China, People’s Republic of (Chin. Zhonghua renmin gonghe guo).

Country in East Asia. China is composed of 22 contiguous provinces, five autonomous regions originally inhabited largely by ‘minority’ groups (Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang-Uighur, Guangxi-Zhuang, Ningxia-Hui and Tibet), three centrally-controlled municipalities (the capital Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin) and the special administrative region of Hong Kong. Its total area of about 9,573,000 km² also includes the area formerly called Manchuria (now the three north-eastern provinces). Of the total population, estimated to be 1,276 million in 2000, 55 ‘minority nationalities’, ethnically distinct from the Han Chinese majority, comprise about 6%.

The majority of the 21 million people (1997) of the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan originate from Fujian and eastern Guangdong provinces of mainland China; about 2.5 million came from other parts of mainland China with the Nationalists in 1949.

Outside of mainland China and Taiwan, the largest groups of Chinese include about 10 million in South-east Asia, (mostly in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia), and over 2 million in the USA (including Hawaii) and Canada. The music of these groups is discussed, as far as possible, in the articles on the countries in which they went to live.

See also Central Asia, §1; East Asia; Mongol music; Tibetan music.)

I. Introduction: historical, regional and study perspectives

II. History and theory

III. Musical instruments

IV. Living traditions

ALAN R. THRASHER (I, III), JOSEPH S.C. LAM (II, 1–5, IV, 4(ii)(a)), JONATHAN P.J. STOCK (II, 6, IV, 6(i)), COLIN MACKERRAS (IV, 1(i)), FRANCESCA REBOLLO-SBORGI (IV, 1(ii)), F. KOUWENHOVEN, A. SCHIMMELPENNINCK (IV, 2), STEPHEN JONES (IV, 3, 4(i)), HAN MEI (IV, 4(ii)(b)), WU BEN (IV, 4(ii)(c)), HELEN REES (IV, 5(i)), SABINE TREBINJAC (IV, 5(ii)), JOANNA C. LEE (IV, 6(ii))

China, People’s Republic of

I. Introduction: historical, regional and study perspectives

Chinese music, owing to its depth of historical development and breadth of regional diversity, constitutes an uneasy alliance of many traditions. Some traditions, such as court ritual music and qin zither, maintain observable lines of continuity between ancient periods and the present; in others, such as the common-practice vocal and instrumental genres, their histories are more recent, and regional differences among similar types often quite pronounced. Thus a balanced view of traditions called ‘Chinese’ must be based not only on a knowledge of written history and related iconography but also on the distinctive cultural patterns and musical tastes of the various regions.

1. Han Chinese regions and genres.

2. Minority regions and genres.

3. Sources and perspectives.

China, People’s Republic of, §I: Introduction.

1. Han Chinese regions and genres.

China today occupies a vast land mass extending from the Mongolian steppe southwards to the borders of present-day Vietnam and Myanmar (Burma), and from the East China Sea westwards to the borders of India and Afghanistan. The ancient centre of Chinese civilization, however, was a very much smaller area on the ‘Central Plain’ of north China (present-day Henan, Hebei, Shanxi and Shandong provinces). Following the emergence of a number of contending kingdoms such as Qin, Wei and Chu, Qin ascended to power in the 3rd century bce, expanding its influence to the South China Sea and unifying the political system throughout its newly acquired empire. Further expansion in these and other directions occurred during the Han dynasty (206bce–220ce), bringing with it the dissemination of many cultural elements, such as the written language and Confucian philosophy and its rituals. As a result, most Chinese today refer to themselves as ‘Han people’ in acknowledgement of this consolidation.

The notion of a monolithic Chinese culture has penetrated deeply into popular thinking, both Chinese and Western. But unification touched the many regions of China unevenly, and over the last 2000 years, diverse regional subcultures, dialects and musical traditions have grown and thrived. These subcultures have gravitated for the most part towards the drainage areas of the Huanghe (‘Yellow river’) in north China, the lower Yangzi (Yangtze) river in central-eastern China, and the Zhujiang (‘Pearl river’) delta in south China. Their various musical traditions commonly share some structural similarities, although they are valued by local practitioners for their distinctive regional qualities. Among the many non-Han peoples, ethnic minorities who have been pushed into the mountains, deserts and other less desirable space, the more usual response to Han unification has been resistance and often bloody rebellion. Their various musical traditions share few roots with the ‘great tradition’ of the Han.

The Han Chinese comprise roughly 94% of the population of China. While the common-practice traditions retain close associations with specific regions, several Han music genres have achieved national prominence over the centuries, such as the Confucian ritual music of the court, the traditions of qin zither, Kunqu opera and Beijing opera, and other genres supported by the emperor or Han Chinese literati. Since the mid-20th century, the concert-hall tradition of ‘national music’ (guoyue) has also achieved a particularly strong pan-Chinese presence and is often the only tradition known among young conservatory-trained musicians of recent decades.

Popular Chinese thinking divides Han China into two broad geographic regions: the North, with its lively traditions of Beijing opera and wind-and-percussion music, and the South, with its more refined literary traditions of Kunqu opera and silk-and-bamboo music. Qiao Jianzhong, approaching this question from a more empirical orientation, divides the country into as many as 12 music culture areas, based upon historic regional nomenclature and distinctive performance characteristics. The divisions given below, which largely coincide with his music areas, are based on geographic and socio-linguistic factors, resulting in what some sinologists call ‘macroregions’ (fig.1).

(i) Central Plain.

(ii) The north-west and central interior.

(iii) Jiangnan.

(iv) Sichuan basin.

(v) The south-east coast.

(vi) Cantonese region.

China, People’s Republic of, §I, 1: Introduction., Han Chinese regions and genres.

(i) Central Plain.

Bordering the Yellow river as it flows through and often over the floodplain of northern Henan and western Shandong provinces is the region known as the Central Plain (Zhongyuan). This broad area is the acknowledged birthplace of Han Chinese civilization and subsequent location of political centres (especially at Luoyang and Anyang) from the Shang through Tang periods (c16th century bce to 10th century ce). The northern province of Hebei, together with the cities of Beijing and Tianjin, may also be included in this macroregion, though cultural development here occurred later. Artefacts of musical significance unearthed on the Central Plain include bone and clay flutes dating to between 6000 and 5000 bce, together with later finds of Shang bronze bells and stone chimes. Oracle bones dating from between the 14th and 12th centuries bce, on which are inscribed many references to musical instruments, ceremony and dance, were also found in this region. Much later, imperial ceremonies such as Confucian rituals, with their magnificent instrumental ensembles were established in the Shandong city of Qufu (legendary home of Confucius), in Beijing and in other urban centres.

Instrumental ensembles in common practice today are mostly of the wind-and-percussion variety, notably the processional suona-and-percussion bands and the ritually more significant ensembles utilizing guan (reed pipe), sheng (mouth organ), di (flute), yunluo (frame of pitched gongs) and percussion. Both types are common throughout northern China, the latter currently most famed in central Hebei province. The most significant instrumental solo tradition to emerge on the Central Plain is the ‘northern school’ of zheng zither, centred in eastern Henan and south-western Shandong. Beijing opera and the other opera traditions of this are more recent in origin and related to those opera types of the north-west and other areas of central China. Narrative song is represented by varieties of dagu (‘large drum’, accompanied by large sanxian and drum), as well as Henan zhuizi and Shandong qinshu, which are unique to their areas. Folksong genres include shan'ge (‘mountain songs’) and the call-and-response type tiange (‘field songs’) of Henan, and the colourful Fengyang huagu (‘flower drum’) songs, which originated in Anhui province and spread into Shandong and other areas. The music culture of the Central Plain exerted considerable influence on surrounding regions, most immediately in the north-west and central interior.

China, People’s Republic of, §I, 1: Introduction., Han Chinese regions and genres.

(ii) The north-west and central interior.

The north-west (Xibei), centred on present-day Shaanxi and western Shanxi provinces and extending into the more western provinces of Gansu and Ningxia, is a highland plateau surrounding the upper reaches of the Yellow river. This region, centre of political activity during the Western Zhou dynasty (c11th–8th centuries bce), saw the rise of the 3rd-century bce state of Qin, whose founder, Qin Shihuang, boldly declared himself the first emperor of China and instigated massive and effective measures of political unification. His capital was established near the city of Xi'an, an area that retained its importance for the next millennium. Present-day wind-and-percussion music, such as the ceremonial guyue (‘drum music’) of the Xi'an area and other variants, have been thought to retain some Tang (618–907ce) characteristics, though they have naturally undergone subsequent change. Like related wind-and-percussion traditions on the Central Plain, these genres are still performed in conjunction with funerals, calendrical rites and other celebrations. Among the regional opera traditions, the lively bangzi (which appeared in the Ming period, 1368–1644) is the most famous and influential; the style was absorbed into many local opera traditions elsewhere in China. Most distinctive of the folksong types are the high-tessitura, rhythmically flexible xintianyou of northern Shaanxi and nearby areas, and yangge, a very old type of dance-song that spread widely across northern China. Located in the central interior provinces of Hubei and Hunan (historically dominated by the state of Chu) are the ancient tomb sites of Zenghou Yi (5th century bce) and Mawangdui (2nd century bce), the former containing a spectacular collection of musical instruments, most likely a ritual ensemble. During subsequent centuries, as this interior region lost its political and cultural prominence, it absorbed many other traditions from the Central Plain, such as the wind-and-percussion ensembles.

Owing to constant pressure from the nomadic and warlike horsemen of the Mongolian steppe, the centre of Chinese culture shifted after the Tang period from the north-west, south-eastwards to the Jiangnan area.

China, People’s Republic of, §I, 1: Introduction., Han Chinese regions and genres.

(iii) Jiangnan.

The fertile rice-growing region of the Yangzi river basin of central-eastern China is most commonly known as Jiangnan (literally, ‘south of the river’), a region centred in present-day southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang provinces and populated by speakers of Wu dialects. Jiangnan emerged as the dominant economic and cultural centre of China after the 12th century, engendering an enormous range of creativity by poets, artists and musicians active in such newly cosmopolitan cities as Hangzhou and Suzhou. Today, the city of Shanghai has taken over the role of cultural capital. Most distinctive of the Jiangnan vocal genres is the ‘classical’ opera Kunqu, which emerged in the 16th century and in which the qudi flute is the principal instrument of accompaniment. More recent opera variants include Shanghai opera (Huju) and Shaoxing opera (Yueju). Other vocal genres prevalent in southern Jiangsu include the pingtan narrative song, accompanied by pipa and sanxian, and various folksong types.

Predominant among the instrumental ensemble traditions is sizhu (‘silk-and-bamboo’), a type of instrumental chamber music dominated by strings and flutes, derived during the 19th century from existing string music and local ceremonial traditions. The Jiangnan region is also the centre of two instrumental solo genres of great importance: the revered pipa tradition, with no fewer than four traditional ‘schools’ (see §IV, 4(ii)(c) below), and the more ancient qin tradition (see §IV, 4(ii)(a) below), emblematic of the highest of literati ideals, also represented by several ‘schools’. From the 1930s the city of Shanghai became an important centre for the growth of guoyue (‘national music’), 20th-century concert-hall music comprised of ensemble compositions, instrumental concertos and solo pieces. Musical influences from the Jiangnan region have been strong on the poorer nearby areas of Anhui and northern Jiangsu (which also absorbed influences from Shandong province) and on the Han population up-river in Sichuan province.

China, People’s Republic of, §I, 1: Introduction., Han Chinese regions and genres.

(iv) Sichuan basin.

The vast south-western province of Sichuan was in imperial times a prosperous region. Emerging under the kingdom of Shu in the 3rd century ce, the fertile agricultural basin of eastern Sichuan was able to sustain a very large population of farming peoples from the Tang dynasty onwards, by which time there had been a sizable migration from north-west China and the Central Plain. Sichuan was also strongly influenced by the more distant region of Jiangnan. This shared influence is especially evident in the make-up of Sichuan opera (Chuanju), which during the Ming dynasty absorbed diverse elements of North-west opera (such as bangzi) and Jiangnan opera (especially Kunqu), together with other influences. The narrative song genre yangqin (named after its principal instrument of accompaniment) most likely emerged after the Ming period and is still performed in traditional teahouses. While instrumental music in Sichuan has as yet been little studied, a regional style of qin is preserved. Among folksong types, shan'ge, especially the minority-influenced antiphonal courtship songs, became popular in rural areas, and along the upper stretches of the Yangzi river, workers and boatmen sang strongly rhythmic worksongs (haozi).

China, People’s Republic of, §I, 1: Introduction., Han Chinese regions and genres.

(v) The south-east coast.

The south-eastern coastal region of present-day southern Fujian and eastern Guangdong provinces, historically isolated from the rest of China by rugged mountainous terrain, is home to a complex of subcultures that are clearly less homogeneous than in other regions of China. This region is dominated by Minnan (Hokkien) and Chaozhou peoples on the coast, together with the more insular (but nevertheless highly influential) Hakka subculture of inland areas. While the Minnan and Chaozhou subcultures share many close cultural and linguistic relationships, their musical traditions appear to be based on different systems. The Minnan area is centred in southern Fujian province, the urban areas of Quanzhou and Xiamen being the largest. Since the Minnan were capable sea travellers, many migrated to Taiwan (where they dominate the population), the Philippines, other Pacific areas and South-east Asia. Their vocal and instrumental genre nanguan (or nanyue) is distinctive for its usage of very old instrument variants (such as the southern pipa and dongxiao flute) and its melodic refinement and introspection, which some scholars have traced to Tang or Song court traditions. Among their opera traditions, the flamboyant gezaixi is most popular.

