In the history of China, there are several emperors of art, including Emperor Li Longji of Tang Xuanzong, Zhao Ji of Song Huizong, and Li Yu of the Southern Tang Dynasty, who are the most famous. Among them, Li Longji was famous for his outstanding musical talents, while Zhao Ji's paintings and calligraphy and Li Yu's lyrics are still highly praised. Unlike Zhao Ji and Li Yu, Li Longji was not only talented in art, but also more capable in politics than in art. Unlike Zhao Ji and Li Yu, Li Longji did not end up as the king of a dead country, but created such a brilliant political situation as "The Golden Age of the Yuan Dynasty".
I. The Life of Li Longji
Li Longji (685-762) was the great-grandson of Emperor Li Shimin of the Tang Dynasty, the grandson of Emperor Li Zhi of the Gaozong Dynasty and Emperor Wu Zetian, and the third son of Emperor Li Dan of the Ruizong Dynasty. When he was five years old, Wu Zetian changed the name of the state to Zhou, demoted Li Dan to the status of heir apparent, and imprisoned him in the palace. Li Longji's childhood was characterized by coups and power struggles in the palace, and in the Shenlong Coup of 705, Wu Zetian abdicated the throne to Emperor Zhongzong, and in 708, Li Longji was appointed as a deputy governor of Luzhou, and he began to cultivate a party to take over the throne, while in 710, Empress Wei and Princess Anle poisoned Emperor Zhongzong in a conspiracy to usurp the throne. In 710, Li Longji and Princess Taiping staged a coup d'état to eliminate Empress Wei and her henchmen, and then supported Emperor Ruizong Li Dan to assume the throne. In 712, he passed the throne to Li Longji and abdicated to become the supreme emperor. In 713, Li Longji killed Princess Taiping and her henchmen before Princess Taiping staged a coup d'état. After that, Li Longji changed his name to Kaiyuan and started a new era of "The Golden Age of the Yuan Dynasty".
During the Tianbao period after the reign of Emperor Kaiyuan, Li Longji used Yang Guozhong as his prime minister because he favored Yang Guifei, and when the Anshi Rebellion broke out in 755, Li Longji and the royal family fled to Sichuan, where at Mawei Slope the troops accompanying Li Longji were forced to give Yang Guifei a death sentence and to kill the Yang family before they left for Sichuan. The crown prince Li Heng took the throne in Shuo Fang and made Li Longji the supreme emperor. It was not until 757, after the Tang army had recaptured Luoyang and Chang'an, that he was welcomed back to Chang'an, and in 760 he was imprisoned by the eunuch Li Fuguo in the Hall of Manna, where he died on April 5, 762, with a deep sense of longing for Yang Guifei, and a sense of guilt for his country.
Second, the emperor Li Longji
In the flourishing days of the Kaiyuan era, Li Longji not only in the political implementation of the suppression of the relatives, consolidate the power of the emperor, selecting and appointing talented people, rectify the rule of the officials, advocate thrift and curb the extravagance of the measures, but also vigorously develop the economy, the creation of the socio-economic prosperity of the situation. He also paid attention to foreign exchanges, strengthened trade with neighboring countries, and also paid attention to cultural exchanges with neighboring countries, especially with Japan, which had a great influence on Japan.
Besides the new situation created by the political and economic prosperity of the reign, a new situation was also opened up culturally.
In terms of religion, unlike the Han Dynasty, which "honored only the Confucians and the Confucians", in the Tang Dynasty the three religions of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism were juxtaposed, and this situation was particularly prominent in the era of Li Longji, when the three religions developed in parallel, with Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism flourishing. There was a harmonious development of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. The people of China were free to believe in these three religions, and they could go from Confucianism to Buddhism and from Buddhism to Taoism, a situation that had never been seen before and will never be seen again. In addition to these three major religions, the Tang Dynasty also allowed other religions to be introduced into China, such as Nestorianism and Islam. The freedom of belief and the coexistence of many cultures gave people more room to develop their ideas.
In the development of Tang poetry, Li Longji's emphasis on culture and religion, his enlightened policies, and the freedom of thought and speech of the literati and the elegant, led to the peak of Tang poetry during this period, with the emergence of the School of Idyllic Poetry, the School of Border Poetry, and the School of Realism, etc., and a large number of famous poets, such as Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei, Wang Changling, Gao Shi, and Cen Shen were the major poets of this time. Their poems, each with its own distinctive features, were a true reflection of the times of the Tang Dynasty.
