there is no music in chinese music history

8/6/2019 There is No Music in Chinese Music History

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'There is No Music- in Chinese MusicHistory': Five Court Tunes from the Yuan

Dynasty (A D 1271-1368)JOSEPH S . C. LAM

'THEREs no music in Chinese music history." This paradox is often ex-pressed by music scholars in Hong Kong, a modem metropolis in whichChinese and Western musics and music scholarship mingle and thrive.Highlighting the contrasts between traditional Chinese and contem-porary Western views of music and music historiography, the paradoxrefers to the scholars' observation that Chinese music histories include fewdescriptions of actual music, and that performances of early Chinesemusic are often inauthentic. Published accounts of China's musical pastinclude little hard evidence about the structure and sounds of specificmusical works. Thus, the scholars argue, the accounts are moretheoretical than factual, and their musical descriptions disputable.'Public performances and recorded examples of early Chinese musicreveal obvious use of Western tonal harmony and counterpoint, and thuscannot be authentic music from China of the past.' The scholars'arguments, however, cannot refute that in Hong Kong many Chinesemusic masters and audiences find the so-called early Chinese musicauthentic and its histories credible.

The paradox raises many fundamental issues concerning relationshipsbetween the musical past and present, traditional Chinese and contem-porary Western music historiography, and the dynamics involved in thereconstruction and perpetuation of a musical heritage. These issues leadto a barrage of questions, some of which can be presented as follows.What is a piece of early Chinese music? How do music scholars verifywhat it was and/or is? How is it incorporated into historical narratives of

I would like to than k Profs. John M. Wa rd of Harvard U nivers~ty.Evelyn Rawsk~ nd Bell Yung ofthe University of Pittsburgh, and Wdliam Prizer of the Un~vers~tyf Cahforn~a , an ta BarbaraThey read earlier drafts of this paper and offered many helpful suggestions' Between 1988 and 1991 I taught in Hong Kong, and I often heard students and colleaguesexpress t h ~ s a radox.In his Zho nggu oguda z yznyue shzgao (Drafi H rtfory ofA nn en & Chznese M W ZC )Beljing. 1981).the standard text of Chmese muslc h~story,Yang Yinhu devoted 800 (out of 1.070) pages and 50musica l examples to h ~ sescription of the h~st ory f Chinese muslc from ~ t seginnmg to AD 1550Only four of these musical examples (nos. 9, 7. 8 an d 14) are preserved in docum ents conte m-poraneous with the muslc being discussed.' A representative comm ercial recording of such examp les is SongJlong Barthz ge qu shzqrthoutuoyu 11 76-1196 nio n (Seventeen Songs by Jaang Barchi Com posed m 11 76-96) (China Records,AL-50. 1986).


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166 JOSEPH S C LAM

Chinese music? Who formulates such narratives? For whom? Why? Andhow do such narratives relate to histories of Western art music and worldmusic? Such questions have no easy answers, for they involve a multitudeof issues in critical theories, cultural studies, ethnomusicology,historiography, musicology and sinology. Generations of Chinese andWestern scholars have wrestled with the questions one way or another.Still their d ebates con tinue, discussing da ta an d theories which transce ndthe boundaries between Chinese and Western musics, and whichunderscore the universal and theoretical nature of the questions. 4Through a case-study of five court tunes (hereafter referred to as tunes1-5) from the Yuan dynasty (AD 1271-1368) of China, this paperdiscusses historiographical issues of methodology, objectivity, relevanceand practicality. The tunes are preserved as notated music in a section ofchapter 53a of the DaM ing jili (Collected Cerem onies of the Ming), amulti -volume m an ua l on Chinese court ceremonials com piled in1369-70 . (Hereafter, the section will be referred to as the source , an d itshost as the DMJL.) The tunes are hitherto unknown examples of Yuandynasty court music; this paper is the first discussion of this repertory inany language. Being thus unknown to present-day Chinese or Westernmusic scholars, musicians and audiences, the tunes have neither a recep-tion history nor generally accepted meanings. They are ideal materialfor theoretical examination of historiographical issues.5To present the tunes and to discuss the historiographical issues theyraise, this paper proposes the following definitions and assumptions.Early Chinese music is defined as music which was created before 1550;which is transmitted to the present through words and notation only; andwhich is reconstructed and performed in the present. 6 Early Chinesemusic is irrelevant to present-day musicians and audiences unless it is ex-plained as historical music and performed as such. A history of earlyChinese music is constructed with narratives which are formulated withverifiable evidence (words, notation, musical instruments and so forth)and non-verifiable hypotheses (historical constructs) which aim to explain

4 Three current pub lications on the q uestions, which also constitute a general foun dation for thispaper, are Liu Nianci et al , 'Yinyue shixue fangfalun yantao' ('Symposium on Methods of MusicHistoriography'), Zhongguo ymyuexue (1989/2), 66-89, Leo Treitler, 'The Politics of ReceptionTailoring the Present as Fulfilment of a Desired Past', Journal of the Royal Mustc Association, 116(1991), 281-98, Writing Culture The Poetics and Po litics of Ethnography, ed. James Clifford(Berkeley, 1986)' For reasons why the DMJL remained unknow n, see Joseph S. C Lam, 'Creativity W ithinBounds State Sacrificial Songs from the Ming Dynasty (1368 -164 4)' (Ph D dissertation, HarvardUniversity, 1988), 311-17' The year 1550 is a convenient dividing line in Chinese music history. No known genre ofChinese music can trace and verify that its performance tradition has been continuously and orallytransmitted to the present from a time prior to 1550 In contrast, Kun opera tic arias (Kunqu) andcertain schools of qin (Chinese seven-string zither) music, w hich developed in the mid-sixteenth cen-tury and are still thriving, have contestable claims to such a kind of continuous oral transmissionHistoriographical issues concerning these twopther genres are related to but different from the issuesdiscussed in this paper, which limits its purview to Chinese music created before_1550. I use the term'early Chinese music' to draw an analogy-to the-early.music.of-the_West._The two^repertonessharefundamental problems of performance practice, authenticity and relationships between facts andfiction For an introduction to theories of early music of the West, see Authenticity and Early Music,ed . Nicholas Kenyon (Oxford, 1988)


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"THERE IS NO MUSIC IN CHINESE MUSIC HISTORY 167music of the past.7 All narratives of early Chinese music are selective: thepast cannot be comprehensively reconstructed and explained in thepresent, and can be viewed only through modern selective perspectives.