To the south, on the coastal plain of eastern Guangdong, lies the centre of the Chaozhou subculture. Chaozhou and Shantou are the largest urban areas, though many Chaozhou people have settled in Hong Kong and as far away as Bangkok, Singapore and Malaysia. Chaozhou opera (Chaoju) is still very popular throughout these areas of settlement. Chaozhou instrumental chamber music, known as xianshi (‘string-poem’), is strikingly different from the neighbouring Minnan music in its use of distinctive instrument variants (such as the high-pitched fiddle erxian and 16-string zheng) and a different melodic repertory, shared in part with Hakka musicians. Chaozhou da luogu (‘great gong-and-drum’ music) is the best known of the ritual wind-and-percussion traditions along the south-east coast.

The Hakka (Kejia) subculture is centred in the mountainous Meixian district of north-eastern Guangdong province, though with a diaspora stretching across to Sichuan province and into Hong Kong, Taiwan and throughout South-east Asia. The very conservative Hakka people, having migrated south from the Central Plain in several waves over the last 1500 years, think of themselves as the preservers of the true Han spirit, exemplified by a strong sense of filial piety and other Confucian virtues. Indeed, the Hakka zheng tradition (see §IV, 4(ii)(b) below), which local musicians consider to be reflective of ancient Confucian ideals, maintains a social position analogous to the qin of the Jiangnan region (an instrument rarely played on the south-east coast). In vocal music, the Hakka maintain their own opera tradition (hanju) and a wealthy heritage of folksong (shan'ge).

China, People’s Republic of, §I, 1: Introduction., Han Chinese regions and genres.

(vi) Cantonese region.

Finally, centring on the Pearl river delta in the far south of China is the Cantonese subculture. The Cantonese occupy most of southern Guangdong province (the cities of Guangzhou and Hong Kong containing the largest urban populations), with substantial settlements in Guangxi province, Macau, Vietnam, Singapore and the Western world. While preserving old elements of language and social behaviour, in their expressive culture the Cantonese have demonstrated over the last century a unique openness to Western ideas, especially in their lively and eclectic music. Most significant is the Cantonese opera (Yueju), arguably the newest of all Chinese opera traditions, which during the 1930s blended northern operatic styles with local songs (and some Western influence) in the creation of a highly syncretic form. Instrumental ensemble music (dominated by the two-stringed fiddle gaohu and dulcimer yangqin) emerged at the same time, based on traditional local genres as well as the Jiangnan pipa repertory, and prompting unprecedented creativity from several dozen composers. Traditional folk and narrative songs such as longzhou and nanyin have mostly been absorbed into the opera tradition. The unique repertory of xianshui ge (‘salt water songs’), however, is still known among the older generation of ‘boat people’, a subculture not well assimilated into the Cantonese mainstream.

China, People’s Republic of, §I: Introduction.

2. Minority regions and genres.

Reflecting even greater cultural diversity than the Han Chinese are China’s ethnic minorities. Known as ‘national minorities’, more than 50 non-Han cultures live in various ‘autonomous’ regions, prefectures and counties at the margins of Han China; taken as a whole, they comprise roughly 6% of the total population. They will be outlined here in three geographic categories (see §IV, 5 below; see also Mongol music; Tibetan music; and Taiwan, §2).

(i) The north-east and Inner Mongolia.

The north-east, including the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang, has been subject to considerable Han migration since the 17th century and industrialization in the 20th century, but its several minority cultures retain at least some of their traditional ways. The largest groups are Manchu (over 4 million) and Korean (about 3 million). The Manchu, who ruled China during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), have become largely assimilated, but traditions such as shamanism remain strong. The Koreans, living mostly in eastern Jilin, bordering North Korea, have also modified their traditional culture under Han influence.

In the grassland area of Inner Mongolia, south of the Chinese-Mongolian border, live more than 3 million Mongols of different ethnicities, many of whom still practise transhumant pastoralism. Because of the intertwined histories of China and Mongolia (the founder of the Yuan dynasty was Genghis Khan's grandson Khubilai, who transferred the centre of the Mongol Empire from Karakorum to today's Beijing in the 13th century), Mongols also inhabit other provinces, such as Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang and Yunnan. They have become renowned for their long-songs accompanied by the two-string ‘horse-head’ fiddle, and narrative tales accompanied by the four-string fiddle.

(ii) The far west.

The far west of China, dominated by present-day Xinjiang province, is one of the largest geographic regions in China. Through its desert corridor ran the legendary Silk Road, along which Buddhist and other material culture and music were introduced into China over the last two millennia. Occupying this area today are a dozen tribal peoples with close ethno-linguistic ties to Central Asia. Largest among them are the Uighurs (about 6 million), Turkic speakers with Muslim-influenced religious practices, who today dominate the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Smaller in numbers are the Kazakh, Kyrgyz and others. Arab and Persian musical influences have been strong here. Especially characteristic of the region's music-making are the full ensembles of Central Asian instruments, including dutar and tanbur lutes, daf frame drum and many others, employed in the performance of muqam suites (see §IV, 5(ii) below; see also Central Asia, §4). Living in isolated pockets throughout the area and elsewhere in China are the Hui (about 7 million), who are also Muslim in belief but otherwise closely related to the Han.

(iii) The south-west and Tibet.

South-west China has at its core the mountainous provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou, though areas of southern Sichuan, western Guangxi and the vast Xizang plateau (Tibet) are often included as well. Closely related tribal peoples also live in neighbouring northern Guangdong and western Hunan provinces, and across the borders in Vietnam and other areas of South-east Asia. As a region of early kingdoms, such as Dian and Nanzhao, the south-west was known to the Han Chinese since the Tang dynasty and earlier. Today it is a region of great heterogeneity, including roughly two dozen tribal cultures speaking dialects of several broad language families. Lolo speakers (a Sino-Tibetan branch) include the Yi (about 5.5 million), Tibetans (about 5 million), Bai (about a million) and many smaller cultures of Yunnan province, most of which absorbed a variety of Han influences over the ages. Whereas Tibetan music is well documented, the Yunnan genres, such as unaccompanied courtship songs (duige) sung between male and female, and circle dance-songs (dage) accompanied by lutes, mouth organs or other instruments, are less well known.

Tai speakers, related to the Thai in Thailand, though dominated in China by the huge Zhuang population (about 13 million, mostly in Guangxi), are lowland farmers who have been exposed to strong sinicization over recent centuries. Miao-Yao speakers, notably the high-mountain dwelling Miao (about 5 million, mostly in Guizhou) and Yao (about 1·5 million), have remained more isolated from mainstream Chinese developments. One distinctive Miao genre is the lusheng dance, for which the large mouth organ Lusheng is used to accompany group dances associated with calendrical festivals, courtship and other functions.

China, People’s Republic of, §I: Introduction.

3. Sources and perspectives.

This section seeks to identify major trends in the study of Chinese music during the imperial and modern periods.

(i) The imperial period.

Written sources for music are voluminous for the imperial period (until 1912). These include not only official writings, such as sections on music in dynastic histories, imperially commissioned encyclopedias and music treatises, but also musical references in novels, poetry and anecdotal ‘notebook’ literature. Some are valuable in giving alternative views to the Confucian ethic propounded in official sources. For instance, the 3rd-century musician and philosopher Ji Kang (or Xi Kang) advanced a well-articulated anti-Confucian aesthetic reflecting Daoist philosophies.

But the primary motivation for the growth of Chinese musical scholarship resides in the ancient association made between music and government theory. With the emergence of the Confucian texts (c3rd and 2nd centuries bce), comprehensive theories of music philosophy and pitch systems evolved. These theories served to establish the principles of a ‘refined music’ (yayue), believed to reinforce state-sanctioned norms of behaviour and, through regulation of pitch systems, reconcile the empire with the cosmological order. So important was the effort to bring all things into harmony that, in both Zhou and early Han dynasties (before the 1st century bce), offices of music (yuefu) were attached to the governments to oversee and coordinate this activity. Thus the Confucian orientation was a powerful motivational force in early scholarship. A remarkably large number of imperial compilations from the period of Confucian classics onwards have extended sections on music, the most recent and largest being the monumental 18th-century encyclopedia Gujin tushu jicheng. In this source, the music section is included not within the category of ‘Arts and sciences’, but under ‘Political economy’, together with sections on the civil service examination system, court ceremonies and military administration.

While scholarship of the imperial period touches upon many aspects, it focusses primarily upon six areas:

Ethos of music. The ethos or philosophy of music (yuelun), an area close to the centre of Confucian orthodoxy, is the dominant theme of the earliest writers. Music (yue) is treated primarily as a medium to promote essential values of the Confucian state (such as moderate behaviour). While this philosophy is advanced in several of the Confucian classics, it is most cogently presented in the Yueji (Record of music) section of the Liji (Record of rites; c1st century bce). This Confucian view is repeated and interpreted in works throughout the imperial period, including Chen Yang's early 12th-century music treatise Yueshu (nearly half of whose 200 chapters contain commentary on the Confucian classics), and in the various encyclopedic compilations and dynastic histories.

Pitch systems and modes. Scholarly interest in pitch systems and modes (lülü) arose from governmental attempts to establish cosmologically the root pitch (huangzhong, ‘yellow bell’) of each empire and bring the 12 chromatic pitches (lülü) into correspondence with the cyclic nature of the calendar. Among the earliest textual accounts to detail these theories is the Lüshi chunqiu (c239 bce). As an essential part of this inquiry, it became known early in China that the circle of pure 5ths taken 12 times produced an interval sharper than the octave taken seven times. Initial attempts to shrink the size of the 5th and thus correct the discrepancy were made as early as the 2nd century bce and documented in the Huai Nanzi (c120 bce). With the publication of Zhu Zaiyu's music treatises Lüxue xinshuo (1584) and Lülü jingyi (1596), this endeavour was finally given a sophisticated formulation resulting in a type of equal temperament. The concept of ‘mode’ (diao), which in Chinese theory exists in five-note and seven-note forms, is well documented in the 3rd-century bce dictionary Erya and other early sources. Summaries and interpretations of these theories of pitch and mode are found in most later treatises, including the 12th-century Lülü xinshu and 18th-century Lülü zhengyi.

Confucian ritual music. While historic documentation of Buddhist and Daoist musical traditions has been minimal (most accounts dating from the Qing dynasty), Confucian court ritual music, embodying the musical ideals of Confucian philosophy and the ancient pitch system, has been well documented over the last millennium. Coverage of all aspects of the ritual is found in most of the above-named music treatises and in encyclopedias and dynastic histories as well.

Musical instruments. Documentation of the history, construction and symbolic associations of musical instruments is so abundant in historic sources that the field of Chinese organology is treated by many scholars as a separate area of inquiry. The earliest descriptions, after citations in the Shijing (Classic of odes; c7th century bce) appear in Confucian texts such as Zhouli (Rites of Zhou; c3rd century bce) and Erya (c3rd century bce), and in the dictionary Shuowen jiezi (ce c121). More comprehensive accounts of both indigenous and introduced instruments appear in the Tang-dynasty encyclopedia Tongdian (801), the 9th-century general music treatise Yuefu zalu and Chen Yang's widely quoted treatise Yueshu (c1100; see §III below).

Instrumental music. Documentation of instrumental music in imperial times focusses upon the scholars' traditions, not surprisingly. While some transcriptions of music (in gongche or other notation) for di and xiao, pipa, zheng and instrumental ensembles appear in Qing sources (rarely earlier), it is the qin zither tradition that is most thoroughly documented, with many essays and treatises dating from the 2nd century onwards, and over 200 collections of qin music in notation from the 6th century onwards (see §IV, 4 below).

Vocal music. Most historic documentation of vocal music focusses on songs from the Shijing, songs composed by the 12th-century Jiang Kui and other art songs. Although folksongs were widespread throughout China, they were ignored by imperial scholars. Coverage of opera is dominated by Kunqu, for which numerous treatises and notations appear from the 16th century onwards. Repertory collections for Beijing opera and some other regional traditions date mostly from the early 20th century (see §IV, 1(i) below).

(ii) The modern period.

Research orientations during the 20th century shifted away from some of the areas outlined above because of the disintegration of the Confucian institution early in the century and the growth of a new social order and new political imperatives. Interest in the ethos of music (i.e. music for promotion of Confucian values) and in Confucian ritual music itself waned among scholars, especially those on the Chinese mainland, although more recently aesthetics have once again become a popular topic. Research into the ancient pitch systems and modes however, continued without interruption, in large part because this body of theory could more easily be disconnected from the Confucian institution that it formerly served. A number of useful analytical accounts have been published since the 1950s (see bibliography).

Several research orientations gained strength from the mid-20th century onwards. Most significant is the documentation of Chinese music history, which took root in the 1930s with the publications of Wang Guangqi and matured during and following the 1950s with the superb scholarship of Yang Yinliu and others. Yang's now standard survey of Chinese music history (1981) documents the numerous historical traditions, instruments and theories for each dynasty. With the formation of the Music Research Institute (Yinyue yanjiusuo) in Beijing, many essential research tools pertinent to Chinese music history have been assembled (see bibliography and §II below). Simultaneously, documentation of musical instruments has drawn new interest, aided by extraordinary discoveries of buried instruments and the growth of Chinese archaeology (see §III below).

