The Sheng is an ancient reed instrument in my country with a long history and can play harmony. It uses reeds and pipes to vibrate together, and the reeds can vibrate freely in the reed frame. It is the earliest instrument in the world to use free reeds.
According to historical records, Nuwa was the sister of Fuxi, who was revered by the ancients as the ancestor of mankind. In the legend, Nuwa and Fuxi have the appearance of a human head and a snake body. Nuwa is also revered as the mother of mankind and is an important figure in Chinese history.
Nuwa has many great achievements, such as refining stones to mend the sky, controlling floods, kneading soil to create humans, rescuing people from disasters, and reproducing human beings. One of the most important ones is Nuwa's invention of the sheng reed. "Bo Ya" quotes "Shiben" as saying:
Nuwa made the sheng reed. Sheng, born, is born like an object that penetrates the ground, and is made of a gourd. It is hollow and receives a spring.
When explaining the word "Wa" in "Shuowen Jiezi", it says:
The ancient sacred goddess is the one who transforms all things.
Looking at the connection between the two, we can see that Nuwa is a great mother who gave birth to human beings and created all things. Legend has it that Nuwa took bamboo from the warmest stream at the foot of Kunlun Mountain, used ropes or wooden frames to weave together some bamboo tubes with different pronunciations, and added bamboo reeds inside the bamboo tubes. Then they select the best gourds that grow in the gentlest reaches of the Yellow River Basin and use the gourds to make sheng buckets. The mouthpiece is made of wood, and the wood is the famous nanmu. Arrange the arranged bamboo tubes in a horseshoe shape on top of the sheng bucket. After doing all this, you will be able to produce a pleasant sound.
The single color of the Sheng is cool and sweet, the treble is crisp and transparent, the midrange is soft and full, and the bass is deep and deep. Nuwa gave this instrument as a gift to her children. She said: "Children, when you can't express your joy in words, you can use it to play tunes. The tune is the expression of your mood."
People felt so magical that they rushed to express their joy to Nuwa. Learn how to make it, and soon the craft of making this instrument spread among people.
Under the guidance of Nuwa, people also invented many other uses of the sheng reed, such as using it to express happiness, celebrate harvest, love between men and women, etc., but the tunes are different. That’s all.
Seeing the children living a safe and happy life, Nuwa felt that her work was completed. As for the rest, she believed that humans would continue to learn and improve in their future lives.
At this time, a thunder cart led by Bai Chi, surrounded by yellow clouds, and driven by a flying dragon landed on the ground. The Emperor of Heaven sent someone to take Nuwa back to heaven. Nuwa boarded the Lei
cart, rode on the clouds and drove the dragon away. In order to appreciate Nuwa's kindness and express their memory for her, the humans on the earth worshiped Nuwa as the Empress Nuwa and worshiped her in a grand manner.
As far back as the Shang Dynasty more than 3,000 years ago, my country already had the prototype of the sheng. There is a record of "harmony" in the oracle bone inscriptions unearthed from the Yin Ruins. "He" is the predecessor of Xiaosheng in later generations. "Erya Shile" records:
The big Sheng is called the nest, and the small one is called the harmony.
In the classification of ancient Chinese musical instruments, the sheng is a gourd instrument. "Xiaoya Lu Ming" in "The Book of Songs" writes:
I have a guest who plays the harp and sheng. Playing the sheng, drums and reeds, carrying the basket is the general.
It can be seen that Sheng was already very popular at that time. In documents from the Warring States Period to the Han Dynasty, two similar musical instruments, the sheng and the yu, are both recorded. "Zhou Li·Chun Guan" contains:
The Sheng Master... is responsible for teaching She Yu, Sheng, Xun, Xun, Xiao, Chi, Zhuan and Guan.
