Artistic Features of Yangzhou Pinghua

Yangzhou Pinghua is famous for its meticulous description, rigorous structure, echoing from beginning to end, complicated and orderly arrangement, rich performance details, vivid characters and vivid language. Artists also attach great importance to rendering the local scenery of Yangzhou in their creation and performance, which has a strong local color. Yangzhou storytelling artists have created their own artistic characteristics and formed their own teaching system in their artistic practice. After the death of Deng Guangdou, who was famous for jumping on the water margin, his son Deng Tangmi inherited the art of calligraphy and became the founder of the later critics. Song is a famous contemporary artist who commented on Water Margin with Deng, and is the ancestor of artists who commented on Water Margin in later generations. Wang Shaotang inherited the calligraphy art of Deng and Song, learning from each other's strengths. He devoted himself to depicting historical figures and three religions and nine streams, and shaped his image with the help of rich life accumulation. After a long period of study, reform and development, it has formed a unique artistic style of line drawing with delicate, sweet, sticky, sharp and spicy personal expressions, and has become one of the most successful representatives in Yangzhou critics. The Water Margin of Ma School is as famous as the Water Margin of Wang School. Ma pai calligraphy is also a master of Deng and Song Dynasties, and it is famous for telling the story before, during and after the Water Margin. Praised by Old Master Q's Yangzhou Zhuzhi Ci Draft in the late Qing Dynasty, he composed and performed China's "The History of the Three Kingdoms", which was dominated by literature, and became a faction with Sun, the famous brother of the "The History of the Three Kingdoms" which was dominated by martial arts at that time. Eight students in Li Guohui are called "Eight Horses", among which Kang Guohua has the highest attainments and is the founder of Kangpai Three Kingdoms. Lan Yuchun, another famous painter with the same name, inherited and developed Mr. Wu's specialty, and was the founder of the blue school art. The blue school and the Kang school formed two basic schools of modern Yangzhou commentary. Wu Guoliang, a close disciple of Li Guohui, and his son Wu Shaoliang accepted literature and martial arts, and formed an artistic style combining literature and martial arts, which was called the martial arts school by his peers. At the same time, there are many excellent talents among storytellers who speak other books. For example, in Eight, Lang Lighting and Lang Zhaoxing in Green Peony, Dai in The Journey to the West, Wang of Gong Peng 'an, Fan in Stone Case, Li in Evergreen, Zou Zhangcan and Zou Canwen in Feilong Legend, and the Eastern Han Dynasty.

After Jiaqing, Yangzhou lost its former prosperity because of the diversion of grain transportation and the reform of salt policy, and the audience of Yangzhou Pinghua dropped sharply. In the third year of Xianfeng (1853), Nanjing and Yangzhou, the capital of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, became military outposts in Jiangbei. In order to avoid the war, local wealthy businessmen and gentry moved eastward to Taizhou and Dongtai to operate. Yangzhou storytellers make a living in Taizhou and Dongtai, and some even make a living in Gaoyou, Xinghua, Baoying and Yancheng in He Lixia. The performance area has expanded, and the number of artists in Yangzhou has rapidly increased from dozens to more than 200. Yangzhou Pinghua expanded its influence in northern Jiangsu. Wang Shaotang (1889 ~ 1968) is a storyteller. Mingdezhuang, also known as Xihe, has a stage name of Shaotang. Originally from Jiangdu, he was born in Anle Lane, Yangzhou. His uncle Zhang Jin and his father Yutang are both Yangzhou storytellers. He is the representative figure of the Water Margin of Wang School, and he is good at talking about four "ten times" of Wu (Song), Song (Jiang), Shi (Xiu) and Lu (Junyi).

Wang Shaotang studied with his father at the age of 7 and took to the stage at the age of 9. At the age of 65,438+02, he made his official debut in the family martial arts (Song Dynasty) for ten times and made his mark in Yangzhou book circle. At the age of 20, he became one of the four famous critics in Yangzhou. In his long-term artistic practice, he not only inherited his father's calligraphy skills, but also inherited the advantages of his uncle and absorbed the strengths of his peers. First, on the basis of heirloom art, focusing on the story of Song Wu in the Chinese classical literary masterpiece Water Margin, it is perfected into ten chapters; Later, he gave ten lectures on the story of Sung River in Water Margin, and edited and published two books in 1950s. At the same time, he compiled the stories of Shi Xiu and Lu Junyi in Water Margin into Yangzhou storytelling, thus making the four "Ten Things" of, Song Jiang, Shi Xiu and Lu Junyi the representative works of Yangzhou storytelling art, which was called Water Margin by the Wang school. His performance is exquisite in appearance, both in form and spirit, and his speech is relaxed and elegant. He called his art "meticulous but not burdensome, magnificent but not rough" and won the praise of "Listen to Mei Lanfang and Wang Shaotang when listening to books". The characteristics of Wang Pai's Outlaws of the Marsh are as follows: the whole content of Outlaws of the Marsh is connected with the story of character structure through four main characters; In particular, it enriches the deeds or simple confessions that are not in the original work, expands the calligraphy of predecessors, and makes it more complete and full.

His son Wang and granddaughter Wang Litang are both famous storytellers in Yangzhou. In particular, her granddaughter, Wang Litang, directly inherited her grandfather's calligraphy skills, and based on her grandfather's artistic style of "sweet, sticky, sharp and spicy", said that her performance was more simple and elegant, and her language was more refined, and she had the reputation of "showing her mouth" and "pouring a string of beads into a bucket". As a result, the owner of "Wang Pai Shui Hu" became a veritable artistic family of "Wang Pai Shui Hu".

The Water Margin of Wang School not only has its artistic connotation, but also has a relatively complete arrangement and preservation of artistic materials. 1954, the people's government assigned a special person to record all the bibliographies of Song Wu, Song Jiang, Shi Xiu and Lu Junyi, and transcribed them into 5 million words. 1958, the government organized forces to publish his Yangzhou Pinghua Song Wu and Song Jiang successively. 1989, 1995, China Quyi Publishing House and Jiangsu Literature and Art Publishing House respectively published Wang Litang's performance books Song Wu (Volume 1 * * * ten times), Song Jiang (Volume 2 * * ten times), Shi Xiu (ten times) and Lu Junyi (. People call it "Yangzhou Wangpai Shuihu's Four Big Ten Returns".