On The Relationship Between Kunqu Opera And Playwrights And Musicians

Currently, Kunqu is a general term for Kunshan Tune, Shuimo Tune (Kunqu opera) and Kunqu opera. According to the recordings of Kunqu opera, it earliest history can be traced back to the end of the Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty and it flourished in mid-Ming Dynasty. Until the Qianlong Period of the Qing Dynasty, Kunqu opera charmed the Chinese drama circle for nearly 300 years with its lingering and enchanting Shuimo Tune, highly formatted stage performance, as well as the script verses with rich literature charms. In the Ming Dynasty, the national fever aroused by Kunqu opera originated from the intrinsic traits and external representations of Kunqu opera, which is closely associated with the formation process of Kunqu opera.The development of Kunqu has been bumpy and complicated. The emergence of Kunqu opera can be traced to the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty; during the gatherings of the literati led by GuJian, men of letters and refined scholars recited poems and made couplets in Kunshan Tune; they abandoned the musical accompaniments, but occasionally added the playing of flutes and Xiao (a vertical bamboo flute), in search of literati taste, but it featured no significant features; until the mid-Ming Dynasty, the musician group with Wei Liangpu as the center developed the new Kunshan Tune on the basis of Gujian-Shumo Tune; Wei Liangpu re-regulated the tunes and added the accompaniments by string musical instruments, thus establishing the style of Shuimo Tune, getting rid of the restraints of the dialect and laying a foundation for the development of Kunqu into Kunqu opera; during the mid-and-late Ming Dynasty, dramatist Liang Chenyu wrote the opera A Tale of Gauze Washing, This version was transferred to the stage and became popular on stage, and further became popular across the nation. Later, the literati successively plunged into the writing of Kunqu, so the differentiation of "scripting" and "staging" became even more substantial; the deposits of the Kunqu family troupe presented unconventional traits, and they mostly came from the highly cultivated bureaucrats and the gentry families; the scripts of Kunqu enabled the carving and printing industry of that time to have rapid development, thus enhancing the number of the "script" Kunqu; Kunqu became the wind vane of the social fashion of that time, and watching Kunqu had become an indispensable entertainment in people living and had become one of the ways of life of the populace of that time. The development of Kunqu from a marginalized local tune into a nation-wide popular drama form is the process of mutual permeation between the literati and the musician groups, the literati and the musicians respectively and mutually enhance Kunqu's circulation of Kunqu in the civil society and the upper class with their perspective functions, and the relation between them features inevitability, staging and particularities at every stage.This paper is divided into five parts:Part I is an introduction, which firstly introduces the positioning of the topic selection and the research significance; secondly, it conducts an overview of the achievements of the study of Kunqu opera involved in this Paper, clarifies the concepts and definitions involved in this Paper, and briefly introduces the research methodologies and research expectations of this Paper. The development of Kunqu spanned across such three dynasties as Yuan, Ming and Qing, and has experienced a transformation process from Kunshan Tune, Kunqu and Kunqu opera; therefore, Chapter One to Chapter Three are respectively unveiled according to the time background and cultural background of the development of Kunqu opera in different stages and explore the exchanges and performances of the literati and the musicians in each phase. It is the prosperity of Kunqu, which expounds on Kunqu's circulation and influences of Kunqu in the various social sectors from "qu" to "opera" and explains the inseparable relation between the literati and the musicians in the popularity of Kunqu. In fact, it also deals with the contribution to Kunqu by the successful cooperation between the scholar-bureaucrats. Chapter Four conducts an overview on the above chapters, and, starting from the thoughts of the literati groups of the Ming Dynasty and the musician register system, it analyzes the rationality of the behaviors and the inevitability of cooperation of these two in the development of Kunqu so as to discuss the relation between the literati and the musicians.Through the sort-out of the development course of Kunqu opera, it is revealed that both the literati and the musicians have explicit self-positioning and both of them had inseparable associations in the development and flowing of the Kungqu opera art and they mutually enhanced the development of Kunqu opera. The relation between the literati and the musicians are supported by the backgrounds of the time and are restrained by the upper system; with the mutual collisions of different thoughts affected the development direction of Kunqu opera.