This paper presumes that upon discovery of the notated source of thetunes, Hong Kong music scholars, masters and audiences would employtheir typical methodologies and perspectives to formulate various nar-ratives. Eight such narratives are hypothesized here, and arranged in thefollowing sequence for convenience of discussion. These narratives wouldexplain the tunes as:(1) court music from the Yuan dynasty;(2) authentic court music from the Yuan dynasty, because the source and its

transmission are reliable;(3) outlines of pitches which do not reveal full musical identities;(4) musical works with distinctive structural features;(5) specimens of banquet music and secular ceremonial music from the Yuan

court;(6) musical works whose instrumentation and performance context are

similar to other pieces of the above two genres;(7) evidence of musical exchange between different ethnic groups of Chinese

people;(8) early Chinese music which can be reconstructed and performed in the

present.The above narratives arehypothetical but serve as case samples to iden-tify verifiable facts and non-verifiable hypotheses in music histories, toanalyse their form ulation processes and to assess their practicality, accep-tance and rejection in different musical and scholarly communities.Through these case samples, this paper argues for a Chinese musichistoriography that not only combines objectivity and cultural sensitivity,but also contributes to universal and theoretical understanding of musicof the past.Tunes 1 -5 begin to exist as early Chinese music with the formulation ofnarrative 1: they are court music from the Yuan dynasty. The tunes haveexisted innotation for more than 600 years, but that existence has residedin meaningless receptacles of data from the past, and has neitherhistorical nor musical significance for the present. In narrative 1, thetunes acquire a present meaning which is formulated with literalunderstanding of hard evidence, namely the words and notation con-tained in the source. Anyone who reads Chinese characters an d has somefamiliarity with Chinese music history and notational signs would for-mulate this same understanding upon encountering the source.Headed 'Yuan yuequ' ( 'Tunes from the Yuan Dynasty'), the sourceincludes 12 folios of words and notation. It preserves the tunes in 83columns of gongche and lulu notation, specifying their pitches but notrhythm or any other details needed for reconstruction and performance

Robin George Collingwood, Idea of History (London, 1946), 231^19


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168 JOSEPHS C LAMin the present (see Figure I).8 In addition to the notated data the sourceincludes the following verbal information: a list of ten song names, titlesof the tunes, two technical terms and modal labels for tunes 4 and 5.There are no song texts. The list of ten song nam es, which app ears at thebeginning of the source, designates specific pieces of banquet music fromthe Yuan court. Three of the ten song nam es are com mo n designations ofconstituent arias in musical dramas (zaju) or song cycles (santao) of theYuan period.9 The titles of the tunes, which in each case precede thenotation, are: Yeketangwu, Weixvuer, W eiwuer guopian, Siji wan-nianhuan (The Four Seasons in Ten Thousand Years of Happiness) andWansuiyue (Music for Ten Thousand Years); Yeketanguru and Weiwuerappear to be Chinese imitations of non-Chinese words, and their mean-ings are, for the time being, unknown. The two technical terms refer tostructural aspects of the music. The first term, guopian, which is ap-pended to the title proper of tune 3, means 'an expanded version'. Thesecond term, wet, which marks the last phrase of tune 4, can betranslated as 'cod a'. T he m odal labels m ark specific phrases or sections in

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THERE IS NO MUSIC IN CHINESE MUSIC HISTORY' 169

the no tation of tunes 4 and 5, specifying m oda l categories with theore tical(proper) and practical (popular) terms.The narrative described above is a simple explanation, and its verifiabledata and straightforward hypothesis are insufficient to jp ec ify ho w .th etunes are to be understood as performable music. A search for additionalinformation would quickly lead to the conclusion that little is knownabout music in the Yuan court.10 Standard historical documents aboutthe Yuan dynasty, such as the Yuanshi (Standard History of the Yuan) of1370, testify to the existence of a variety of music: state sacrificial music,banquet music, secular ceremonial music, military music, recreationalmusic and other genres. Thus, despite a lack of direct evidence, it isreasonable to presume that the tunes did exist in the Yuan court. Withacceptance of this presumption, authenticity of the tunes becomes anurgent issue which cannot, however, be solved definitively. Past existenceof the tune s is unrec overa ble. On e can nevertheless formu late narrative 2:the tunes are authentic because the source and its transmission arereliable. Equating musical authenticity with bibliographical reliability,the narrative is open to challenge, but it provides a justification forexam ining the tun es as early Chinese music and for co nstructing historiesabout them. Without the narrative, there is neither reason to pursue thetunes as early Chinese music nor a theoretical framework in which toexamine the few pieces of surviving evidence.

An investigation into the reliability of the source and its host, theDMJL, entails scrutiny of the bibliographical and historical data that areavailable. The DMJL is a Ming dynasty (1368-1644) manual on courtceremonials, which was compiled, upon imperial order, by Xu Yikui(1318-C.1400) and other scholar-officials during 1369-70. From descrip-tions found in standard documents of the Ming dynasty, such as theWenyuange cangshu shumu (Catalogue of the Wenyuange Library) of1440, the Ming Shizong Shuhuangdi shilu (Veritable Records of theMing. Emperor Shizong) of 1577 and the Mingshi (Standard History ofthe Ming) of 1739, it is clear that the manual has existed in four editions:(1) an original edition of 50 chapters, which existed only in manuscriptsand is now lost; (2) a 1530 edition, which has 53 chapters, was edited byLi Shi (1471-1539) and was printed inside the palace; (3) a Honanprinted edition, a copy of which is now kept in the Gest Collection ofPrinceton University Library; and (4) the Siku quanshu (ImperialLibrary) edition of the 1770s, which is now available in facsimile print-ings. " 15 of the 53 cha pters of the m an ua l inc lude extensive descriptions

10 Ther e is only one known publication which specifically discusses music in the Yuan court of thethirteenth and fourteenth centuries Moerjihu's 'Yuandai gon gting yinyue chutan' ('A PreliminaryStudy of Music in the Yuan Court1), Yinyue ytshu (1990), 16-231' For an introduction to documents about the Ming, see Wo lfgang Franke, An In troduction to theSources of Ming History (Kuala Lum pur, 1968) For further deta ils of Ming dynasty musical sources,see Lam , 'Creativity W ithin Bounds', 319 -34 For general information on Chinese historicaldocuments mentioned briefly, see Endymion Wilkinson, The History of Imperial China A ResearchGuide (Cambridge, Mass., 1975)


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1 7 0 JOSEPHS C LAMof music (instruments, histories, theories, musicians, etc.). Seven of the15 cha pters (nos. 2, 3, 4, 9, 11, 13 an d 14) include lulu notation for Mingdynasty state sacrificial music. Only chapter 53a, which consists of 39folios, preserves notated music from the Yuan court. The source for tunes1 -5, i.e. the section that includes the notation, appears as folios 26-37 v.

Th e com pilation and transmission history of the DMJL suggest that themanual is reliable. Compilation of the DMJL began in 1369, the yearafter the formal end ing of the Yuan dynasty, an op po rtun e time w hen in-formation about musical practices in the Yuan court was still available.Many Ming scholar-officials and musicians, such as Zhu Sheng(1299-1371), Sung Lian (1310-81) and Leng Qian (c. 1310-1371),matured during the Yuan dynasty, and carried their musical-ritual ex-pertise to the Ming court.12 That there was a certain continuity betweenthe Yuan and the early Ming courts is now generally accepted amongscholars of Chinese history.13 Compilation of the DMJL was part of alarge-scale attempt to construct a new system of secular and religiousceremonials. Thus it is reasonable to hypothesize that the manual in-cluded reliable information. Such a hypothesis assumes that compilers ofthe manual made no editorial mistakes, chose typical examples andrepresented Y uan court m usic as it was. Th e assum ption is optimistic, butthere are no foolproof methods to identify inaccuracies, if they exist, inthe DMJL.Subsequent editions of the DMJL have probably transmitted the con-tents of the manual faithfully. Court records indicate that the 1530edition was prepared before manuscript copies of the original editionperished, and was produced as a replacem ent. '4 The 1530 edition differsfrom the original edition in certain features such as the number ofchapte rs, b ut its faithfulness to the exem plar is obvious.15 As Figure 2shows, the editor of the 1530 edition left blank spaces in the notationrather than substitute inauthentic text. These lacunae cannot have arisenthrough an omission in editing or printing, because the 1530 editionshows signs of meticulous production. It is inconceivable that the editorwould have left such glaring spaces and have risked offending theemperor by presenting him with a defective manual. The only logical butnon-verifiable argument is that the editor did not want to supply in-authentic materials; he did not dare tamper with a document that wasrespected as part of the legacy of the founder of the Ming dynasty.'6 The1530 ed ition, of which only very few copies are now accessible for study, is