"Sheng" is the official name, and his position is to be the general manager to teach how to play Yu, Sheng and other musical instruments. The difference between Yu and Sheng is: Sheng has a small body and few springs; Yu has a large body and many springs. In the early days of both of them, braided tubes with embedded springs were inserted into the gourds, and the gourds were used as the sounding body. Therefore, some documents believe that the Yu is a different shape of Sheng. For example, Gao Xiu's note in "Lu Shi Chun Qiu Zhong Xia Ji": < /p>
Yu, the big Sheng.
During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the sheng and yu were important wind instruments. Yu was once widely popular among the court, nobles or citizens.
During the Spring and Autumn Period, the Sheng was greatly developed and was generally used to add to the fun during major ceremonies or banquets. Confucius, an educator in the Spring and Autumn Period, was a famous Sheng player, which shows the importance attached to the Sheng at that time. Later, during the Warring States Period, the Sheng had a broader space for development, making the Sheng an important role among musical instruments. During the Warring States Period, King Qi Xuan, the king of Qi State, especially liked to listen to the Yu's large ensemble. He specially set up a 300-person large band in the palace so that he could often listen to the band's performance. There was a man named Mr. Nan Guo, who didn't know how to play the yu, but he also joined the band. When playing, he held the Yu in both hands like others, shaking his head and pretending to be playing. The days passed like this, and no one noticed that he was also rewarded by King Qi Xuan.
After the death of King Qi Xuan, his son King Qi Min succeeded to the throne. The new king, on the contrary, loved to listen to Yu's solo. He called the band members and asked them to play one by one. When Mr. Nan Guo saw this situation, he was afraid that the truth would be exposed and he would commit the crime of deceiving the king, so he quietly slipped away midway.
The idiom "to make up for one's mistakes" comes from this fable. Since the pre-Qin Dynasty, the shape of the sheng has changed greatly. Before the Han Dynasty, the sheng pipes were mostly made of reed bamboo or purple bamboo, with the number of sheng pipes ranging from 12 to 18, the reeds were made of bamboo, and the sheng buckets were made of gourds. After the Han Dynasty, reeds were gradually made of copper.
Ancient books of the Eastern Han Dynasty record the shape of the Sheng. "Shuowen Jiezi" contains:
Sheng, thirteen reeds, resembles the body of a phoenix.
The "Shuowen Jiezi" of the Eastern Han Dynasty records that the Yu has 36 reeds. A Yu was unearthed from Han Tomb No. 1 in Mawangdui, Changsha. It has 26 tubes and is equipped with folding tubes for producing bass sounds. The reed is made of copper sheets. From the unearthed pottery figurines of Baixi in the Western Han Dynasty and the stone carvings of Baixi in the Eastern Han Dynasty, it can also be seen that the Yu plays an important role in the Baixi band.
The yu still existed during the Sui and Tang Dynasties, but it was no longer used in the Jiu Bu music and the Ten Bu music. All are used in music. Many famous sheng players emerged in the Tang Dynasty, and their skills have reached a high level. Many poets in the Tang Dynasty also wrote poems about Sheng.
"Listening to the Neighbor Playing the Sheng" is a work by Lang Shiyuan, a poet of the Tang Dynasty. This poem uses metaphor, synaesthesia and imagination techniques, starting from listening to Sheng, to create a fascinating artistic conception in an extremely romantic way. The poem says:
The sound of the phoenix blowing is like the colorful clouds across the wall, and I don’t know whose house is outside the wall. The heavy door is locked and nowhere to be found. It is suspected that there are green peach trees and thousands of flowers.
The poet uses Sheng music to convey the music of his heart, and uses the music of his heart to echo the music of Sheng. It is the word "suspicious" that cleverly integrates the music of his heart and the music of Sheng. In this dreamlike wonderland, people can truly feel the brightness and joy of the "neighbor" Shengle.
In 741, Yuan Danqiu, a good friend of the poet Li Bai, visited Taoism at the invitation of Princess Yuzhen, the sister of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty. From his retreat in the east of Mengshan Mountain, she entered Chang'an in the west, passing through Yanzhou Zhicheng Xiaqiu , Li Bai bid farewell to him and specially composed the poem "Phoenix Blowing Sheng Music". The whole poem has sixteen lines, and his feelings of farewell are deep and moving.
