chinese historiography and music some observations

8/6/2019 Chinese Historiography and Music Some Observations

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Chinese Histo riograph y and Music 219deal and related musical theories,0 as well as the research in similarareas by Fritz Kuttner; 7 not the least are, of course, the exemplarymon ographs by Mr. Picken himself.Though impressive, these are nonetheless the work of a few andmust be regarded as fortuitous exceptions in an otherwise under-productive field, which is inhibited by the lack of scholarly com-munication with China and of the opportunity for field work. Thetruth of the matter is that research in Chinese music has remainedlost among the various allied fields where it finds neither a soundawareness of its problems nor an appropriate methodology for itstasks. The historical musicologist regards the field as out of bounds,the ethnomusicologist is not equipped in historiography to the extentrequired by the study of Chinese music, and the Sinologist fails totreat music with seriousness, despite its unusual prominence in thecultural history of China. Thus, in spite of those few who find itpossible to cross the disciplinary boundaries with competence, pri-mary sources are not infrequently mistranslated and misinterpreted,while secondary sources of dubious validity are often left unchal-lenged and sometimes perpetuated. An obvious example is providedby J. A. Van Aalst's Chinese Music, published almost a century ago,in 1884, but reprinted successively until as late as 1964 in New Yorkand 1965 in Taipei. 8 One of its contentions based on misuse ofprimary sources is still being cited and theorized upon.9

A perusal of the above-mentioned bibliographies will amply re-mind us how scarce are reliable sources in Western languages andhow many publications of no more than journalistic, speculative, orliterary merit are perforce accepted as standard reference. ThatVan Aalst 's book and other such reprints remain part of the meagerdiet for many is devastating to the field. By contrast, another bookmade available through a new edition, The Lore of the ChineseLute by Robert Hans van Gulik,1 0 is one for which we should feel

6 Joseph Ne cdham and K enneth Rob inson, "Sound (Acoustics)," in Joseph N eed-ham, Science and Civilisation in China, IV /1 (Cam bridge, 1962), 126-228.

1 Especially Fritz A. Kuttner, "Prince Chu Tsai-yii's Life and Work," Ethno-musicology, X IX /2 (1975), 163-206; with the assistance of Kuo Chung-w u and O doricY. K. Wou.8J. A. Van Aalst, Chinese Music (Shanghai and London, 1884; reprint, NewYork, 1964).

9 See p. 2S0, below.1 0 Robert Hans van Gulik, The Lore of the Chinese Lute: An Essay in the

Ideology of the Ch'in (Tokyo, 1940; new edition, revised and reset, Rutland and


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220 T h e Musical Q uarter lygrateful, since it has for long filled a great need. 11 It remains re-quired reading and the best introduction in Western languages tothe important ch'in tradition.12 (Although van Gulik should not befaulted for the limitations he set for himself, it is nevertheless re-grettable that the book does not include discussions on the musicor its theory.)

T h u s , Picken's statement quoted above might well be expandedto suggest that the new standards of Sino-musicology should embodycompetence in both historiography and musical research, or call forclose interdisciplinary cooperation as exemplified by Needham'smonumental series.18 It is with this in m ind that the following ob-servations are made on some well-known areas and problems foundin some studies on Chinese music. These comments, however, donot purport to point to errors or to offer corrections; they representmerely a brief re-examination of the issues, sources, and interpreta-tions involved in these instances.

Chinese tradition attributes the invention of the first musicalinstruments to the mythical emperor Fu Hsi, whose accession wastraditionally placed at 2852 B.C.14 Specific musical compositions anddances were also attributed to the reigns of Fu Hsi and nine subse-qu en t rule rs before the rise of Sh ang dynasty (ca. 1766 - ca. 1122 B.C.)and the beginning of archeological evidence. Obviously historicalmaterial of this sort does not command credibility without docu-mentary or archeological corroboration. Each such claim, neverthe-less, does not call for dismissal out of mere skepticism; it deserves tobe evaluated before rejection or acceptance either in part or as awhole. In the case of these compositions of great antiquity we find(1) brief references in most of the pre-Han texts, i.e., the earliestextant documents, dating from the periods immediately before theHan Dynasty (202 B . C - 2 2 0 A . D . ) , and (2) in some details in Chou Li("Rites of Ch ou ") , which is of the th ird cen tury B.C. bu t pro bab lyTokyo, 1969). See review by Chou Wen-chung in The Musical Quarterly, L X / 2 (1974),301-5.

n One m ust hasten to men tion in th is regard another notable essay: MauriceCourant, "Essai sur la musique classique des Chinois," Encyclopedic de la muiiqueet Dictionnaire du Conservatoire, ed. Albert Lavignac, 1st part I (Paris, 1913), 77-241. See p. 236, below.