l! See their biographies in Dictionary of Ming Biography, ed L Carnngton Goodrich and Chaoy-mg Fang (New York, 1976)" A discussion of the continu ity is Edward L Dreyer 'The Early Ming Period in Chinese History',Early Ming China A Political History, 1355-143} (Stanford, 1982), 1-12" This is clear from a description in the Ming Shizong Shuhuan gdi shilu (1577; Taipei AcademiaSinica edn, 1962-8), 116 9a11 Besides the differences in the number of chapters, the 1530 edition has textual discrepancieswith contemporaneous docum ents over elements which were regarded as anachronistic None ofthese facts, however, casts doubt on the reliability of the DMJL- .See Lam, 'Creativity WithinBounds', 329-32" See Emperor Shizong's preface in DMJL, 1-la-b Emperor-Shizong wrote that the DMJLpreserves ritual guidelines from the founder of the empire that should be followed by all hisdescendants


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1 7 2 JOSEPHS C LAM

which is identical to that of tune 2 and the title proper of tune 3. Suchmatching of a distinctive title found in two contemporaneous documentscannot be accidental. At the least, it demonstrates that musical workswith this title existed in the Yuan period. Whether tunes 2 and 3 are thesame Weiwuer- hea rd by T a o Zongyi is -not a n issue. Many Chinesemusical works share a title; nevertheless, the appearance of a distinctiveand identical title in two contemporaneous documents leaves no doubtthat at least one musical work with this title must have existed. If theDMJL preserves music whose title is proved to have existed in the Yuantime, by that very fact the reliability of the document is enhanced.Second, th e ten n am es of Yuan songs listed at th e beginn ing of the sourcehave counterparts in contemporaneous documents, such as the Yuanshiand Zhu Quan's Taihe zhengyinpu {Manua l on Harm onious and ProperMusic) of 1398. Third, the modal labels listed in the source also matchthose that are registered in Shilin guangji (A Comprehensive Record ofthe Forest of Affairs), a Yuan dynasty encyclopedia which included aconsiderable amount of musical materials of the time. 20

Further corroboration of the reliability of the DMJL comes fromhistorical data about the lulu and gongche notation used in the manual.The two notational systems were, by the fourteenth century, establishedmeans of representing music, and all scholar-officials and courtmusicians should have been able to use the notational signs accuratelyand reliably.21 The 12 lulu terms, which were first mentioned in theLiishi chunqiu (Spring and Autumn of Lu B uwei), prior to 235 BC,became standard ized references to pitch by the Form er H an dynasty (206BC -AD 23), and ap peared repeatedly in stan dar d m usic treatises, such asthe Yueji (Monograph on Music), prior to 7 BC. The exact date for thefirst appearance of the gongche notation as used in the source is not yetclear, but the system can be traced at least as far back as the NorthernSong dynasty (960-1127)." By the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368), thegongche notation was widely known, and was even exported outsideChina. An example of such export is Lin Yu's Dashengyuepu (Collectionof Dasheng Music) of 1349, through which Korean scholar-officials inKing Sejong's court (1418-50) leamt 16 tunes of Confucian ritualmusic.23 If the lulu and gongche notation were, by mid-fourteenth cen-tury, established means of representing music, one has to presume thatthe compilers of the DMJL used the notation accurately. In other words,the notated music in the manual should be reliable.T he above claim of reliability for the source, th e argu m ents and the useof corroborative data, constitute the basis for formulating narrative 2: thetunes are authentic court music from the Yuan dynasty because thesource an d its transmission are reliable. T h e narrativ e is significantbecause it renders the tunes historically meaningful, even though it may

20 For an introduction to the encyclopedia and its musical contents, see Plan, Sonq DynastyMusical Sources, 23-9 ." Ther e are many.references to the use of notation in the Yuan court See 'Zhiyue shimo' ('Historyof Instituting Music [in the Yuan Court]'), Yuanshi, 68 1691-9" Plan, Sonq Dynasty M usical Sources, 59, 97-811 Robert Provine, Essays on Smo-Korean Musicology (Seoul, 1988), 116-33.


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'THERE IS NO MUSIC IN CHINESE MUSIC HISTORY' 173

only be a 'partial truth'. 2 4 If the tunes are inauthentic, they cannot becourt music from the Yuan dynasty. Scholars and musicians can stillexamine the tunes as they are, but such an examination is not an exercisethat engages China's musical past.If the tunes are authentic,_they constitute the earliest extant examples ofChinese music from the Yuan period. Qin (Chinese seven-string zither)music of the Yuan period may have been preserved in Zhu Quan's Shenqimipu (The Mysterious and Precious Notation) of 1425, but such musicalpieces are not yet identified. Yang Yinliu and other Chinese scholars haveclaimed that Yuan songs are preserved in the fiugong dacheng nanbeicigongpu (A Comprehensive Anthology of Texts and Musical Notation ofSouthern and Northern Arias in Nine Modes), but that document wascompiled in 1746 and authenticity of the music awaits confirmation.Thus, for the time being, the tunes are the only readily availableexamples of Yuan dynasty music. As such, they give rise to many ques-tions about themselves and about musical practices in the Yuan court.One must, for example, assess the musical information preserved in thenotat ion.Such an assessment leads to narrative 3: as preserved in the source, thetunes are only outlines of pitches which do not reveal full musical iden-tities. T h e lulu and gongche signs in the source constitute only an im-precise representation of music. The lulu notation, which identifies the12 pitches inside an octave with 12 specific terms, is conceptually aprecise system. In practice, however, it can only be a rough representa-tion: its signs cannot reflect pitch variations which may have resultedfrom tuning differences. The Yuanshi reports that musical instruments inthe Yuan court were appropriated from various peoples, and that therewere different attempts at tuning musical instruments by differentmusicians." Lacking more specific information about the instrumentswith which the tunes were once performed, the lulu notation cannot besaid to represent the exact pitches of the music.The same is true of the gongche notation which names relative pitcheswith ten Chinese characters. Since it originated from tablatures for windinstruments and is still widely used among traditional musicians, thegongche notation seems to be a faithful representation of pitches as theyare performed. In reality, the rigid gongche signs cannot express thefluidity of pitch manifestations during performance. Exact pitch varieswith, for example, the speed with which a flautist's finger covers afingerhole on a flute, and the extent to which the hole is covered. Thusanalysed (an d conceived), the lulu and gongche notation can preserve thetunes only as rough pitch outlines. Furthermore, as the Hong Kong musicscholars would observe, both the lulu and the gongche notation in the

24 For a discussion of the concep t of 'parti al tr ut h' and its intellectual co ntexts, see Jam es Clifford,' Introduction. Part ial Truths ' , Wntmg Culture, 1-26." In addition to making new instruments, the Yuan government collected musical instrumen tsfrom the Jin , N orthe rn Song and S outhern Song cou rts. For a brief survey of the different tunin gstandards used in these courts, see Yang Yinliu, Zhongguo ytnyue shigang (Outlme of Chinese MusicHistory) (Shanghai, 1953), 288-300.