Most important of the late 20th-century trends was a new interest in the systematic documentation of regional common-practice traditions, notably folksong, opera, narrative song, instrumental music and dance. Beginning in the 1980s, a massive project was organized by the Chinese Musicians' Association and the Ministry of Culture to assemble an Anthology of Folk Music of the Chinese Peoples (Zhongguo minzu minjian yinyue jicheng) based on fieldwork and including numerous early notations and contemporary transcriptions of the music genres in common practice (see §IV Introduction below). As a result of this work, new insights are emerging into actual local practice. Study of the music of the ‘national minorities’ is also receiving greater attention (see §IV, 5 below).

Many useful analytic accounts of the local comon-practice traditions are found in Chinese-language journals such as Yinyue yanjiu, Zhongguo yinyuexue and those of the many regional conservatories. Most notable among Western-language journals that focus on these and other topics are the American ACMR Reports (journal of the Association for Chinese Music Research), CHIME (journal of the European Foundation for Chinese Music Research), Chinoperl, Asian Music and Musica asiatica. Among the best of the archives containing Chinese music materials are the Music Research Institute (Beijing), the Library of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, the Chinese Music Archive at the University of Hong Kong, the Harvard-Yenching Library (Cambridge, MA) and the CHIME Library at the European Foundation for Chinese Music Research (Leiden).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

For a comprehensive list of Chinese journals see Yung, 1990, and Zhongguo, 1990. General bibliographies can be found in Zhongguo, 1984; Thrasher, 1993; GEWM, iii (‘China’). For historical sources, see §II. For instruments, see §III. For the Anthology of Folk Music of the Chinese Peoples and common-practice traditions, see §IV.

general histories and perspectives

Wang Guangqi: Zhongguo yinyue shi [History of Chinese music] (Shanghai, 1934)

Guo Nai'an and others: Minzu yinyue gailun [Survey of Chinese music] (Beijing, 1964/R) [YYS pubn]

Cheung Sai-bung: Zhongguo yinyue shilun shugao [Historical studies of Chinese music] (Hong Kong, 1974–5)

Han Kuo-huang: ‘Three Chinese Musicologists: Yang Yinliu, Yin Falu, Li Chunyi’, EthM, xxiv (1980), 483–529

Yang Yinliu: Zhongguo gudai yinyue shigao [Draft history of ancient Chinese music] (Beijing, 1981)

Liang Mingyue: Music of the Billion: an Introduction to Chinese Musical Culture (New York, 1985)

L. Moser: The Chinese Mosaic: the Peoples and Provinces of China (Boulder, CO, 1985)

Huang Xiangpeng: Chuantong shi yitiao heliu [Tradition flows like a river] (Beijing, 1990)

Qiao Jianzhong and Mao Jizeng, eds.: Zhongguo yinyuexue yidai zongshi Yang Yinliu jinian ji [Commemorative volume for Yang Yinliu, founding master of Chinese musicology] (Taipei, 1992)

Shen Qia: ‘Minzu yinyuexue zai Zhongguo’ [Ethnomusicology in China], Zhongguo yinyuexue (1996), no.3, pp.5–22

Huang Xiangpeng: Zhongguorende yinyue he yinyuexue [Music and musicology of the Chinese] (Ji'nan, 1997)

Qiao Jianzhong: Tudi yu ge [Land and song] (Ji'nan, 1998)

dictionaries and other research tools

J. Needham, K.G. Robinson and Wang Ling, eds.: ‘Bibliographies’, Science and Civilization in China, iv/1 (Cambridge, 1962), 335–97

F. Lieberman: Chinese Music: an Annotated Bibliography (New York, 2/1979)

Zhongguo xiqu quyi cidian [Dictionary of Chinese opera and narrative] (Shanghai, 1981)

Zhongguo dabaike quanshu: xiqu, quyi [Encyclopedia sinica: opera and narrative] (Beijing, 1983)

Zhongguo yinyue cidian [Dictionary of Chinese music] (Beijing, 1984; suppl. vol., 1992)

Zhongguo yinyue shupu zhi [Catalogue of sources and notations of Chinese music] (Beijing, 1984)

Zhongguo yinyue nianjian [Chinese music yearbook] (Beijing/Ji'nan, 1986–) [YYS pubn]

Liu Dongsheng and Yuan Quanyou, eds.: Zhongguo yinyue shi tujian [Pictorial guide to the history of Chinese music] (Beijing, 1988) [YYS pubn]

Zhongguo minzu minjian yinyue jicheng [Anthology of folk music of the Chinese peoples] (Beijing, 1988–), vols. by province incl. following categories: Zhongguo minjian gequ jicheng [Anthology of Chinese folksongs], Zhongguo xiqu zhi [Monographs on Chinese opera], Zhongguo xiqu yinyue jicheng [Anthology of Chinese opera music], Zhongguo quyi zhi [Monograph on Chinese narrative singing], Zhongguo quyi yinyue jicheng [Anthology of Chinese narrative singing music], Zhongguo minzu minjian qiyuequ jicheng [Anthology of instrumental pieces of the Chinese peoples], Zhongguo minzu minjian wudao jicheng [Anthology of folk dance of the Chinese peoples]

Zhongguo dabaike quanshu: yinyue, wudao [Encyclopedia sinica: music and dance] (Beijing, 1989)

Zhongguo minzu yinyui daxi [Compendium of traditional Chinese music], ed. Dungfang yinyue xuehui (Shanghai, 1989)

B. Yung: ‘Music Journals from PRC’, ACMR Reports, iii/2 (1990), 9–12; repr. in CHIME, no.2 (1990), 52–7

1906–1949 Zhongguo yinyue qikan pianmu huilu [Directory of Chinese music journals, 1906–1949] (Beijing, 1990) [YYS pubn]

A.R. Thrasher: ‘China’, Ethnomusicology: Historical and Regional Studies, ed. H. Myers (New York, 1993), 311–44

V. Fung: ‘Chinese Music Journals Published in Chinese and Located in Selected Major U.S. Libraries’, ACMR Reports, viii/2 (1995), 52–70

Xue Zongming: Zhongguo yinyue wenxian shumu huibian [Catalogue of sources on Chinese music] (Gaoxiong, 1996)

China, People’s Republic of

II. History and theory

1. General.

2. Antiquity to the Warring States period (to 221 bce).

3. Qin to Tang dynasties (221 bce–907 ce).

4. Song to Yuan dynasties (960–1368).

5. Ming to Qing dynasties (1368–1911).

6. Since 1911.

China, People’s Republic of, §II: History and theory

1. General.

The continuously documented history of Chinese music reflects both the vast size of the country and ethnic and cultural interactions; constant change has nevertheless been based on long traditions. For its variety and dynamism in both time and space, Huang Xiangpeng has compared Chinese music to a river, which carries in its present current rich historical material on aspects such as aesthetics, practices, repertories, song texts, instruments and musicians.

The broad view of Chinese music history is clear. Despite historical and regional variation, it is unified not only by a degree of geographical, political and cultural homogeneity but also by many distinctively Chinese pairs of yin and yang dynamics. These include ‘proper’ versus ‘vernacular’ musics; national versus regional developments; ethnically Han Chinese genres and practices versus non-Han ones; commoners' creation of repertories and styles versus the élite's appropriation and remoulding of them; and retrospective understanding and faithful transmission of inherited musics versus innovatory interpretations of them.

Nevertheless, much about Chinese music history and theory remains unclear. In addition to mysteries about structural features of historical works, there are numerous unanswered questions about aspects such as performing practices, venues and interrelationships between repertories. The filling of these lacunae depends on future research and discovery of new evidence that will overcome a relative lack of notated sources and balance the Confucian and élitist biases that permeate available sources. The prognosis is promising. Recent studies have discovered musical traditions (such as the so-called ‘drum music’ of Xi'an and the operas of Putian and Xianyou in Fujian) that, having resisted the forces of 20th-century modernization and Westernization, may have preserved residues of music that disappeared centuries ago. Since the end of two millennia of imperial rule in 1911 (Table 1), and even since the revolution of 1949, while the towns have been increasingly affected by forces such as Maoism and transnational capitalism, rural areas have persisted in keeping their regional traditions.

Stimulated by studies of historical sources and living traditions, and propelled by an economy growing rapidly since the 1980s, contemporary China is heading towards uncharted music frontiers, rediscovering its musical roots and reconstructing historical repertories while creating new Chinese music. Indeed, the new ways in which China responds to the forces of the contemporary world are reminiscent of earlier periods, such as the fundamental shifts of the social and political order in the Qin-Han and Song eras, which conveniently serve as dividing points in the following sketch of Chinese music history.

China, People’s Republic of, §II: History and theory

2. Antiquity to the Warring States period (to 221 bce).

From the earliest times, Chinese people sang, danced and played such instruments as bone flutes and clay vessel flutes to request rain and other survival needs from supernatural forces. By the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the Chinese court had already established traditions legitimizing imperial ancestors as military, political and moral leaders with elaborate works of song, dance and music played on stone-chimes, bell-chimes, drums and other instruments; the Shao and Wu, two much discussed musical works from Chinese antiquity, are representative. At the same time, both the élite and the common people sang and danced as a means of self-expression, influencing one another. Lü Buwei (d 235 bce), for example, in his Lüshi chunqiu (Springs and autumns of Master Lü), describes a maid composing a song to describe her waiting for her master Yu, founder of the Xia dynasty, south of Mount Tu. This song is said to have become the earliest example of the southern folksongs that were subsequently collected by Zhou dynasty officials, rearranged and sung as the Zhounan and Zhaonan songs, 25 lyrics of which are preserved in the Shijing (Classic of odes). By the 5th century bce, a diverse and sophisticated music culture was in place, laying the foundations for Chinese music theory and practices for the next two and a half millennia.

A central figure in the laying of these foundations is Confucius (551–479 bce), who taught a humanist and functional approach to music. Reasoning that music is an expression of the human heart or mind and a counterpart of ritual, Confucius promoted music as a means of governance and self-cultivation and denounced the use of music as entertainment. By praising the Shao as the most perfect and beautiful music, and by denouncing the ‘licentious’ tunes of the Zheng and Wei states as music that dissipated people's time and energy, Confucius established the paradigms of ‘proper music’ (yayue) and ‘vernacular music’ (suyue). People who aspire to become benevolent and cultivated should practise the moderate and harmonious (he) sounds of the former and avoid the excessive and vain sounds of the latter. By compiling the Shijing, Confucius bequeathed an exemplary collection of 305 song texts, diverse in content, literary structure and musical style. Studied by all Chinese students, the collection has inspired them to create many literary and musical works until the present day.

The musical diversity projected by the Shijing is echoed by other ancient texts: the Jiuge (Nine songs) of Qu Yuan (c340–c278 bce), the patriotic poet of the Chu state, for example, vividly portrays the songs and dances of the region. Archaeological evidence substantiates these descriptions. Musical artefacts excavated from the tomb of Marquis Yi of the Zeng state (c433 bce) reveal not only the gigantic scale of court music and dance but also a most advanced technology for making musical instruments, most clearly evidenced by a set of 64 bronze bell-chimes, each of whose bells can produce two pitches either a major or minor 3rd apart (fig.2). Inscribed on the bells are more than 2800 words describing theories and practices of music pitches of the time. The sophistication of the musical culture of this early regional court is clear from the variety, size and manufacture of the instruments and from the conceptual detail of the inscriptions.

The mature state of ancient Chinese music theory, as revealed by archaeological and literary evidence, may account for its lasting relevance. The Guoyu (Conversations from the states) and Lüshi chunqiu, for example, describe the 12 standard fixed pitches (lülü) produced through the circle of 5ths (sanfen sunyi), constituting a complete octave, and the five and seven relative tones (wusheng, qisheng) that can be used to form different scales and keys. Identified by 12 bisyllabic terms (see Table 2 below; see also Notation, §II), the 12 standard fixed pitches embody the Chinese pursuit of absolute and accurate pitch standards, serving not only musical needs but also those of practical and theoretical measurements and calculations. Throughout Chinese history, Chinese courts initiated numerous changes of pitch standards: during the Northern Song dynasty, for example, no less than five extensive revisions were introduced at court.

The five and seven relative tones represent Chinese understanding of relative pitches, intervals and their use in actual musical pieces. Together, the fixed and relative pitches constitute a complex modal system (known as gong, yun or diao) also associated with non-musical entities. For example, the five relative tones are respectively correlated socially with king, ministers, people, affairs and objects, and with the colours of yellow, white, blue, red and black. The modes, which are traditionally defined by the pitch levels of the constituent notes, their assigned roles as the five or seven relative tones and as initials and finals in melodies, are employed not only by musical principles but also by cosmological considerations: music honouring Heaven, for example, should use the jiazhong gong mode, which can be interpreted as a set of pitches adopting the fixed pitch of jiazhong as the gong degree.

Apart from technical and structural aspects, ancient Chinese music theory also discusses topics such as the nature and functions of music. The Yueji (Record of music, c1st and 2nd centuries bce), for example, manifests Confucian moral theories of understanding music in its social context. Studied and implemented by Confucian scholar-officials, who dominated formal learning in imperial China and controlled textual representation of it, these theories helped form a musical Confucianism that overshadowed but did not erase rival approaches. These include the assertion of Mozi (c468–c376 bce) that music wasted human and material resources, and Laozi's claim that the greatest music had no sounds. Indeed, Daoist influence on Chinese music and music culture has remained substantial. Even the music of the qin zither, a genre closely affiliated with Confucian scholar-officials, includes many works with Daoist references, such as Tianfeng huanpei (‘Heavenly Breeze and Sounds of Jade Pendants’).