13 Op. cit. See note 6, above.14 All pre-Chou reign-periods are according to T un g Tso-p in, Chronological

Tables of Chinese History (Hong Kong, 1960).


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222 T h e Musical Q uarte rlyduring which historians in the true sense of the word began to com-pile records.

As regards archaeological evidence, excavations in recent dec-ades, particularly since 1950, have un ear thed a considerab le nu m be rof early instruments. Especially noteworthy are the pitched instru-ments of the Shang dynasty, among which are two small potteryglobular flutes (hsiiri) excavated together, which emit identicalpitches. And in the Imperial Palace Museum of Peking there arethree sonorous stones (ch'ing) that are part of a set, and three bronzebells (chung), also from a set. In both instances, tested pitches showthat the interval of a fourth is present between two of the threepitches and th at this interval is qu ite accep table as a pur e fourth. 19The number of excavated Shang instruments that are still in work-ing order is far too small to draw any conclusion as to whether theprinciple of generating pitches by successive pure fifths was alreadyin practice during the Shang dynasty. Nevertheless, the few testedpitches seem to conform to this principle. Moreover, these instru-ments demonstrate an advanced stage of acoustic technology inmaking and tuning ins truments .

A gr ou p of twenty-five sonorou s stones excavated in 1970 arefrom a considerably later period, that of the Warring States (403-221 B.C.), but their tested pitches should throw some light on thepitch concept and tuning practice of the period before such matterswere systematized in the Han dynasty. These stones were found inChiang-lin of Hupei province. They were piled neatly together inorder according to size. Therefore, even though they do not appearto be all of one set (pien-ch'ing), there must have been a reason forthem to be stored together. In other words, this may mean they areall related in tuning. All the stones bear paintings in color. Wherethere is no color or where the color is worn, there is evidence ofcorrosion. This means their present pitch in each case may havebeen affected according to the degree of corrosion. The testedpitches of the twenty undamaged stones are given in the third issueof Kaogu ("A rche ology ") of 1973, and consist of seven pitch-classes(E, F-sharp, G-sharp, A , B, C-sharp, D ), sprea d over two a nd a half oc-

19 The tested pitches of the two stones are 948.6 and 1278.7, while those of thetwo bells are 688.4 and 915.7. See Li Ch'un-i, "Kuan Yfl Yin Chung Ti Yen Chiu" inChung Kuo K'ao Ku HsUeh Poo [Chinese journal of archaeology], 1957, No. 3;Chung Kuo Ku Tax Yin Yueh Shih Kao [Draft of a history of ancie nt Chinese music],(Peking, 1959). Cf. Needham and Robinson, op. cit., p. 162.


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224 T he Mu sical Qu arterlytaves, from E4 to B 6.20 Because of the missing pitches, the wide range,and the corrosion factor, no con clusion can be draw n from these testedpitches. Nevertheless, superficial observations can be made on thefollowing: (1) of the three G-sharp 4 stones, two (nos. 4 and 5) are lessthan one vps. from each other;.21 (2) of the three D 5's, two (nos. 12and 13) are identical;22 (3) using the lowest pitch, E4 at 333.07 vps.,as the po int of depa rture , the eleventh operation according to the"spiral of fifths," or San Fen Sun I Fa, yields A5 with 900.30 vps.,which compares favorably with stone no. 24, whose pitch is A" with1804.3 vps. (there is no AB in the set); (4) by disregarding octave posi-tions, it is possible to select a particular stone for each of the avail-able pitches with a frequency that is within tolerance compared tothe theoretical frequency calculated from E 4 at 333.07 vps. Thus,with the reservations already mentioned, one may still concludetentatively that (1) this group reinforces observations previouslymade on the Shang instruments; (2) at least by the time of theWarring States there was a definite concern with exact pitch, oreven abso lute pitch; and (3) the tu ni ng was reasonably accurateaccording to the "spiral of fifths." The fact that the seven pitch-classes conform to a heptatonic scale may or may not be a coinci-dence. Much, of course, depends on the awaited test results on the134 stones of the W ar rin g States perio d discovered so far.