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1 7 4 JOSEPHS C LAMsource offer no information about rhythm, timbre, dynamics and otherelements which are necessary for realizing and performing the tunes asaudible music in the present.Still, the notation leads to narrative 4: even as rough pitch outlines, thetunes display distinctive structural features. Such a narrative is based onstructural analysis of the tunes as notated music which is graphic andverifiable. This narrative is however not free of hypothetical elements.Structural analyses of notated music may include subjective and non-verifiable aspects. T he re is, for e xam ple, no way of knowing w hether suchanalyses reflect the way people in the Yuan court experienced the tunes.Structural analyses of the tunes simply render the music meaningful totheir analysts.26

Th e tun es sha re a similar gene ral style (see Exam ples 1 -5). With regardto pitch, they employ scales which are essentially heptatonic. Tunes 2, 3and 5 use the straightforward heptatonic scale C-D-E-F#-G-A-B or i tstranspositions. Tu ne 1 employs the scale C- D -E -F-F #-G -A , while tune 4uses only six pitches within an octave (C-D-E-F#-G-G#). Tunes 2 and 3have identical initials and finals, a feature which traditional Chinesemusic theory assigns to the demonstration of modal identity. Within thenarrow tessitura of a sixth, tunes 1 -3 move mostly in seconds and thirds,displaying an undulating and flowing contour. The few repeated notesand large-interval leaps create only localized diversions. The melody oftune 4 is characterized by prominent semitone motion, while the melodyof tune 5 is disjunct.Th e formal structure of tunes 1 -4 dem onstrates no distinctive pa ttern s,apart from a general regularity in phrase length. Tunes 2 and 3 share sixidentical musical phrases, the latter being an expanded version of theformer. Tune 5 has a binary structure, whose eight phrases divide intotwo almost identical parts. With regard to structural relationships be-tween individual pitches and phrases, tunes 1 -4 demonstrate a sense ofmusical coherence and flow that results from similarity between adjacentphrases, strategically located repetitions and a gradual introduction ofnew musical ideas. If the similar melodic patterns are conceived as basicmusical ideas, they are the most prominent and memorizable features ofthe tunes. By comparison, tune 5 lacks such musical coherence and flow:its phrases employ strong cadences, prominent use of leaps larger than athird and contrast between adjacent phrases.The distinctive structural features of the tunes imply specific genres,identification of which might further clarify what the tunes are about,providing clues to when, why and how they were performed in the Yuancourt. No known data explicitly identify the genres of the tunes ordescribe their musical features, but many clues implicitly lead to nar-rative no. 5: the tunes are specimens of banquet music and secularceremonial music from the Yuan court.27

" See Leo Tren ler's discussion of various types of analysis in his Music and the Historical Imagina-tion (Cambridge, Mass , -1989), 67 -78 - -27 Th ere are various classifications of music in Chinese courts proper music or state sacrificialmusic (yayue), vulgar music (suyue), entertainment music (yanyue), non-Han music (huyue), out-


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THER E IS NO MUSIC IN CHINESE MUSIC HISTOR Y' 175

Two verifiable facts strongly, though indirectly, suggest narrative 5.First, banquet music and secular ceremonial music are the subject-matterof the whole of cha pter 53a of the DMJL. Second, external data confirmthis interpretation of the nature of the tunes. The names of the ten songslisted at the beginning of the source also appear in a Yuanshi account ofbanquet and secular ceremonial music. The songs are registered as con-stituent pieces in four standard large-scale music programmes from theYuan court - the New Year celebrations, imperial birthday celebrations,imperial auditions and devotional celebrations.28 Judging by the fact thatthe list of the ten songs and the tunes appear under the same heading('Yuan yuequ'; 'Tunes from the Yuan Dynasty') and in the same docu-ment, one can presume that the songs and the tunes belong to the samegenres.The tunes must have been intended as banquet music and secularceremonial music, because they do not satisfy the criteria for statesacrificial music, military music or recreational music - i.e. for any of theprominent genres of court music.29 The tunes cannot have been statesacrificial music for the following reasons: (a) they do not carry formalan d r itual titles; (b) they include no song texts, which are indispensable toexpress the ritual ideas of imperial sacrifices; (c) their musical structuredoes not m atc h any extant texts of Yu an dynasty state sacrificial songs, allof which share a textual structure of 32 syllables/characters dividedequally among eight phrases.30 The tunes cannot have been militarymusic or recreational music: official ritual manuals, such as the DMJL,were not designed to describe such genres, and none of the manuals ofcourt ceremonials produced between the fourteenth and late nineteenthcenturies I have studied includes notation of either military music orrecreational music. The distinctiveness of their titles argues that the tunescannot have been recreational music practised inside or outside the Yuancourt. Except for Tao Zongyi's reference, the titles of the tunes have nocounterparts among the approximately 600 known names of Yuan songs,the most popular genre of secular and dramatic music during the Yuandynasty.T he evidence tha t th e tunes may have belonged to two different genresof court music comes from the music: the structure of tune 5 issignificantly different from that of the other four tunes. Tune 5 has asimple binary structure in which the second to fourth phrases arerepeated (see Example 5). It is described and notated as a set of 12 modaldoor processional music (yizhang), recreatio nal music for leisurely enjoyment, and so forth T ofacilitate discussion, banquet music and secular ceremonial music, both of which belong to thegenera l category of ente rtain me nt m usic, are defined as follows Ban quet m usic was music per-formed as entertainment at court functions, such as banquet parties which followed New Yearcelebrations, coronations, and other formal and ntual activities. Secular ceremonial music was musicperformed to accompany secular ceremonies, such as a formal toast, in secular court functions.11 'Yuedui'( 'Musical Orchestras'), Yuanshi, 71.1773-7" T he term recreationa l music refers to those genres em perors, nob leme n and cou rt citizens en-joyed privately and/or during their leisure. Such genres, which ranged from the seven-string zithermusic of the Confucian scholars to popular musical dramas, were also enjoyed by the general publicT h u s , those genres are seldom discussed as court music' An exam ple is the first song for a Yuan dynasty state sacrifice to H eaven and Ea rth, performedin 1302, which was entitled Qtanning zhi qu (Music of Heavenly Peace).


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176 JOSEPHS C LAM

Example 1. Tune 1: Yeketangwu1 2 1 2

1t l *'-m- -m- m '

2 1 31 ' + ' * *

*=*-*-+= - * _ _ * _ -

10 10 10

11-$ B ' 00m*0m

11' 00m*0'

11* 00**0*

12_ m m 1

13 13 13


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"THERE IS NO MUSIC IN CHINESE MUSIC HISTORY'

Example 2. Tune 2: Weiwuer.1

177

11

The numbers refer to those of musical ideas in Example 3 below.

Example 3. Tune 3: Weiwuer guopian.1 2

3 $ = ^ 0 0 0 0'Related pitch groups:

5 6

10

11


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178 JOSEPHS C LAM

Example 4. T u n e 4: Sijt wannianhuan.

Relatedpitchgroups:V V ~ ~ V

, I * ' ' I t ' > , ftV vva* *

Example 5. Tune 5: Wansuiyue,-/-

-

m

J f - --tft>s " 1 z:3 * - tt *- a **

yJ *

Note: The tune is represented in the source in all 12 transpositions.


