It's a twenty-year affair.
I remember when I was still in middle school, whenever I came home from school at noon, I rode my bicycle on the road to my meal, and I kept thinking about various questions about Qin Opera in my mind countless times. There were a number of problems, I remember that I had already thought very maturely at that time, and I almost wrote them down, but for many reasons, I finally did not write them.
However, at that time, even if it was written down, it was just a kind of self-amusement and self-comfort, and there was no way to express it.
Fortunately, now that we have headlines, it changes everything, and here we can communicate in an infinitely vast world, spanning time and space. I finally decided to try to write again, but in twenty years, things are not human, many people have left us forever, and they will never be seen.
I didn't want to write any overly formal words, after so many years, even for a long time in between, I was almost completely disappointed in Qin Lu, and many things that I once felt had to adhere to were now indifferent. So, here, just say whatever you want.
It must be admitted that the Qin Dynasty, including all traditional Chinese opera, has declined, and there must be both external reasons and necessarily internal reasons.
In general, among all kinds of drama, the vitality of Peking Opera is still the most exuberant, except for the second half of the 19th century to the first 50 years of the 20th century, a total of more than 100 years, the branches and leaves are extremely extensive, Peking Opera, relatively speaking, is an important reason for its vigorous vitality.
There are many Peking Opera practitioners across the country, as well as a large number of Peking Opera enthusiasts, who generally have a relatively clear teacher lineage, performance routes, and singing styles. One of the most important manifestations of the Peking Opera norm is that it has relatively consistent aesthetic values. The closer it is to or conforms to this aesthetic, the better it is considered good; the other way around it is bad.
Qin Cavity, on the other hand, is not. For a long time, the Qin cavity was called "roaring", and this roar was mainly said to be flower face (net horn). In fact, there is no problem with roaring, it is also a way of acting and style, and roaring can also be very beautiful. But the problem is that there is never a criterion for judging the quality of the roar, thousands of faces, completely dependent on innate conditions, mainly depending on the volume size, no artificial correction and intervention, as long as it can be sung to the key, the other can basically be ignored. Therefore, Qin Cavity singing, there is no sound modeling, two people in the same industry sing the same play, the sense of listening may be completely different.
This kind of singing method, which is completely dependent on innate conditions, gradually does not reach the level of youth after the actor is older, or due to changes in physical conditions, so many actors have to change their profession until they stop singing.
A more serious problem than the general pronunciation is the pronunciation and pronunciation of Qin opera.
Contemporary Qin cavity has formed a situation with Xi'an, Lanzhou and other provincial capitals as a single center; other prefecture-level cities or counties are ultimately weaker or much weaker due to the limitations of material conditions. The actors live in big cities and are also social people, and the Qin dialect they sing is more elegant, but it is also less and less Qin, less and less like Qin.
Almost without exception, the actors are singing the Qin dialect in Mandarin or shaanxi dialect that has changed its pronunciation.
The reason why Qin Cavity has become a local drama is precisely because it is sung in the standard Shaanxi (Guanzhong) dialect.
Of course, there are also many branches of Shaanxi dialect, but in the early days, the pronunciation of the Qin cavity was a roughly unified norm, which is often said, generally based on the dialects of the "Jing and Sanyuan" area, and some characters were properly naturalized, thus forming a unified opera language.
The problem is that with the rapid development of society, even the local dialects of these areas have undergone a fundamental change, that is, they are infinitely close to Mandarin, so will the Qin Cavity continue to follow this standard?
In fact, the actors have long given answers with practical actions.
Moreover, they have taken bigger steps, gone farther, and even created another standard, and regarded them as treasures.
To put it bluntly, it is to abandon the characteristic character sounds one by one, and use the standard Mandarin pronunciation of these words to read and sing.
The most typical words are: book, live, divide, out, such as, into, water, rui.
Many people support this change, and some experts have made theoretical analysis of this change in the form of papers. For example, there is one, these words are sung in Mandarin, the pronunciation is clearer, the audience can hear more clearly, and the effect is better.
In fact, all the grand theoretical support cannot hide a secret hidden in the heart.
That is, almost all the actors in the city feel that they are completely sung in the standard Shaanxi dialect, which looks very "earthy"! The soil has to fall into slag!
This is a ghost hovering within the ecology of the Qin Cavity. Like infectious disease bacteria, it constantly penetrates and spreads, shuttling through all the Qin actors in Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Xinjiang, and Shanxi, breaking through each one, and finally swallowing up normal immune cells, making the entire industry appear pathological.
This change did not appear in recent years, the earliest signs of this kind were in a special era, the ancient Qin Cavity began to perform model plays, and the above requirements to model plays do not deviate. It is impossible to verify who first started doing this. In short, from that time on, the only standard of Qin Cavity was broken.
It was also from that time that even after the end of the special era, there were actors who constantly changed the sounds of the words they sang to Mandarin, which gradually became a fashion.
The level of education of opera actors is generally low, and few people will calm down in that era to reflect on it: should this change be? Right? Can? Why change it? But one thing that should not be too problematic is human nature - to go with the flow. Everyone does that, so I do it, and that's right.
Indeed, from the 70s to the 90s of the last century, whether it was an old actor who came from the old society or a young actor who was trained before the 70s, everyone began to change consciously or unconsciously, and no one told them, why did they do this? Leaders, teachers, colleagues, peers, and students have followed suit and never mentioned the past. And only someone will remind you, why are you still so dirty? Everyone has a vague fear of being laughed at. I can feel that at that time, the mainstream concept was proud to change to Mandarin chanting, thinking that it reflected a kind of ability, a skill, and even vaguely began to have a certain relationship with the size of the business ability.
Qin Cavity "Three Drops of Blood" Liu Yuzhong Chen Miaohua
Fortunately, there is always a trace of everything.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Changying and Western Film shot two old Qin-cavity films, which were the only two Qin-cavity video materials before the 1960s. "Flame Foal" is filmed in the province, the actors in the play bring together the most heavyweight batch of shaanxi Qin at that time, just a few of the major delegation actors, Liu Yuzhong, Meng Shuyun, Xiao Ruolan, Fan Xinmin, Chen Miaohua are from the Yi Folk Society, Su Yumin, Zhou Fuguo, Xiao Yuling are from the Sanyi Society, and Li Yingzhen, who performed Yun Xiang, is from the Shaanxi Provincial Opera Research Institute. The usual performance styles of these troupes are very different, the Yi Folk Society and the Sanyi Society are both old drama clubs, from the Republic of China to the new society, each has formed a performance, chanting, accompaniment road with a distinct genre style; and the Shaanxi Provincial Opera Research Institute is from Yan'an, and soon after arriving in Xi'an, Li Yingzhen was still a native of northern Shaanxi.
However, we were astonished to find that the singing and pronunciation of all the actors in the play were completely unified.
Including the later "Three Drops of Blood", although it is only the team of the Yi Folk Society, the situation is the same.
Then, this is a good proof that in the past, qin opera's singing, teaching, and learning had a relatively unified standard. The actors not only strictly follow this standard, but are also recorded and permanently retained by the film. Moreover, this standard is not so unbearable, because decades have passed, and today we go to see it again, and we still feel that those old movies and the singing of old actors are still good, still full of charm, and still not out of the track of Qin Cavity.
(To be continued)