The Study Of Ritualistic Music Of Qi Yue Guan Shen In Yuzhong Gansu

Introduced conceptually from the area of ritualistic research into musicology, religious rites have arrested much attention to researchers in quite a few institutes, such as the Chinese Academy of Arts and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, not only forming their own theoretical and system, including beliefs, rituals acts, structural patterns of the in-ceremony ternary-vocal theory, bipolar variable modes of being near-far, inner-external, stable-flexible, but also making specific application of these theories to the survey of ritualistic music throughout our country.As Chinese music culture are rich and heterogeneous and forms of ritual music vary from region to region, so the investigation into the ritual music in the Northwest of China should not only be focused on religious ritual music of minorities, but researchers should also pay attention to the musical culture in folk beliefs peculiar to the Han nationality. Qi Yue Guan Shen (God of July) is a combination of Taoism, Buddhism and also a particular mixture of Han, Manchu, Mongolian, Tibetan folk customs in the north-west of China. The ceremony honoring Qi Yue Guan Shen is of a social musical sacrificial rite with villagers from distinct customs and nationalities to be ritualistic groups, with the principal and Taoist gods Bai Ma Tian Zi (God of White Horse) and Ba Zha Tian Zu (God of Harvest) regarded as the objects of worship, with clan leaders being ceremony organizers, with employed sorcerer teams performing sacrificial and musical activities, and with Taoist ritualistic music, and dance performed by sorcerers to worship the gods, as the main form of music played on the spot.Although the study of intangible cultural heritage is a brand-new discipline, seeming to be irrelevant to ritualistic music, yet the former and the latter are interwoven and inter-supplementary, both of which are and will be playing a vital role in the research and protection of China's traditional musical culture. Integrating the research of ritualistic music and the study of immaterial cultural heritage, the thesis will attempt to dwell on the sacrificial ritual of Qi Yue Guan Shen.