Fan Zhongyan's ci is famous for this tune, which is known as "the word of the poor". The style of his ci is vigorous and sad, which can best reflect the characteristics of this tune.
Ci is a unique style of poetry, which sprouted in the Southern Dynasties and is a new literary style that rose in the Sui and Tang Dynasties. In the Song Dynasty, after a long period of continuous development, Ci entered its heyday. Ci was originally called "Quci" or "Quci", which is also known as: near-style Yuefu, long and short sentences, Ci, Quci, music movement, piano interest, and poetry, etc. It is a song and poem filled in with the music of feast, and the epigraph is the name of the tone of the word. Different epigraph has regulations on the total number of sentences, the number of sentences, the number of words in each sentence and the level.
1. Every word has a musical tone. Generally speaking, the tone of words is not the title of words, and it can only be regarded as a musical score. In the Song Dynasty, in order to show the meaning of words, some poets often added a topic under the tone of words, and the tone of words was separated from the topic by "",or a small preface was written. Each tone of words is "the tone has a fixed frame, the sentence has a fixed number, and the word has a fixed sound", and they are different.
2. Words are generally divided into two sections (called upper and lower pieces or upper and lower pieces), and there are very few words that are not divided or divided into more than two pieces. Some words are only divided into one paragraph, which is called monotony; Some are divided into two sections, called double tones; Some are divided into three or four sections, which are called triple or quadruple. Fragmentation is due to the provisions of the score, because the music has been sung once. The relationship between films (or between films) is a temporary pause in music rather than the end of the whole song. A word is divided into several pieces, that is, several pieces of music are synthesized into a complete song.
3. Generally, the number of words and the length of sentences are fixed, and there is a certain format (generally, the upper and lower parts are opposite like couplets)
4. The sentence patterns of words are uneven, basically long and short sentences, and long and short sentences are also nicknames of words.
5. The rules of phonology in words are particularly strict, and the words should be leveled, and the leveling of each tone is different.
6. Words sometimes don't conform to the above rules, because they were written with music in the early days, so it pays most attention to the coordination with music. (In the Yuan Dynasty, Ci and Qu were in harmony, because Yuan Qu was similar to Ci, except that Qu had no defects and Ci had defects. )
7. Generally, words are divided into three types according to the number of words, namely, poem, middle tone and long tone, with poem within 58 words; 59 to 9 words are in the middle tone; The long tune is more than 91 words, and the longest word is 24 words.
8. The word sounds are more closely coordinated. The phonetic organization of words is basically similar to that of modern poetry, but there are many changes, and some tones must be distinguished from yin and yang. When writing lyrics, we should judge the pronunciation and use words, and match the tone of the words with the tone of the music score. In places where music is tight, it is even more necessary to distinguish the sound of words strictly in order to coordinate the music and listen to it beautifully.
Origin
Ci began in Nanliang, formed in the Tang Dynasty, flourished after the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, and reached its peak in the Song Dynasty. The formal characteristics of words are "the tone has a fixed frame and the sentence has a flaw." According to "Old Tang Book"; "Since Kaiyuan (the year of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty), singers have mixed songs from Okoyi Lane." Due to the widespread spread of music; At that time, there were many gifted musicians in the city who made a living by singing. According to the needs of the coordination of lyrics and music beats, they created or adapted some lyrics with long and short sentences, which was the earliest word. It can also be seen from Dunhuang Quzi Ci that the words produced by the people are decades earlier than those written by literati.
in the Tang dynasty, most of the folk words reflected the themes of love and lovesickness, so they were not elegant in the eyes of literati and were regarded as poems. Only those who pay attention to absorbing the artistic advantages of folk songs, such as Bai Juyi and Liu Yuxi, write some words, which have a simple and natural style and are full of strong life breath. Wen Tingyun and the "Huajian School" of the Five Dynasties, who are famous for their rich rhetoric. Wen Tingyun, the first writer who wrote lyrics vigorously in the history of literature, has about 7 poems. The subject matter is narrow, mainly in the boudoir, and the opening words are the first of its kind. The style is beautiful and graceful. It has a certain position in the history of ci development. However, Li Houzhu's poems after being captured in the Southern Tang Dynasty opened up a new and deep artistic realm, which strongly infected later poets.
Ci is a lyric poem, a Yuefu poem that can be sung with music, and one of the main literary forms in the Tang and Song Dynasties. Tang and Song Ci is a new stage in the development of China literature and a brilliant achievement of Tang and Song literature.
There is a historical inheritance between Tang and Song Ci poems and Yuefu poems of the previous generation, but there are significant differences in content, form, style and expression techniques. It is not directly produced and developed from the previous generation of Yuefu poems. It was a new kind of poetry at that time, which kept its own characteristics in all aspects and formed its own independent tradition from the development process. Musically, it belongs to a different system from the previous generation of Yuefu poems.
Ci reached its peak in the Song Dynasty, declined for more than 3 years in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, and re-entered the development state in the Qing Dynasty. In the history of literature, Ci has become a popular literary genre with its unique musical beauty, intricate rhythm, uneven syntax and strong and deep feelings expressed. Ci is a new kind of folk song and poem in the late Tang Dynasty, that is, singing ci. In the late Tang Dynasty, Hu music in the western regions, especially Qiuci music, was introduced into the Central Plains through the Silk Road, and it merged with various musicians of the Han nationality, mainly Qing Shang music, resulting in a new kind of music-Yanle. Yan music has many tunes, including dance music and songs. The lyrics of songs are the ancestors of later lyrics, which were called "Quzi Ci" at that time. In the course of its development, the lyrics of Yan music in the Tang Dynasty gradually formed a remarkable feature, that is, the lyrics were created in strict accordance with the requirements of music, including segmentation according to the movement structure, sentence by beat, and word selection according to the sound of music, and its glyph became a form with irregular sentence length and fixed frame. After the mid-Tang Dynasty, many literati used this method to create poems, which was later commonly called "Ci".