History of ancient Chinese musical instruments

The ancients believed that music is holy and can purify people's minds. Creating music is to use the "eight tones" harmoniously. The so-called "eight tones" refer to Eight kinds of musical instruments: gold, stone, earth, wood, bamboo, silk, gourd, and leather.

Gold, stone, soil, wood, bamboo, silk, gourd and leather are musical instruments made of bronze, stone, pottery, wood, bamboo, silk, gourd and leather. The ancient Chinese made musical instruments according to Different musical instruments are distinguished by their materials. It is these musical instruments that, in the depths of history, have jointly performed the music of the Chinese soul...

In August 2005, a Chinese band performed in Switzerland Touring the Canton of Geneva, the theme of the performance was "Oriental Notes". The audience had never seen the instruments used by the band, and had never appreciated such a melodious and ancient melody. The performance caused a sensation in the local area.

The listeners in the audience did not understand that this way of playing has incorporated many modern factors, and today's artists are no longer able to truly reproduce the essence of ancient Chinese music.

Xun is an ancient Chinese wind instrument shaped like an egg. The music from this small instrument immediately reminds people of the open wilderness. After hearing it, people today may think A faint melancholy arose in my heart, as if I was recalling something from the past.

This is a memory that remains deep in the collective memory of mankind.

In the past, this instrument was used to play in the wilderness. It once dominated the musical life of the ancient Chinese. From the lower reaches of the Yangtze River to the middle reaches of the Yellow River, people have found this kind of musical instrument in many Neolithic ancient civilization sites. The making of xun is very simple. It is shaped with clay, holes are made in it, and then it is fired in the fire.

In the view of Liu Kuanren, president of the Chinese Xun Culture Research Association, the biggest characteristic of the Xun is that it has a strong power of shock. In the words of the writer Jia Pingwa, it is native to the country and is not like ordinary musical instruments. What can be replaced is that it has a shocking effect on people's souls and inner world.

In the harsh primitive society, in order to survive, human beings competed with wild beasts for food in the embrace of nature, and died of natural disasters like wild beasts. But humans are different from other animals. They can think and have wisdom. Their emotions are richer and require more ways of expression. Animals can only howl, but humans can sing, and they can also make stones, soil, bamboo, and bones emit sounds. Beautiful sound - musical instrument was born.

From a music theory perspective, ancient Chinese music generally uses a pentatonic scale, called "Gong, Shang, Jiao, Yu, Yu", which is equivalent to "1, 2, 3, 5, 6", which is more accurate than modern music. The general heptatonic scale has less "4" and "7" notes. So, does it mean that Chinese ancient musical instruments simply do not have the function of playing the seven-note scale?

Qiao Jianzhong, the former director of the Music Institute of the China Academy of Arts, believes that it cannot be said that China does not have seven-tone melody, and this does not exist. The Chinese mainly use five tones, which is indeed closely related to the Chinese cosmology of yin and yang and the five elements. Later, "Gong Shang Jiao Zheng Yu" became "Gold, Wood, Water, Fire and Earth", and became "East, West, South, North, Middle". ”, in short, it is related to the concept of five elements.

This rule may be in line with the gentle and tranquil spiritual realm advocated by Chinese culture. It is also precisely because the music played by traditional Chinese instruments lacks the dramatic ups and downs of the five-note scale. Calm and elegant.

□Beginning in the 8th century BC, China entered the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. It was an era of constant wars and an era of great cultural development. Chinese ancient musical instruments ushered in their first golden age.

Confucius, the famous founder of Confucianism, was a musician.

In his theoretical system, music and etiquette are of equal importance, and playing a musical instrument is an important way to cultivate noble character. It is said that Confucius loved playing the guqin very much and could even compose music himself.

Since then, the guqin has been given a significance higher than the instrument itself, and its presence has always lingered in the musical life of ancient Chinese people.

In ancient China, the qin was a special instrument for literati. They had to bathe before playing, play with a solemn and peaceful mind, and a stick of incense must be burned on the qin stand. According to reports, "Qin player is forbidden" means that evil thoughts should be prohibited when playing the piano, in order to achieve a kind of self-cultivation effect. The musical instruments at this time not only produced beautiful music, but more importantly, with the help of musical instruments, people could cultivate their temperament and even understand the profound philosophy of life and the universe.

In Wuhan, a city with a long history, there is a guqin platform, and there is a story about guqin circulating here. A long time ago, here, a man named Yu Boya heard the sound of the piano played by the piano master Zhong Ziqi. When the sound of the piano performed the majestic mountains, he sighed: What a high mountain! When the sound of the piano expressed the surging river, he praised loudly: What a magnificent river! For the first time, Zhong Ziqi met someone who could understand his music. He was very moved and became life and death friends with Yu Boya. After Yu Boya died, Zhong Ziqi broke his piano and stopped playing it. From then on, "high mountains and flowing water" became a synonym for bosom friends.

Not far from the guqin platform, there is a palace of musical instruments that is more than 2,000 years old.

