In recent years, "the relationship between poetry and music" seems to have become a "remarkable study". This problem is often mentioned in academic conferences on poetry, ci, qu and even poetry and fu. As a special academic conference, maybe today is the first time. There are so many participants and many young and middle-aged scholars, which is very exciting.

Everyone knows the meaning of the sentence "the relationship between poetry and music", but the word "poetry" itself contains "music", so can this formulation be modified? Or we can say "the relationship between poetry and music" or simply "the relationship between poetry and music". Personally, I am used to saying a few words. In a word: "the relationship between' literature' and' music' in singing"-singing is the combination of' literature' and' music'; There is another sentence: "the relationship between verse and music"-although any verse (even prose) can be put into singing, there are some verse genres and works in reality that are not written for singing.

I have read some related works and attended many related academic conferences. It can be said that this is the content of discussing the relationship between verse and music; Accordingly, all the authors of these works, the initiators and sponsors of these academic societies, and almost all the participants are scholars in the literary world. For example, the so-called "vocal poetry" and "the relationship between words and music" are all put forward by the literary world for study. This topic, of course, is not only in the literary world, but also in the music world. In the music field, there are also studies on the relationship between "music" and "prose", but it is mainly the relationship between "musical image" and "artistic conception of lyrics" or "melody" and "pronunciation" when composing songs today; It rarely enters the breadth and depth of the research on the relationship between literature and music in the field of video literature, at least it doesn't fully study the relationship between China folk music and traditional verse.

This phenomenon is also natural. China is a "country of poetry and prose". For thousands of years, the development of national traditional rhymes is far higher and deeper than that of music-this is a completely different historical reality between China and European countries and other foreign countries. Perhaps we only need to look at a phenomenon to understand that singing is a combination of "literature and music". In China, the legacy of "music" (forgetting and giving up) was abandoned and became "rhyme" literature-poetry, Sao, Fu, Yuefu, Poetry, Ci and North-South music. And what about European countries? We can put aside the "words" in singing and separate "music" into instrumental music (this situation only appears in China's "Qin", but Qin is just beyond our research scope). In China, verse forms the text structure, sentence pattern and metrical structure of the above-mentioned various styles; What about the music? It seems that the concepts of "musical style" and "musical style" have never been produced (not in ancient times); In Europe, on the contrary, the style and form of music, from phrases, paragraphs, harmony and counterpoint to movements, music, symphonies and operas, are standardized and complete, but what about their "words"? Except for the so-called "sonnets", their rhymes have no definite and standardized "style". Is that so?

Mr. Jiang Baishi himself said that it was his "initial meaning of long and short sentences, then the rhythm" that made the lyrics (then the music). How can there be a "score" and then a "fill"? Because it's impossible.

The fact is, whether in history or today, the relationship between "Wen" and "Yue" in various schools and singing methods in China is generally dominated by "Wen" and "Yue" is subordinate. More specifically, four:

1. Articles and chapters that take pleasure in articles and chapters;

Second, take the rhyme (discontinuity) of words as the "resident" in music-roughly equivalent to today's "music section";

Thirdly, take the sentence (broken) in the text as the "rice" in joy-roughly equivalent to today's "happy sentence";

Fourth, take "Bujie" in the sentence as the combination of "Yuejie" in the phrase to promote development;

The above four items, with few exceptions, can be divided into two categories on the premise of these four items, that is, how to combine specific words, sentences and musical melodies:

One kind is: singing all kinds of prose in a stable or basically stable melody (I call it "tune");

One is to change the flat tones of words and sentences into musical tones to form melodies;

The former is what I call "talking with a cavity", and the typical one is "bar songs", such as countless "folk songs and minor tunes" and today's songs. For example, orchids can sing "Blue Line, Blue Line, Blue Ying Ying Land" and "If you are going to die, you will die early" in exactly the same melody.

The latter, which I call "singing according to the sound", is a typical "singing", such as the Peony Pavilion Garden [soap robe].

The first sentence: "It turned out to be colorful", and its music must be composed according to the ups and downs of the words "Sheng/,Sheng/,Qu ∧, Qu ∨, Ping-,Sheng/,Ping-,Qu ∧".

Generally speaking, there are the above two categories. However, in the singing method of our country, the position of "literary expression" is always the first. On the one hand, China (at least historically) does not have the "song without words" mentioned above. On the other hand, even in the "certain singing method" singing, if there is too much contradiction between the melody of music and the pronunciation of words, the singer will often make some adjustments to the singing, that is, the so-called "moistening cavity" and "small cavity" to adapt to the pronunciation of words. More questions can't be said here.

So, looking back, I want to say a word to my music colleagues: I think there are two phenomena that cannot be ignored or underestimated: First, in the past hundred years, western music (its ideas, concepts, theories and even terms used) has covered our country in an all-round way; Another reason is that our music circle does not pay enough attention to "the relationship between our own national charm and music" and "the relationship between literature and music in singing". Our enthusiasm for learning "literature" in the music circle is far less than that in the literary circle. Isn't it?