A Research On Musical Culture Of Shandong Liuzi Opera

Musical culture,geographic culture,dialect culture,Grand Canal culture,and Golden Lotus culture in Shandong Province are all contributive components in Liuzi Opera, while the latter endeavors a mutual interactivity with all the abovementioned factors.Liuzi Opera,performed in Shandong dialects,is distributed along the Grand Canal basin,namely,southeastern,western and southwestern Shandong Province.Such a diversified distribution is well illustrative of geographic,traditional and tune characteristics,hence the significance of a field survey on its original,intermediate and improved distribution diversity.The multipolarized other than monopoly arias of Liuzi Opera is reasoned out of diversified localization.Southwestern Shandong aria,the most primitive in form, expresses the most traditional melodious forms;western Shandong aria,a bridge-functioning transition,shares southeastern aria quality while witnesses a tendency towards southwestern features;southwestern Shandong aria,compared with the other two forms,enjoys the best richness in expression.Liuzi Opera,along its evolutionary course,has observed an intermingling tie with other folk music forms in Shandong Province,among which are Shandong Folk Song, quyi(Chinese folk art forms,including ballad singing,story telling,comic dialogues, clapper talks,cross talks,etc.),instrumental music and other traditional operas.The Grand Canal culture nurtures Liuzi Opera while Liuzi Opera enriches Grand Canal culture,the two aspects being an indispensable integrity.The interactive tie between Liuzi Opera music and Grand Canal culture lies in that the canal development offers opportunities for the opera's maturation while canal immigrants are major media in popularizing the tunes of Liuzi Opera.Both lending other operas its own colors and borrowing from them their own special characteristics,Liuzi Opera witnesses differentiated culture in different sections of the Grand Canal.Golden Lotus,a secular novel in Ming and Qing Dynasties,narrates a story that happens around the Grand Canal bank.The Characters in the novel employs the same instruments and chants the same tune names in the same cultural regions and at the same time with Liuzi Opera,hence the close,interactive relation between Golden Lotus tunes and Liuzi Opera.