A Study Of The Music Historical Materials In The Golden Lotus

Before A Dream of Red Mansions was published,the novel The Golden Lotus had always been in the position as one of the four remarkable books in China.The stories in the novel happened in Song Dynasty,but they reflect the reality in Ming Dynasty,it spares no effort for the presentation of the society in general during the middle and late Ming Dynasty with mean and bitter pen craft,just like a custom scroll which is rolled out slowly.In this scroll,there are many active groups of people,including power ministers and high officials,street vendors and stooges,bawds and prostitutes,Buddhist nuns and acolytes,every group of people are penetratingly depicted by the author with flesh and blood.Those who are familiar with music may also find many musicians and music images within it.Based on the purpose of exploration and analysis on the historical data of music,this article develops the research on the music images in The Golden Lotus from four parts which are the musicians,opera singing,Buddhist music and musicianship.It mainly elaborates the purpose,current status and method of the research in the part of introduction.In Part I,the writer limits the concept of musician,discusses the important significance of research on musicians in The Gold Lotus,conducts the statistics for the musicians appeared in the book and lists the details of them for the analysis of their social status,living conditions and revenue.In Part ?,the writer summarizes the various kinds of traditional opera and lyric verses appeared in The Golden Lotus,through the classifications of "type","function"and "scenes of application",the compositions within it are summarized for the more accurate position of traditional opera and lyric verses in the civic life during the middle and late Ming Dynasty.In Part III,the writer finds out the Buddhist music scattered between lines one by one for the summarization in a table and conducts the comparative analysis on the singing for enlightenment during the six dynasties and secular talk in Tang Dynasty to explore for the relationship between them.The research on the development of Buddhist music in the middle and late Ming Dynasty is also conducted through the depiction of Buddhist music in the book.In Part IV,the writer separates out "Ximen Qing","Wu Yueniang" and "Pan Jinlian",the three important characters in the book,conducts the research on the aspects of "background","social status" and "level of appreciation by listening" etc.and analyzes the music aesthetics of the respective levels in the middle and late Ming Dynasty through the features of them.