A reassessment of the relationship between text, speech tone, melody, and aria structure in Beijing Opera

Journal of Musicological Research

Volumn 18, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 183-206

  Stock, Jonathan P J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149455815     PISSN: 01411896     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01411899908574757     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. For a comparable perspective from the field of African music, see V. Kofi Agawu, "Tone and Tune: The Evidence for Northern Ewe Music," Africa 58 (1988): 127-46.
2. See, for instance, James Webster, "The Analysis of Mozart's Arias," Mozart Studies, ed. Cliff Eisen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 101-99;
3. Allan W. Atlas, "Multivalence, Ambiguity and Non-Ambiguity: Puccini and the Polemicists," Journal of the Royal Musical Association 118 (1993): 73-93.
4. Jonathan P. J. Stock, "The Application of Schenkerian Analysis to Ethnomusicology: Problems and Possibilities," Music Analysis 12 (1993): 215-40, especially 217-25.
5. See also Jonathan P. J. Stock, Musical Creativity in Twentieth-Century China: Abing, His Music, and Its Changing Meanings (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1996), 10-13.
6. Certainly, there is a difference here: in the case of music analysis the concepts seem largely to arise from the study of a single musical tradition, while anthropological concepts have a much wider provenance. In the first place, however, I would say that identification of Western art music as a single tradition is more a matter of convenience than of demonstrable musical similarity or social function. Second, there is no reason why ideas arising from the study of the musical traditions of other cultural groups should not be added to the theoretical palette of the ethnomusicological analyst. Techniques of - and rationales for - study need to be accumulated, tested, and honed; it makes much sense to begin with what is already available.
7. Chinese names are given with family name first, as usual. Romanization of Chinese terms uses the pinyin system, in which the majority of letters are pronounced somewhat similarly to their English equivalents (hence Beijing is preferred to the older term Peking). "Zh" is pronounced somewhat like an initial "j" and "ou" as a long "o", while "XS" represents a sibilant "hs" sound. Other exceptions are "c" ("ts") and "q" ("ch"). In Beijing opera singing some pronunciations differ from those of contemporary Mandarin, but since this is not an issue in this essay, I have employed Mandarin romanizations throughout.
8. See Richard Widdess, "Involving the Performers in Transcription and Analysis: A Collaborative Approach to Dhrupad," Ethnomusicology 38 (1994): 59-79.
9. Elsewhere, I have examined the rise of a conservatory system in mainland China, noting how attitudes to traditional instrumental music have changed during the last seventy years. See Stock, Musical Creativity, 6, 142-67.
10. In describing both interviews with Chinese musicians and the literature on this topic as "folk evaluation", I am following the implication of John Blacking's statement, "I want to argue that the technical jargon of musical description is not substantially different and should not be separated from 'non-technical' discourse, except insofar as they are the languages of particular social groups." Music, Culture, and Experience: Selected Papers of John Blacking (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 230.
11. A selection of European language texts on aspects of Chinese opera include: Colin P. Mackerras, The Rise of the Peking Opera 1770-1870: Social Aspects of the Theatre in Manchu China (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972);
12. Mackerras, The Chinese Theatre in Modern Times: From 1840 to the Present Day (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975);
13. Gerd Schönfelder, Die Musik der Peking-Oper (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1972);
14. Wilt Idema and Stephen H. West, Chinese Theater 1100-1400: A Source Book (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1982);
15. Bell Yung, Cantonese Opera: Performance as Creative Process (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989);
16. Elizabeth Wichmann, Listening to Theatre: The Aural Dimension of Beijing Opera (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991).
17. See also Francesca Rebello-Sborgi, "The Musicality of Oral Performance: The Case of Tianjin Shidiao and the Musical Expression of Urban Identity," Asian Music 26, no. 1 (1994/1995): 9-51.
18. Nancy Guy has suggested that in the interests of historical continuity writers of English should use the term "Peking opera" rather than "Beijing opera." See Nancy Guy, "Peking Opera as 'National Opera in Taiwan: What's in a Name?" Asian Theatre Journal 12, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 85-103, especially 98. Notwithstanding Guy's proposal, I prefer to observe modern practice in recognizing "Beijing" as the official romanization of that city's name. It then seems untidy to mix both new and old forms together, particularly when the Chinese-language term is employed as well: the "jing" of jingju is, of course, also the "jing" of Beijing [opera].
19. Couplet 1 occurs in the opera Sanniang jiao zi (Beijing: China Record Co., 1983 [1962]) HD-12;
20. Couplet 2 is in Er jin gong, cited by Liu Guojie, Xipi erhuang yinyue gailun (Shanghai: Shanghai yinyue chubanshe, 1989), 360-61. Both couplets are set to the same basic melody.
21. Rulan Chao Pian, "Text Setting with the Shipyi Animated Aria," in Words and Music: The Scholar's View: A Medley of Problems and Solutions Compiled in Honor of A. Tilman Merritt by Sundry Hands, ed. Laurence Berman (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, Department of Music, 1972), 237-70.
22. Pian, "Text Setting," 257.
23. Rulan Chao Pian, "Aria Structural Patterns in the Peking Opera," in Chinese and Japanese Music Dramas, ed. J. I. Crump and William Malm (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1975), 65-89, especially 66-67. Bell Yung has reminded me that these kind of "anti-couplet" structures, in which one singer takes the latter line of the pair and then the first line of the next couplet, may even be more common than the "textbook" AB model.
24. Pian, "Aria Structural Patterns," 70-72.
25. Yung, Cantonese Opera, 83-88.
26. Wichmann, Listening to Theatre, 55-57.
27. Cipher notation is commonly used in present-day China. "1" represents do, "2" is re, and so forth.
28. Notations of Zhou's arias, along with photographs, synopses, and scripts are in Xu Jinwen, ed., Zhou Xinfang yanchu juben changqiang ji (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 1982).
29. Liu Guojie, personal communication, 18 May 1993;
30. Lian Bo, personal communication, 7 June 1993.
31. Xu, ed., Zhou Xinfang, 210-11. The opera in question is Wulong yuan [Black-Dragon Court] and the singer a painted-face character, Chao Shan (acted by Wang Zhikui). (Elsewhere in the volume there are other xipi yaoban arias, some of them sung by Zhou Xinfang himself, which conform closely to this model).
32. This cadence pattern (mi-do-re-do) is also found in sanban ["scattered meter"], daoban ["leading meter"], and some kuaiban ["fast meter"] arias.
33. Personal communication, 21 June 1993.
34. Traditional Chinese music theory provides terms for scale degrees similar to "dominant," "tonic," etc. Here, I use the English terms, but without meaning to imply any harmonic function.
35. Xu, ed., Zhou Xinfang, 245-46.
36. Zhou Xinfang changqiang xuan (Beijing: Tianjin yinhe Co., n.d.) 8071 BY076. The end of the aria is unusual, the final two lines cadencing to sol (lower octave)-do. Although a departure from Zhou's pattern discussed above of delaying the standard xipi cadences re-do until the final couplet, it is one which again marks off the end of the aria from the start and middle.
37. A single example of a four-line aria structure in another traditional Chinese operatic style, Zhejiang Province yueju opera, is analyzed in Stock, "Schenkerian Analysis," 228-32.
38. See, for instance, John E. Kaemmer, Music in Human Life: Anthropological Perspectives on Music (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1993), where the useful analytical categories of "practical consciousness" and "discursive consciousness" are proposed (14). Adopting these categories, we might observe that Zhou Xinfang and his troupe have provided evidence of their "practical consciousness" but not of "discursive consciousness", while present-day theorists have offered much in the way of the latter but are not engaged in creative activity in the same sense or context as Zhou and his companions.
39. See also Stock, Musical Creativity, 158, 166 n.61;
40. Antoinet Schimmelpenninck, Chinese Folk Songs and Folk Singers: Shan'ge Traditions in Southern Jiangsu (Leiden: Chime Foundation, 1997), 15.