The above observations on the early compositions and on tuninghave been made in order to compare with the historical evidencesurrounding the legend concerning the origin of the twelve pitch-pipes (lii), the Chinese version of the "spiral of fifths" in generatingthe twelve pitches of the octave. A much quoted passage in Lii ShihCh'un Ch'iu ("Mr. Lii 's Spring and Autumn Annals"), compiledabout 240 i.e. under the patronage of Lii Pu-wei (d. 235 B.C.), saysthat the chief director of music, Lun,2 s was ordered by Huang Ti(Yellow Emperor) to make pitch-pipes and therefore went to a valley

"Hu Pei Chiang Ling Hsien Ti Ch'u Kuo Tsai Hui Shih Pien Ching Chi Ch'iHsiang Kuan Wen T'i" [On the painted stone chimes of the state of Ch'u discoveredin Chiang-lin of Hupei province and related questions], pp. 41-48, article attributedcollectively to the Hupei Provincial Museum.

419.65 and 42037, respectively.a 581.25.*3 He is usua lly referred to a* Ling Lun in translations, altho ugh Ling in th is

case i* no t part of his nam e but the titl e of a court Official in charge of m u si cAnother early musician who is also often referred to with this title is Ling ChouChiu (see p. 227, below ).


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Chinese Histo riograph y and Music 225in the west, where he found the bamboo with the appropriate boreand thickness, and cut it between the nodes to a specific length toproduce the fundamental note of huang-chung ("yellow bell") fromwhich he then made all the twelve pitch-pipes, arranged in twogroups of six, each according to the singing of the legendary birds,feng ("male") and huang ("female").24 This colorful and symboliclegend was attributed to the reign (2674-2575 B.C.) of Huang Ti ,who is traditionally regarded as the founder of Chinese civilizationan d who is also said to have ha d an oth er official, T s'a n g Ch ieh , in-vent the first written signs. The legend has stimulated some modernWestern scholars to engage in various conjectures, speculating, forinstance, that the idea stemmed from Pythagoras or Babyloniansources.

T he re are, however, some fundam ental questions tha t must beanswered before any serious pursuit of such speculations can bejustified. First of all, contrary to the case of the compositions ofantiquity discussed above, this episode is given in only one pre-Hantext, and a rather late one at that. It would be surprising for all theother texts to neglect a historic event of this order, attributed to thereign of Huang Ti and purportedly giving bir th to the all- importantconcept of the pitch-pipes. When it was recounted again, it was notin Shih Chi ("Historic Records") by Ssu-ma Ch'ien (145 ca. 86 B.C.),the first general history of China and an exemplary documentation ofearly events, but in Ch'ien Han Shu. The fact that it is not foundin either the "Yiieh Shu" or "Lii Shu" chapter of Shih Chi is notnecessarily significant in view of doubts about the authenticity ofthese chapters. But, in citing this legend in Ch'ien Han Shu, Pan Kuapparently found it necessary to qualify the passage by preceding itwith the words ch'i ch'uan yiieh, which roughly means "accordingto what is said anciently." The vigorous attack on the validity ofthis legend by C hu Ts'ai-yii (1536-1614) m ust also be taken in toaccount,25 in view of his great insight i nt o th e early m usic.

The location of the valley is identified in the text by the follow-ing: "from the west of Ta-Hsia, he reached the northern slope ofYiian-yii, and took bamboos from the valley of Hsieh-ch'i." Ta-Hsiahas been identified as Bactria, according to Han usage of the term.

** Often incorrectly translated as phoenix.*0 See hi s LH Lu Ching I Wai P'ien [The essential meaning of the twelve

pitches. Part II], cha p. 1 (1596).


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Chinese Historiography an d Music 227and subject to interpretation, others are specific and conclusive. Thetwelve pitch-pipes or the pitches they produce (lii) are specified forthe first time in Kuo Yii ("Discourses of the States," compiled in thefourth century B.C.), in conversations that took place in 522 and 524B.C., betw een Ch ou C hin g W an g (King Ch ing of Ch ou) and hisdirector of music, Chou Chiu,27 on the wisdom of making a bellwith the pitch of wu-i. In Chou Li, there is a famous passage whichcites not only these pitch names but also names of the pentatonicscale-tones in direct reference to some of the compositions of antiq-uity.28 Whether the names for the scale-tones are meant in thispassage to specify the modes is not clear, but an explanation ofthe five modes can be found in an oth er tex t of the same pe riod Tso Chuan ("Tso's Commentary to the Ch'un Ch'iu"), a chronicleof the state of Lu, compiled between the fifth and third century B.C.In a passage concerning the first year of Duke Shao of Lu (542 B.C.)there is an unequivocal description of how the five modes are evolvedby ro tat in g the o rde r of the five scale-tones.