In terms of painting, the Tang Dynasty, with its wealth and social stability, as well as its frequent exchanges with foreign countries, was good at absorbing foreign cultures, and thus the paintings of the Kaiyuan period were full of famous schools and masters. Due to the continuous updating of painting techniques and the variety of subjects, Tang Dynasty paintings were divided into the categories of figures, birds and flowers, landscapes, ghosts and gods, and houses.
During the flourishing period of the Tang Dynasty, the development of figure painting was the most significant, with painters focusing more and more on the reflection of real life, and on the characterization of the figure in their paintings. The representative figure was Wu Daozi, known as the Sage of Painting, whose attainments in painting were so high that he was highly appreciated by Li Longji and became a doctor of internal education after entering the palace. Wu Daozi was good at painting people as well as landscapes. In terms of figure painting, he was good at painting Buddhist and Taoist figures. At that time, there were many temples in Chang'an and Luoyang, and Wu Daozi left more than 300 wall paintings of Buddhist and Taoist figures in these temples. These figures are of different shapes and appear vivid and three-dimensional. In addition to the frescoes, he also left more than 150 scroll paintings of figures, the most famous of which are The Heavenly King Delivering His Son, The Golden Bridge, and Zhong Kui with Ten Fingers.
Besides figure painting, which reached its artistic peak during the reign of the Emperor, landscape painting also matured, with the emergence of two major systems of green and ink painting due to the geographical differences between the north and south of the country. At the same time, due to the development of religion, religious paintings, grottoes, mausoleums and temple murals were also developed unprecedentedly. These murals not only reflected the social customs of the time, but also left a vivid depiction of the music and dance of the Tang Dynasty.
Because of the unprecedented political, economic and cultural development of the Tang Dynasty, the aesthetic concepts of the Tang Dynasty were different from the traditional aesthetic concepts of China. Since ancient times, China's women's aesthetic is to slender, slim as the standard of beauty, in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period, there is a "King of Chu is good thin waist, the palace of more starvation," the legend, to the Han Dynasty, there are also able to do the dance of the palm of the Zhao Feiyan, these are all slender and slim representatives. In the Tang Dynasty, however, fatness was considered beautiful, and the representative figure was Yang Yuhuan, the beloved concubine of Li Longji. In addition, in the paintings and sculptures left over from the Tang Dynasty, women were also seen as plump.
Prior to the Tang Dynasty, people's attire was modeled after the Han Chinese dress, but by the time of the Tang Dynasty, women's attire was characterized by a peculiar flamboyance, and they popularized a kind of bare-collar dress, which exposed their full breasts, as well as huqi and men's clothing. This kind of aesthetic and clothing tendency fully demonstrates the people's pursuit of health, the characteristics of the liberal temperament during the reign of the Emperor.
Third, the art of Emperor Li Longji
Li Longji not only has his own characteristics in the governance of the country, in the personal cultivation of his own, he is also a multi-talented artistic talent, because of his personal appreciation of the arts, and therefore, during his reign, to vigorously advocate and promote the development of culture and art. His artistic talents were mainly in music and dance, calligraphy, instrumental music and poetry.
According to historical records, Li Longji was artistically gifted in his childhood. When he was only six years old, he performed the difficult "Long-lived Daughter" at Wu Zetian's birthday banquet to celebrate his grandmother's birthday. As he grew up, his interest turned to composing, and he contributed greatly to the music and dances of the Tang Dynasty, composing the Nishang Yuyi, Longchi Le, Lingbo Le, and Ziyun Hui, among others. In addition to his profound musical attainments, he also possessed a sensitive hearing and a strong sense of music. He has the temperament of a conductor. He often choreographed large-scale music and dance, and he could hear the wrong syllable from any instrument when it was playing in unison.
In addition to dancing and composing, Li Longji is also good at playing instrumental music, the most skillful is the capricorn drum, in the ancient musical instruments "gold, stone, earth, leather, silk, wood, bamboo, Lagenaria" eight categories, the capricorn drum belongs to the leather category. It is a kind of percussion instrument from the ancient western region. The instrument is characterized by a loud, rapid and intense sound, suitable for performing fast-paced music. Li Longji's skill in playing the capricorn drum was so great that Song Jing, the chancellor at the time, once praised him for his "head as green as a mountain peak, hands as white as raindrops," meaning that his head was stable while his hands were agile and rapid when he played the drum. In addition to the capricorn drum, he was also good at playing the flute and pipa.
In calligraphy, his characters are characterized by precise strokes, strong and sharp, and are written with calmness and majesty, richness and beauty.
