Singing music of Cantonese opera

The singing music of Cantonese opera is mainly divided into three types: banqiang, qupai and poetry. In fact, this is all related to the development of opera and Cantonese opera.

The poetry and praise genre is generally also called the rap genre. The local opera music in Guangdong should be mainly based on the rap-type Nanyin, Muyu, Dragon Boat, Banyan, Yueyu, etc., because it is composed according to the language characteristics of Cantonese. On the basis of the level and oblique language and the upper and lower sentences, Guangdong For rap singing, the lyrics and sentences must be divided into two sets of upper and lower sentences, because Cantonese is divided into Yin and Yang, which is different from the Yin and Yang in northern languages, and there is a big difference in pronunciation.

The basic feature of Cantonese opera singing music is Banqiang, namely Bangzi and Erhuang, commonly known as "Banghuang", which is similar to the "Pihuang" in Peking Opera, so Cantonese Opera also belongs to the North-South Opera. , that is, there are South Road "Erhuang" singing style and North Road "Bangzi" singing style.

The most fundamental difference between Banqiang style, Shizhuang style opera singing style and Qupai style opera singing style is that Banqiang style and Shixing style opera singing style do not have a fixed tune and melody, and the melody is determined by the pronunciation of the lyrics. , so even if they are both "Adagio" or "Medium Tempo", they can have different musical melodies because of different lyrics.

The singing tune of Qupai style opera is composed first of all, and then the lyrics are filled in, and the backbone sounds cannot be modified. Therefore, no matter there are thousands of songs of the same Qupai style, even if the lyrics are different, the tones of the distribution are still the same. They must be the same, otherwise they will fill in a ditty.

Although Cantonese Opera "Banghuang" has different board forms and different tones, there are mainly two types of music forms (of course, some newly created music forms are not included, such as the ordered middle board, and Cantonese Opera's Xipi, Love Tan, these are all special cases], that is, there are two types of music: the old form and the new form.

The old musical form refers to the different patterns developed from seven-character sentences to cross-word sentences. Its characteristic is that it is divided into upper and lower sentence patterns based on the oblique rhythm of modern poetry. Initially, it started with rolling singing of seven-character sentences in Qiyan, and then developed into the mid-tempo of seven-character sentences, then evolved into the mid-tempo of cross-line sentences, then evolved into the adagio of cross-line sentences, and then evolved into the adagio of seven-character sentences.

The way to expand a seven-character sentence into a cross sentence is to add a zigzag character opposite to the second and fourth characters before the first character and the third character, and add a character before the fifth character. The words form a cross sentence. An example is as follows: "Fishing with golden hooks and silver bait on the cold river" - a slow-tempo Tung-tao sung by Xiaoshengchi Tongshang in "The Wrong Dream in the West Tower".

In addition to being sung as "Hurry up", this line can also be changed into a cross-line adagio or midtempo, modified as follows: "Fishing with golden hooks, throwing silver bait, fishing alone, cold river ."

Similarly, the middle boards of some cross sentences can also be reversed, for example: "I want to steal the flowers on the fence and recall the willows on the embankment, let me tell the past, desolate." - "Rebirth." "The Story of Red Plum Blossoms"

The text of the cross sentence pattern is as follows: "Flowers on the fence, willows on the bank of the embankment, the past is desolate." - "The Story of Red Plum Blossoms Again"

Back to Seven The words become - "The lace fence and the willows are so sad" can also be sung slow or fast. The instruments used in early Cantonese opera were only two-stringed instruments, fiddle, yueqin, flute, three-stringed instrument and gongs, cymbals and drum boards, and the tones were relatively simple. After the ban on Cantonese opera was lifted in the Qing Dynasty, Bangzi was added.

After entering its mature stage, Cantonese opera uses more than forty musical instruments, which can be roughly divided into four categories: wind instruments, plucked instruments, stringed instruments and percussion instruments. Among them, plucked instruments include guzheng, pipa and butterfly harp; gongs and drums include buyuban, sand, double-skin drum/banggu, cymbals, Beijing gongs, hook gongs, war drums, large wooden fish, small wooden fish, large gongs and cymbals, large Loud. After the reform of Cantonese opera, a variety of Western instruments such as saxophone and violin were adopted to improve the musical effect.

Bangzi is a bamboo and wood percussion instrument with no fixed pitch. The north is called "Bangzi", the south is called "Nan Bangzi", also known as "Fang Bangzi". The bangzi used in northern opera is solid, referred to as "bangzi". The southern bangzi is divided into large, medium and small. It is made of rectangular hollow wooden blocks. During performance, it is hung on a stand and played with drum sticks. Since the sound can be played quickly and continuously, it is easy to create a warm and tense atmosphere. Because bangzi is used to hit the beat, "bangzi tune" was born. Bangzi Opera, also known as Qin Opera or West Qin Opera, originated in Shaanxi, Shanxi and Gansu areas, and slowly spread to Guangdong in the early 17th century (early Qing Dynasty). Bangzi tune is divided into head board, slow board, middle board, knurled board, sigh board and Sha board.

Muyu is also a bamboo and wood percussion instrument with no fixed pitch. It looks like a fish head on the outside, and is hollowed out in the middle to form a sound box. A long fish mouth is opened on the front, and a small mallet is held to knock it to make sounds. The wooden fish was originally a Buddhist ritual instrument and an accompaniment to religious music. Later, it was gradually used in folk instrumental music.

The sound of wooden fish is hollow, the pronunciation is short, lively and lively. It often plays the role of accompaniment and is used to beat the beat when "counting white olives"! In the industry, the band or musicians are called shanmian, and the leader of the gongs and drums is called changban. Sitting on the left side of the stage. The booth needs to be familiar with the beats of gongs and drums to create an atmosphere for the audience. For example: singing mouth with one mallet, collecting with one mallet, collecting with three mallets, Shibai gongs and drums, Bailan gongs and drums, flashing mallets, Jijifeng and Lala drums.

The early sheds were divided into ten hands: flute, three-stringed flute, zheng and blowing conch, (day) big cymbal (night) two strings, (day) palm board (night) big drum, (day) big cymbal (night) two strings Day) gong playing (night) clapboard, (day) big drum/secondary string, (day) reporting drum/big gong, violin/small gong, big cymbal, horizontal flute, big gong, small gong and backup. Later, other local opera types were absorbed, and short-throated pipe, long-throated pipe, jinghu and dulcimer were added. Xue Juexian was the first to introduce Western musical instruments and founded the "Western Music Club". Traditional folk instruments include Sanskrit dumbbells, xylophones, Wendeliens, guitars, saxophones and banjos. The music score of Cantonese opera is called Gongchipu, which is the traditional notation method of Cantonese opera. It is similar to that used in other local operas, using notation characters such as He, Shi, Yi, Shang, Chi, Gong, Fan, Liu, etc. to represent the music in the singing. Qupai generally refers to the names of rap and ban-style tunes outside the qupai system. Cantonese opera singing is divided into two major systems, one is the Banqiang system and the other is the Qupai system. It is mainly divided into brands, major keys and minor keys. The tunes have fixed melodies, including: "Insidious Accusation", "On the Silver Platform", "Scolding Yulang", "Crying Farewell on the Qiujiang River" and "Autumn Moon on the Flat Lake".