In ancient China, the so-called "song" refers to a song that can be played and sung with music score, and its text part is equivalent to the later "lyrics"; The so-called "Sanqu" can even be said to be a popular song at that time. China's ancient poetry creation has always attached importance to the combination with music, and "poetry" is also a "song". For example, in the earliest Book of Songs, Ya and Ode were mostly temple songs, while Feng was a folk song. Yuefu poems collected in the Han Dynasty were originally folk songs. It can be seen that the tradition of "poetry" and "song" in China is very long. However, as later poetry creation gradually stepped onto the road of literati and gradually divorced from music, in the most glorious era of Tang poetry, there appeared "Ci" specially for people to sing, and in the Song Dynasty, it moved towards new glory, which was called "Song Ci". This phenomenon shows that it is difficult to meet the needs of society, especially the needs of the people, if poetry creation pays more attention to "poetry" than "song", or even has "poetry" without "song" In the same way, the reason why Qu "thrives after Ci" is nothing more than that the development of Song Ci has finally embarked on the road of being a man without music, so the society also needs a new poetic style combined with music. This is from the evolution of creative genres, one of which is. Secondly, the prosperity of Sanqu creation in the Yuan Dynasty is of course related to the national characteristics of this dynasty. As we all know, the Yuan Dynasty was established after Mongols entered the Central Plains. Mongolians have been nomadic people in the north since ancient times. They are straightforward and love to sing and dance. It can even be said that singing has become a very common lifestyle for them. Such national character and customs are undoubtedly the key premise and factor for the birth of Sanqu. From the qupai of Sanqu, we can see that quite a few of them come from the Ci-pai of Tang and Song Dynasties, and also from the ballads and ballads of Mongolian or other northern nationalities, so Sanqu is also called "Yuci", "Northern Qu", "Northern Yuefu" and "Modern Yuefu", which shows that there is a profound relationship between them. As Heng Tan, a recluse in the Ming Dynasty, said: "Since Jin and Yuan Dynasties entered China, Hu Yue's words have been noisy, and new words have been flattering; Writers such as Guan, Zhai and so on are all well-read, good at temperament and longer than a generation. ..... Hu Yu gradually dyed Dajiang North. " As Xu Wei's "Narration of Southern Ci" said: "Today's Northern Song Dynasty covers the northern part of Liao and Jin Dynasties, which is powerful and ruthless. The martial arts horse song flowed into the Central Plains and became a folk daily use. Song Ci can neither be strung, nor can South Renye Fang. " It can be seen that the entry of Mongolian and other northern nationalities into the Central Plains has brought great new changes in aesthetic taste, which is the decisive reason why Sanqu has become a folk daily use.
Because of this, Sanqu shows many characteristics that are both inherited and different from the past characters, such as: first, from the internal law, Sanqu is similar to characters, but it also has a relatively fixed format, sentence pattern, spectrum, etc., but it is allowed to increase or decrease or change in terms of words, sentence patterns, rhymes, etc., instead of being as rigid as filling words; Secondly, from the structural point of view, Sanqu can be divided into two categories: one is poetry (including songs) and the other is the number of sets. Poetry consists of one tablet, and the number of sets consists of two or more tablets, which is obviously a development on the basis of words, which is different from that each word can only be composed of one tablet. It can be seen that Sanqu is more natural, flexible and convenient than Ci, and these characteristics are nothing more than formed to meet the needs of singing at that time.