Fourth, Li Longji's contribution to the music of the Tang Dynasty
As an artistic emperor, Li Longji's most outstanding contribution was the promotion of music and dance in the Tang Dynasty, as well as his contribution to music.
1. Promotion of Tang music and dance. Tang dynasty music and dance is the art of Tang dynasty Han dance, which was built on the Han dynasty's hundred operas and evolved through several dynasties to reach its artistic peak in the Tang dynasty, where it absorbed the essence of foreign dances. In the era of Li Longji, he made innovative changes to the "Sitting Kabuki" and "Standing Kabuki" in the "Ten Parts of Music" reformed by Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty. In order to improve the palace music and dance institutions, he also set up additional workshops in the palace, from the original one to five, the Taishang Temple and workshops made a clear division of labor, Taishang Temple is responsible for the elegant music for ceremonial and sacrificial use; workshops are responsible for the common music, responsible for the entertainment of the music. Since the church was located in the palace, most of the musicians were women. In addition, Li Longji also founded another music and dance institutions - Liyuan, where the musicians are responsible for the court music, dance, theater performances, equivalent to a Royal Academy of the Arts, is responsible for the training of talent, but also responsible for the performance. Li Longji selected more than 300 male musicians in the pear orchard, he himself personally teaching and rehearsal.
In Li Longji's vigorous advocacy, the Tang Dynasty music and dance appeared unprecedented prosperity, a large number of dancers appeared in the Li Longji era, among them, there are good sword dance Gongsun Damiang, good at "Dance of the Shocked" Li Longji's Mei Fei Jiang Cai Ping, as well as good at dancing the "Nishang Yuyi song" and "Huxuan dance" Yang Guifei, good at dancing the "Lingbo song" Xie A barbarians, and so on.
2. Li Longji's contribution to the music of the Tang Dynasty. The development of music and dance in the Tang Dynasty could not be separated from music, and the Daqu is an important form of music and dance in the Tang Dynasty, which is a multi-part music and dance suite integrating dance, music and singing. Structurally, the Daqu is divided into three parts: the loose sequence, the middle sequence and the break, in which the loose sequence is instrumental music, the middle sequence has a slower tempo and the singing and dancing begin to gradually enter, sometimes only singing but not dancing, and the break is the music and dancing part with a fast and changing tempo, which pushes the whole piece to the climax. In the Tang Dynasty, there were many big songs and dances, and the most famous one was the "Nishang Yuyi Qu" composed by Li Longji.
The Neishang Yuyi Song was adapted by Li Longji from the Brahman Song of the Western Regions, in which the prelude is free and melodious, and the instrumental music is played by chime, xiao, flute and zheng, which is poetic and hazy, and in the middle of the prelude, the fairy-like dancers start to dance with a "fluttering spinning back to the snow," and "a sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, and sweet," and "the dragon is surprised". They have the mood of "floating and twirling back to the snow lightly, and sweetly sending the traveling dragon to be frightened". The breaking song is the climax of the whole piece, the music has the resonance of the urgent pipes and artemisia strings, when the dancers are still forgetting to travel to the fairyland, the music comes to an abrupt end. The whole music and dance has a strong contrast between strength and weakness, urgency and slowness, and movement and static, and has a unique form of beauty.
The Nishang Yuyi Song, whether in music, dance or costume, pursues a kind of illusory fairyland-like illusion, which is the embodiment of Taoism's idea of "becoming immortal", and is performed in the form of solo dances, duo dances, and even group dances by hundreds of people, and the one who interpreted it most perfectly at that time was Yang Guifei.
In addition to the "Nishang Yuyi Song", Li Longji also created the "Longji Le", one of the "Sitting Part of the Kabuki" music and dance, which mainly expresses that the Xingqing Palace has the "image of the Son of Heaven", and the whole music has the characteristics of auspiciousness and elegance.
The "Lingbo Qu" came from a dream of Li Longji, who created a dreamlike music based on his dream, and was accompanied by Xie Aban's agile and light dance, which portrayed the image of a graceful dragon lady.
Whether it was the beautiful "Nishang Yuyi", the mysterious and peaceful "Dragon Pond Music", or the fairy-like "Lingbo Music", Li Longji used his own music to bring Tang music and dance from realism to romanticism, and not only did he make an outstanding contribution to Tang music and dance, but he also made a great contribution to the music of China.
Li Longji was criticized for his governance in his later years as an emperor, but his artistic talent and achievements were unmatched by any other emperor.
This is why Li Longji was honored by the pear orchards as the grandmaster.