The germination and start of China's film music.
( 1905- 1045)
Dingjun Mountain is the first domestic film in China. According to the needs of silent films, the film only takes martial arts scenes such as pleading, knife dancing and confrontation in the Beijing opera Dingjun Mountain.
However, films in the silent film period still have "soundtracks" when they are shown. There are moving images in black and white on the stage, and a piano, a violin or a small band of three or five people are used to enliven the atmosphere under the stage. People gradually began to pay attention to the combination of music and film content. Music helps people understand the plot when the mood of music is related to the content of the film. However, because music has no conventional semantics, the relationship between music and film content is not one-to-one correspondence.
During the silent film period, Hollywood films dominated the film market in China, and the soundtrack followed the convention of "theater music". China didn't form his own film music.
1930, Shanghai Dentsu Company and record company purchased a full set of sound film machines from abroad, and officially produced China's first sound film "The Singing Girl Red Peony". Since then, audio movies have gradually appeared.
Since the end of the 1920s, the development of China urban song and dance music and China movie music, especially movie songs, has become the main body of entertainment pop music in China. In the 1930s and 1940s, they had a great impact on the cultural life of urban residents. Especially in the 1930s, when anti-Japanese became the main theme of the times, the revolutionary struggle urgently needed songs to match it.
Progressive songs, such as Graduation Song, Song Guangming Fishing, Song of the Road, New Woman, Song of the Four Seasons, Singing Girl, Crossroads, Singing Girl Behind Iron Shoes, March of the Volunteers, etc. It's all made for movies. The left-wing songwriters, represented by Nie Er, applied this propaganda method to movies. On the one hand, they made a successful attempt to use songs in movies; on the other hand, they greatly inspired the fighting spirit of the anti-Japanese soldiers and civilians, and movie songs became the mainstream of China's early movie music.
Most of these songs appear in the film in the form of interludes, sung by the characters in the play, which are true and natural and conform to the realistic creative style. The Four Seasons Songs and Genv in Street Angels were adapted by He Lvting according to two Suzhou folk songs at that time, Crying July 7th and Intimate Guest. The singer first appeared when Chen Xiao and Xiao Hong had a secret love. The second time was after the misunderstanding between the two. In the bar, Xiao Chen took out money to ask Xiaohong to sing. Xiaohong sang "Genv" again with tears in her eyes, and the speech speed doubled. The sweet scenes of the two people in the morning are superimposed from time to time. At this time, the lyrics of "A friend in need is a friend indeed" sound sour. Such a sharp artistic contrast is unparalleled in the history of China's film music. Another example is "Wan Li's Poem of Looking for a Brother" and "Singing Girl under Iron Shoes", which also appear in the film in the form of interludes.
In many movie songs, the prototype of the theme song also appeared, and some movie songs just clicked on the theme of the movie and played the role of the theme song. For example, "Graduation Song" in "Peach Blossom Robbery" composed by Nie Er and written by Tian Han appeared twice at the beginning and end of the film. The whole song is more than 50 seconds long, which expounds the background of the times and the identity of the characters and becomes the crowning touch of the whole film.
At that time, the soundtrack of film music mostly used ready-made music as the soundtrack of the film, and the whole film lacked the overall planning of music. March of the Volunteers, who appeared at the end of the film Son of the Storm, directly expressed the core theme of the film and began to have the artistic expression function of the theme song.
At that time, the means of expression of theme music had begun to appear. The film "Spring in a Small Town" used common music materials three times, and it also appeared in the form of variation because of the different characters and plots. This is a preliminary attempt of music infiltration.
During this period, there was basically no music (except songs) specially created for movies. In the process of film creation, the work of "music score" refers to re-editing the existing music material to match the picture and strengthen the action expression of the characters in the play. At this time, the use of music is highly consistent with the picture, and it does not give meaning outside the picture, nor does it take music as an independent film expression element to participate in the creation.
In the movie Crossroads, after losing his job, Lao Zhao is depressed or relaxed in his room, sometimes worrying and sometimes comforting himself. Music became Lao Zhao's "inner monologue" here. The choice of emotions in each piece of music is completely synchronized with the emotions of the characters, which increases the picture effect, but it seems too simple and naive. In the movie Street Angel, Xiaohong, Xiao Chen and Lao Wang went to the "big world" and were stopped by Xiaoyun who was soliciting in the street. There is no audio dialogue in this film, and the music lasts for four and a half minutes, and the writing of the music is refined to the lens. Music plays a sound role here, with three gongs and one drum. The sound of gong increases the sense of hearing tension and visually strengthens the action of the role. Drums have a comic effect. Generally speaking, this piece of music is sculpture-like, music and performance are integrated and completely synchronized with the picture.