The Immortal Fifteen loves to play the sheng and learns the sound of colorful phoenixes from Kunqiu.
When I first heard about refining qi and drinking gold liquid, I resumed my journey to Jade Capital.
Jade capital is thousands of miles away, and Feng Sheng has gone endlessly.
My lips turn red when I want to sigh, and my fingers are flowing when I sigh.
It is unbearable to say goodbye at this time, and I can’t bear to see each other here.
Repeat real music and clear blows, but play fairy songs to ring the green clouds.
The green clouds and purple air are heading towards Hanguan. When visiting the road, you should look for Mount Goushi.
Don’t learn to play the sheng like Prince Jin. If you encounter a floating hill, you will never return it.
After the Tang Dynasty, performers changed the sheng pipe to wood, and painted patterns around the sheng pipe. There were 19, 17 and 13 reeds in various forms; later, a 17-reed instrument became popular. Sheng, this kind of Sheng has two "righteous pipes" in addition to the 17 reeds for replacement when changing the key. Later, the 19 Huang Sheng was also lost. Later, after spreading, the wooden bucket was replaced by a copper bucket, and the reeds were also changed from bamboo to copper.
my country's sheng and yu were introduced to Japan in the east during the prosperous Tang Dynasty. In the Shoso-yuan of Todaiji Temple in Nara, two Wu bamboo sheng and yu made in my country's Tang Dynasty have been preserved, as well as two fake spotted bamboo sheng and yu. Each one has 17 pipes, all arranged in a horseshoe shape, except that the curved mouthpiece is particularly long, and there are painted figures or landscapes on the pipes. Ancient books say that the yu has multiple pipes, but the yu used in Tang folk music preserved in Zhengcang Yuan has 17 pipes, the same as the sheng.
In the Song Dynasty, the yu disappeared. Among the thirteen sections of Jiaofang, there is only the color of sheng but no color of yu. In the third year of Jingde in the Northern Song Dynasty, that is, 1006, Shan Zhongxin, a court musician, made another 19-reed sheng. Since then, the 19-reed sheng has been widely used in the court and among the people.
Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the most popular shengs are 17-reed, 14-reed square sheng, 13-reed and 10-reed sheng.
my country's Sheng has played a positive role in promoting the development of Western musical instruments. The Sheng was first introduced to Persia through the "Silk Road". In 1777, the French missionary Amio introduced the Sheng to Europe.
In 1780, Kosnik, a Danish organ maker living in Russia, imitated the reed principle of the Chinese sheng and manufactured the reed handle of the organ. Only then did the organ begin to use free reeds with soft and pleasant timbres.
At the end of the 18th century, Yashtalin, an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, once wrote an article praising the Sheng as "the most popular Chinese pipe organ." Later, it promoted the invention of the organ and accordion.
Because the Sheng has been around for a long time, there are different styles of Sheng in different regions. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Chinese musical instrument makers and music workers continued to reform the sheng, and successively trial-produced a variety of new varieties such as amplified shengs and keyed shengs, overcoming the short range, inability to modulate and play quickly. Inconvenience and other shortcomings have brought new vitality to Sheng. Nowadays, there are many kinds of shengs used by the people, including 13 reeds, 14 reeds, 15 reeds, 17 reeds, etc., but the 14 reeds and 17 reeds are the most popular.
The sound of Sheng is bright and sweet, the treble is crisp and transparent, the midrange is soft and full, the bass is thick and deep, and the volume is larger. Moreover, among traditional Chinese wind instruments, it is also the only instrument that can produce harmony. When playing together with other instruments, it can harmonize the band's tone and enrich the band's sound. In large national orchestras, three types of sheng are sometimes used: treble, alto and bass.
Nowadays, the reformed Sheng has become a solo instrument with rich expressive power. It can not only play majestic and powerful tunes, but also beautiful and lyrical melodies. Representative songs include "Peacock Spreading Its Tail", " Phoenix Spreads Its Wings" etc.