Nirvana Of Grassroots

Tetrachord Opera is a kind of local opera which combines music, dancing anddramas. It is named in this way because of its accompanying musical instruments—aChinese fiddle called Sihu with four strings. Tetrachord opera is now over200year’sold since its first appearance. In1935, it came to the land of Linzhou and began toroot and sprout since then. During the past decades, tetrachord opera nearly got outof people’s life and became extinct because of historical and cultural shock. Aftersuffering all those repeatedly tribulations, it finally was declared as the intangiblecultural heritage of Henan Province in August15th,2012, and then Xinyi TetrachordOpera Troupe was founded in Linzhou city. The anabiosis of the opera and thefoundation of the troupe make the author of this thesis clearly realize the culturalvalue of this Tetrachord Opera--it inherits the outstanding tradition of Chineseculture, condenses the crystallization of the traditional folk music, and shows theaborinigality and the mass characters of the local culture. The author of this thesisdid field research and study of the tetrachord opera which is par of theethnomusicology located in Linzhou city. Using inheritage as the visual angle andthe Opera Troupe as the object in the study,the author has given detailed descriptionand explanation about the inheritance of this Tetrachord Opera.This thesis mainly contains six parts as follows:The first part is Introduction. This part mainly introduces the origin, currentsituation and the methods of this study.The second part starts with the geography and cultural environment of Linzhoucity, and then leads to the historical of Tetrachord Opera in this place.The third part states the bloom and decline of Tetrachord Opera in Linzhou andthe current situation of Xinyi Tetrachord Opera Troupe.The forth part mainly describes the detailed field research the author has doneabout the organizing size, living modes and performance forms of the troupe, whichcan leads to a further understanding of Tetrachord Opera and this troupe.The fifth part mainly analyzes the cultural inheritance of Tetrachord Opera inLinzhou through two cases and a home visit.The sixth part mainly reflects the author’s thinking about the Tetrachord Operain Linzhou through the datas and information got by field visits. Besides, it alsogives a general introduction of the inheritance situation of Linzhou Tetrachord OperaTroupe and some of the author’s opinions.