Pipa is one of the main national musical instruments in my country and one of the most artistically expressive plucked instruments.

Historically, the two expeditions of Zhang Qian and Ban Chao opened up a Silk Road leading to the Western Regions. With the opening of the Silk Road, the pipa was introduced to my country from Persia and India through Buddhism since the Han and Wei Dynasties. The continuous improvement of the people has made it develop in both form and performance skills.

The introduction and evolution of the pipa in my country embodies the wisdom and creativity of the Chinese people, and it is also a model for the introduction and digestion of foreign musical instruments in the field of music and art in ancient my country.

The five-stringed pipa is the same as the four-stringed pipa, neither of which originated in my country. So how did the five-stringed pipa come into China from the Western Regions, what position did it have in the development of ancient Chinese music, and how should the five-stringed pipa, an ancient national musical instrument, be inherited and developed today when people's aesthetic and cultural needs are increasing day by day? , I would like to do some preliminary research on this.

The historical origin of the five-stringed pipa
The five-stringed lute originally originated in India, and then gradually matured in Persia, Gandhara and other places, and then spread to China. Unlike the four-stringed pipa, which entered the Chinese mainland from Khotan at the southern foot of the Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang, the five-stringed pipa gradually entered the Central Plains eastward through the Qiuci (now Kuqa, Xinjiang, my country) and Yanqi at the northern foot of the Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang.

Buddhism in India was born around the fifth century BC. After it gradually matured, it passed through Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia in Russia. In the first half of the first century AD, it crossed the Pamirs and entered the Xinjiang region of my country.

After entering the Qiuci at the northern foot of the Tianshan Mountains, Buddhism developed extremely and became the center of Buddhism in the Western Regions at that time.

When Buddhism flourished, a large number of temples and grottoes were built, and many murals and statues were left. The frescoes were built in the late third and early fourth centuries and completed in the eighth century. Among them, the Kizil Thousand Buddha Caves located on the north bank of the Weigan River Valley in Baicheng County, Qiuci Prefecture, is one of the four Buddhist grottoes in Dunhuang, Longmen and Maijishan in China. The grotto murals are mostly Indian Buddhist stories.

In the frescoes of "Flying Music Feitian" in the eighth cave of Kizil Thousand Buddha Caves and the frescoes of the Buddhist music in the top of the thirty-eighth cave, both the player appears holding the stick-shaped five-stringed straight pipa and playing the pipa. It can be seen that the five-stringed pipa was introduced into the western region of Xinjiang with Buddhism during the two Jin Dynasties in my country, and it can be seen from the two music pictures that the five-stringed pipa was very popular in this area.

In the Southern and Northern Dynasties, especially the Northern Qi five-stringed pipa has gradually entered the Central Plains. This can be seen from the music and dance pictures on the porcelain pots and pots unearthed from the Northern Qi tomb in Anyang, Henan. It can be seen from the jubilant singing and dancing pictures that Qiuci music, including the five-stringed pipa, is not only popular and popular in the Central Plains, and has developed rapidly.

During the Sui and Tang dynasties, the five-stringed pipa reached its peak, and there were ten musical instruments established in the early Tang Dynasty (Yan Le, Qing Shang Le, Xiliang Le, Tian Zhu Le, Gaoli Le, Qiuci Le, Anguo Le, Shule Le, Kang Guo Le, Gao Chang Le) In addition to Xiliangji and Kangguoji, the other eight pieces of music all used the five-stringed pipa, which shows its great influence in the Tang court. The five-stringed pipa of Hu Qi has gradually moved towards the integration of the prosperous Tang Dynasty from the elegant, vulgar and Hu Le three music in the late Sui and early Tang Dynasties, and entered a prosperous period of multi-ethnic unity and political unity in Chinese history.

Cao Miaoda, Cao Sengnu, Cao Brahmin and Su Zhipo, who came to the dynasty from Qiuci from the Western Regions, brought a wealth of foreign musical instruments to the Han court of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, including the five-stringed pipa. It was widely circulated in the Tang Dynasty and promoted the integration of Hu Le and Tang Yan Le and Ya Le in later Chinese courts.

The five-stringed pipa occupies a very important position in Chinese court music, and has made a very important contribution to the development of music in the Sui and Tang Dynasties.

It is regrettable that after the Song Dynasty, the five-stringed pipa failed to develop as it should in China like the four-stringed pipa, and gradually withdrew from the stage of history.
The reason for this is not recorded in historical documents. The only historical testimony left to the world is that the Tang Dynasty Japan sent an envoy to the Tang Dynasty and brought it back to the Nara Shoso-in Temple, which has been preserved for more than 1,200 years. It is made of hard red sandalwood, inlaid with snails, tortoiseshells, etc., and it is painted with the pattern of people riding a camel and playing the pipa. Through its extremely exquisite manufacturing process, we seem to see the five-string pipa in the court and folk music of the Sui and Tang Dynasties. brilliance created.

The artistic expression of the five-stringed pipa
The five-stringed pipa has existed since ancient times, and the current five-stringed pipa is an innovation based on the antique.

When it comes to the excavation and research of the five-stringed pipa, one cannot fail to mention Fang Jinlong, a contemporary young and middle-aged pipa player.

Fang Jinlong has devoted all his energy and enthusiasm to the exploration and innovation of Chinese folk music performance skills. He believes that for Chinese folk music, it should be inherited first and then innovated on the basis of inheritance. In recent years, he has produced the five-stringed pipa that has been lost for many years based on historical data, and is known as the "representative figure of the contemporary five-stringed pipa". It is his profound cultural accomplishment and extraordinary artistic attainments that make the Wuxian Pipa rediscovered and developed today.

In the 1990s, he deeply felt that the four-stringed pipa still lacked in the performance quality of some traditional music such as "House of Flying Daggers", "Spring River, Flowers and Moonlight" and other repertoires transplanted from foreign music, so he began to excavate and explore the modern five-stringed pipa. Research.

The traditional five-stringed pipa is slanted to the lower left when it is played, and the body is small, so there are few frets and columns, and the resonance is not enough, and the expressiveness is poor. The new five-string pipa developed by Fang Jinlong is an improvement on the basis of the well-developed modern four-string pipa. Fang Jinlong added an extra inner string (bass) on the basis of the modern four-string pipa, so that the range of the pipa becomes wider, the resonance of the speakers increases, the harmony texture is extremely rich, the sound becomes perfect and soft, and the artistic expression of the pipa is enhanced. greatly enhanced.

Chinese pipa art has experienced a long development process, and now we are facing the challenges of unprecedented social and cultural environment. The sustainable development of pipa art in contemporary times is an urgent and complex research topic before us. The preliminary discussion of the five-stringed pipa is to draw our attention to the development of traditional Chinese folk music, and to study the relationship between the pipa performance art and performance technology from multiple angles, so that the ancient pipa can continue to be inherited and developed.