China, People’s Republic of, §II: History and theory

3. Qin to Tang dynasties (221 bce–907 ce).

Though the Qin dynasty (221–206 bce) unified China for only 15 years, its policy of standardization and control of knowledge directly and indirectly exerted a lasting influence on Chinese culture. The first Qin emperor (Qin Shihuang), who is said to have burnt numerous books in an intellectual purge, thus destroyed much musical literature, inadvertently generating an insatiable need to reconstruct ancient music, now idealized as perfect. The Han dynasty, which overthrew the Qin, developed its distinctive musical culture within this context. Adopting Confucianism as the official ideology, the Han court (206 bce–220 ce) implemented Confucian theories of ritual and music by instituting an elaborate system of state sacrifices and music. Following a Qin model, the Han court also established the Yuefu (Office of Music). It collected folksongs to learn about the experiences of common people, and it transformed them, musically and textually, into works that served the political as well as the expressive needs of the court. The office employed many musicians to perform a variety of music: in 7 bce, at a time when the Han court had to downsize because of financial constraints, the office cut 441 out of a total of 829 employees. One of the directors of this office was Li Yannian (d c90 bce), a musician who came from a family of entertainers and was noted for his singing and compositional skills. He once rearranged a piece brought back from Central Asia by the famous Han emissary Zhang Qian (d 114 bce).

If the Yuefu symbolized Chinese courts' continual appropriation of folk music, the rise of ‘drum-and-wind’ music (guchui) at the Han court shows how musical exchanges between Han Chinese living within China proper and non-Han peoples living at its borders might lead to new genres and practices. Drum-and-wind music is said to have evolved from two sources: the music of non-Han peoples living in the north-west of China proper, and the music Zhang Qian brought back from Central Asia. Drum-and-wind music soon became an integral part of Chinese music culture; traditionally, Han Chinese believe that once accepted and absorbed into Han culture, the ethnic musics of non-Han peoples will eventually become totally sinicized. Used in regional courts, drum-and-wind music largely accompanied military rituals and processionals; in folk form, the genre included songs and instrumental pieces performed for calendrical and life-cycle occasions, a practice still common in rural China today.

No notated Han dynasty music has survived, but musical practices and products are clearly described in many documents. The xianghe genre consisted not only of short, separate songs but also multi-movement suites (daqu), with solo and choral singing, playing of various musical instruments and dancing. Their structure is indicated by the terms qu, yan and luan, which have been interpreted as music played accelerando, with ornaments and as refrains and codas. Such structures were to become fundamental strategies of Chinese music composition and can still be found in many traditional genres today. These include qin music, a repertory of instrumental solos and accompanied songs, some of which had already emerged by the end of the Han dynasty, and music theatre, such as the nanxi (southern operas) of the Song dynasty, which feature suites of arias – indeed, the roots of Chinese music theatre can be traced to the Han dynasty variety plays (baixi) performed by actors or puppets.

After the collapse of the Han dynasty in 220 ce, China experienced four centuries of social and cultural unrest, during which a succession of dynasties rose and fell. Musically, it was a time of drastic changes and tenacious continuities. The tradition of multi-movement suites of songs, instrumental music and dance continued; further musical exchanges took place between Han and various non-Han peoples; and Confucian theorists such as Jing Fang (77–3 bce), He Chengtian (370–447 ce) and Xun Xu (d 289 ce) pushed their technical and cosmological explanations of music to theoretical limits. Meanwhile Chinese music culture was transformed by the universal acceptance of Buddhism, which originated in India, and by music and musical instruments imported from Central and West Asia. By the time of the Northern and Southern dynasties 420–589 ce), Buddhism had totally merged with indigenous ways of life. As demonstrated by numerous documents, paintings and sculptures, Buddhism introduced new genres and practices, notably a form of vocal liturgy (fanbei) that featured melismatic melodies for multi-syllabic words that specify no linguistic tones – Chinese words are monosyllabic and tone-specific. Buddhism also transformed musical practices by appropriating indigenous tunes and venues to chant sutras, perform rituals and teach religious doctrine.

As this musical and cultural transformation unfolded, China embraced instruments imported from various cultures located in the west of China proper (fig.3). Four of these later became important components of the entertainment music of the Sui (581–618) and Tang (618–907) courts and are prominently featured in visual representations of the genre: the bent-neck pipa (quxiang pipa), a pear-shaped lute with four strings and four frets, which originated in Persia; the bili, a short, double-reed pipe with eight finger-holes brought to China proper by musicians from what is now Kuqa in Xinjiang province; the konghou, a vertical harp, perhaps also from Persia; and the jiegu, an hourglass drum. The acceptance of these imported instruments generated not only new repertories and performing practices but also new music theories. The pipa, for example, carried with it a theory of musical modes that subsequently led to the Sui and Tang theory of 84 musical modes.

Against this backdrop of imported music and musical instruments, indigenous traditions continued to develop both at court and among the general populace. By the Jin dynasty (266–420 ce), the Han multi-movement suites had evolved into a music called Qingshang yue. Considered to represent Han Chinese music, it stood in contrast to repertories that were wholly or partially imported. These repertories eventually led to the rise of the entertainment music performed at the Sui and Tang courts. Like the Qingshang yue, qin music was also maturing into a creative and sophisticated tradition of instrumental music. Ji Kang's Qin fu (Essay on qin music) describes performing techniques such as double-stops and ornamental notes. Challenging orthodox Confucian aesthetics that music should not be used to indulge visual and auditory senses, such techniques represented attempts to manipulate sounds as creative expressions, not mechanical reflections of human emotions or mental states. Theoretical underpinning for these departures can be found in Ji Kang's argument that musical sounds have no inherent sadness or happiness.

After four centuries of social and cultural turbulence, China enjoyed peace and prosperity in the early part of the Tang dynasty, and Chinese music achieved a high point that has had few parallels. Almost 600 folk and popular song texts are still preserved in anthologies. New genres also evolved from folk and religious contexts. Buddhist monks played a significant role in the early development of the ‘transformation text’ (bianwen), a narrative genre, a branch of which tells Buddhist stories; it foreshadowed the blossoming of narrative singing in the Song and subsequent dynasties. During the Tang, theatrical dances such as the ‘adjutant plays’ (canjun xi) and the ‘stepping and singing woman’ (tayao niang) became popular. The former is a comical dance ridiculing disgraced officials, while the latter features a drunkard and his complaining wife; they are often seen as prototypes of Chinese opera. At the same time, literati produced numerous shi poems that could be sung as art songs; traces of the singing style of Tang poetry can still be found today in the qin songs.

Written to express diverse emotions and to celebrate various social occasions and interactions, many Tang shi poems are also informative historical records, describing musicians, musical activities and practices. The Pipa xing (Pipa journey) of the great Tang poet Bai Juyi (772–846) vividly describes a female musician playing the pipa, evoking the artistic sophistication of Tang music. Similarly, a poem by Li Ye, a Tang courtesan, projects vivid images of qin music, with metaphors of sharp cliffs and gushing streams, echoing the complex performing techniques described by Zhao Yeli (563–639) and other professional performers of the time, and showing that music brought together people of different social status. Such a flourishing of qin music also demanded well-made instruments. Qin made by the Lei family of Sichuan were highly acclaimed. The few Tang qin still surviving in leading museums, such as the Shōsōin in Nara (Japan) and the Palace Museum in Beijing, reveal both organological and decorative mastery; besides their role as musical instruments, qin were also valued by the élite as objets d'art.

As one of the most powerful governments in Chinese history, monopolizing tremendous human and material resources, the Tang court created several musical institutions. The Dayueshu (Office of Grand Music) and Guchuishu (Office of Drum-and-Wind Music) oversaw elaborate systems of state sacrificial music and military music. Documented in the Kaiyuan li (Rites of the Kaiyuan period) of 732 and other sources, the Tang system of state sacrificial music was so exhaustive that it became a model for subsequent dynasties.

Achievements in ritual music, however, paled beside those in entertainment music. In the mid-7th century the Tang court featured ten kinds of ethnic banquet music (yanyue): indigenous Chinese music, music that combined Chinese and non-Chinese elements, and musics from Bukhara, Cambodia, India, Kashgar, Korea, Kuqa, Samarkand and Turfan. Moreover, through the Jiaofang (Office of Entertainment Music) and the Liyuan (Pear Garden), the Tang court trained numerous musicians, many of whom were female, to perform a variety of songs, instrumental music and dances (fig.4). Dance was a prominent component of Tang entertainment music; many Tang pieces are labelled as dances, such as the celebrated ‘twirling dance’ (huxuan wu). Only the best of the trained musicians would be allowed to perform for the emperor after passing many levels of musical examinations.

Music flourished under the reign of the great artistic patron Xuanzong (712–56), and the Kaiyuan period (713–41) of his reign is traditionally considered one of the golden ages of Chinese arts. A repertory of 14 large-scale works emerged and was classified as sitting and standing music (libuji, zuobuji). A refined genre called faqu thrived, incorporating Buddhist and Daoist elements into multi-movement suites; Xuanzong actually participated in the teaching and performance of it. In 754, Xuanzong issued an edict to sinicize titles of musical works that included foreign elements. For example, the title Boluomen, clearly of Indian Buddhist origin, was changed to Nishang yuyi qu (‘Music of the Rainbow Feather Dress’), a title that subsequently became a metaphor for exquisite music. Though only a fragment of this piece has been preserved in notation, early literary sources describe it as an extensive work exemplifying the tripartite structure of the Tang dynasty suite (daqu). It began with six movements of instrumental music in free rhythm (sanxu), continued with 18 movements of lyrical songs and dances accompanied by instrumental music (zhongxu), and concluded with 12 movements of gradually accelerating music and dances.

In later ages Xuanzong was well remembered for his musical patronage. His Liyuan academy has become a symbol of music, professional musicians and their institutions, and numerous stories and dramas have been written and performed to describe his love for the imperial concubine Yang Guifei and their music. The day Yang was invested, Nishang yuyi qu was performed inside the palace.

Tang dynasty music culture is copiously described in Chinese sources. Apart from official records such as the Yueshu yaolu (Essential records of music documents), a treatise of music theory compiled during the reign of Empress Wu (684–704), and the ‘Old’ (945) and ‘New’ (1061) official histories of the Tang, many informal sources of the time describe musicians and their careers. A Kaiyuan period document, the Jiaofang ji (Record of the Office of Entertainment Music), for instance, describes Cao Miaoda and Duan Shanben as master pipa players of the time, and Li Guinian as a virtuoso of the bili pipe and jiegu drum. Similarly, the Yuefu zalu (Miscellaneous records of the Office of Music), compiled at the end of the Tang dynasty, reports competitions between pipa masters such as Kang Kunlun and Duan Shanben, revealing how audiences knew leading performers and championed their talents. Such descriptions also show the contacts between folk and élite musicians, contexts and repertories. Thus Tang entertainment music (yanyue), described in most early sources as courtly, was not unknown among common people. Court musicians who were commoners before being drafted into court service, and who later retired back to ordinary life, must have stimulated exchanges between court and populace. Individual musicians naturally contributed to the spread of Tang entertainment music. A story about Yongxin, a female singer, is revealing: even after she was drafted into court service, people remembered her, and once the emperor Xuanzong had to ask her to sing to appease a boisterous audience of commoners at a festive event.

Further evidence of the appeal of Tang entertainment music is its export to Japan. There, it led to the rise of gagaku (see Japan, §V), a tradition of court music and dance that still lives on in Japan today, providing a precious means for scholars to probe the mysteries of Tang entertainment music. For example, through his pioneering studies, Hayashi Kenzō established musical relationships between gagaku and Tang music; similarly, by transcribing notated music preserved in medieval Japanese sources, Laurence picken and his colleagues have produced anthologies of ‘Music from the Tang Court’.

The only substantial and verifiable notated source of Tang music to have survived in China itself is a set of 25 pieces from 933 discovered at Dunhuang. These have been much studied, both in China (by scholars such as Ye Dong, Chen Yingshi and He Changlin) and in Japan and the West; though the transcriptions are still controversial, the source has stimulated the study of Tang music and dance. Tang performing practice and modal theory have become major topics for scholarly debates, while ‘reconstructed’ and ‘imitation’ Tang music and dance have become widely known through performances and audio and video recordings and have influenced new compositions.

China, People’s Republic of, §II: History and theory

4. Song to Yuan dynasties (960–1368).

Chinese music culture followed a path that was open and international in nature during the Tang, but it changed direction during the Song dynasty (960–1279); as new forces emerged, China turned inwards. Non-Han empires arose along China's northern and western borders; neo-Confucianism and new civil values were propounded; a powerful and privileged class of scholar-officials emerged; and commoners in urban centres gained economic empowerment. The result of the change in direction, however, was a selectively retrospective and creative music culture, with an intensifying conflict between ‘proper’ and ‘vernacular’ music. It is to this period that the direct roots of traditional Chinese music today can be traced.