Seventeen years after the founding of the People's Republic of China: the mature stage of film music
( 1949- 1966)
At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the government's policy towards the film industry was quite loose. 195 1 The simple and rude criticism of Wu Xunchuan has seriously dampened the creative enthusiasm of filmmakers. It was not until 1953 that the first film script creation conference and film art work conference, as well as the second national literary and art workers' congress, criticized the left-leaning thought and opposed "formulation" and "conceptualization" with "socialist realistic creation method", especially after Mao Zedong put forward the policy of "letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend" in 1956. For example, The City that Never Sleeps, Flying Tigers, Love Song of Lusheng, Story of Six Treasures, Li Shizhen, Song Jingshi, Mysterious Companion, Before the arrival of the new director, etc. They depict human nature and praise love, and many movie songs have appeared that are deeply loved by the people. However, after the anti-rightist struggle of 1957 began, some lyric movie songs became the target of public criticism, and The Little Swallow and Sunny Days of 1999 received a lot of criticism. During this period, the theoretical research and criticism of film music just started. Some experienced film music composers and theorists, such as He Shide, Wang Yunjie, Xu Wei, etc., wrote articles aiming at the shortcomings of film music creation at that time, and began to comment on some films from the perspective of music, with clear views to convince people. The movement of criticizing poisonous weeds, raising the white flag and the Great Leap Forward have brought unprecedented setbacks to film creation. Until 1959, in order to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC) 10, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping personally created a number of key films. Premier Zhou pointed out in particular that the tribute films lacked songs and dances, which made people watch happy minority films. This directly gave birth to folk music films such as Five Golden Flowers and Third Sister Liu. The following Eight Articles on Literature and Art and Thirty-two Articles on Film are programmatic documents to guide the adjustment and recovery of literature and art work and film work in this period. At this time, there are many movies that are remarkable in the use of music, such as Early Spring in February, stage sisters, Spring after a Dead Tree, Ashima, The Red Female Soldier, The Visitor on the Iceberg and so on. At this time, the theory of film music is also more enthusiastic. Zhou Yang, Li Huanzhi, Zhao Yufeng, Wang Yunjie, Wei Xu, Huang Zhun, Wu Yingju, Li Shubao, etc. wrote articles in succession, on the one hand summing up experience, on the other hand, making theoretical discussions on the artistic creation of film music. In the bumpy historical evolution, the film industry has suffered several setbacks, but it has made great progress, and the film music has also moved towards a mature stage.
After the exploration in the 1940s and 1950s, the film industry formed a professional film music creation team. 1949 In April, the Central Film Bureau was established in Beiping. The Music Department under the Art Committee of the Film Bureau is responsible for leading the national film music work. Each film studio has its own orchestra and film music creation group. These mechanisms effectively ensure the quality of film music.
After 1953, the Music Department of the Central Film Bureau sent a large number of cadres to study abroad. On the other hand, a one-and-a-half-year composer training course was organized, in which film composers He Shide, He Shide, Quan Ruxuan, who have rich experience in film music creation, taught professional courses, and Li Huanzhi, Kyle, Yang and Yao taught music theory and music history. The training class also observed domestic and foreign films and learned the experience of film music creation. This training course has a direct impact on meeting the urgent needs of film production in film studios. The trainees of this training course have played an important role in the creation of new China film music. All these make China's film music creation more mature.
After the founding of New China, Wang Yunjie of Shanghai Film Studio created music for films such as The Diary of the Mammy, Lin Zexu and The True Story of Ah Q ... Lei Zhenbang of changchun film studio once composed music for more than 40 films such as Five Golden Flowers, Sister Liu and The Visitor on the Iceberg, among which the film interludes Why Flowers Are So Red and butterfly spring Edge were widely circulated. His works are based on folk music materials, with strong national flavor and local characteristics. Liu Chi, a famous composer, has composed music for Shangganling, Heroes and Children, Flowers of the Motherland and other works. Yan Ge of Shanghai Film Studio composes music for Daughter of China, and films such as North War, Crossing the River, New Biography of Veterans, Nie Er, Spring after a Dead Tree, Ashima and so on. In addition, the music creators of the film White-haired Girl are Qu Wei, Zhang Lu and Kyle, the composer Che Ming of Guerrilla in the Plain, Zhu Ming of Li Shizhen, Gao Ruxing of Tales of Six Treasures, Huang Zhun of Red women soldiers, Qu Xixian of Song of Youth, Flying Tigers and People on the Grassland.