T h e phrase "ta pu yii ku ng, hsi pu yii yii" in this passage is alsofound in the Kuo Yii passage cited above. The words ta and hsi herehave been interpreted as meaning "loud" and "soft," respectively.29T hi s tran slatio n is not applicab le in the con text of eithe r the Kuo Yiior Tso Chuan passages, since pu yii kung means "not exceeding thekung note" and pu yii yii, "not exceeding the yii note." Instead, taand hsi have to be read as "low" (or "lowest") and "high" (or "high-est"). T h e Kuo Yii passage goes on to say that "kung is the funda-mental, step by step yii is reac hed " ("fu ku ng yin chih chu yeh, tii chi yii"). Thus, the term kung in this context also refers to thelowest note in the gamut of any mode, while yii similarly refers tothe highest of any mode. Moreover, Tso Chuan is even more explicitin saying "ta tse sheng ch'ih, hsi tse sheng su, ta che wei pen, hsi chewei mo," which means "if low, the sound is slow; if high, the soundis fast, the lowest is the beginning, the highest is the last." This isobviously a reference to the frequencies and the positions in thegamut. Once the meaning of this part of the text is understood, therest is clearly an exposition of how each scale-tone can be assignedas the lowest (i. e., kung) or the highest (i. e., yii) in the gamut of

& See note 23, above.28 Ch ap . 6 ("Ch'un Kuan"). Cf. Needham and Robinson, op. cit., p. 151.


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229

A fragment of an early H an copy of/ Ching ("Book ofChanges") on silk.O ne of several pre -H an texts un ea rth ed in 1973 from N o. 3 of the three H antombs in Ma-wang-tui, Changsha, H un an province. Da te of bu rial: 168 B.C.(thirty-four years after H an w as established an d forty-five years after th e " bu rn in gof classics"). Also found in these tombs were seven in stru me nts (inc lud ing theearliest ch'in found so far) and, significantly, a set of twelve pitch-pipes eachmarked with its lu name.


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230 The Musical Quarterlytional oversight and distortion. One cannot say that Yii Tsai (fl.1315), a composer and theorist of the Yuan dynasty (1260-1368), wasnot knowledgeable in music or history. Yet a set of nine songs, knownas Chiu Te Chih Ko,so published by him around 1330 is based onthe use of the whole-tone hexachord as a scale. This is because hechose to in terpret the phrase often found in ancient texts, liu liiwu sheng ("six pitches, five tones," i. e., six pitches each in the twohexachords, five degrees in the pentatonic modes), so as to mean thatthe five degrees should all belong to ei ther the yin or the yanghexachord. Chuang Pen-li , however, has noted that Yii 's use of thewhole-tone scale in these com positions facilitates th eir perform anceon pai-hsiao (panpipes), for which he feels the pieces might have beeninten ded by Yii.81

Another interest ing example is Van Aalst 's statement that aneight-tone scale, with three successive semitones in the middle, wasused during the Yuan dynasty.32 His citation gives Shih Tien K'ao ashis source. Shih Tien K'ao is actually the first chapte r of Hung KungChing Shih by Kuei L iang, publ ished in 1835, a treatise on sacrificialprocedures in honor of early sages. It is not known why Van Aalstrelied solely on a treatise of such late date and on so specializeda topic or why he would refer to it in the book as one of his "bestand m ost reliable " Chinese sources.88 His information is found in theeighth section of the second chapter, which presents the compositionChung Ho Shao Yu'eh in notation with explanatory passages. In thissection there is a brief phrase saying that in the Yuan dynasty all ofth e ten kung ch'ih symbols were used. The kung ch'ih p'u or kungch'ih ttu p'u is a notation system in use at least since the t ime ofShen K'uo (1031-1095), who was the first to have written about it.84It employs ten Chinese characters, tzu, as its basic symbols. Withprefixes added to some of the characters, sixteeen composite symbolsare used to denote all the chromatic tones within the range of an

30 Shao Wu Chiu Ch'eng Y&eh Pu. Yii a lso inven ted a notat ion system usingsquares to ind ica te bo th p i tch and t ime. Vert ical ly , each square represents one of thetwelve pi tches; horizontal ly , each square represents one t im e u n i t . Szu k'u Ch'uan Shuedition (1782); Mo Hai Chin Hu edition (1808).