Indicative of the retrospective elements in Song music culture are state sacrificial music and formal discourses on ‘proper’ music. For example, the Zhongxing lishu (a compilation of ritual and music of the Southern Song) of the 1180s shows that state sacrificial music of the time emulated ancient models. The ritual pieces notated in the document follow prescriptions for musical modes listed in the ancient text of the Zhouli; its melodies were sung in a syllabic style, reflecting scholar-officials' interpretations of ancient music as having been sung syllabically. From Chen Yang's Yueshu of 1104, a musical encyclopedia that comprehensively collates ancient texts about music, it is also clear that music discourse had become dependent on classical descriptions and historical models. Even the great neo-Confucianist Zhu Xi (1130–1200) cited historical sources to illustrate his doubts about whether the syllabic style of singing was an authentic feature of ancient music: in his Yili jingchuan tongjie (General survey of ritual) he presented the notated music of Zhao Yanshu's 12 ritual songs, attributed to the Kaiyuan period (713–41) of the Tang dynasty.

This interest in ancient music and dependency on historical data were instrumental in widening the gap between theory and practice. A case in point is the solution devised by Cai Yuanding (1135–98) for the problem of ‘going without return’ (wang' er bufan), a theory clearly explicated in his Lülü xinshu (New treatise of music theory). The pitches produced with the traditional cycle of 5ths method contradict the technical and cosmological understanding that the 12 standard pitches (lülü) are equidistant and cyclical, and that they would form complete octaves and scales that allow unrestricted transpositions; to resolve the contradiction, Cai proposed the use of six supplementary notes, but they never found their way into actual music-making.

Many innovations also reveal the creative aspect of Song dynasty music culture. Rooted in the shi poetry of the literati and in more popular songs, a new wave of ci lyrics and compositional techniques appeared. Repeated use of pre-existing melodies and established textual structure led to innovatory ways of creating variety. To generate rhythmic interest, for example, additional words could be inserted into a pre-existing textual and melodic phrase, such as one with seven words, entailing rhythmic and melodic changes. Alternatively, the number of words in standardized phrases might be decreased; to delete or fill the vacated space, the melody could either be truncated or some of its notes lengthened. More drastic transformations were also possible: melodic phrases from different songs could be arbitrarily assembled to make new songs, while complete tunes could be recast into different music modes. These variational and compositional techniques were probably rooted in the tradition of multi-movement suites. Unlike their Tang predecessors with 30 or more movements, Song dynasty suites became more compact, most having no more than ten movements.

Ci poetry is so inherently musical that one of its greatest authors is also one of the few documented composers in Chinese music history. Jiang Kui (1155–1221) did not have a career as a scholar-official, although in 1197 he submitted to the court a proposal for ‘proper music’. Supported by friends and patrons, Jiang created ci songs such as Yangzhou man (Song of Yangzhou), popular ever since its creation. Besides authoring poetic texts, Jiang also composed and notated the melodies of his lyrics, which are valuable evidence for Song dynasty music. The notation Jiang used is a forerunner of the gongche notation that began to appear in many notated sources by at least the 17th century and is still used by many traditional musicians today. Reflecting its probable origin in tablatures for wind instruments, Jiang used 18 symbols precisely indicating pitches, and other signs to suggest rhythm; the version of gongche notation that later became common uses nine characters to specify pitches and three symbols to mark cyclical structure of beats and rhythmic divisions. Table 2 compares five Chinese systems of pitch names/notation with their Western counterparts.

In addition to ci songs, Song dynasty Chinese also sang a variety of art songs, including the changzhuan, sung to the accompaniment of drum, flute and clappers. This genre is significant because it displays Song attempts to organize individual songs into extended structures: typically a changzhuan includes a prelude, a modally unified sequence of several songs (or an alternation between two individual songs) and a coda. It foreshadows a basic structural principle of Chinese music (qupai ti): by arranging a number of labelled and pre-existent tunes into modally and structurally unified sequences, they can be used as building blocks to create very extensive works, such as a music drama of more than 50 scenes. The individual and pre-existent tunes are called labelled melodies (qupai), whose melodic, rhythmic, rhyme, phrasal and other structure can be adapted to match different texts and expressive needs.

With the establishment of entertainment quarters in urban centres, Song China saw the rise of a whole class of music masters, most of whom were professionals vying to create various genres to satisfy the expressive and entertainment demands of an increasingly affluent urban class. One such genre that deeply affected subsequent musical history is narrative singing (see §IV, 1(ii) below), in which one or two performers tell long stories, often over a series of performances, by singing and speaking in the first and third persons. One major form in the Song dynasty was the zhugongdiao (‘medley’), the creation of which was attributed to a professional entertainer called Kong Sanchuan (fl 1080s). Mature samples of the genre could be structurally very extensive: the Xixiangji zhugongdiao (‘Medley of the Romance of the West Chamber’), attributed to Dong Jieyuan (fl 1190s), for example, employs 14 different musical modes and more than 150 labelled melodies.

Mature samples of narrative singing can easily become theatrical; if musicians of narrative singing put on make-up and wear costumes, sing, recite, dance and act on stage and in the first person, the result is understood as music theatre or opera (xi, ju, xiju). Song dynasty China had several forms of musical theatre, including the zaju (variety plays) and nanxi (southern opera), which developed in northern and southern China respectively. Whereas little is known about the zaju, the rise of nanxi is better documented. It first appeared in Wenzhou, Hangzhou and other coastal cities of central-eastern China and then spread nationally. Its music, which involved vocal solos and duets, ensemble singing as well as instrumental playing, originated from folksong and is thus noted for a flexibility and creativity that are not harnessed by theoretical prescriptions. The Zhangxie zhuangyuan (‘Zhangxie, First Imperial Candidate’), one of the three earliest known samples of nanxi, shows its maturity. Actors took specified male and female roles, venues included stages with promotional signs, and audiences often paid admission fees.

Song dynasty China also made significant advances in instruments and instrumental music. A free-reed mouth organ (sheng) was developed with 19 pipes, tuned to allow octave doublings and modal transpositions; marking a range of two octaves and a 3rd, the pipes played 12 regular pitches (zhengsheng) that constituted a central and complete octave, three low pitches (zhuosheng) chosen from the octave below and four clear pitches (qingsheng) from the octave above. Though the 19-pipe sheng did not become popular, it reminds us not only of the organological innovations of the time but also of the general importance of the sheng in later history: as the only traditional Chinese instrument that can produce sustained sounds of more than one pitch, it is still indispensable in many traditional ensembles today.

Another revealing case is the xiqin, a two-string fiddle of the Xi people of northern China that became widely used by commoners in the Song dynasty. As described and illustrated in Chen Yang's Yueshu, the xiqin, which was played not with a bow but with a thin strip of bamboo, is a rather distant prototype of the two-string fiddles in use today, but the enduring tradition of using two-string fiddles to accompany narrative singing and opera may be traced to the Song dynasty.

While folk instruments and music developed, qin music was favoured by professionals and élite amateurs. Zhu Changwen's Qinshi (Qin history) of 1084 records some of the distinctive qin schools (pai) then being founded, with genealogies of teachers and disciples. Apart from composing and performing, the musicians promoted their schools and aesthetics by producing anthologies of qin tablatures. For instance, Yang Zuan's Zixiadong pu [Qin score of Purple Cloud Cave], an influential collection of 468 melodies, established Yang's ‘Zhe school’ as a leader in Song dynasty qin music; though the collection is now lost, traces of its contents and influences can still be found in Ming sources. The rise of qin schools, with their genealogies and notated anthologies, illustrates the importance of master-pupil transmission in schools with distinctive musical and aesthetic styles and in communities held together by geographical and social bonds.

Song dynasty music culture was so tailored to the needs of the populace that its course of development survived the powerful, non-Han impact of the brief Mongol Yuan dynasty (1279–1368). Nevertheless, the Yuan too left a permanent mark on Chinese literature and music theatre. Many Han literati and artists who, voluntarily or involuntarily, did not serve the Mongolian court poured their creative energy into the new drama (zaju) of the time. Indeed, the surviving repertory of over 150 Yuan dramas shows musical as much as literary mastery. Each of the four acts in a typical drama, such as Dou'e yuan (‘Injustice Done to Dou'e’), is a sequence of arias unified by a common mode and structure and sung by either a male or female performer accompanied by flute, drums, clappers and other instruments. As described in Zi An's Changlun (Treatise on singing), Yuan drama arias, called beiqu (northern arias), used 17 modes, each of which was said to have distinctive musical and expressive qualities. For example, arias in the xianlü gong mode were considered pure, fresh, continuous and far-reaching, while those of the nanlü gong modes were described as emotive and melancholic. What these poetic and emotive descriptions meant in musical terms remains to be examined, but they attest to Yuan people's concern for musical and dramatic expression.

Yuan drama arias were also sung with a sophisticated vocal technique, as Zi An's descriptions again show. Judging from notated samples preserved in Qing dynasty sources, melodies from Yuan drama featured heptatonic scales, energetic rhythm and melodic contours that are generally compatible with the rise and fall of linguistic tones in Mandarin, the official language of contemporary China, not unrelated to what was spoken in Yuan China. Judging from historical evidence and titles of the arias, the pre-existent labelled melodies came from a variety of sources, including Tang and Song suites, ci lyrics and changzhuan. Yuan drama marked a momentous advance in the expressive culture of China, and it still remains an integral part of literary and musical China.

While Yuan drama dominated the music culture of its time, it was only one of many old and new types of music practised then (fig.5). The Yuan court, for example, performed not only orthodox state sacrificial music but also elaborate banquet music that included non-Han songs and dances such as the Weiwuer preserved in the Da Ming jili (Collected ceremonials of the Great Ming) of 1370. Non-Han influences were also heard outside the Mongolian court. The famous pipa piece Haiqing na tian'e (‘Eagle Captures the Swan’) was created in Yuan China; a vivid portrayal of falconry, the piece was widely performed at the time and still remains in the repertory today. Folk traditions of songs, narrative singing, instrumental music and dances were often interrelated. For example, Huolang'er (‘Peddler's Ditty’), a type of folksong originating from peddlers' musical calls, became a form of narrative singing and a type of Yuan drama melody noted for its melodic variations.

China, People’s Republic of, §II: History and theory

5. Ming to Qing dynasties (1368–1911).

When the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) came to power, China was once again ruled by Han Chinese, and indigenous culture regained centre stage. The creativity of Ming musicians was again based on tradition. As demonstrated by the Taichang xukao (Expanded monograph of the Court of State Sacrifices), Ming state sacrificial music of the 1530s employed orthodox elements, such as the use of bell-chimes, but used pentatonic and flowing vocal melodies that reflect mid- and late-Ming preferences. In the same way, though Lü Nan (1479–1542), Zhu Zaiyu (1536–1610) and other theorist-composers followed Song dynasty models of composing antiquarian melodies to sing lyrics from the Shijing, their melodies reflected their creativity and aesthetic ideals.

A monument to the change and continuity between Ming and earlier times is Zhu Zaiyu's late 16th-century Yuelü quanshu (Collected works of music theory). While this encyclopedia presents what is probably the earliest theory of 12 tempered pitches in world history, it also preserves Zhu's critique of the theoretical works of many leading Song and Ming predecessors, including Cai Yuanding, Li Wenli (jinshi degree 1480) and Li Wencha (fl 1540s). Another seminal Ming work is the 1425 qin score Shenqi mipu (Wondrous and secret notation) by Zhu Quan; a notated anthology of 64 qin pieces, it not only preserves music from the Song dynasty and earlier but also demonstrates Ming qin musicianship and scholarship. Besides notated music, many Ming qin anthologies include descriptive programme notes on individual works, detailed instructions for performance techniques and penetrating discussions on historical and theoretical issues. Yan Cheng's (1547–1625) Songxian guan qinpu (Qin score of the Pines and Silk Studio), for example, preserves the repertory of the Yushan school, promoting an aesthetic pursuit of music that is ‘clear, subtle, light and broad’ (qing, wei, dan, yuan), and revealing artistic tensions between the instrumental and vocal branches of the genre.

That Ming music culture was not a simple continuation of inherited music is most evident in its music theatre. This form blossomed with the rise of chuanqi drama, a genre that grew out of nanxi but generated new regional vocal styles, known as qiang or shengqiang and traditionally classified as nanqu (southern arias). By the middle of the Ming dynasty, four major regional styles had appeared: Haiyan qiang, Yiyang qiang, Yuyao qiang and Kunqiang. Kunqiang (or Kunqu) originated in the Kunshan area of Jiangsu and is noted for its florid and slow melodies that perfectly match lyrics enunciated in the Wu dialect. As a lyrical style of singing that was often performed with elegant dances, Kunqiang was popular among the élite and was performed wherever they lived. It was a major factor in the development of chuanqi, many late Ming examples of which were performed as Kunqiang operas. Wanshaji (‘Washing Silk’) by Liang Zhenyu (1519–c1591) and Mudan ting (‘Peony Pavilion’) by Tang Xianzu (1550–1616), for example, were both musical and literary milestones. As reported by Wang Qide (d 1623), a Ming scholar and critic of music theatre, the success of Wanshaji made performers and audiences ignore the old northern arias. Similarly, the Yiyang qiang style first appeared during the Yuan dynasty in the Yiyang area of Jiangxi. Its robust style features solo singing punctuated by choral refrains and loud percussion accompaniment. As it spread all over China, Yiyang qiang acquired different local characters, generating many regional genres by the mid- and late Qing, including what is now known as Beijing Opera.