Many movie songs created at that time have been sung to this day. Thanks to their efforts, some concepts of film music have been clarified, and many creative methods have been well summarized, which has promoted the maturity of film music. With a mature creative team, film music gradually got rid of the tradition of "collage", and most of the film soundtracks were original music. This makes people have more discussion on the combination of music and film, and realize that music can not only be in the position of accompaniment in the film, but as an important performance element in the film, it should be more closely combined with the picture and have more layers. In the coordination of sound and painting, it is more artistic and the artistic expression of film music is more.
The theme of Japanese soldiers is written in "Guerrilla in the Plain" with Japanese mode scales, and the scenes such as devils entering the village have been used, and everyone is familiar with it. Dong Cunrui designed a humorous and cheerful music theme for Dong Cunrui, which blended well with other scene music. The use of national orchestral music in films such as Blessing and Lin Jiapu, on the one hand, outlines the meaning of water towns in the south of the Yangtze River, and on the other hand, the theme music throughout makes the films in a unified emotional atmosphere. The Visitor on the Iceberg, The Story of Six Treasures, The Red Female Soldier, Young People in Our Village, Nie Er, etc. Will change the tone of the theme song and become the theme music in the film.
During this period, the concept of theme music was gradually established and matured, and many excellent overall music designs appeared in the film. For example, the theme music designed for the enemy and the enemy in "Northern War" has been fully played in the plot of storming Motian Mountain: the staggered pictures show that the enemy and the enemy are racing against time to seize the highlands from both sides of the ridge, and the music also switches to their respective themes with the switching of pictures. In the frequent switching from a few seconds to dozens of seconds, the music keeps a good connection, and the emotions are pushed to a climax layer by layer through orchestration, speed and strength. Especially when the enemy fled in a panic, the chaotic and overbearing enemy theme music was evolved into only basic rhythm and residual weak emotions, reflecting that their army was distracted and defeated. This kind of music processing is very vivid. When our soldiers finally broke into the enemy headquarters, the screen reflected the scene of the enemy's fear of surrender, but music is an extremely high-spirited and radical theme of our army, where music shares the narrative function with the screen. This expression of audio-visual counterpoint was rare at that time, which effectively expanded the performance space of the picture and enriched the level of cooperation between music and the picture.
In addition to theme design, there are also many original paragraphs in the use of music. The pipa is well used in Flying Tigers. In the scene of grabbing tickets, the random fiddling of guerrillas is originally the music in the painting, brewing an atmosphere of rain. With the intense development of the plot, various musical instruments from the painting gradually joined and merged into a magnificent symphony from the painting. The application of these shows a further understanding of the law of film music at that time.
The progress of technology also directly affects the development of film music. 1958, the first three-dimensional film "The Old Soldier Biography" appeared, in which four tracks were used to record the sound, but in this film, it was mainly reflected in the sound processing of the dialogue between characters. With the continuous progress of recording technology, the application of multi-channel recording technology brings more possibilities to the processing of sound elements. Technically, there are enough audio tracks to record music and sound respectively, which makes the sound more layered. In Linjiabao, there is a scene where Axiu and his classmates go to a temple fair, starting with the sound of a child's diabolo, which is the first level sound; Axiu and his classmates went to the temple fair in high spirits, and gradually the subjective music of bamboo silk came in, accompanied them into the crowd to watch juggling, which was the second level of sound; At this time, the objective gongs and drums at the temple fair gradually replaced the subjective score, which is the third level; At this time, another sound-the distant whistle brought people to the ship of Shanghai refugees who had just landed on the river. That was the fourth-level sound. Against the background of these music and acoustics, the characters' language is also very clear, the contrast between the strength and weakness of the sound is obvious, and the connection of various sound elements is natural and smooth, with a strong sense of hierarchy.
17 A large number of excellent movie songs appeared, and the movie songs in this period have made great progress in art and quantity. In the absence of other forms of entertainment at that time, movies not only shouldered the heavy responsibility of boosting morale, publicizing and educating, but also shouldered the function of enriching the entertainment life of ordinary people to a great extent. Most movie songs can spread all over the country with the screening of movies, such as The Little Swallow, Playing My Beloved Pipa, My Motherland, Happiness Will Not Fall from the Sky, The Edge of butterfly spring, Why Flowers Are So Red, etc.