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"THERE IS NO MUSIC IN CHINESE MUSIC HISTOR Y1 179transpositions in the source. This modal feature is distinctive of ritualmusic in Chinese courts, reflecting the ritual-cosmological theory of them onthly rotation of mu sical mod es: if a piece of ritual music is employedthro ug ho ut the year, it m ust a pp ear in distinctive modes in each of the 12months .31 Thus, tune 5 may be ritual music. Furthermore, it may havebeen in tend ed as secular cerem onial music because it can not be sung as astate sacrificial song. If tune 5 is secular ceremonial music, then tunes 1 -4m ust have belonged to a different gen re of court mu sic. They reveal suchobvious differences in their structure that they cannot have belonged tothe same genre as tune 5; theoretically, musical pieces of the same genreshould share sub stantial similarity which is often found in their s truc ture .Unlike tun e 5, w hich is organized as two nearly identical p arts , tun es 1 -4are through-composed, and their structure demonstrates a distinctivemusical coherence and flow (Examples 1-4).The above genre identification leads to questions concerning theinstrumentation and performance context of the tunes, musical datawhich are needed to understand how the tunes sounded. Such data arenot described in the source, and can be probed only on the assumptionthat musical works belonging to the same genre share basic features andthat data about a musical work can be applied to other works of the samegenre. Thus, one can formulate narrative 6: the tunes share similarinstrumentation and performance contexts with other pieces of banquetmusic and secular ceremonial music from the Yuan court. In otherwords, the instrumentation and performance contexts of the tunes mustbe similar to those described in the four aforementioned standardprogrammes of Yuan dynasty court music.32According to narrative 6, tunes 1 -4 were probably performed with oneof the following types of instrumentation, which were employed forba nqu et music in the Y uan court: (1) the grand orchestra (dayue); (2) anensemble of three flutes (longdi); three hour-glass drums (zhanggu), asmall drum (Jingong xiaogu) and a set of wooden clappers (ban); (3)simultaneous performance by the grand orchestra and an ensemble ofthree flutes, three oboes (xianli) and two hour-glass drums; (4)simultaneous performance by the grand orchestra and an ensemble ofthree flutes, three oboes, three small hour-glass drums (zhagu), a hand-held drum (hegu) and a set of wooden clappers.33 Tune 5, as secularceremonial music, was probably performed by the terrace orchestra(dengge). Such unde rstand ing of the instrum entation is abstract, but itprovides a theoretical basis from which to explore how the tune s sou nde d." W ang Mengou, 'Yueling', Ltjt jinzhu jmyi (Book of Ceremonial, Annotated and Translated)(Tianjin, 1988), 201-tO." Yuanshi, 71 1773-7." As described in the Yuanshi (71 1771-3), the grand orchestra included the following in-struments, organ (xinglongsheng); pear-shaped four-string lute (pipa), 13-stnng fretted zither(zheng); four-string lute (huobusi), two-string fiddle (huqtn); metal-slab chime (fangxiang), flute(longdi); oboe (touguan), mouth organ (sheng); harp (konghou); gong chimes (yunluo); verticalflute (xtao); bamboo pole (xtzhu); suspended big drum (gu); hour-glass drum (zhanggu), small hour-glass drum (zhagu); hand-held drum (hegu); seven-string zither (9m); three-hole flute (jiangdi);wooden clappers (paiban); bronze bowls (shuizhan)

14 As described in the Yuanshi (71.1700-5), the terrace orchestra includes the following in-strum ents a set of bell chimes; a set of stone chimes; a one-string zither (qin), two three-string


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180 JOSEPH S C LAM

So far, this discussion has dwelt on technical details, and has offered nohints as to how the tunes and their narratives may contribute to theun der stan din g of China's musical past. A re the tune s musical trivia whichhappen accidentally to have been preserved? Do they lead to narrativesabout the musical scene in the Yuan court? Are such narratives com-patible with current histories of China's musical past? One answer tothese issues is narrative 7: the tunes are evidence of musical exchangebetween different ethnic groups in China. This narrative is historio-graphically significant because it presents the tunes as rare and verifiableevidence to illuminate musical relationships between Han and non-Hanpeoples in the Yuan court.All current histories of China's musical past agree that non-Han musiccontributed much to the development of Han Chinese music, but theyprovide few clarifications.35 Such an inadequacy results from a scarcity ofmusical evidence and from the view tha t C hina's musical past and presentconstitute a continuous and essentially Han-Chinese tradition whichabsorbs foreign elements without losing its own distinctive characteristics,whatever those characteristics were and/or are. There is as yet no cleardescription of the musical exchange between Han and non-Han peoplesduring the Yuan dynasty, a period which followed centuries of ethnic-political struggles and which was politically dominated by Mongoliansand other non-Han peoples.36 Even though non-Han influence is con-sidered a factor leading to the more 'dynamic' style of the Yuan songs,there has been little clarification of what that non-Han music was, whereit originated, and how it affected Han-Chinese music.37In such a contex t, the m usical features of the tunes ap pea r as sug-gestive traces of Chin a's musical past: they confirm , in two ways, the con-ventional view that non-Han musical elements were always sinicized andthen absorbed into the Han culture. First, the Yuan court, which wascontrolled by Mongolian and non-Han peoples, adopted distinctive Hanorchestras of stone chimes and bell chimes, a nd related practices of large-scale ceremonial and banquet music. Second, the tunes were adjusted toHan-Chinese scales: the heptatonic scale C-D-E-Flt-G-A-B and itszithers; two five-string zithers; two seven-string zithers, two nine-string zithers, four 25-strmg zithers,two sets of panpipes; two flutes (di), two flutes (yue), two flutes (chi), four large 19-pipe mouthorgans (chaosheng), four small 19-pipe mouth organs (hesheng); a seven-pipe mouth organ (qtx-tngbao); a nine-pipe mouth organ (jiuyaobao); a 13-pipe mouth organ (yunyubao); two ocarinas(xun); two drums (bofu), a wooden rectangle (zhu), a wooden tiger (yu)" See Yang Yinliu, Zhongguo gudai yinyue shtgao, 42 1- 2 Throughout the monograph, Yangalludes to issues of non-Ha n m usic without detailed discussions Section 6 of Yang's book, pp275 -45 6, is entitled '[Music in the] Liao, Song, Xixia and Jin dynasties, 9 37-1 279', but discussion isdevoted to music of the Song empires of Han people, only pages 421 -2 discuss court music in theLiao (Khitan p eople, 907 -112 5) and Jin (Jurchen people, 1115- 1234) dynasties See also note 36below" While the Northern Song government of Han people ruled over the central part of China(960 -112 7), the Khitan, the Jurchen and the-Tanguts peoples of Xixia (1032 -122 7) occupied variousareas in north and north-west China Genghis Khan (116 2-1 22 7) established the Mon golian empirein 1206. The empire was renamed as the Yuan in 1271, eight years before it conquered the SouthernSong dynasty of the Han people and achieved full control of the whole Chinese land Contactsbetween the various non-Han and Han peoples were constant.17 For example, Cheung Saibung believes that imp ortation of non-H an peoples' plucked lutes ledto the rise of rhythm ically fast melodies and the use of paddin g words in song texts See his Zhongguoytnyuesht lunshugao (Hxstoncal Studies of Chinese Music) (Hong Kong, 1975), 353-6


