This article comes from WeChat public account: Qingshan Capital (ID: cyanhillvc) , author: Zhang Ye
“The world kissed me with pain, and told me to sing it back.” — Tagore
70 singers chorus “Heart warming equals the world”; Belgian pianist Shang Malong wrote “The Bells of Dawn”; Senior High School students from the National People’s Congress created the rap “Empty City”; …
Maybe you’ve heard these from friends circles and various media platforms these days, maybe people around you are doing similar creations. Someone is writing, someone is singing, and someone is listening. They all use music to heal themselves and comfort others.
Music exists in two ways, lyric and narrative, and there is only one purpose, comfort. Emotions in music are personal, but narratives in music often record collective memories.
I can calm down recently and write something. Today, I will review with you a few major disasters in the long river of human history, and how to embrace each other and warm each other in those sad times.
Dark Middle Ages and Sacred Tone
The Middle Ages can be said to be the longest dark age in human history. Wars and plagues have lasted for nearly 1,000 years, especially in the early Middle Ages, 400-750 AD. The Western Roman Empire perished. Recession, class flow has basically stopped, and the sectarian power has expanded dramatically.
Ordinary people are told that life is used for atonement, and they endure their sufferings silently, hoping that their sufferings will be treated well under judgment when the end is coming.
After the whole day’s work, I walked to the church on the dark muddy road by the sunset, and chanted with the church members in the candlelight, and never remember words, some of them were just buriedWith sleeping children, some people have just learned that their husbands will disappear forever in war, and this is the only place where they can be comforted.
Medieval art is not allowed to be used by ordinary people, almost all serving the church.
Gregory Chant was born At this time, it is difficult for us to imagine that in the massacre, plague, hunger, and all kinds of disasters, so many peaceful tunes were born. They are full of simple hope and so Sweet feelings.
We can simply imagine that at that time, there were no notation methods such as staff notation and notation that we widely use now. The tunes were passed on by word of mouth. People came to the church, drowned their voices in the chorus and expressed their emotions. Hidden in the group, comforted in the song.
Many people in the church sang a tune. Some people were inaccurate or incomplete, and accidentally formed some harmonious and beautiful melody. They were recorded by sensitive and talented people in their own way and became later. Polyphony and harmony.
Plagues and Masses before the Renaissance
In the 14th century, the largest plague in human history came to Europe. In 1347, the Mongolian army attacked Faka and brought the plague into Faka. The Faka garrison fled to Europe and brought the bacteria back to their respective countries. In just 6 years, 25 million people died. At the time, one in three people in Europe died of the plague. Florence is the most severely plagued city. 80% of the people died of infection. The scene in Florence was described in “The Ten Days Talk”, “like hell on earth.”
An oil painting depicting the “Black Death” of the Great Plague.
Mass is a Catholic ritual and the most important sacrifice at that time. The mass used in the event was the Mass Music at that time.
The power of the Catholic Church has reached its peak during this period. Mass is no longer a common tune of the people ’s chorus. It is relatively complicated and requires high skills from the singers. As a result, the mass can only be sung by the professional staff of the church. Looking up at this solemn process, we reach the comfort of the soul by hearing the sound as if from above.
The third and sixth intervals we use most now are considered “impure” at that time, and only octaves and fifths and fourths are pure, so it sounds unavoidably a little hollow and pale, but it does It was the most mainstream music in that central age, in the darkness before dawn.
As we all know, after this greatest disaster in human history, the cultural field has ushered in the most magnificent hundreds of years. During this period, people pursued freedom, pursued the truth, pursued the meaning of life and the truth of the world.
Old people often say how cold it is this winter and how hot it will be next summer. The “Renaissance” wields its sleeves fiercely to the end of the winter with the extreme of human wisdom and aesthetics.
The Revolution and Composer Age
At the age of the French Revolution in 1789, Beethoven was 19 years old. Although he began to study music at the age of 4, he was not able to become a child prodigy like Mozart.
When Bonaparte Napoleon became a general at the age of 24 and began his outstanding career, Beethoven, one year younger, recognized him as the “Messiah”-the savior, and determined that Napoleon was here to save all beings. The man who consolidated the fruits of the revolution and led people to the new world, Napoleon took power at the age of 30, began to lead the French nation, and Beethoven cheered for it, and began to write a symphony dedicated to the most admired.
In 1804, Napoleon became emperor, and the French Empire was rebuilt. Beethoven was furious. He almost wrote the third symphony, Bonaparte, and renamed it “Hero.”
The cover of the manuscript of the Beethoven Hero Symphony can be clearly seen.
After Napoleon’s failure, the main area of Poland occupied by it was taken over by the Tsarist Russia, and Chopin was born here. I do n’t know whether Poland has a literary hero such as “the country is broken by mountains and rivers, and the city is deep in grass and trees.” Living under the rule of a foreign country, until the age of 20, Polish youth officers and young students launched an uprising, took over the regime and established their own government, but the situation did not last long. The Russian army returned 10 months later, Warsaw was captured, and the uprising failure.
The pain of Chopin was distressed, and he wrote in his diary: I can do nothing but sigh and release my pain on the piano.
Modern War and Pop Music
In the twentieth century, like a wiper in front of a car window, sliding left and right erased the traces of long history. Urbanization, industrialization, electronics, and informatization, each of them is a force that changes the music. .
When Werner von Siemens discovered that the vibration system could maintain axial motion through magnetic fields, when Thomas Alva Edison wrote in a notepad: the stylus vibrator was engraved on wax paper, which would later make the waxy Repeat the vibration of the stylus. They might never have imagined that this would completely change the art-music category that lasted for thousands of years, and took her to a completely different fast lane.
The loudspeaker breaks through the obstacles of the instrument itself and the singing technique. It can reach a certain volume without dozens of people playing; it can be heard by the audience when singing without a lot of chest and abdomen resonance, so that the white voice or popular singing method is quickly swept the world. Gramophones allow music to be recorded and transmitted. The recording time limit of films and tapes and fast-paced urban life make short tunes more easily transmitted and accepted.
On the other side, during the First and Second World Wars, nearly 100 million people died in the flames of war, engraving those left behind