Chapter 22 Section 4 Tang poetry and music

Poetry creation by Chinese literati entered its golden age in the Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties.As the main body of poetry creation in this era, Tang poetry marks the achievement of Chinese classical poetry and has reached an unprecedented peak. Tang poetry is not only rich in poems and famous writers, but also many of them are famous songs combined with music and widely sung.Singing Tang poems (mainly five-character and seven-character quatrains) into music was not an accident at that time, but a common social fashion.In "Ji Yi Ji" written by Xue Yong of Tang Dynasty, there is an interesting story about a poem sung by a celebrity at that time:

In Tang Kaiyuan (713-741 A.D.), on a cold day with light snow, three poets, Wang Changling, Gao Shi and Wang Zhihuan, visited Qiting in winter, and then entered the building to drink and have a rest.Suddenly, more than a dozen people from the palace went upstairs to have a banquet at the same time, and the three poets withdrew from the table to avoid watching.Then I saw four pretty young girls coming one after another, and immediately sang and played music. It turned out that they were all musicians from the famous troupe of Liyuan.As soon as Changling had an idea, he discussed with Gao Shi and Zhihuan in whispers: We are equally famous in the poetry world, why not just watch them sing in secret, and whoever has the most sung poems written by the three of us will be the best.The two readily agreed.After a while, I saw a trick singing: "Enter Wu in the cold rain and the river at night, and see off the guests in Chushan Gu in Pingming. Relatives and friends in Luoyang ask each other, and a heart of ice is in the jade pot." The last painting said: "A quatrain." After a while, another trick sang: "Open the suitcase with tears in your eyes, and see the emperor's book the day before. How lonely the night stage is, it still lives in Ziyun." Gao Shi saw the poem written by himself. , and also wrote a painting on the wall saying: "A quatrain." After a while, I saw another trick singing: "Bong broom Pingming Golden Palace opens, and the fan is forced to hang around together. The jade face is not as good as the jackdaw, and it still brings the shadow of Zhaoyang sun." When Changling saw that he was singing his own poem, he added a picture on the wall saying: "Two quatrains." Seeing that all the performers hadn't sung his own poem, Zhihuan hurriedly said, "This generation is all poor musicians. , all the songs sung by people from Xialiba are all vulgar songs, how can they be regarded as elegant poems like "Yangchun Baixue", if the kabuki with the best posture is not singing my poems, then I will be willing to bow down and not compete with the two of you. Zheng Heng; if what you are singing is my poem, you two should worship under the bed and regard me as your teacher." A moment later, the geisha pointed at by Dan Jian Zhihuan sang loudly: "The Yellow River is far above the white clouds, an isolated city of Wanren Mountain. Qiang flute Why do you have to blame the willows, the spring breeze does not cross the Yumen Pass." Zhihuan saw that the song he sang was his own poem, so he smiled and said to the two of them, "What do you think!" The three of them laughed out loud.At this time, all the prostitutes present were alarmed, and they asked: "Why are you laughing here, three gentlemen?" We can have a meal together." Then the three of them entered the table and drank drunk for a day.

This is the "Flag Pavilion Painting Wall Gambling Singing" that has been well-known in the history of Chinese poetry. It vividly shows the social fashion of singing poetry in the Tang Dynasty.Therefore, Song Wangzhuo's "Biji Manzhi" (Volume 1) said: "Li and Tang actors, who took the poems of famous scholars at that time and incorporated them into songs, are also common customs." The singing of Tang poetry is also closely related to folk music.For example, the five-character and seven-character quatrains in Tang poetry have much in common with the syntactic structure of folk song lyrics.At that time, the folk songs in the Jiangnan area were mostly five-character and four-sentence songs or seven-character and four-sentence songs. This is what we often call "four sentence head" folk songs today.There are two lines in a poem written by Zhu Mingzhai, a native of the Qing Dynasty: "Sing a folk song as an introduction, and everyone argues that it is Tang poetry." Forged an "indissoluble bond". The word "folk song" first appeared in the poems of the Tang Dynasty in the Tang Dynasty. For example, in Li Yi's five-character verse "Sending People Back to the South", there is a sentence "I am helpless on a lonely boat at night, and the folk song smells bamboo branches"; Bai Juyi's narrative poem "Pipa Xing" In it, there is a sentence of "how can there be no folk songs and village flutes".In Li Yi's poems, folk songs and bamboo branches are listed together, indicating that they are two names for the same song. Folk songs are the common name for singing, and bamboo branches are the elegant name for libretto, so Li Yicai heard Zhuzhi Ci from folk songs.

Liu Yuxi, another poet of the Tang Dynasty, imitated the folk songs of Bayu (now eastern Sichuan) and wrote nine "Bamboo Branches", all of which are seven-character quatrains.For example, one of the poems: "Spring grass grows at the head of Baidi City, and the river in Shujiang is clear at the bottom of Baiyan Mountain. Southerners come up to sing a song, and northerners don't go up to touch the nostalgia." According to Liu Yuxi's "Preface to Bamboo Branches": "In the first month of the year, I come to build Ping, Li Zhonger's couplet song "Bamboo Branch", playing piccolo and beating drums to go to the festival", "Yu also wrote nine pieces of "Bamboo Branch" for those who are good at singing", which shows that he completely followed the local folk song (Bamboo Branch) to sing the lyrics and syntax It is written in a structured way, so it can be sung by folk singers.Hu Zhenheng said in "Tang Yin Gui Sign": ""Bamboo Branch" originally came out of Bayu... There are harmony, seven characters are sentences, broken four characters and Yun'zhuzhi'; broken three characters and Yun'daughter'. Later In Yuanhe, Liu Yuxi was banished to his land, and it became a new word, and it became more prosperous." This means that this kind of folk song called "Zhuzhi" has seven characters in each sentence, and it must be divided into four characters and three characters in two verses when singing. The word "bamboo branch" is added at the end of four characters; the word "daughter" is added at the end of three characters.In the folk songs of today's Eastern Sichuan, the method of adding lining words in seven-character sentences is exactly the same as the method of adding lining words in seven-character sentences when singing "Bamboo Branches" in the Tang Dynasty.For example, the well-known Sichuan folk song "A Locust Tree on a High Mountain" (Eastern Sichuan):

Although the lining words in this song are not "zhuzhi" or "daughter", the method of breaking the seven-character sentence and the position of the lining words in the seven-character sentence are exactly the same as in "Zhuzhi".It can be seen from this that the Tang poem "Bamboo Branches" not only has a very close relationship with folk songs, but also the singing method of breaking sentences and adding words at that time is still preserved in the folk songs of the eastern Sichuan (Bayu) area.