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THERE IS NO MUSIC IN CHINESE MUSIC HISTORY' 1 8 1

variants employed in the tunes are closely associated with proper music(yayue) in Han-Chinese courts. Both are clear cases in which non-Hanelements were either replaced or sinicized to conform to Han standards.At the same time, the tunes also lead to doubts on that prevalent view,which arise from the following observations. First, tunes 1-4 on the onehand and tune 5 on the other demonstrate contrasting strategies oforganizing pitches in musical works. Second, Tao Zongyi, a fourteenth-century H an Chinese, com me nted th at T ar ta r music was different fromits Han counterparts. Third, the non-Han origin of tunes 1 -3 is apparentfrom their non-Han titles. Fourth, the Han origin of tune 5 is evidentfrom its set of 12 modal transpositions, a musical feature which reflects aritual-cosmological theory of Han Chinese. Considered together, theabove observations point to the deduction that the contrast between tunes1^4 and tune 5 may reflect what Tao Zongyi perceived as differentmusics.The reflection is noteworthy because it implies that non-Han and Hanpeople in the Y uan period used different strategies of organizing pitches,and that non-Han musical features may resist sinicization. In otherwords, musical exchange in the Yuan court of the thirteenth and four-teenth centuries may not be an entirely one-sided process of sinicizingnon-Han elements, and certain non-Han elements, such as particularstrategies of organizing pitches, may not have been assimilated into thetradition of Chinese music. What happened between non-Han and Hanmusic in the Yuan court? Are there other residues of non-Han music inChinese music as it is experienced today? How can they be identified?These issues transcend the scope of the present article. And yet, the veryfact that the questions arise from the tunes renders them a reminder thatcurrent histories of China's musical past are formulated from Han-Chinese perspectives. Are those histories objective and representative?Such significance of the tunes begs questions of how they sounded in thepast, and how they can be performed in the present. These questions arecritical, because the tunes were music (expressions of/through sounds),and because present-day performance is the only way through which thetunes can be understood and experienced as music. Unless answered, thequestions generate scepticism concerning all theoretical narratives aboutthe tunes as early Chinese mu sic. Unless they describe musical sounds, nar-ratives about the tunes will always appear abstract, drawing attention tothe non-verifiable and hypothetical arguments which are inevitable inhistorical-musical investigations.

38Before abandoning any narrative ofthe tunes as too abstract or musically irrelevant, however, one must assessit on its own m erits. W hat would be th e stan dar ds for such an assessment?Who set those standards and by what authority? Are those standardsabsolutely and universally objective?39

" See Edward Hallett Carr, "The Historian and his Facts', What tsHistory?(Londo n, 1987), 7-30 ;Michael Stanford, "The Evidence of History', The Nature of Historical Knowledge (New York,1986), 56-75." See Thom as L . Haskell, 'Objectivity is not Neutrality: R hetoric vs. Practice in Peter Novick'sThat Noble Dream', History and Theory, 29 (1990), 129-67


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182 JOSEPHS C LAMFor theH ong Kong music scholars who com plain th at there is no m usicin Chinese music history the standards are positivist methodologies andvalues which areprevalent in Hong Kong andother Westernized Chinesecommunities.40 In other words, the scholars are arguing that narrativesabout the tunes must be formulated with autographs, sketches and othersimilar pieces of har d evidence, and tha t cred ible narratives are verifiableand would eventually lead to a definitive edition and authentic historicalperformance of the tunes.41 The scholars also realize that such a positivistapproach to studying the tunes is impossible and limiting.A scarcity of notated sources andother documents means that there islittle opportunity to formulate any narrative of the tunes with only hardevidence and verifiable hypotheses.42 The disappearance of historicalperformance practices leaves no basis for reconstructing the tunes asmusical sounds. Traditional Chinese musicians' licence in 'updating' pre-existing musical works ensures that the tunes will never sound as they didonce, even had they been transmitted continuously. In fact, if thescholars insist on hard data and verifiable arguments, they will have toconclude that the tunes will forever remain a historical mystery becausethere are simply too many unknowns. Such scepticism is not merelyacademic dialectic. As ethnic Chinese, the Hong Kong scholars wouldwant to claim the tunes as part of their musical heritage and to under-stand them in this context. And yet they cannot accept narratives whichviolate positivist tenets. They want at once to appropriate the tunes andto reject them.For its theoretical presumptions, foreignness to China's musical pastand crippling implications, the Hong Kong scholars' positivist under-standing of the tunes cannot be the final verdict.43 Sooner or later,traditional Chinese music masters - namely, Chinese musicians andresearchers who are knowledgeable about traditional Chinese music, whoexercise the traditional practice of rearranging pre-existing music forpresent-day needs, andwho do not hold inflexible belief in hard evidenceand verifiability - will produce their own narratives and reconstructionsof the tunes. Such an alternative approach to understanding the tunes isnot only the insiders' view, but may also be a practical solution to theproblems of Chinese music history.Traditional Chinese music masters always reconstruct and/or adjustpre-existing musical works to suit contemporary needs.44 Descriptions of

40 For a history of modern Chinese acceptance of scientism and positivism, see Daniel W Y.Kwok, Scientism m Chinese Thought, 1900-1950 (New Haven, 1965)

41 This sentence reports what Hong Kong music scholars emphasize as characteristics of Anglo-American musicology as it relates to Western art music For a discussion of Anglo-Americanmusicology, see Joseph Kerman, Contemplating Music Challenges to Musicology (Cambridge,Mass , 1985) See also Leo Treitler's review, 'The Power of Positivist Thinking', Journal of theAmerican Musicological Society, 42 (1989), 375-402, and 'History and Music', New Literary History,21 (1990), 299-319.

" There are numerous verbal descriptions of China's musical past, but there are relatively fewnotated sources See Zhongguo ymyue shupuzhi (Bibliography of Chinese Music Books and Scores)(Beijing, 1984)

43 For an analysis of the fundamental presumptions ln-music-histones of Western art music, seeLeo Treitler, 'The Present as History', Music and the Historical Imagination, 95-156.

44 See Fang Kun et al., 'A Discussion on Chinese National Musical Traditions', Asian Music, 12(1981), 1-15 For discussion of the dapu process in which qin music preserved in historical notation is


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THER E IS NO MUSIC IN CHINESE MUSIC HISTORY1 183

four p rom inen t cases will illustrate such confidence a nd pra ctice . As earlyas the second century , Du K ui consulted classical do cum ents a nd descrip-tions of historical musical practices to reconstruct ancient music (guyue)for Cao Cao (155-220), the king of the Wei.

45(Can music bereconstructed from verbal descriptions of historical music and practices?How?) In 1186, the famous poet a nd compo ser Jia ng K ui discovered, in apile of old docum ents belonging to a certain m usician, the n otation of theNishang yuyiqu (Costume of Rainbow Feather), which was composedbetween 745 and 756.46 After analysing the modal and formal structureof the no tate d m usic, identifying its discrepancies with historical descrip-tions and com m enting on its antiq uate d style, Jiang set a new p oetic textto one of the sections of the m usic . (Why did Jia ng superimp ose a creative