During this period, there were various forms of movie songs, which reflected the prosperity of song creation. For example, the song "Why are the flowers so red" in the movie "The Visitor on the Iceberg" appeared in the form of a solo, the love between Zato and Nawa in "Love Song of Lusheng" was expressed in the form of a duet, the meeting between A Peng and Jinhua in "Brotherhood" was also a duet, and there were many duet scenes in "Six Sisters". Shangganling's Heroes and Children and My Motherland are well known, and the performances in Honghu Red Guards are also very vivid.
17 During the founding of the People's Republic of China, a new form of interlude was widely used. In the past, interludes were all sung by playwrights. During this period, there were musical interludes outside the picture. These songs are no longer composed of sound sources, but the melody and lyrics are still combined with the content of the film, which plays a role in summarizing the meaning of the film, revealing the inner world of the characters, expanding the screen space and expressing the meaning that the film can not directly express with songs.
At the beginning of the film "Sisters on the Stage", the chorus of Yue Opera "There are many sad and happy people on the stage, and there is a stage outside the stage" begins, which is a metaphor for the story. At every key point and turning point of film development, chorus will be used to summarize the story and predict the development of the plot. When Chunhua exposed the despicable behavior of boss Tang and others in court, there was a commotion in the court. At this time of Sang Song, "birds are talking in disorder, crows are making noise in court, and black hands can't hide the sun and the moon ...". In the movie "The Visitor on the Iceberg", the herdsman Kale was killed by a spy when he went to the People's Liberation Army to escort Guranda. At this time, the high-pitched melody of the female chorus appeared: "Glory, good boy of the motherland. Glorious, small eagle ... "These all reflect the further exploration of the form and function of film soundtrack, showing an increasingly strong subjective consciousness, which is more extreme in the Cultural Revolution films.
At that time, there was an evaluation standard for movies, that is, "good story, good actors, good photography and good music", but there were also examples that were counterproductive because they paid too much attention to the use of music. In the process of synthesizing sound, some composers demand to emphasize the integrity and importance of music, use music to reduce and depress the dialogue and sound in paragraphs, and even argue with the director for "striving for the integrity of music", which is caused by insufficient understanding of the law of film music.
After Mao Zedong's speech at Yan 'an Forum on Literature and Art, the literary and art circles put forward the requirements of "revolutionization, nationalization and popularization". Literary and art circles have been exploring on the road of nationalization, and theoretical circles are also deeply discussing this issue. Magazines such as Film Art, Film Literature and People's Music have published theoretical articles to discuss the national style of film music and the use of national musical instruments.
During this period, the continuous discussion and revision of literary and artistic policies directly affected the development of art. During the period of the founding of the People's Republic of China 17, the creators actually turned their attention to the in-depth excavation of rural and ethnic minority films, and the artistic exploration of nationalization of film music also showed great achievements.
In the choice of musical instruments, first of all, the orchestration gradually gave up the practice of giving priority to orchestral music in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and tapped the nationalization factors in works with various themes and backgrounds. For example, in Dong Cunrui and Shangganling, the techniques of symphony and folk music are well combined in language. On the one hand, orchestral music established the musical theme of the film and set off the atmosphere; On the other hand, dulcimer, flute and other special musical instruments are used to express the delicate feelings of the characters. Later, in Young People in Our Village, Lin Zexu and Little Soldier, ethnic music was the mainstay, and a large number of ethnic musical instruments, such as banhu, Zheng, castanet, suona and Ruan, were added to form a national orchestra, which depicted various emotional atmospheres with ethnic music.
In the selection of music materials, a large number of folk songs and local folk arts are combined. There is no need to go into details about the national tunes in films that reflect the lives of ethnic minorities, such as Pingtan in Dead Trees in Spring, Yue Opera in stage sisters, Cantonese Opera and local operas in Lin Zexu, Ashima, Five Golden Flowers and Visitors from Tianshan Mountain. These folk music words are sometimes regarded as subjective music, which are easily accepted by the audience at that time. More often, it comes from objective music such as radio programs in movies, singing in fairs, and the protagonist's own singing, which is more real and cordial. "Red Flag Spectrum" Zhu Laozhong happened to meet a fellow villager at the station. Zhu Laozhong walked on a noisy station, and the music was the whole process of Zhu Laozhong's family being bullied by bullies, their families being ruined and their homes being left. As the camera moved, rappers appeared on the screen, and the music changed from subjective to objective, which not only explained the plot, but also explained the environment.
The nationalization exploration of 17 film music was very successful, which also laid the foundation for a large number of film soundtracks with national characteristics in the new period.
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