In May 1978, in Suizhou, Hubei, an archaeological excavation of great significance to the history of ancient Chinese music brought enough surprises to Chinese music: the owner of the tomb was a man from the 5th century BC. Zeng Houyi, the king of the vassal states, has a large room of more than 60 square meters in the middle room of the tomb, which symbolizes the "palace" where the owner of the tomb was alive. On the south and west walls of the middle room, there is a curved ruler-shaped A set of bronze chimes, hung neatly on the wooden bell frame, as if they had just been buried underground.

This set of musical instruments is not only an amazing achievement in the history of world archaeology, but also a unique discovery in the history of music. The entire set of chimes is large in size, complex in shape, and shows a majestic kingly style. Feng Guangsheng, deputy director of Hubei Vocational College of Art, said that when we rang the bell for the first time, its very transparent tone, as transparent as water droplets, and its long lingering sound, suddenly attracted everyone. They were all stunned, it was so wonderful!

□ As early as the Western Han Dynasty, the explorer Zhang Qian traveled to various countries in the Western Regions, which promoted cultural exchanges among various ethnic groups. As a result, some foreign musical instruments entered the Central Plains, which led to major changes in the development of Chinese musical instruments.

In the transformation, the evolution of flute and flute is the most obvious.

The flute unearthed from a cultural site in Henan has a history of 8,000 years. It is the earliest musical instrument with scales found in the world. Qiao Jianzhong said that people used the thicker bones on the eagle's wings and dug them into many pressing holes and blowing holes to play music.

Until the Han Dynasty, traditional Chinese flutes were played vertically. Qiao Jianzhong said that Xiao used to be called flute. Our early flute was a vertical flute. After the Han Dynasty, it was Zhang Qian who first brought back this horizontal flute from his trip to the Western Regions.

In human history, it is the exchanges between different cultures that have enabled various nations to maintain the vitality of continuous creation and renewal. After the end of the Han Dynasty, the period of Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties was filled with constant disputes. The war-torn years were a golden age of cultural exchanges. Various foreign cultures entered ancient China, bringing opportunities for innovation.

A major change occurred in the history of Chinese musical instruments. The musical instruments introduced from the Western Regions via the Silk Road gradually occupied a prominent position in traditional music life.

There is a musical instrument with a Chinese name called "Ruan Xian". In fact, "Ruan Xian" is a variant of the Western Region Pipa handed down from the Han Dynasty. It was called Qin Pipa in the Han Dynasty. Later, in the Western Jin Dynasty in the 3rd century AD, the famous scholar Ruan Xian was good at playing this instrument, so it was renamed after him. "Ruan Xian".

The name of Pipa actually refers to the playing method. "Pi" means playing the strings pointing outwards, and "Pa" means playing the strings pointing inwards. Bai Juyi, a famous poet of the Tang Dynasty, once gave an extremely vivid and vivid description of pipa playing in his famous poem "Pipa Play": the big strings are noisy like urgent words, and the small strings are like whispers. The noisy and mixed shells, big and small beads falling on the jade plate...

After the introduction and integration during the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Chinese ancient musical instruments formed a colorful situation in the Tang Dynasty that was unprecedented in previous generations. Unfortunately, there are very few actual Tang Dynasty musical instruments that have been preserved to this day. However, the tricolor glazed pottery unearthed from the Tang Dynasty shows us the accompaniment band of the Tang Dynasty: the band's instruments are a hodgepodge, including traditional Chinese instruments panpipe, sheng, and recorder, as well as pipa, harp, transverse flute, and clapper passed down from the Western Regions.

Today, there are still a few precious musical relics of the Tang Dynasty preserved in Japan.

□After many transformations, in the Yuan Dynasty, a new type of Chinese musical instruments - bowed string instruments were born. Their main function is to accompany opera, rap, song and dance and participate in some small-scale performances. Traditional band ensemble.

Qiao Jianzhong said that the erhu has a very soft tone. Compared with the pipa, which once dominated the Tang Dynasty, the erhu is more expressive. Moreover, the erhu’s timbre is closer to the human voice and has a stronger Singing sex. After the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Erhu family gradually expanded, with Gaohu, Banhu, Jinghu and other varieties appearing. The Erhu finally took the top spot among Chinese folk instruments.

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the ranks of Chinese folk musical instruments were basically mature.

After thousands of years of absorption, creation, elimination and updating, several types of musical instruments have become the most important roles on the Chinese music stage. Later, they were divided into four types according to their playing methods, including Erhu, Jinghu, Stringed instruments represented by gaohu, etc.; plucked instruments represented by qin, pipa, dulcimer, etc.; wind instruments represented by flute, flute, sheng, suona, etc.; percussion.

In medieval Europe it was a different scene. A majestic symphony orchestra is gradually taking shape, with various instruments harmoniously performing increasingly complex music. Symphony originated from religious music and comes from human beings' admiration for God, so it is full of passion and drama.

China’s traditional musical instruments are still moving forward along their own track.

The ancient Chinese musical instruments are divided into four categories: blowing, pulling, playing and playing, which are made of eight kinds of materials: gold, stone, earth, wood, gourd, leather, silk and bamboo. Cheng, known as "Eight Sounds" in history. The famous Zeng Houyi chimes unearthed in Hubei Province are gold in the eight-tone system and are percussion instruments. Bronze bells of different sizes are used to display the sound quality.