and contemporary feature on authentic historical music?) In 1968, theTaiwanese scholar Chuang Penli claimed to have reconstructed the Mingdynasty (1368-1644) version of Confucian ritual music from verbaldescriptions and sketchy notation.47 Since 1986, the Qing dynasty(1644-1911) version of Confucian ritual music has been revived in Con-fucius's home town, Qufu, China, celebrating the philosopher's birthdayand attracting international at tention.48Even today, traditional Chinese music masters still firmly believe thattheir 'updated' performances of musical works are representative of thepast.49 The rationale behind this traditional Chinese approach can betentatively explained as follows. Traditional Chinese music mastersunderstand a pre-existing musical work more as the representation of acertain 'essence' and less as a musical object with a particular structure.The essence represents what is unique and meaningful in the work;however, what is unique and meaningful is always defined according tomusical values of the present.50 Furthermore, traditional Chinese musicmasters believe that the essence of a musical work is independent of itsstructural features, which are merely the means of communicating theessence - content is independent of its form. These beliefs transform intoactions and results as follows. Traditional Chinese music masters changetheir musical values from time to time. Whenever such changes occur,the essence of a pre-existent musical work is redefined and its structuralfeatures adjusted (changed) accordingly. Such adjustments are deemednecessary to reveal better the essence of the musical work to contem-reconstructed in the present, see Bell Yung, 'Da Pu. The Recreative Process for the Music of theSeven-String Zither', Music and Context Essays for John M Ward (Cambridge, Mass., 1985),370-83, and 'H istorical Interdepe nden cy A Case Study of the Chinese Seven-String Zither', Journalof the American Mustcological Society, 40 (1987), 82-91" Jiaozhu Songshu yuezhi (An A nnotated Edition of the Music Chap ters m the History of theSong), ed Sujinren and Xiao Lianzi (Jinan, 1982), 11-12." Yang Yinhu and Yin Falu, Songjtang Baishi chuangzuo gequ yanjtu (S tudies of the Songs Com -posed by Jiang Batshi of the Song D ynasty) (Beijing, 1957), 4747 See JiKong hyuezht gaijtn (On Improving the Ritual and Music of the Sacrifice to Confucius)(Taipei, 1970)41 A detailed study of the reconstructed music is in progress" A written example of such an attitude is Ge Hong's 'Weiyi xiaode xingqiaocui' ( 'For Music, Heis Exhausted A Biographical Sketch of [Shang hai] Qin Musician Gong Yi'), Renmm yinyue(1991/4) , 25-7.! The traditional music masters may however consult and accept historically established mean-ings of a musical work.


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184 JOSEPH S.C LAMporary audiences. The musical work thus changed is still consideredrepresentative of what it was.This traditional Chinese approach encourages the reconstruction ofmusical works which have ceased to be performed. As long as one canfind the essence of those works, one can either gloss over certain gaps inavailable data about their structural details or substitute appropriateones from current practices. Such optimism operates with the belief thatthe tradition of Chinese music is long and continuous, and that manycurrent practices are either identical or similar to earlier ones.51 Thus thepredominance of binary rhythm, heterophonic texture, stable dynamiclevels and other so-called traditional features is considered typical of pastand present genres of Chinese music. Indeed, these traditional featuresare m aterials with which early Chinese mu sic can be recons tructed an d itsmissing data filled in. This optimistic attitude towards the reconstruc-tion of music of the past has been exercised in China for centuries: theeleventh-century philosopher Zhang Zai (1020-77) declared that music ofthe past could always be reconstructed in the present unless one was lostin the details ."The traditional Chinese approach includes many internal contradic-tions. For example, if the essence of the tunes is defined according topresent m usical values, tha t essence is not s om ething received from thepast. If reconstruction of the tunes depends on substitutes, thereconstruction can never be what the tunes were. Still, the traditionalChinese approach is a way of understanding the Chinese musical past,rendering it meaningful for the present. With verifiable data and non-verifiable hypotheses, the traditional Chinese approach formulates nar-ratives about the tunes which lead to reconstruction of their sounds,rendering the tunes relevant to the general Chinese music audience.T he trad ition al C hinese appro ach is also an effective way of conn ectingChina's musical past and present. The approach accepts changes intro-duced in the present without rejecting the past. It guarantees legitimacyof the new and smoothness in the transition from the 'old' to the'reconstructed', confirming the notion that the tradition of Chinese musicis long and continuous. The traditional Chinese approach is alsopragmatic. No musical works can sound absolutely identical in differenttimes. Besides pitch, rhythm, timbre and other fundamental ingredients,music is subject to change by the acoustic qualities of the performancelocale, the relationship between performers a nd audien ce, an d other con-textual factors. Even if all the structural ingredients of the tunes arereconstructed in the present, the minds and ears experiencing thereconstruction belong to a present-day audience.The pragmatic nature of the traditional Chinese approach encouragesreconstruction of the tunes. Traditional Chinese music masters can

11 A recent article illustratin g such a belief is Guo N aian's 'Zhongguo ch uanton g yinyue di fengge'('Musical Styles of T radi tion al Chinese. Music'), _ Wenhua Shtjie renrnm dt jiaoltu (CultureDialogues among Peoples of the World) (Beijing,_n d.), 58^6452 Yinyue Yanjiusuo, 'Zhang Zai lunyue' ('Zhang Zai Discusses Music'), Zhongguo gudat yuelunxuanji (A Selection of Ancient Chinese Music T heories) (Beijing, 1981), 188-9.


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reconstruct the tunes as soon as their musical essence has been grasped,and as soon as substitutes can be found for their missing features. Thefact th at the tune s are preserved only as roug h p itch outlines in the sourceis not an insurmountable obstacle. Rhythm, dynamics and other detailsnee ded for th e recon structio n will be found in descriptions of. orchestrasand music program m es in the Yuan court, and in knowledge about tradi-tional Chinese music. In other words, traditional Chinese music masterswho want to reconstruct the tunes would always find clues as to theirmusical identities. The masters would formulate and believe in narrative8: the tunes are early Chinese music which can be reconstructed andperformed in the present.A search am ong extant descriptions of Yuan court m usic produces d atawhich can be transformed into clues about the sounds of the tunes. If onepresumes that the tunes share fundamental similarities with traditionalChinese music, the following clues (i.e. speculations) are obvious. First,the tunes would have sounded like a collection of tone colours that didnot blend together. Instruments of court orchestras or ensembles, asdescribed in the Yuanshi, would have produced contrasting timbres,namely, heterogeneous sounds. The crisp and short sounds of stonechimes in large court orchestras would, for instance, stand apart from themetallic tones of the bell chimes. Music played by an ensemble of flutes,oboes and hour-glass drums would sound like a combination of threedistinctive timbres. Second, the tunes would have had few sudden andwide dynamic changes, as may be deduced from the fact that traditionalChinese music employs few. Third, the tunes, as played by courtorchestras or ensembles, would have had a heterophonic texture. Tradi-tional Chinese music, including that of the Mongolian minorities, ishetero pho nic. Fourth , tunes 1-4, interpreted as ban qu et music, wouldhave ha d a perform ance style different from tha t of tun e 5, which is sup-posedly intended to be secular ceremonial music. The two genres ofmusic had distinctive functions. Fifth, tunes 1 -4 would have appeared inlively rhythm and tempo because banquet music always accompaniedlively and rhythmic dances. In contrast, tune 5, which would haveaccom panied ceremonial movements, would have appear ed in steady andslow rhythm and tempo. With these five speculations, reconstruction ofthe tunes as musical sounds is a straightforward task of finding theappropriate features of traditional Chinese music.One hypothetical example will illustrate such a reconstruction and

explain why the Hong Kong music scholars would reject it. One maypostulate that tune 5 was performed to accompany ceremonial walkinginside a pala ce hall. T he 12 m od al transpositions of tun e 5 conform to theritual-cosmological theory of the monthly rotation of musical modes; thesame practice of monthly transpositions was applied to the processionalmusic that accompanied a prime minister's ceremonial approach to theemperor in the imperial auditions.53 On e may thus infer tha t tune 5 wasperformed by a terrace orchestra, which was assigned to provide secularceremonial music inside a palace hall. One may presume that the indi-" Yuanshi, 67 1667


