining Qupai, linking sentences and changing old songs. Singing more than one song means that the same song changes in rhythm and melody to express a variety of feelings.

Qupai combination adopts the divertimento form of Yangzhou Qingqu. According to the needs of the plot, the qupai with similar tonality is regularly combined, which is mostly used for long narrative and lyric characters. Sentence-picking connection is to pick out some phrases of Qupai to form a new aria according to the needs of lyrics content, which better embodies the meaning of words and makes the combination of words and songs more appropriate; The variation of the old tune is a renovation of the original tune.

Yang opera accompaniment instruments are divided into literary field and martial field. The literary field is dominated by high-pitched erhu, supplemented by alto erhu or Hu Si, supplemented by pipa, dulcimer, sanxian, Qin Yue, bamboo flute and suona; There are drums, gongs, cymbals, drums and gongs in Wuyang. The rhyme of Yangju opera is mainly percussion instruments such as drums and gongs; Many classical gongs and drums and music playing cards are similar to those of Beijing Opera, and in addition, they have absorbed and utilized the music playing cards of Yangzhou Qingqu.

After long-term stage practice, the music tunes from the above sources have gradually formed a harmonious, unified and complete music system.