31 In his Chung Kuo Ku Tai Chih Pai Hsiao [Panp ipes of a n c i e n t Ch in a ] ,(Taipei, 1963), pp. 7O-7S. The p ipes of pan-hsiao are ar ranged in two groups , eachconsis t ing of the p ipes for one of the two hexachords and octave duplicat ions.

32 Op. at., p. 15.S3 Ibid., p. 12.3* Shen K'uo, Meng Ch'i Pi Tan, chap. 6 ("Yueh LQ" II), (ca. 1090).


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231

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A page from Hung Kung Ching Shih Lu by Kuei Liang(second edition , 1882).This page (Volume II, page 27a) is the source cited by Van Aalst for his claim ofthe existence of an "eight-tone scale" during the Yuan Dynasty. The circledcharaaers in the fourth column from right are the ten basic symbols of the kungch'ih notation, in use since the Sung Dynasty. The text otherwise fails to supporthis assertion.


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232 T h e Musical Q uarterlyaugmented ninth. These symbols, however, are to be used selectivelyaccording to the pentatonic or heptatonic mode in question. As amatter of fact, the prefixes (hsia and shang) are often not given; thusthe symbols szu, i, kung, fan and wu may imply either hsia or shangpositions (which are a semitone apart) according to the mode inquestion. Therefore, the ten standard symbols,85 without the pre-fixes (ho, szu, i, shang, kou, ch'ih, kung, fan, liu, wu), must not beconstrued as a scale of, say, C, D, E, F, F-sharp, G, A, B (C, D) as isgiven in Van Aalst's book. The text of his source lists these tensymbols and then adds, "shih tzu ch'uan yung," i. e., "all tencharacters are used." The context of this phrase simply indicatesthat these symbols are all used in Yuan dynasty, without any refer-ence to a scale. The source of Van Aalst's problem, aside from hisquestionable methodology, may well be the word tzu, which means"word," but also "symbol" in a notational system, and thereforecould be taken to mean a tone, thereby implying a scale-tone.

Even without textual misapprehension, the pitfalls of being mis-led by assertions and hypotheses abound in Chinese historiography,as witness van Gu lik's inadv ertent da ting of th e establishm ent ofYiieh Fu (Office of Music) almost a century ahead of the acceptedda te (pro bably 111 B.C.).86 It is, moreover, a common occurrence fora musical term or the name of an instrument to be mistranslated orreplaced by another that seems to read better in a Western language,without much concern for how this might alter the meaning of thepassage. Even to a conscientious author the title of a musical com-position may be deceptive. For example, a composition of the T'angDynasty (618-906), Tu Chiieh San T'ai, has not long ago beentranslated in an important and praiseworthy volume as "The ThreePlatforms of the Turks," and mentioned by the author as a kind ofChinese counterpart of a Western popular song with an exotic title. 87What one must be aware of, however, is that the words san t'ai in thistitle stand for a type of melody or music, while the other words standfor the poem or its contents. There are many compositions bearingthe title of san t'ai, such as Shang Huang San T'ai with the text in a

s* Frequently given in ancient Chinese treatises on music.86 Op. cit., p. 59. See Chou, op. dt., p. 304. Cf. Chang Shou-p'ing, Han TaiYUeh Fu Y U Yueh Fu Ko Tz'u (The office of music of the Han dynasty and the texts

of the YUeh Fu song collection], (Taipei, 1970), p. 12.37 Edw ard H . Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T'ang

Exotics (Berkeley, Calif., 1963), pp. 51-52 .


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Chinese H istoriograph y and Music 233five-character-line shih form, Chiang Nan San T'ai with a six-char-acter-line shih form. The text of T'u Chiieh San T'ai is in the newertz?u form.88

According to the T'ang poet Liu Yu-hsi (772-842),89 the origin ofsan t'ai is related to ascending the three terraces in the palace to toastthe emperor. While some san fai pieces were used for drinking andtoasting, T'u Chiieh San T'ai belongs to the ta ch'ii form, one of themost elaborate types of T'ang music. Some of these compositions arealso found in Korea and Japan, such as Sonin Sandai (Shu Jen SanT'ai in Chinese). In the Korean Hoe-rye ak (banquet music) thereis also Chol-hwa sam-tae (Ch'e Hua San T'ai in Chinese) for theroyal banquet held on New Year's Day and the winter solstice atcou rt. Th us , a seemingly inn ocen t title may lead one to conjectureinstead of information.

