Religious Music Traditions (Continued)
Taoist Traditions
In Taoist ceremonies, music has several different functions. Taoists believe that music is a way to speak to the gods, to inspire religious followers and to achieve inner harmony, bringing the listener or participant closer to Tao-the path to enlightenment, the goal of all followers of the Taoist faith. To follow Tao is to recognize the inner harmony and balance in all living things. This belief is often represented in the Yin Yang symbol.
Taoist music, which can be traced back to the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD) when the Taoist religion was formed, originated from ritual practices involving the reciting of scripts, music, and dance in ancient China. Over a long period of development, it borrowed from various style of folk and court music, and integrated certain aspects of Buddhist music. In turn, Taoist music has also influenced many folk musics, resulting in the rise of independent genres such as the ballad form daoqing and opera daoqingju in the Qing dynasty. In the second half of the 20th century, Taoist music gradually faded out from daily life for many in China because of the turbulent conditions of the nation and the Communist suspicion of religion and religious influence (Jones 2004). Nonetheless, it has seen a revival in the last 20 to 30 years, mainly due to support from both the government's cultural policies and Taoist believers.
Taoist music today encompasses vocal and instrumental genres. The Quanzhen school of vocal music can be further subdivided into singing for living people and singing for the dead, each of which has a distinctive melodic and vocal style. In the first part of the morning practice, 'Chengqing yun', melodies move very slowly with each word given an exceptionally long melodic treatment. In 'Jingxin shen zhou'-the second part of morning practice-there is one note for each word with a regular pulse of one beat per note. In the ritual for releasing the souls of the dead, certain sections are sung very fast. In 'Zhenfu jing' for instance, more words are fitted into each beat, with the chant keeping to the same pitch over a long period of time. The vocal delivery sounds somewhere between singing and speaking. It emphasizes the beauty of the text pronunciation by changing the normal speech rhythms to create a more musical impression or by enhancing the text's inherent melodic pitches while speaking. This means that the first and second tones are typically set to more level melodic lines and the third and fourth tones to more angular melodic lines.[4]Chinese Mandarin has four tones and a 'neutral' tone and every Chinese character has an assigned tone. Taking 'a' as an example, the first tone (ā) is high and level. The second tone (á) starts medium in tone, and then rises in pitch. The third tone (ă) starts low, dips to the bottom, and then rises higher. The fourth tone (à) starts at the top, and then falls sharply and strongly lower. The neutral tone (a) is flat with no emphasis. Online resource, http://www.chinese-outpost.com/language/pronunciation/tones-of-mandarin-chinese.asp, accessed on 21 June 2018. For further information about melodic composition on the tones of the Chinese language, see Li Xian (1982), Yu Huiyong (2008). These recitations may be accompanied by wood clappers and qing (a stone drum, not the zither mentioned above) (Yuan 2000: 461), while the reciters aim to stay synchronized with those instruments. The resulting gradual rhythmic acceleration brings believers into a heightened feeling for the supernatural.
Linguistic tone is crucial to understanding spoken Chinese: the sound 'da' could mean either 'big' or 'to beat' (among other meanings) depending on its pitch and contour.