While operatic and professional music flourished in Ming China, trends were also evident in folk and popular songs. Shen Defu (1578–1642) reported that around the turn of the 17th century the urban ditties Dazaogan and Guazhi'er were so popular that they were sung by all, regardless of gender, age, social status and geographical location. As clear from the song texts collected and edited by Feng Menglong (1574–1646), late Ming folk and popular songs are emotive and candid; some are even bawdy. Such songs challenged Confucian notions of ‘proper’ music and of using music as a means of governance and self-cultivation, though at the same time reflecting the Confucian theory that music is a sincere expression of hearts and minds. Indeed, this is one reason why the Ming élite collected commoners' songs and emulated them as authentic (zhen) expressions, comparing them to the regional airs (guofeng) preserved in the Shijing of antiquity.

While late Ming songs display increasingly populist sentiments and urban settings, fictional sources such as the Jinping mei (Golden lotus), a late Ming novel, portray China, notably the Jiangnan (lower Yangtze) area, as a society of lavish lifestyles in which music was a constant part of daily life. It was performed inside rich households by familial, often female, musicians, many of whom were highly gifted. Outside familial quarters, many professionals, from itinerant operatic troupes to individual courtesans, also performed a large variety of music (fig.6). This blooming of music culture was temporarily interrupted by the turbulent events during the transition from Ming to Qing but soon recovered during the peaceful and prosperous times of the early Qing.

The Qing rulers (1644–1911) were Manchurians, but far from marginalizing Han culture they appropriated and promoted it alongside their own. As a result, Chinese music continued to develop along a course that had been set since the Song dynasty, while collecting distinctively Qing characteristics. Like its predecessors, the Qing court performed Confucian state sacrificial music, sang songs from the Shijing and instituted elaborate programmes of banquet music. Similarly, the élite continued its love of Kunqu operas, qin music and other ‘refined’ genres, while the common people continued to produce folk and popular songs, narrating stories with a fixed sequence of melodies (fig.7), and celebrating ritual as well as daily activities with music of gongs, drums and wind instruments.

What separates the musical worlds of Ming and Qing China is neither a marked shift of genres nor a fundamental change in aesthetics, but modifications in repertories, styles and structures. For instance, during the Qing, the Kunqiang and Yiyang qiang styles competed to dominate music theatre. With the tremendous success of Changsheng dian (‘Palace of Eternal Youth’) by Hong Sheng (1645–1704) and Daohuashan (‘Peach Flower Fan’) by Kong Shangren (1648–1718), Kunqiang dominated the literary and musical world of the early Qing. Nevertheless, by the mid-Qing, Kunqiang was deemed too refined by the general audience, and a variety of regional operatic styles emerged to claim leadership. Yangzhou, a city famous for its entertainment quarters, became a site where refined and vernacular musics competed for audiences' attention. Nevertheless, it was in the capital, Beijing, that artistic prominence could be definitively established: no genre could become nationally successful without the patronage of the court and the scholar-officials. Beijing opera originated in the local theatre of Anhui province, an indirect descendant of Yiyang qiang; a prototype of the genre reached Beijing in 1790, featuring a form known as banqiang ti, music that is constructed with a limited number of melodies and rhythmic procedures that are set to lyrics of fixed phrase structure and diverse verbal meanings. Beijing opera soon evolved into a sophisticated performance art and dominated music theatre: the banqiang ti form appeals with its straightforward music intelligibility, in which a maximum of expressiveness is achieved with a minimum of musical material.

What also separates Ming and Qing is the amount of notated music they have bequeathed to posterity. Musical notation was known and used in Ming China; documents such as the Wenlin jubao wanquan xinluo (Comprehensive collection of scattered treasures for scholars) of 1600 leaves no doubt that the late Ming used gongche notation, the predominant form found in Qing sources. Little Ming notation has been preserved, however. The wealth of Qing notation is easily explained by factors such as its temporal proximity with contemporary China, the Qing tradition of empirical scholarship, imperial efforts to collect and organize all kinds of documents and knowledge, and changing perceptions of musical works. After the mid-Qing, notation also seems to have begun to assume a more significant role in the transmission of music, especially that of the upper classes; much of commoners’ music was transmitted orally until recent decades.

Given the tenacious continuity found in the histories of many genres of traditional Chinese music, and given that most historical scores were produced by musicians who performed the music they notated, Qing notated sources evidently involve much more than music of their own times. Indeed, most seem to include traces of pre-Qing music that is otherwise lost, preserving genres that had been orally transmitted long before the Qing. Most extensive of such scores is the Jiugong dacheng nanbeici gongpu (Comprehensive anthology of texts and notation of Southern and Northern arias in nine modes) of 1746, a gigantic collection in 81 fascicles. Preserving the notated music of 2094 labelled melodies and their variants from numerous operas, it is now the largest single source of operatic arias once sung in Yuan, Ming and Qing China (fig.8a). The Taigu quanzong (Arias from ancient times) of 1749 preserves not only operatic music of the early Qing but also pipa arias from the late Ming. Ye Tang's 1792 collection of Kunqu arias, the Nashuying qupu, preserves the melodies he composed for singing many Ming and Qing dramatic texts, including the four ‘dream’ operas of Tang Xianzu, one of the most influential playwrights in Chinese history. Ye Tang's collection is also valuable because his compositions and style of singing Kunqu arias have been indirectly but continuously transmitted to the present; the Kunqu music of Yu Zhenfei, one of the most respected singer-actors of 20th-century China, can trace its lineage to Ye Tang's music. Xie Yuanhuai's Cuijin cipu (Notated register of ci songs) of 1847 represents Qing scholar-musicians' historical understanding of ci music of Song dynasty China and attempts to reconstruct and perform it.

As to instrumental scores, Rong Zhai's unique Xiansuo beikao of 1814 notates the heterophonic music of a string ensemble. Rong Zhai confirmed that his score notates traditional music that he learnt orally, affirming that music notated often predates the time when the notation is produced. Hua Qiuping's pipa score of 1818 includes a repertory of 58 pieces, some of which, such as the Shimian maifu (‘Ambush from All Sides’) and Yue'er gao (‘The Moon on High’), had long been traditional favourites and remain so today. The maturity of the notation used in the anthology attests to the historical roots of the music and its transmission.

As the Qing dynasty collapsed in 1911, two millennia of imperial rule came to an end. Nevertheless, the traditions bequeathed from imperial times did not cease. Many operatic and instrumental genres flourished with new aesthetics and innovatory practices, while some more conservative genres such as ritual music and the qin were authentically maintained by intellectual and regional communities. Even state sacrificial music survived: Confucian ceremonial music, which originated as ritual music performed during state sacrifices honouring Confucius, a tradition that began soon after the philosopher's death in 479 bce, is now performed during public worship of Confucius in Taipei, Qufu and other Chinese communities inside and outside mainland China.

China, People’s Republic of, §II: History and theory

6. Since 1911.

The history of music in 20th-century China is inseparable from broader national and intercultural trends. While many traditional performance styles have been sustained, others have been adapted or completely reformed. Some ancient genres have been reconstructed from historical records, and certain entirely new Chinese genres have been created. Modern China has also become a fertile site for the composition, performance and reception of musical styles from the West and Japan. In urban centres particularly, a substantial spectrum of foreign musical theory and practice has been adopted, from equal temperament and staff notation to choral singing, symphonic concerts, rock music and kala-OK (karaoke). Stimulated by the advent of new institutions and technologies, most obviously sound broadcasting, and impinged upon by broader social and political developments, there has been a reformation of the ways in which music – including older traditional forms – is envisaged by large segments of Chinese society. Nonetheless, cultural exchange has not been a one-way process: certain styles of Chinese music have acquired an international reputation during this period.

A brief chronological outline of the main political events of this period will orientate the musical discussion that follows. In 1911, the Manchu Qing dynasty was overthrown by an alliance of Chinese reformists. The Republic of China was established one year later, although large parts of the nation were controlled by warlords and foreign powers. The Nationalist Party, led by Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek), partially reunified the country by the early 1930s, repressing the nascent Communist party, but the country was torn apart by the ‘War of Resistance’ to invasion from Japan (1937–45). After the defeat of Japan, the Communists, whose support had grown significantly in rural China, were victorious in a civil war against the Nationalists; while Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Nationalists perpetuated the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan. In the 1950s agricultural production was collectivized into a large-scale commune system, and in the cities, industries and shops were nationalized. Mao Zedong’s disastrous attempt at instant industrialization, the Great Leap Forward (1958), led to a famine in which millions of peasants died.

Temporarily discredited, Mao seized power again during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), when he encouraged rival bands of teenage Red Guards to rove the nation assaulting all signs – and practitioners – of traditional and foreign culture. Eventually order was restored, and many of these youths were themselves exiled to the country for re-education. From 1980, the Maoist commune system was dismantled; public-sector commerce and industry and state-sponsored cultural units were severely cut, and traditions that the new liberal climate had allowed to revive were now influenced by new popular culture.

Much musical change in 20th-century China results from the encounter of Chinese society with facets of Western political, economic and cultural life. Late 19th-century Chinese reformers saw the greater military and economic might of foreign nations as a result of their modern patterns of culture, and sought to replicate such patterns in China. The political revolution culminating in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty was thus paralleled – at least in urban society – by a simultaneous but longer-lasting movement for cultural reform (later called the May Fourth Movement) summed up in the slogan ‘Chinese essence, Western means’. Music reformers took part in this cultural movement, attempting to reinvent existing traditions along Western-influenced lines.

Western music itself had been introduced to China by musicians employed to add pomp to early Western diplomatic, religious and military expeditions. During the 17th and 18th centuries, for instance, Jesuit priests used music to interest the Qing emperors in European culture and ideas. However, it was only in the second half of the 19th century that significant impact occurred. A new wave of missionaries imported Western instruments and encouraged collective singing, uncommon in Chinese religious practices, as a means of instructing converts. The Christian-influenced rebel Hong Xiuquan (1814–68) borrowed hymn tunes (including ‘Old Hundred’) and the idea of cementing group identity through communal singing when founding the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (1851). Missionaries also produced and disseminated hymn books using a form of cipher notation (jianpu) based on the system of Emile J.M. Chevé. This notation remains widely used today.

Military and educational reformers also adopted Western-style mass singing. Illiterate army recruits memorized regulations through singing, and school curricula from the early years of the 20th century provided for the performance of new songs. Songs were also composed by activists in many of China’s new social and political movements. Singing mobilized mass boycotts of imported goods and broadcast news of foreign encroachments upon Chinese sovereignty. The creators of these songs were often foreign-trained intellectuals, such as the linguist Zhao Yuanren (Yuen Ren Chao, 1892–1982) and musicologist-composer Huang Zi (1904–38). Important composers of political songs include Xian Xinghai and Nie Er, who contributed numerous songs to Communist efforts to overthrow the Republic of China. Some basic aspects of later Communist cultural policy were formulated during the war against Japan from the Communist headquarters at Yan'an in Shaanxi province, where new works such as yangge operas (fig.9) and folksong were adapted from traditional models to reflect the political struggle. More often new diatonic or pentatonic melodies were composed, along with harmonic accompaniments written for piano, accordion or other instruments. The composition and performance of these songs continued throughout the 20th century, reaching a peak during the Cultural Revolution and declining in importance thereafter.

The import of Western entertainment technology to Chinese cities in the 1920s was also significant. For example, a new genre of film song was created, with singing stars drawing on jazz, among other foreign styles, in the 1930s. The introduction of radio stimulated the spread of the new genre of Cantonese ensemble music.

A third strand of Western-influenced musical activity was the establishment in China of a network of teacher training colleges, music conservatories, research institutes and university departments. Initiated during the 1920s, the curriculum at these institutions today includes Chinese traditional instruments (erhu, pipa etc.) and instruction in Chinese musical history. However, students of Western-style art music remain in the majority, and courses on Chinese music have been closely modelled on Western methods. Those who studied indigenous traditions tended to combine a broadly nationalist outlook with a progressive attitude towards existing Chinese musical traditions, their intent being to develop a new musical language from the synthesis of Western and Chinese ingredients, the former providing a ‘scientific’ and ‘modern’ basis and the latter national colour and identity. Beijing-based music scholar Liu Tianhua, for instance, composed a series of ten solos for the two-string fiddle erhu, which typify this aesthetic (ex.1). Indeed, the very idea of treating the erhu as a solo recital instrument was itself a new one. Liu’s solos combine traditional Chinese elements, such as descriptive titles, with Western ingredients, including aspects of violin technique and equal temperament. From the start, they were disseminated in fixed form in notation, and the performer was expected to perform this music as written, not develop a personal realization, as in traditional music. Gradually, this performance aesthetic was applied to older traditional pieces also. The establishment of the conservatory system thus led not only to the rise of new musical styles in China but also to transformations of performing practice and expectations.

The music composed and performed by the new conservatory-based musicians falls into two broad categories: music for Western instruments, and Western-style voices and that for Chinese instruments and voices (commonly called guoyue, ‘national music’). Some crossover pieces also exist. The former category includes many pieces in nationalistic and social realist styles, testimony to the profound impact of Russian and then Soviet teachers on several generations of Chinese composers. These pieces rely mostly on indigenous folk-tune melodies (or original imitations of these) and the conventions of the late-romantic tonal system. In some, pentatonic note-sets are used as a harmonic basis. Intended to appeal widely to Chinese listeners, almost every mainland Chinese composition written between 1949 and about 1980 has a socialist programme or theme. A typical example is Ding shande’s ‘Long March’ symphony (1959–62), commemorating the Communist army’s journey in 1934–5 from Jiangxi province to a new headquarters at Yan'an. Music for Chinese instruments and voices includes solos such as those of Liu Tianhua, harmonized arrangements of folk pieces and many new compositions for ensembles and orchestras of redesigned Chinese instruments. In the main, these pieces share the programmatic nature, sectional structure and musical language of those for Western instruments.