Just as easily and as often, only partial information is provided,creating an unwarranted impression or a distortion. Much has beenmade of the many musicians of Central Asian origin active in Chinafrom the period of the Southern and Northern dynasties (386-589)through T'ang. Yet, the question of whether they were or were notborn in China an imp ortant consideration has seldom beenraised. In fact, most among the best known were indeed born inChina. For example, Ts'ao Miao-ta, the p'i-p'a player of Kabudhanancestry, who was made a prince at the court of Northern Ch'i (550-557), was actually two generations rem oved from imm igration toChina. Another p'i-p'a virtuoso of the same name and probablythe same family, Ts'ao Kang, who has been immortalized in thepoems of Po Chii-i (772-846) and Hsieh Feng (ca. 853) of T'ang,4 0was likewise from a family settled in China for generations. Anothersimilar case is the composer Pai Ming-ta, of Kuchean ancestry, whoserved at the court of both the Sui (590-618) and T'ang dynasties.These musicians would be enormously fascinating subjects to studyif more material were available. In any event, the Central Asian in-fluence exerted on Chinese music by them cannot be equated tosomeone like Su-chih-p'o, another Kuchean, who was, however,

38 T'u chOeh m e a n s " T u r k i c "39 W e i H s u a n , Liu Pin K'o Chia Hua Lu, a me m oi r of conv er sa t ions wi th Liu

d u r i n g t he yea r 821 .40 Ting Ts'ao Kang Chien Shih Ch'ing Lien a n d T'ing Ts'ao Kang Tan P"i P"a,

respectively.


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234 T h e Musical Qu arterlybrought to China by the Turkish empress of Northern Chou dynasty(557-581) during the reign (561-578) of Wu Ti, shortly before therise of the Sui.

The influence of Su-chih-p'o on an important musician of the SuiDynasty, Cheng I (fl. 580), is well known. In a statement made inthe year of 587 and quoted in Sui Shu ("History of the Sui Dynasty"),Cheng declared that his own system of eighty-four modes based onthe twelve transpositions of the seven basic modes was arrived at afterSu-chih-p'o demonstrated to him on the p'i-p'a the seven diatonicmodes.41 These modes explained by Su-chih-p'o are certainly signif-icant to T'ang music. But while scholars have claimed, variously,Indian or Persian origin for Su's modes, the history of their transmis-sion through Central Asia is still ambiguous. It should be observedthat the re is no do cum enta ry evidenc e of the use of transp osition ineither Indian or Persian music prior to this period, whereas someHan theorists were already preoccupied with its practical solution.The difficulty in providing the origin of these modes and in evaluat-ing their influence on Chinese popular music is but an indication ofthe kind of interfusion that took place in inner Asia during thatperiod. Therefore, the Su-chih-p'o modes might well be heteroge-neous in natu re, as has recently been expo unde d upon by W u Nan -hsiin in his monumental s tudy on tuning, temperament, and modalsystems in Chinese history.42

The study of the Su-chih-p'o episode would not be completewithout examining the Sui Shu passage with care in order fully tounderstand Cheng I's statement and his motives. His statement was areply to Emperor Wen Ti (reigned 581-604) of Sui, who orderedCheng and others to establish a new official music for the Sui afterhaving complained that his court musicians failed to do so sevenyears after his dynasty was established. It must be borne in mind thatat that t ime the Sui court inherited the music of the Northern Chou,a minor dynasty ruled by Mongols, as well as the music of earlierNorthern dynasties of Turkic rulers . On the other hand, ch'ing shangyiieh or ch'ing yiieh of Han tradition continued to flourish in thecontemporary Southern dynasties of Chinese rulers. Actually, thestudy of the su yiieh ("music of the people") of T'ang must begin

41 Sui Shu, chap. 14 ("Yin YOeh Chih" II).42 LU HsSeh Hui T'ung [A comprehensive study of music and acoustics], (Peking,

1964), pp. 198-203, 218-33, 434-70.