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186 JOS EPH S C LAM

vidual pitches in tune 5 were performed as sustained notes, as was con-ventional in Chinese court ceremonial music.54 One may assume thattune 5 was performed in a temp o tha t m atched a prime minister's proces-sional movements. Similar assumptions will establish that the texture oftune 5 was, like most traditional Chinese music, heterophonic, and thatornaments were added to the notated pitches. The introduction of suchornaments is a common practice known as 'adding flowers' (jiahua).Finally, knowledge about traditional ritual music reveals that variouskinds of drum patterns marked the musical phrases of tune 5. With theabove speculations, tune 5 becomes early Chinese music, performableand relevant to the general Chinese music audience.To positivist Hong Kong music scholars, the above reconstruction of tune5 is a fantasy. At any rate, the reconstructed music is more a new com-position than an artefact of early Chinese music. To traditional Chinesemusic masters and the general music audience in Hong Kong, however,the reconstruction qualifies as music from the past. It not only contains averifiable pitch outline preserved in a fourteenth-century notated source,it also conveys to its present audience an essential message - one that isimmanent in tune 5, a piece of music for secular ceremonials in the Yuancourt. The reconstruction employs rhythm, timbres and other musicalelements which are common in traditional Chinese music and which areassociated with China's musical past. Embodying a present understand-ing of tune 5, the reconstruction and its narratives connect the presentwith the pa st, fulfilling one of the fu nd am ental goals of studyin g music ofthe past.

Furthermore, the reconstruction process of tune 5 is similar to otherattempts to understand music of the past. Traditional Chinese musicmasters may not understand tune 5 or any of the tunes through the firstseven narratives presented in earlier sections of this discussion, but theyhave to formulate their own narratives with verifiable facts and non-verifiable hypotheses. They have to convince themselves that the notatedmusic in the source is authentic music of the Yuan court (cf. narratives 1and 2). They have to analyse the notated music (cf. narratives 3 and 4)and supplement their analytical-notational data with verbal ones (cf. nar-ratives 5 and 6). Upon realizing one or more meaning(s) of the tune (cf.narrative 7), the pursuit of musical details begins and assumptions willbe made (cf. narrative 8). Once all the details necessary for performanceof tune 5 are found (a n d/ o r newly created), a reconstruction is bo rn. An dit will serve to remind the general Chinese audience of a musical past inthe Yuan court .As described above, there is a method in the ways traditional Chinesemusic masters would reconstruct tune 5 or any other piece of earlyChinese music. Historically and historiographically, their reconstructionsand histories canno t be dismissed on the groun ds that their narratives arenot based on positivist studies. In fact, traditional Chinese musicians arenot the only professionals who engage in speculative reconstructions and

" An explicit record of the practice is provided by Yangj ie's argum ents for its applicatio n (AD1080) See Songshi (The Standard History of the Song) (1345, Beijing Zhonghua shuju edn, 1977),128 2981


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narratives of historical music. Laurence Picken has reconstructed 'musicfrom the Tang court ' .55 Many musicians and scholars in the Westernworld have worked on early music, combining 'facts and fiction' to pro-duce one of the most energetic music movem ents of the century. Further-more, as eloquently argued by Leo Treitler, the positivist pursuit of harddata" an d of-formalist analysis is no t as objective as it~may~ seem. " 'Giventhe current state of music scholarship, one has to ask whether positivistmethodologies and values hold the one and only 'objective' way ofun derstan ding the tunes and their story, and of China's musical past. T heanswer must be no, if one respects cultural differences. A 'China-centered' understanding of the tunes and of Chinese music history isnecessary to reveal 'what is happening in that history in terms that are asfree as possible of imported criteria of significance'.57 It is crucial toreconsider wh at co nstitutes a piece of early Chinese music in Chinese andnon-C hinese contex ts. W ha t is the essence of a musical work? Is it a 'com-municative process' as defined by Dahlhaus? If so, what kind of 'text' isthe source an d how should on e assess a Chinese recon struction as a docu-ment of 'a particular mode of reception'?58

Answers are probably not to be found with either postivist or tradi-tional Chinese approaches. The positivist pursuit may identify someisolated facts, but it may not lead to an audible piece of early Chinesemusic, a verifiable narrative or a history of it. Unless a more flexible andculturally sensitive interpretation of hard evidence can be accepted, thereis neith er early Chinese m usic nor its history. Chinese reconstructions m ayhave preserved the essence of historical works of Chinese music, but suchworks are more than just their essence, and reconstructions beg the ques-tion how the originals sounded. Unless a more detailed (and perhapsm ore positivist) method ology is foun d, there is no way critically to un der-stand Chinese music as it was. Perhaps some kind of 'objective' fusion ofthe positivist and the traditional Chinese may generate new approachesand results.59 Then there may be music in Chinese music history, and

" Laurence Picken and his colleagu es have produced a series of 'reconstructed' and 'performab le'scores of 'music from the Tang court' which will not be discussed in this paper for the followingreasons. Picken and his colleagues' distinctive attempts to understand and reconstruct early music ofEast Asian cultures are intellectually, socially and musically different from the subject-matter andissues of this discussion Picken and his colleagues use a methodology that is based on a Westerntradition of philology and textual criticism, and that does not involve current practices of the musicalcultures they study Th e notated sources they have consulted were produced in Japan by Japanesemu sicians The Chinese attributes of that notated music are disputable Th e narratives andreconstructed compositions of Picken and his colleagues exist in specialized and scholarly publica-tions, and are not commonly known among general Chinese music audiences in Hong Kong or anyother Chinese comm unities See Music from the Tang Court, ed Laurence Picken et al., 5 vols(London, 1981, Cambridge, 1985-91). See also Richard Widdess, 'Historical Ethnomusicology',Ethnomusicology An Introduction, ed Helen Myers (New York, 1992), 219 -37 , and Joseph S CLam, review of Music from the Tang Court, li-in, Ethnomusicology, 33 (1989), 345-8" See Leo Treitler, 'The Power of Positivist Thinking', and Margaret Bent et al , 'Facts andV alues in Contemporary Musical Scholarship', CM S Proceedings The National and RegionalMeetings, 1985 (Boulder, 1986), 1-52" Paul Cohen, Discovering History in China American Historical W riting on the Recent ChinesePast (New York, 1984), 196" Carl Dahlhaus, Foundations of Music History, trans. J B Robinson (Lond on, 1983), 39." The word 'objective' refers to the objectivity defined in Haskell, 'Objectivity is not N eutrality'He states that 'the most commonly observed fulfilment of the ideal of objectivity in the historical pro-


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188 JOSEPHS C LAMChinese music historiography may become objective, culturally sensitive,practical and relevant. Suffice it to say, such a historiography would con-tribute to universal theories and methodologies in the understanding,reconstruction and perpetuation of any music from any past.

University of C alifornia, Santa Barbarafession is simply the powerful argument - the text that reveals by its every twist and turn its respectfulappre ciation of the alternatives it rejects' (p 135)

A PPEN D IXCHR ONOLOGY OF CHINESE DYNASTIES

Xia dynastyShang dynastyZhou dynastyQ_in dynastyFormer Han dynastyLater Han dynastyThree Kingdoms eraWestern Jin dynastyEra of North-South divisionSui dynastyTang dynastyFive dynasties eraNorthern Song dynastyLiao dynastyXixia dynastyJin dynastySouthern Song dynastyYuan dynastyMing dynastyQjng dynasty

2000?-1500? BC1500?-1066> BC1066?-221 BC221 -206 BC206 BC-AD 23AD 25 -220220-80266-316316-589581-618618-907907-60960-1127907-11251032-12271115-12341127-12791271-13681368-16441644-1911

there is no music in chinese music history

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