Summary

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT OF MUSIC IN CHINA'S EARLY HISTORY fewsources of music history from the pre-Confucian and Confucian periods have had the earlysources on Chinese music from the Chou dynasty (c.

questions on both the word and the concept of music in China's early history.

The written character for music in its modern form (fig.

Now, what the archaic graph YtCeh (= music) really represents is certainly the pictographmusic during the Shang II period.

This commentary brings us to a further ambiguity in the character for music.

character, and have built up theories of the psychological content of Chinese musical originallythe character Yfeh meant "music" but in the past people have made the with whichinstrumental music is made: silk (strings), bamboo (pipes, flutes), metal music actuallyperformed, but rather the theory of music - an interesting insight.

We may therefore conclude that in the early history of Chinese music there existed a themonopolized knowledge on which were based the early ideas on music and the observationsof musical and other sound phenomena so early in China's history is We have not been able tofind an archaic form of Sh ng (figs.

in no way rejected that these three characters may have had a connection with music d is apictogram from a bronze inscription of the early Western Chou period (c.

C.), in which the incomplete character for music (the middle part missing) with the graph formusic, although the middle part of the archaic music graph is 28 Figure z is the modern form ofthe archaic character and is In summarizing, we might say that the earliest concept of music inChina has been did writings appear which amplified the concept of music, so that it mightinclude all It is very gratifying that a lively interest in the early music history of the nation is The"Modern" character forms still in use today date back to the Earlier Han dynasty, Early WesternChou period, c.

In studies of the early history of Chinese music, learned philology has as yet contributed j is Shng in its modern form; k is a shortening of the complete form j.

1 is Yin in modern form, m an archaic form (K.

and reaches to some extent similar conclusions ("Musical Terms in a Chinese