In parallel to the growth of the education network after 1949, numerous state-supported professional performance ensembles (from symphony orchestras to song-and-dance troupes) were established, and large factories were set up in principal cities to produce reformed and standardized musical instruments, in some cases developing Western style SATB families for use in the new orchestra of Chinese instruments. Pre-existing ensembles, such as privately run traditional opera troupes, were nationalized and sent forth to educate the people at large. These troupes were expanded, gaining full-time resident composers, directors, script-writers and other support personnel. Extemporization on the part of singers was discouraged, with scripts now requiring the approval of a Communist Party official prior to their performance. The performers of one local tradition were also encouraged to learn from those of another (many opera troupes adopted percussion music based on that of Beijing opera, for instance). Accordingly, the 1950s and early 1960s can be viewed as an innovatory period in Chinese cultural life (fig.10).

The music conservatories and many urban professional performance units were closed down during the Cultural Revolution, and much of their repertory, whether for Western or Chinese instruments, was banned. Nonetheless, some composition and performance was allowed at this time, including the combination of Western instruments and Beijing opera singing first assayed in 1968 with an arrangement of songs from the revolutionary model opera Hongdeng ji (‘The Red Lantern’) by pianist Yin Chengzong (b 1941) (ex.2). This was one of the few so-called ‘model operas’ (yangbanxi) passed for performance by the cultural authorities. These operas have been criticized for reducing drama to a moralistic triumph of good over evil, yet the music was regarded by many as very well crafted, and in recent years there has been a resurgence of enthusiasm for several of these compositions.

In the meantime, prospective music students were dispersed across the Chinese interior. Hitherto mainly exposed to conservatory-mediated representations of national music, young composers such as Tan Dun (b 1957) returned to the cities in the late 1970s with a real sense of the vibrancy of rural musical styles. In the conservatories they now encountered a diverse range of contemporary Western compositions, which political liberalization was finally allowing into China. Several of the most successful members of the Chinese avant garde are now resident abroad, but even middle-generation composers within China have moved away from the composition of programmatic nationalist pieces to combine techniques from Chinese folk and historical traditions and the whole range of 20th-century Western styles.

Since about 1980, foreign popular music has been broadcast within China, and recordings sold in music shops. Hong Kong and Taiwanese pop have been most successful, although Beijing also has a small rock scene (see §IV, 6(ii) below). The national media industries have also produced immense amounts of light music, which is disseminated on radio and television. Although political and cultural freedom of expression have increased during the past two decades, the freezing of many government subsidies since the 1980s has hit the large state-supported ensembles and educational institutions particularly hard, and many have had to make redundancies. Many other staff have resigned as inflation erodes their earnings and economic development allows greater financial rewards to be reaped in the commercial sector. The general retreat of politicians from cultural matters has meant that most musicians have lost the important social position they held from the 1950s.

In the countryside, where the majority of the Chinese population still resides, the picture is somewhat different (see also §IV below). In some areas, older traditions were maintained throughout much of the 20th century, and elsewhere traditions stamped out (or introduced) by the political leadership have reasserted themselves (or disappeared) once the political tide has turned – even in the Cultural Revolution, some villages ignored governmental cultural dictates. Radio and television broadcasts and, as in previous centuries, occasional visits by professional urban ensembles may supplement the musical lives of the peasantry without much influencing the music they choose to make themselves.

Rural traditions, however, have not remained static. For instance, partial mechanization in some agricultural regions has reduced the need for the singing of work songs, while some village bands now include cover versions of the latest pop songs together with older music in their wedding repertory. Old rituals may be shortened in the face of social pressure to limit wedding or funeral expenses, and the gradually increasing availability of electricity has offered villagers new forms of musical entertainment – people may watch television instead of joining a musical group. Political campaigns have also had a decided impact. Early Communist movements against village landlords not only redistributed land but also destroyed the social class who organized and sponsored many rural cultural events. Likewise, campaigns against religious bodies broke up certain traditional performance groups and, until recently, curtailed opportunities for the performance of musics – temple fairs, it should be noted, formed the focus of a wide variety of musical events, including secular instrumental and operatic music performed to entertain both mortals and gods. More recently, the opening of China to the tourist trade has provided new contexts for musical performance, a case in point being the Naxi minority’s dongjing ensemble music from Yunnan province (see §IV, 5(i) below). Here, an old ritual form of music, once performed partly to assert cultural unity with the majority Han Chinese, has now become an activity aimed at tourists and marked by ethnic difference, secularism and commercial gain.

Our picture of musical life in 20th-century China is still more detailed for the cities than for the villages. It is easier to document the impact of rural styles on urban music, for example the rise in the 1980s of ‘Northwest wind’ (xibei feng)-style rock music, than vice versa. Nonetheless, political liberalization since 1980 has allowed growing numbers of Chinese and foreign scholars to carry out research into local musical traditions, and improved relations with the outside world have permitted a greater number of Chinese musicians to perform abroad. We now have at least some sense of the musical lives of ordinary Chinese people.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

China, People’s Republic of, §II, 6: History and theory, Since 1911.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Priority is given to recent work in Western languages, most of which refers extensively to Chinese studies. A selection of Chinese scholarship is also given; see also §I, Bibliography, and Thrasher, 1993 (which also includes selected imperial sources).

general (see also §I, bibliography)

J.-M. Amiot: Mémoire sur la musique des Chinois, tant anciens que modernes, ed. P.J. Roussier (Paris, 1779/R)

M. Courant: ‘Essai historique sur la musique classique des Chinois’, EMDC, I/v (Paris, 1922), 77–241

Wang Guangqi: : Zhongguo yinyue shi [History of Chinese music] (Shanghai, 1934)

Zhongguo yinyue shi cankao tupian [Illustrations for reference on Chinese music history], ed. YYS (Shanghai and Beijing, 1954–64)

Zhongguo gudian xiqu lunzhu jicheng [Anthology of writings on classical Chinese opera] (Shanghai, 1959/R)

Zhongguo gudai yinyue shiliao jiyao [Compendium of historical materials on ancient Chinese music], ed. YYS (Beijing, 1962/R)

W. Kaufmann: : Musical Notations of the Orient (Bloomington, IN, 1967)

Cheung Sai-bung: Zhongguo yinyue shilun shugao [Historical studies of Chinese music] (Hong Kong, 1974–5)

Yang Jialuo, ed.: Zhongguo yinyue shiliao [Historical material on Chinese music] (Taipei, 1975)

Ji Liankang, ed.: Yinyue shiliao [Historical material on Chinese music] (Shanghai, 1978–86)

Ren Erbei, ed.: You yu ji [Collected anecdotes on actors] (Shanghai, 1981)

Yang Yinliu: Zhongguo gudai yinyue shigao [Draft history of ancient Chinese music] (Beijing, 1981)

Zhongguo gudai yuelun xuanji [Selected ancient Chinese musical treatises], ed. YYS (Beijing, 1981/R)

Zhongguo yinyue shupu zhi [Catalogue of writings and scores of Chinese music] (Beijing, 1984 [YYS pubn]

Liang Mingyue: Music of the Billion: an Introduction to Chinese Musical Culture (New York, 1985)

Cai Zhongde: Zhongguo yinyue meixue shilun [History of Chinese music aesthetics] (Beijing, 1988)

Liu Dongsheng and Yuan Quanyou, eds.: Zhongguo yinyue shi tujian [Pictorial guide to the history of Chinese music] (Beijing, 1988) [YYS pubn]

Chen Yingshi: ‘Temperamentology in Ancient Chinese Written Records’, trans. by M. Sawer and C. Rockwell, Musicology Australia, xi–xii (1988–9), 44–67

Xiu Hailin: Guyue de chenfu [The ebb and flow of ancient music] (Ji'nan, 1989)

Huang Xiangpeng: Chuantong shi yitiao heliu [Tradition flows like a river] (Beijing, 1990)

Huang Xiangpeng: Suliu tanyuan: Zhongguo chuantong yinyue yanjiu [Tracing origins: studies on traditional Chinese music] (Beijing, 1993)

Pu Hengqiang: Daojiao yu Zhongguo chuantong yinyue [Daoism and traditional Chinese music] (Taipei, 1993)

A.R. Thrasher: ‘China’, Ethnomusicology: Historical and Regional Studies, ed. H. Myers (New York, 1993), 311–44

Xiu Jun and Jian Jin: Zhongguo yueji shi [History of Chinese female musicians] (Beijing, 1993)

J.S.C. Lam: ‘Chinese Music Historiography: From Yang Yinliu’s A Draft History of Ancient Chinese Music to Confucian Classics’, ACMR Reports, viii/2 (1995), 1–45

S. Jones: ‘Source and stream: early music and living traditions in China’, EMc, xxiv/3 (1996), 374–88

Yan Changhong and Pu Hengqiang: Zhongguo gu wenhua yanjiu [Study of Chinese drum culture] (Nanning, 1997)

early history

W. Kaufmann: Musical References in the Chinese Classics (Detroit, 1976)

K. DeWoskin: A Song for One or Two: Music and the Concept of Art in Early China (Ann Arbor, MI, 1982)

Tong Kin-woon: ‘Shang Musical Instruments’, AsM, xiv/2 (1983), 17–182; xv/1 (1984), 103–84; xv/2 (1984), 68–143

K. DeWoskin: ‘Sources for the Study of Early Chinese Music’, Archeologica Musicalis, 1989

L. von Falkenhausen: Suspended Music: Chime Bells in the Culture of Bronze-age China (Berkeley, 1993)

S. Cook: ‘Yue Ji, Record of Music: Introduction, Translation, Notes, and Commentary’, AsM, xxvi/2 (1995), 1–96

Li Chunyi: Zhongguo shanggu chutu yueqi zonglun [Survey of excavated musical instruments of ancient China] (Beijing, 1996)

qin to tang dynasties

K. Hayashi: Sui-Tang yanyue diao yanjiu [Study of mode-keys of the Sui and Tang] (Shanghai, 1936/R)

Quan Tangshi zhongde yuewu ziliao [Music and dance material in the Complete Tang shi poetry], ed. Zhongguo wudao yishu yanjiuhui wudaoshi yanjiuzu (Beijing, 1958/R)

S. Kishibe: Tōdai ongaku no rekishiteki kenkyū [Historical study of Tang dynasty music] (Tokyo, 1960–61; Chin. trans. 1973)

Ren Bantang, ed.: Jiaofang ji jianding [The Jiaofang ji edited] (Beijing, 1962/R)

E. Schafer: The Golden Peaches of Samarkand (Berkeley, 1963)

M. Gimm: Das Yüeh-fu Tsa-lu des Tuan An-chieh: Studien zur Geschichte von Musik, Schauspiel und Tanz in der T’ang-dynastie (Wiesbaden, 1966)

Ouyang Yuqian, ed.: Tangdai wudao [Tang dynasty dance] (Shanghai, 1980)

L. Picken and others: Music from the Tang Court (Oxford, 1981; Cambridge, 1985–)

A. Birrell: New Songs from a Jade Terrace (London, 1982/R)

Ren Bantang: Tang shengshi [Tang sung poetry] (Shanghai, 1982)

Ren Bantang: Tang xinong [Tang plays] (Shanghai, 1984)

A. Marett: ‘Tōgaku: Where Have the Tang Melodies Gone, and Where Have the New Melodies Come From?’, EthM, xxix (1985), 409–31

Qiu Xiongsun: Yanyue tanwei [Study of entertainment music] (Shanghai, 1989)

Jin Jianmin: ‘Guanyu Dunhuang qupu he gupuxue di lunzheng ji wojian’ [The controversy about the Dunhuang scores and the study of early notation, and my own opinions], Zhongguo yinyuexue (1990), no.2, pp.74–82

D. Twitchett: ‘A Note on the “Monograph on Music” in Chiu T’ang Shu’, Asia Major, iii (1990), 51–62

Fu Chenggu, ed.: Tangdai yinyue wudao zaji shi xuanyi [Selected and annotated Tang poems on music, dance and acrobatics] (Beijing, 1991)

T. Kamatani: ‘The Early Bureau of Music (Yuëh-fu)’, Acta Asiatica, lxx (1996), 37–53

song to qing dynasties

L. Picken: ‘Chiang K’uei’s Nine Songs for Yuëh’, MQ, xliii (1957), 201–19

Yang Yinliu and Yin Falu: Song Jiang Baishi chuangzuo gequ yanjiu [Study of songs composed by Jiang Baishi of the Song dynasty] (Beijing, 1957)

L. Picken: ‘Secular Chinese Songs of the Twelfth Century’, Studia Musicologica, viii (1966), 125–71

R.C. Pian: Song Dynasty Musical Sources and their Interpretation (Cambridge, MA, 1967)

H.K. Joseph: ‘The Chanda’, T’oung Pao, lxii (1976), 167–98

Liang Ming-yüeh: ‘The Tz’u Music of Chiang K’uei: Its Style and Compositional Strategy’, Renditions, xi–xii (1979), 211–49