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Chinese Historiography and Music 235with the confrontation and interpenetration between ch'ing yiiehand hu yiieh ("foreign music"), which includes foreign music andSinicized music of Central Asian origin or influence. The varigatedorigins of the types of music included in su yiieh may be readilydemonstrated by the confused and changing definition of the term,yen yiieh, which was often used interchangeably with su yiieh ofT'ang. Originally meaning music for banquet and court entertain-ment, yen yiieh came to mean, at times, the category of music ex-cluding hu yiieh, including hu yiieh, or combining hu yiieh andch'ing yiieh. This reflects the whole politico-cultural strugglebetween the south and the north, between maintaining the Chinesetradition and absorbing foreign ideas, during the period of theSouthern and Northern dynasties, Sui, and early T'ang. To assert,as some scholars have done, that the new music of T'ang was largelyof inner Asian origin or, for that matter, of Han tradition wouldbe futile.48

There was obviously a prolonged ongoing interaction betweenthe two, concurrent with a gradual Sinicization of the music andinstruments of foreign origin. One reminder of this process wouldbe the fact that the twenty-eight su yiieh modes of T'ang bear anamalgam of traditional Chinese terms as well as names of likelyforeign origin, including some of Su-chih-p'o's. Another would bethe evolution of p'i-p'a from a horizontally held position playedwith a large plectrum to a vertical one plucked with the fingers, andfrom a simple right-hand technique to an elaborate one, most likelyborrowed from ch'in technique.44 There was also the type of musicknown as fa ch'ii, which was of ch'ing yiieh tradition but acquiredsome foreign influence. For example, the famous P"o Chen Yiieh("Breaking the Enemy Ranks"), composed in 627 by order ofEmperor T'ai Tsung (reigned 627-649) of the T'ang Dynasty and re-


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236 T he Musical Qu arterlyvised several times thereafter, was regarded as one of the finest fach'iX compositions. It was originally based on folk material, butKuchean elements were added later; and by 677 two sections of ithad been reclassified as ya yiieh.*6 Whatever its actual degree ofcultural synthesis, Po Chen Yu'eh was greatly admired and widelyperformed throughout the T'ang period, so much so that it is oneT'ang composition known to have been performed in neighboringcountries other than Japan. The Buddhist pilgrim Hsiian Chuang(596-664) reported hearing it in India;4 0 and Liu Yuan-ting wit-nessed a performance of it in T'u-fan (Tibet) when he was envoy tothat state som etime between 806 and 820.47

By contrast, such pervasive intercourse in music between theChinese and the nomad invaders did not take place during the periodfrom the decline of the Sung (960-1279) to the rise of the Mingdynasty (13681644). Understanding Chinese intellectuals' resistanceto the relatively brief Mongol rule during the Yuan dynasty willbetter explain why so much was claimed to be of Sung origin byearly Ming scholars and musicians, bypassing Yuan completely inasserting their tradition. A concrete example is the Ming edition ofan important treatise on ch'in (the zither), T'ai Ku I Yin, compiledsupposedly by T'ien Chih-weng of the twelfth century. T'ai KuI Yin was reissued by C hu C h'iian (1378-1448) with a preface da ted1413, and with his own corrections, commentary, and supplements. 48It is particularly noted for (1) its coverage on shou shih ("handpostures"), drawings which show the hand postures and matchingimagery of movement or sound quality, (2) its detailed explanationof the finger techniques and the chien tzu ("abbreviated characters")notation, and (3) the inclusion of commentaries on finger techniquesand notation by two T'ang writers , Chen Chii-shih 49 (ca. 880) andLiu Chieh (ca. 900). Because of the affinity between the contents of

Chiu T'ang Shu, chaps. 28 and 29 ("Yin Yueh Chih" I and II).


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Chinese Historiograp hy and Music 237T'ai Ku I Yin and those of subsequent Ming publications it will,if its Sung origin can be accepted, serve as an important link betweenthe ch'in tradition of Ming with its voluminous literature and theSung tradition with very limited sources. The significance of thisrelation can be easily grasped if one realizes that ch'in music, asidefrom its unique character, has a large body of notated and printedliterature and is probably the only tradition of its magnitude extantin Chinese music that can presently be traced back to early Mingwith certainty.

