The Development of Chinese Folk Music in the Ming and Qing dynasties
The Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911) saw the sprouting of capitalism in civil society. With the increasingly expanding citizen class, the music culture tended to be more secularized and further enriched the lives of ordinary people. The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) boasted rich content and diverse categories of folk songs that, though somewhat vulgar, had such extensive influences that everyone, male or female, could sing them. In the meantime, private workshops also started to collect, edit and publish folk songs, resulting in published lyrics booklets, opera scripts and qin music scores including Song in the Mountains edited by Feng Menglong and the earliest qin music, The Miraculous Secret Tablature of the Qin edited by Zhu Quan.
The "telling and singing music" came in a variety of categories in the Ming and Qing dynasties, including tanci, guci as well as paiziqu, qinshu and daoqing. The tanci in Suzhou had the biggest influence in the southern areas, while guci music such as the big drums in Shandong, Xihe and Beijing, and wooden drum in Jizhong, were the most famous pieces of music in the northern areas. The paiziqu music included danxian and dadiaoquzi in Henan; Qinshu music was represented by qinshu in Shandong and yangqin in Sichuan; Daoqing music included the daoqing in Zhejiang and Shaanxi, and yugu in Hubei. Also, some ethnic groups also boasted some telling and singing music like the story telling of Mongolians and dabaiqu of the Bai ethnic group.
The period saw another peak of opera music marked by the"four major tunes"(Haiyan, Yuyao, Yiyang and Kunshan tunes).The Kunshan tune, redeveloped by musicians like Wei Liangfu in Jiangsu, gained popularity for its pleasant and smooth melody as well as highlights on pronunciation. Through the integration of southern and northern opera music, the Kunshan tune was later developed into Kun opera that was popular with the people. The Yiyang tune heavily influenced local dialect opera music with its flexible and changing style, leading to an increasing number of local operas like high-pitched ones. In the northern areas, the bangzi tune represented by the qin tune in Shaanxi developed rapidly.
High-pitched and unconstrained, the bangzi tune has lasting and far-reaching influences.
In the late Qing Dynasty, the pihuang tune, consisting of two basic tunes known as xipi and erhuang, initially took shape and further evolved into the Peking Opera that has become popular throughout the country.
Orchestral music combining multiple musical instruments appeared in civil society during the Ming and Qing dynasties, such as pipe music in the Zhihua Temple in Beijing, chuige in Hebei, sizhu in the areas south of the Yangtze River and Shifan luogu. The qin music like Wild Geese over the Clam Sands in the Ming Dynasty and Flowing Water in the Qing Dynasty, as well as some nice qin songs like
Parting at the Yangguan and The Eighteen Beats of Tartar Reed Flute were widely spread works. Well-known pieces of pipa musicd included Haiging Hunting the Swan and Ambush on Ten Sides (Shi Mian Mai Fu) created during the period from the late Yuan Dynasty to early Ming Dynasty, and the earliest Tablature of the Pipa compiled by Hua Qiuping in the Qing Dynasty.
The Ming Dynasty also produced an eminent yuelü expert, Zhu Zaiyu, who was the first person to establish the theory of "Equal Temperament." By figuring out the length proportion between any two neighboring Lü (semitones) in the equal temperament (with the accuracy of 25 digits), the theory was a revolution in both music and physics in music, and a great invention in world science history as well.
