Liu Chi: "The motherland, the people and the Chinese nation are my eternal creative themes"

Author: Chen Zonghua (Distinguished Professor of Henan Provincial Government, Professor of School of Music, Henan University); Su Qianrong (Master's Degree candidate, School of Music, Henan University)

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, and red music such as "My Motherland", "Ode to the Motherland", "Hero Praise", and "Let's Swing the Oars" reverberates in the ears, and Liu Chi is the composer of these classic songs. "The motherland, the people, and the Chinese nation are my eternal creative themes", Liu Chi said in his later years, so he summarized his musical life. This year is also the centenary of Liu Chi's birth, recently, the author conducted an exclusive interview with Liu Xinxin, the son of Liu Chi, combined with his oral history and relevant literature and historical materials, accompanied by the melodious melody of "a big river with wide waves, the wind blowing rice and flowers on both sides of the river", and traced the mental process behind Liu Chi's red classic music creation.

Illustration of the text "Let's Swing the Oars"

"I gave the music back to the people"

"My father's whole life was dedicated to the people", this is Liu Xinxin's evaluation of his father. Liu Xinxin recalled that as a student personally recruited by Xian Xinghai, the entrustment left by the practitioner before going to the Soviet Union became Liu Chi's inexhaustible creative motivation: "You must always remember, you must go deep into the art of the nation and folk, learn from the people, only in this way can you create a work of art that can truly impress the people of Chinese." "Turning Over" is an interlude composed by Liu Chi for the opera "Rent Reduction Society", adapted from folk songs in northern Shaanxi, and quickly spread throughout the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region and various anti-Japanese base areas, becoming one of the earliest award-winning songs in the world in New China.

Liu Chi has been creating for the people all his life, creating "Workers' Chorus" and "Miners are the Sun on Earth" with the theme of "Coal Miners, Textile Women Workers, and Railway Workers", etc. With the theme of "Ordinary Peasants", he has written "Transporting Salt" and "Turning Over and Turning Over", etc., and has written works such as "March of the Iron And Steel Troops" and "Attacking the Big City" with the theme of "Soldiers and Soldiers". "In order to more truly express the work and life scenes of the workers, Liu Chi has repeatedly gone deep into the Harbin Textile Factory, the Machine Tool Factory, the Thirty-Six Shed Railway Factory, the Benxi Coal Kiln, the Shipyard and other industrial production lines to carry out field mining, and the people's fresh life has given him endless inspiration." The first work to represent the new workers" (Lü Ji) – the "Workers' Chorus" was conceived in his intimate contact with the workers. When talking about this work, Liu Xinxin told us about Liu Chi's affectionate past with the workers.

At the Sixth National Workers' Congress, after the performance of "Workers' Chorus", the applause in the venue was thunderous, and Yu Hongen, who was the vice chairman of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, and his master (coal miners in the northeast) went to the backstage together to thank Liu Chi and said: "I didn't expect you to write so many works for our worker brothers. Liu Chi regards the masses of the people as the object of creation, refining and processing their lives, making them artistic and aesthetic. Reproducing and expressing life according to the laws of art is the creative concept of "returning the people's things to the people after artistic processing" that Liu Chi has always followed.

"The motherland has given me infinite strength"

"Motherland" is the main theme of Liu Chi's lifelong music creation. Liu Xinxin told this writer that Liu Chi's foreshadowing of "My Motherland" was laid as early as 1937 when he met the American female journalist Helen Snow (Mrs. Edgar Snow). Helen Snow loves this "smart, charming, cute, receptive" red teenager:

Throughout the summer, Liu Chi and his friend, a boy from northern Shaanxi named Wang Wenjiang, were regular visitors to the small courtyard where I lived. In order to exercise, I used to learn tap dance, and I taught them all the dance footwork I remembered. (Helen Snow: Interview with Yan'an)

In 1987, Helen Snow's eightieth birthday, Liu Chi also wrote a song "Our Friend Helen Snow", recorded by singer Feng Jianxue, Liu Chi personally went to the post office to send the tape to California, the United States, Helen wrote to express her great happiness.

Liu Chi heard for the first time from Helen Snow's phonograph the symphonic poetry suite "My Motherland" by the Czech composer Smetana, and a seed quietly sprouted in the heart of the young Liu Chi, who was determined to write a poem belonging to the sons and daughters of China, "My Motherland", praising the motherland and the people.

In the winter of 1955, at the request of director Sha Meng, Liu Chi went north to Changchun to score "Shangganling". In order to write the theme song of the film, Liu Chi locked himself in the "Little White Building" of the Changchun Film Studio and studied deeply, "To make the people like your songs, you must first know what the people love to sing." After analyzing and studying a large number of folk songs, the beautiful and moving melody of "My Motherland" flowed out under Liu Chi's pen, and "a big river" has been sung to this day. As Liu Chi said:

"My song is based on the eight words of 'pure, affectionate, fiery, and simple' as the blueprint, in the structure of the melody, the configuration of the harmony, the chorus and the foil of the band, I focus on pursuing two points: 1. National style; 2. Feelings of the times." ("Singing the Motherland and the People")

Liu Xinxin also told the author: "A famous Chinese director once said: You don't even need to wait to hear the first lyrics, as long as you hear the prelude, you already know how deeply this composer loves his motherland and this land." ”

Liu Xinxin described her father's personality this way: "Father is like a spring, every time you think he is about to fall, he can die again." In 1975, Liu Chi completed the second part of the motherland trilogy, "Ode to the Earth".