Chu as a musician of the Ming dynasty stands next only to ChuTs'ai-yii (1536-16 14). His scholarly in tegr ity is well attested by hiswork on T'ai Ku I Yin and on his collection of ch'in music, Shen Ch'iPi Pu (preface dated 1425), which is the earliest known collection ofits size and contents.6 0 The first of the three volumes consists of six-teen compositions, which according to Chu's preface are of greatantiquity, not ordinarily passed on by ch'in masters. Cha Fu-hsi notedin the colophon to the facsimile edition of the Wan-li printing 8 1that according to some historical evidence and judging from thefinger techniques employed, some of these compositions predatedSouthern Sung Dynasty (1127-1279). If Cha proves to be correct,this will also lend credibility to Chu's claim that T'ai Ku I Yin datedfrom the twelfth century. Presumably Cha's finding is included inhis long-awaited treatise on ch'in, the publication of which has beendelayed because of the Cultural Revolution.5 2 The second and thirdvolumes consist of forty-eight pieces which were generally availablein the Sung and Yuan dynasties. Chu states that thirty-four piecesare from his own repe rtor y; the othe rs he collected by send ing fivestudents to learn from various masters of his time. The task tookhim twelve years to com plete. A noth er informative statem ent in thepreface is that while small circles, known as chu tien iS ("phrasalpunctuations"), used to denote phrasal structure in the music areprovided for all the works in the last two volumes, they are not sup-plied in the older compositions in the first volume, because these

60 Facsim ile edition of a copy printed du ring the W an-li period (1573-1619),(Peking, 1956); an editio n of the Chia-ching period (1522-66) is reproduced infacsimile in Ch'in Cha Chi Ch'eng (see note 48, above), pp. 69-144.

*i See note 50, above.521 was privileged to examine briefly Cha's manuscript during a visit with this

respected ch'in master and scholar in Peking, December, 1972.53 Or tien cha.


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Chinese Historiog raphy and Music 239identical with the paragraph under the same heading in another en-cyclopedia of the same period, Hsin Pien Ku Chin Shih Wen LeiChii, by C hu M u (preface da ted 1246).87 This is of interest since,according to Ch u C h'iian's preface to his edition , T'ie n Chih-weng'sT'ai Ku I Yin was edited and presented to the Sung court, under thetitle of Ch'in Yuan Hsu Chih, by Yang Tsu-yiin (ca. 1210) during theCh ia-ting period (1208-1224). Th is was two or three decades beforeChu Mu completed his encyclopedia and almost half a century beforethe other encyclopedia, Shih Lin Kuang Chi, made i ts appearance.To further pursue the circumstances surrounding these parallel orexce rpted passages a c hara cteristic feature of Ch inese histori-ography and to trace the origin of much of T'ai Ku I Yin's contentswould far exceed the scope and intent of this essay. Suffice it to ob-serve that the link between the ch'in t radit ion of Chu Ch'i ian'stime and that of Sung, hypothetically referred to earlier, is at leastin part borne out by the fact that (1) the aforementioned passages inT'ai Ku I Yin are traced to more than one Sung sources, (2) its texton these and other topics, such as notation, is more extensive thanany of the pre-Ming sources extant, and (3) Ch u's comm ents o nchii tien cited above are consistent with the contents in the pertinentpassages found in both T'ai Ku I Yin and Shih Lin Kuang Chi.The study of chien tzu notation and of ch'in's theoretical writingsan d edition s, kno wledg e of which is pre req uis ite for any fruitful in-vestigation of the music itself, is one more example of an area wherecom petence in both Sinology and m usicology is req uire d. M oreover,it provides irrefutable though unhappy evidence that the inabilityto consult primary source materials is no less a handicap in the studyof Chinese music than in the research on some early European music.

Reaching for otherwise inaccessible sources, however, should initself prove to be more than gratifying in view of the richness of thefield. For the c om petent Sino-musicologist, the future perhap s,it may be hop ed, no t so distant will d oubtless be a m ost excitingone, once the vast source materials in China are opened to re-searchers in the West and scholarly exchanges can be undertaken inearnest. It is the work of these scholars that will eventually open the

87 Part III, cha p. 22, section on ch'in. See facsimile reproduction in Chung Kuo KuTax Yin Yueh Shih Liao Ch'ieh Yao (Collection of important ancient Chinese sourcema terials on mu sic), I, (Pek ing, 1962), 405.


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240 T h e Musical Qu arterlydoor for the public in the West to one of the oldest and richestmusical traditions, one that for centuries served as a musical SilkRoad and the progenitor for many other Asian musical cultures.Meanwhile, let us hope that the considerable number of indispens-able monographs published in recent decades by Chinese musi-cologists will be made available in the West through translation. 58

5 8 This article is a revised version of a paper read at the Western Conferenceof The Association for Asian Studies, held at Arizona State University, Terape,Arizona, December 6-8, 1974. All translations in this essay are the author's own.

chinese historiography and music some observations

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