Praying Tech Fearless Charm

Longhu Mountain has been not only the place where the Taoist masters lived and raised pulpits to impart secrets to their disciples since the Jin Dynasty, but also the center of Taoism. Due to the fact that Tianshi Sect's position had been gradually promoted in the society and Taoism, the ritual music, with its mature form and profound implications, was gradually popularized and perfected. It greatly influenced the folk music and local culture. In the meanwhile, it was also directly influenced by the folk music and court music in many ways. Therefore, it can be asserted that the existing Tianshi Taoist ritual music is the great heritages of the traditional Chinese musical culture. In the introduction this dissertation at first reviews the formation, the development and the transition of Tianshi Taoist ritual music and tries to make a comprehensive analysis of its main characters through the ages, the classics, the concerned cultural background, the procedures and structure of its ritual music and its musical attributes, and then the author tries to sketch the general trend of its development and its transition. Based on the data that derived from the on-the-spot investigation, the first section of the present dissertation attempts to make an analysis and exposition of the history and the social background of the main contemporary genres of ritual music in Longfu Mountain. The author of this dissertation has personally recorded the whole procedures and music of " rituals of scriptures in the daily morning and evening" , "ritual of Ling Bao's(灵宝) salvation of the ghost alone" and "ritual of delivering sermon and imparting Lu(箓)" to demonstrate the important role and the function of music in the rituals and correct the errors of our predecessors, who had examined and studied the ritual music by separating the music from the rituals. In the second section this dissertation at first investigates the religious functions of Tianshi Taoist ritual music and points out that, despite its close relation to the folk music, even striking similarity to the local folk songs, operas and instrumental music, Tianshi Taoist ritual music, whose prospect makes one conscious of a transcendental and mysterious atmosphere and a sacred religious attribute, possesses a unique style which is distinct from the secular music, for it was influenced by religious rituals and ideas of the Taoists and a range of special historical and cultural elements. Consequently, this dissertation holds that, aside from the general musical functions common to the music, such as cognitive function, educational function and aesthetical function, Tianshi Taoist ritual music has its unique religious functions, such as prayer, salvation of the souls, consciousness of the God's purpose, and appreciation of God. Moreover, this dissertation has made a concrete analysis of and research in the melodies, the members of the orchestra, the performing skills, the characteristics of orchestration, the musical forms, and the structural factors of Longfu Mountain's ritual music. In the dissertation the author summarizes the melody features of Tianshi Taoist ritual music, grasps the internal laws of polyphony in Tianshi Taoist ritual music. In the end, this dissertation, approaching the problems from the angles of religion, sociology and aesthetics, tries to deeply analyze and elaborate on the Taoists' values on music and aesthetics, draws a conclusion that the formation of Tianshi Taoist ritual music style has a close bearing on the Taoists' distinct psychology and aesthetic tastes, and then discusses the humanistic background of Tianshi Taoist ritual music in a penetrating way. This dissertation also quotes some expositions of the eminent monks and Taoists through the ages to demonstrate the ideological basis and the cultural connotation of Tianshi Taoist ritual music.