"I love your nuwa skillfully, the descendants bow strong, I love you Dayu Caixiong, Shennong grass fragrance ..." Dang Yong'an's long poem "Smiling Sun" expresses Liu Chi's feeling of bathing in the motherland and the sunshine of the motherland in the new period. Liu Chi found a lyricist to revise the lyrics and completed a hymn to the motherland. At this point, the trilogy of the motherland that lasted for 30 years - "Ode to the Motherland" (1957), "Ode to the Earth" (1977), "Ode to the Sun" (1987) was completed. As Liu Chi said in the preface to the "Motherland Trilogy", this is "a composer who grew up feeding with the water of the Yanhe River and small rice, was nourished by national and folk music, and gradually matured through the care and cultivation of the revolutionary ancestors, and devoted himself to the rivers and lands that gave birth to me and raised me, the mother of the motherland."

"The Chinese nation is my eternal source of creation"

Water without a source cannot flow for a long time, and trees without roots cannot flourish, and Liu Chi is a composer who has taken root and grown in the soil of the nation. In Liu Chi's view, music creation "should be new, at the same time real, deep, and more importantly, rooted." This root is to have the people's lives, thoughts, feelings, and at the same time to have a rich national folk music as the basis, without this root, there is no way to talk about anything new" ("Some Views on Certain Phenomena in the Music World"). As a result, Liu Chi refers to national folk music as the foundation, and works of art need to be created on this basis, thus giving the "mother" characteristics of national folk music. For example, when writing "My Motherland", the "seed" of music was found in the "Lugou Q&A" adapted from the folk song "Little Cow Herding"; when writing "Hero Hymn", the basis was found from the Inner Mongolian folk song "Hero Tao Taohu"; when writing "Ode to the Motherland", with shaanxi Qin cavity and Meihu as musical materials, it was from the soil of folk music that Liu Chi created many widely sung musical works.

"The motherland, the people, and the Chinese nation" are closely related in Liu Chi's concept of red music creation, and Liu Chi regards national folk music as his link with the masses of the people. As early as the Yan'an Luyi period, Liu Chi and others proposed that "folk music is used by the masses of the people themselves to reflect their thoughts and emotions in life, and studying it can not only enable us to understand the living conditions of the masses of the people yesterday and today, but also let us know the interests and requirements of the masses of the people in music" (Zhang Lu, An Bo, Guan Hetong, Marco, Liu Chi: "How to Collect Folk Music"), thus emphasizing that the study of national folk music is an important way to understand the masses of the people. Liu Chi believes that national folk music is an artistic expression of the people's living emotions, the people are embedded in the national folk music, with the national folk music as the "line", the "motherland, the people, the Chinese nation" three are connected together, his works take folk songs as the "seed" of music, retain the unique charm of the nation, and add a small amount of Western techniques to polish, resulting in intriguing fine products, creating a song praising the motherland.

As a member of the Communist Party, Liu Chi's feelings for "the motherland, the people, and the Chinese nation" are strong and rich, and he hopes to give his heart to the party through music, so he is very diligent about every musical work. Before composing "Hymn to Heroes", Liu Chi had completed the music of the movie "Shangganling", and the theme song "Ode to Heroes" and the interlude "My Motherland" in the film were highly praised by the people and all walks of life. When faced with the same subject again, Liu Chi was a little worried that he could not surpass himself, so when writing, he put forward three requirements for the lyricist Gongmu: "First, it is not an elegy that is an ode, not with tears, with the love of children, but with the hero's infatuation and broad mind, singing this hero who stands tall in the sky; second, instead of using formulaic and conceptual preaching to teach listeners and singers, but with the noble and pure feelings of the soul to infect people and call people to continue to move forward; third, It must be the heroism of the Chinese nation in the fifties, not Napoleonic, Matlosov, nor Chu Bawang and Zheng Chenggong"(Liu Chi: "Analyzing One of My Songs--About the Hymn of heroes"). When he saw the lyrics, Liu Chi thought that it was far beyond the requirements he put forward, but when the melody was created, he encountered some problems, that is, after the end of the main song part, it was when the emotions reached the climax and were about to gush out, but suddenly there were no lyrics, the words were not exhausted, the excitement was thick, and the mood of the whole song was suddenly broken, what to do? As a revolutionary musician from Yan'an, Liu Chi was inspired to sing it himself: "Why is the battle flag so picturesque?" The hero's blood stained it red. Why is spring always there? The life of a hero blossoms". It is these two improvised sentences that put the heroism contained in the plot to the peak of emotion with romantic techniques, and at the same time inadvertently express the reverence and love of revolutionary musician Liu Chi for heroes, and the melody of high-spirited and agitated is soaked with a strong patriotic and heroic fist. Liu Chi and Gongmu, two golden partners in revolutionary music creation, joined hands again to express their sincere love for the great motherland and the great people through "Heroic Hymn".

Speaking about his father's influence on himself, Liu Xinxin said: "Music creation leaves the traditional rhythms and ethnic music of any region, and artists become passive water, which is where I benefit most from my father. As the name suggests, Liu Chi has spent his life interpreting his fiery and sincere love for the "motherland, the people, and the Chinese nation". Looking back on a hundred years ago, a great river is still running endlessly, and the eternal melody will always echo in the hearts of the people.

Guangming Daily ( 2021-06-14 06 edition)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily