Sheng and Guan Ensemble

Ⅱ-121Traditional MusicJianping, LiaoningBatch 2 (2008)Newly Added Item

01 · Historical Records

In the early twentieth century the performing technique and repertory of the lama band flowed into the folk of Jianping and were generally applied to weddings, funerals and birthday celebrations. Since the middle and late Qing dynasty the performing form of the Ten Kings Society has gradually merged with drum-and-wind music and has for the most part been replaced by it; at present it survives only in a few villages of Jianping County and of Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, and so on.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Sheng-and-guan music generally consists of the guan, the sheng, the flute, cloud gongs and such other instruments, together with percussion instruments such as the drum, the nao and the gong. The principal instrument is the guan, called “bili” in ancient times; it is a double-reed aerophone, usually made of wood, with eight finger-holes in the upper part, seven in front and one behind, and a double reed of hard reed cane; its pitch is often tuned by changing to reeds of different sizes. In the court music and temple music of successive dynasties the guan was always the principal instrument, and was called the “head pipe”. Sheng-and-guan music is the most solemn and refined musical art within folk drum-and-wind music. It differs from the suona-and-percussion music whose principal instrument is the suona: the special flavour that comes from its combination of instruments enables it to create the clear, empty and tranquil atmosphere that religious occasions require, so it was generally adopted by the temples and Taoist shrines throughout China and became a common form of instrumental music in the old religious rites. The Jianping Ten Kings Society is also called the “Double Society” or the “Scripture Society”; it is inherited from the performing technique of the lama band of the Kalaqin princely household. According to tradition, whenever the princely household went to hold sacrifices at the “Prince's Tomb” at the foot of Longdan Mountain in Jianping, Liaoning, it took its lama band along to play, the band numbering as many as sixty men on one occasion. The instruments of the Ten Kings Society include twelve kinds: the guan, the sheng, the flute, the xiao, the cloud gong, the hand drum, the hall drum, the small cymbals, the large cymbals, the large nao, the chong (struck bell) and the clapper. Research shows that it is connected with the Jurchen drum-and-flute music and with the qingyue, sanyue and mahouyue that have existed since the Liao and Song dynasties. The scores of the Ten Kings Society are all copied on rough paper; the note symbols are identical with those of the common gongche notation, written in vertical columns from right to left, with the beats marked to the right of the notes. From the order of copying and the explanatory notes in the scores, the Ten Kings Society originally had six suites and more than forty short pieces such as Gua Jin Suo, Shan Po Yang and Wu Sheng Fo. Of the six suites, the first is made up of Chun Lai, Xia Lai, Qiu Lai, Dong Lai, Si Lai Wei and other pieces, followed immediately by three tune patterns; the second is Yan Er Luo, the third Xiao Gong (Gong) Yi Tao, the fourth Zheng Gong Yi Tao, the fifth E Ling Zi, and the sixth San Hui Jiu Zhuan Da Pu An Zhou. Besides the gongche notation, the copy also contains three pieces of gong-and-drum notation. Its gong mode mainly uses the zheng gong mode, with the xiao gong mode used now and then.