1, the emergence and development of the ditty. Certain narrative chapters in the Book of Songs have already nurtured some elements of this genre. In the Han Dynasty, the Xianghe song was a form of singing accompanied by silk and bamboo, which was distinctly different from the Tusi song (a kind of clear singing), and the Xianghe song can be said to be one of the sources of the ditty. In the period of Wei, Jin and North and South Dynasties, folk songs such as "Songs of the Four Hours of the Night", "Five Nights of the Army" and "Songs of Folding the Willow at the Moon Festival" appeared in the folk music genre. In the Sui and Tang dynasties, many folk songs were selected and refined, and became part of rap, song and dance performances, called quzi, which was also an early form of the minstrel genre. After the Song and Yuan dynasties, along with the growing prosperity of China's urban economy, the ditty also entered a mature stage of comprehensive development. On the one hand, many folk songs and tunes introduced into the cities from the countryside were sung and processed by artists and became part of the ditties. On the other hand, the Yuan Dynasty, the rise of small orders, loose sets, in the process of spreading, in order to adapt to the needs of the public class and gradually with the style of strict North and South Songs to separate the darts, into a kind of easy-to-understand, smooth and beautiful, still retains the name of the tune of the small song. This part of the song was merged into the minor key, making it more colorful. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the trend of compiling albums of folk songs and chants emerged among some literati and scholars. According to statistics, in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, there were 6,044 kinds of popular songs printed (see Liu? Li Jiarui, "Draft of the General Catalog of Chinese Popular Songs"). Most of them belonged to the minor-key genre.
2, the repertoire of ditties: Influential publications are "Nishang Renewal Spectrum", "White Snow Remaining Sound", "Fashion North and South ditties Wanhua ditties", "Cantonese Wind", "Cantonese Acura" and so on. Among them, there are quite a few ditties. Their chants, often able to touch upon all aspects of social life with a high degree of generalization and a sharp critical edge, thus giving the subject matter a wide range of social significance. Among them, there are some with the influence of corrupt exploitative class ideology and low-grade vulgar content. Especially in the teahouse and wine shop, the green house and bookstore and other environments sung part of the city ditties, often by some boring literati, dude to tamper with, become pretentious, frivolous and charming sound. They are the dregs of the ditty.
3, the distribution of ditties is quite wide, almost throughout most of China's Han areas. Among them, Shandong and Hebei in the lower reaches of the Yellow River and Jiangsu in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River are more representative in terms of quantity and kind. In the process of circulation, the tunes of the ditties were changed to different degrees due to the personalities of the singers, their aesthetic habits, the filling and matching of new words, and the different singing styles, thus forming different variants, as well as containing different moods and expressive qualities of the tunes, which were largely the same, but with the names of the tunes changed. Song and dance tune, refers to a part of the folk festival songs and dances sung in various places, such as the northern rice-planting song tune, the southern lamp tune, tea song, and so on.
4, the musical characteristics of the ditty: ① ditty tunes with smooth, soft, winding, delicate artistic characteristics. Its melodic changes are rich, often the gradual progression of the tone pattern and jump into the tone pattern, one-way up, down with the arc, wave melody line and other means of expression flexible, skillful combination together, resulting in a kind of ups and downs, diverse and unified tunes. At the same time, under the long-term practice and processing of singing artists, the melody is highly decorative, with natural and logical articulation between the musical repertoire and phrases, and it is very good at expressing the contents of those subjects which are both narrative and lyrical (e.g., "Five Brothers Herding Sheep", "Painting Fans", "Prostitutes in Sorrow", "Five Nights of the Bird", etc.). Most of the ditties are sung with instrumental accompaniment, and add the intro, outro, coda, etc., to make it more complete. The minor keys are not influenced by external factors, and according to the inherent requirements of the melody itself, they pursue the balance of harmonization of words and songs and the flexibility of means of expression. Therefore, the beat of the minor key is regular but not constrained, and the sense of rhythm is distinct but not strong. It often does not destroy the rhythm of the lyrics, but also obeys the premise of metronomic regularity, and flexibly uses a variety of rhythmic patterns, so that it is sparse and dense, varied, and rich in a strong sense of power. The structure of the minor key is mostly based on a single form, emphasizing the regularity and proportionality within the structure. The structural function of the phrases is clearer, basically divided into two categories: counterpoint and succession. The non-counterpoint 3 or 5 phrase monodic structure is also more common. In some regions, there is also a "suite" (known as a "major tune" in folklore) consisting of several single tunes. Regardless of the length, the structure of the minor key is based on the principle of correspondence and succession, forming a neat and balanced relationship, and the last line often has a concluding weight and a strong sense of stability. (4) The liner notes and cadences in the minor key are stereotyped and regularized. When singing in sections, although the words of each section are different, the liner notes and cadences are repeated as they are, which becomes a powerful means to strengthen the unity of the whole work. Among the various genres of Chinese folk songs, the minor key is in a very important position. On the one hand, it draws nutrients from mountain songs, trumpets and other genres, and processes and refines part of the repertoire to make it more mature artistically and become part of the ditties; at the same time, some of the ditties often become the singing voices of the operas and operatic songs, as well as the themes and songs of the folk music in the process of spreading. Such as "Sichuan Qingyin" in the "Massachusetts tune", "Sizhou tune", "kite", etc., are in the original development on the basis of the ditty; Guangdong music in the "dresser", "embroidered red shoes", "cut flowers"; Shanxi, "eight sets of" in the "Jasmine" are also The "Jasmine Flower" in the "eight sets" of Shanxi is also taken from the ditty of the same name. In short, in the development of folk music, the ditty can be said to be a kind of folk song category with a wide range of mass, but also with certain professional characteristics.
(The author's unit: Zhangshu Third Middle School, School of Music, Hunan Normal University)
Responsibility Editor: Xiaofang
The author's unit: Zhangshu Third Middle School, School of Music, Hunan Normal University.