K. Robinson: A Critical Study of Chu Tsai-yü’s Contribution to the Theory of Equal Temperament in Chinese Music (Wiesbaden, 1980)

Liu Nianzi: Nanxi xinzheng [New evidence for southern opera] (Beijing, 1986)

Sun Xuanling: Yuan sanqu de yinyue [The music of sanqu arias of the Yuan] (Beijing, 1988)

Hu Ji and Liu Zhizhong: Kunju fazhan shi [History of the development of Kunqu] (Beijing, 1999)

Jin Qianqiu, ed.: QuanSongci zhongde yuewu ziliao [Music and dance material in the Complete Song ci] (Beijing, 1990/R)

G. Gild-Böhne: Das Lü Lü Zheng Yi Xubian: ein Jesuitentraktat über das Europaneische Notation in China von 1713) Göttingen, 1991)

Zhang, Weihua: ‘Music in Ming Daily Life, as Portrayed in the Narrative Jin Ping Mei’, AsM, xxiii/2 (1992), 105–34

Li Yongmin: ‘Songdai minsu yinyue xuebao’ [Study of Song dynasty folk music], Zhongyang yinyue xueyuan xuebao (1994), no.4, pp.31–43

Zheng Zurang: ‘Jiugong dacheng nanbeici gongpu cidiao laiyuan bianxi’ [Analysis of the sources of the texts and tunes of the Jiugong dacheng nanbeici gongpu], Zhongguo yinyuexue (1994), no.1, pp.38–47

Liu Ben: Song Yuan xiqu wenwu yu minsu [Relics and traditions of Song and Yuan operas] (Beijing, 1998)

confucian court and ritual music

Grove6 (China §II, Court Traditions; S. Kishibe)

G.E. Moule: ‘Notes on the Ting-chi, or Half-yearly Sacrifice to Confucius’, Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, xxxiii (Shanghai, 1899–1900), 120–56

Yang Yinliu: ‘Kongmiao dingji yinyue de chubu yanjiu’ [Preliminary study of the music of the spring and autumn sacrifices at the Confucian temple], Yang Yinliu yinyue lunwen xuanji [Selected articles on music by Yang Yinliu] (Shanghai, 1986), 276–304 [repr. from Yinyue yanjiu (1958), no.1]

Wan Yi and Huang Haitao: Qingdai gongting yinyue [Court music of the Qing dynasty] (Hong Kong, 1985)

K. Pratt: ‘Change and Continuity in Qing Court Music’, CHIME, no.7 (1993), 90–103

J.S.C. Lam: ‘There is No Music in Chinese Music History’: Five Court Tunes from the Yuan Dynasty (A.D. 1271–1368)’, JRMA, cxix/2 (1994), 165–88

Luo Minghui: ‘Qingdai gongting yanyue yanjiu’ [Study of the banquet music of the Qing dynasty], Zhongyang yinyue xueyuan xuebao (1994), no.1, pp.55–63

J.S.C. Lam: ‘Musical Relics and Cultural Expressions: State Sacrificial Songs from the Southern Song Court (A.D. 1127–1279)’, Journal of Sung-Yuan Studies, xxv (1995), 1–27

J.S.C. Lam: ‘The Yin and Yang of Chinese Music Historiography: the Case of Confucian Ceremonial Music’, YTM, xxvii (1995), 34–51

J.S.C. Lam: State Sacrifices and Music in Ming China: Orthodoxy, Creativity, and Expressiveness (Albany, NY, 1998)

20th century

general

Grove6 (China §VI, Since 1949; A.C. Scott)

A. Tcherepnine: ‘Music in Modern China’, MQ, xxi (1935), 391–400

A.L. Kagan: ‘Music and the Hundred Flowers Movement’, MQ, xlix (1963), 417–30

Yang Schuman Chao: Twentieth Century Chinese Solo Songs: a Historical and Analytical Study of Selected Chinese Solo Songs Composed or Arranged by Chinese Composers of the 1920s to the Present (diss., George Peabody College, 1973)

Chao Hua: ‘Has Absolute Music No Class Character?’, Peking Review, xvii/9 (1974), 15–17

Han Kuo-Huang: ‘The Chinese Concept of Program Music’, AsM, x/1 (1978), 17–38

Han Kuo-Huang: ‘The Modern Chinese Orchestra’, AsM, xi/1 (1979), 1–40

Fang Kun: ‘A Discussion on Chinese National Musical Traditions’, AsM, xii/2 (1981), 1–16

C.P. Mackerras: The Performing Arts in Contemporary China (London, 1981)

A.R. Thrasher: ‘The Sociology of Chinese Music: an Introduction’, AsM, xii/2 (1981), 17–53

A. Perris: ‘Music as Propaganda: Art at the Command of Doctrine in the P.R.C.’, EthM, xxvii (1983), 1–28

I. Wong: ‘Geming Gequ: Songs for the Education of the Masses’, Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1979, ed. B. McDougall (Berkeley, 1984), 112–43

Liu Yuhe, ed.: Liu Tianhua chuangzuo quji [Collection of Liu Tianhua’s compositions] (Beijing, 1985)

R.C. Kraus: Pianos and Politics in China: Middle-Class Ambitions and the Struggle over Western Music (New York, 1989)

D. Holm: Art and Ideology in Revolutionary China (Oxford, 1991)

Jiang Jing: ‘The Influence of Traditional Chinese Music on Professional Instrumental Composition’, AsM, xxii/2 ( 1991), 83–96

F. Lau: Music and Musicians of the Traditional Chinese Dizi in the People’s Republic of China (diss., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1991)

Mao Yu Run: ‘Music under Mao: Its Background and Aftermath’, AsM, xxii/2 ( 1991), 97–125

Wang Yuhe: Zhongguo xiandai yinyue shi gang (1949–1986) [Outline of the history of contemporary Chinese music] (Beijing, 1991)

J.P.J. Stock: ‘Contemporary Recital Solos for the Chinese Two-Stringed Fiddle Erhu’, British Journal of Ethnomusicology, i (1992), 55–88

A. Schimmelpenninck and F. Kouwenhoven: ‘The Shanghai Conservatory of Music: History and Foreign Students’ Experiences’, CHIME, no.6 ( 1993), 56–91

J.P.J. Stock: Musical Creativity in Twentieth-Century China: Abing, His Music, and Its Changing Meanings (Rochester, NY, 1996)

avant-garde and pop music

Liu Ching-chih, ed.: Zhongguo xin yinyue shilun ji [Collected essays on new Chinese music] (Hong Kong, 1986–92)

F. Kouwenhoven: ‘Mainland China’s New Music (1): Out of the Desert’, CHIME, no.2 ( 1990), 58–93

Zheng Ying-Lie: ‘Letter from China: The Use of Twelve-Tone Technique in Chinese Musical Composition’, MQ, lxxiv ( 1990), 437–88

AsM, xxii/2 (1991) [complete issue on Chinese popular music]

P. Chang: ‘Tan Dun’s String Quartet Feng-Ya-Song: Some Ideological Issues’, AsM, xxii/2 ( 1991), 127–58

F. Kouwenhoven: ‘Mainland China’s New Music (2): Madly Singing in the Mountains’, CHIME, no.3 ( 1991), 42–75

H. Ryker, ed.: New Music in the Orient: Essays on Composition in Asia since World War II (Buren, 1991)

T. Brace: Modernization and Music in Contemporary China: Crisis, Identity, and the Politics of Style (diss., U. of Texas, Austin, 1992)

T. Brace and P. Friedlander: ‘Rock and Roll on the New Long March: Popular Music, Cultural Identity, and Political Opposition in the People's Republic of China’, Rocking the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements, ed. R. Garofalo (Boston, 1992), 115–27

A. Jones: Like a Knife: Ideology and Genre in Contemporary Chinese Popular Music (Ithaca, NY, 1992)

F. Kouwenhoven: ‘Mainland China’s New Music (3): The Age of Pluralism’, CHIME, no.5 ( 1992), 76–134

B. Mittler: Dangerous Tunes: the Politics of Chinese Music in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China since 1949 (diss., Ruprecht-Karls U., Heidelberg, 1993)

P. Micic and D. Stokes: ‘A Selected Annotated Discography of Pop and Rock Albums in the People's Republic of China (1989–1995)’, Association for Chinese Music Reports, ix/2 (1996), 37–52

A. Steen: Der Lange Marsch des Rock ’n’ Roll: Pop- und Rockmusik in der Volksrepublik China (Hamburg, 1996)

China, People’s Republic of

III. Musical instruments

This section surveys the development of Chinese instruments. Those in common practice today, whose history is briefly introduced here, are further discussed in separate entries. For instruments of China’s ethnic minorities see §IV, 5 below.

1. Ancient instruments: the archaeological finds.

2. ‘Bayin’ instruments.

3. Common-practice instruments.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

China, People’s Republic of, §III: Musical instruments

1. Ancient instruments: the archaeological finds.

When ancient Chinese rulers died, part of their estate was routinely buried with them, including ritual vessels, weapons, musical instruments and sometimes even servants and dancers. Within the last few decades, numerous tombs in north and central China have been found yielding treasure troves of instruments – clay flutes, stone chimes and bronze bells in particular, but also instruments made from more perishable materials, such as zithers with silk strings and flutes of bamboo. The oldest instruments found to date are flutes made from bird or animal bones, with two or three finger-holes, unearthed at various sites across north China and dating to between about 6000 and 5000 bce. The most remarkable specimens of these bone flutes, the ‘Jiahu flutes’ (named after the Henan village where they were discovered), have unnotched blowing ends and between five and eight carefully spaced and meticulously drilled finger-holes. Appearing in Shanxi province (and other) sites dating to c4000 bce and later are numerous irregular clay vessel flutes (later known as Xun), ball-shaped, egg-shaped and fish-shaped, each with one or two finger-holes. Most of these are kept at the Shanxi and Gansu Provincial Museums. Stone chimes (later known as Qing), chipped from limestone or other resonant rock, date from about 2000 bce.

The most significant finds of Shang instruments (c16th–11th centuries bce) have been unearthed in northern Henan province, especially at sites near the town of Anyang. The following instruments, most dating to about the 12th century bce, reflect a very conscious attention to form, design and acoustics: (a) xun, small globular flutes of baked clay, with three finger-holes in front plus two thumb-holes, some decorated with the highly stylized mythical animal face (taotie) typical of the period; (b) qing, stone chimes made from highly polished slabs in various shapes, both single and in sets of three, some carved with beautifully stylized motifs of tigers and fish; (c) nao, bronze bells, short and broad in profile, designed to be hand-held and struck with beaters (see Zhong); (d) the ancient Shang bronze barrel drum (tong gu, not to be confused with the large gong of the same name still played by ethnic minorities, for which see Bronze drum), made entirely of bronze and resting horizontally on four legs, with a raised saddle-shaped decoration on top; its two heads (about 39 cm in diameter) are also of bronze. These musical instruments (and others), which were in ritual usage during the Shang dynasty, are cited in the ancient oracle bone inscriptions. They are held at the Chinese Historical Museum and the Palace Museum in Beijing, and at other museums in north China. (For a thorough English-language examination of Shang instruments, see Tong, 1983.)

Instruments uncovered from several Zhou sites (c11th century bce–256 bce) are of even greater abundance and diversity. Most significant are those found in the tomb of the Marquis Yi of the Zeng state (Zenghou Yi), Hubei province, a site in central China dating to about 433 bce. Found together with ritual vessels, weapons, gold, jade and lacquer-ware (about 7000 artefacts in all) was a magnificent ensemble of well-preserved musical instruments, including (a) the visually stunning set of 65 bells (bianzhong) arranged on an ornate, three-tiered frame and reflecting different suspension methods and construction types (see Zhong); (b) the complementary set of 32 L-shaped stone chimes (bianqing), arranged on a two-tiered frame (see Qing); (c) a ten-string Qin zither with a short soundboard; (d) a five-string zither (possibly a zhu) with a long, narrow soundboard; (e) twelve 25-string se zithers with broad soundboard; (f) two transverse flutes of the chi type, lacquered black with red designs; (g) two panpipes (paixiao), each with 13 tubes of bamboo, lacquered black and arranged in ‘single-wing’ form (see Panpipe); (h) six mouth organs (Sheng or he), with varying numbers of bamboo pipes inserted into windchests of gourd, all lacquered black; (i) a large wooden barrel drum (jian' gu) mounted on a thick vertical pole held upright in an ornate bronze base; (j) three small barrel drums of different types. These instruments are housed at the Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan.

Other instruments unearthed from sites in central China include a surprisingly early zhang zither with positions for 13 strips (c6th century bce) and many relatively thin drums now known as niujiao gu (‘bird-frame drum’, c5th century bce), each suspended by cords between two carved wooden figures of large birds (probably egrets) standing on the backs of crouching tigers.

Among Han sites (206 bce–220 ce) containing musical instruments, most significant is the tomb of Mawangdui in Hunan province, dating to the 2nd century bce. Unearthed from tombs 1 and 3 are instruments similar to the earlier finds but including several important discoveries: (a) two 25-string se zithers, each with four top-mounted string-holding pegs (similar to the Zenghou Yi se) and, remarkably, with silk strings and bridges intact; (b) one seven-string qin zither, similar in shape to the older Zenghou Yi qin but with a longer soundboard and the now-standard seven strings; (c) one zhu zither, with very narrow soundboard and positions for five strings; (d) two long yu mouth organs, one consisting of 23 pipes mounted in a wooden windchest, with many of its metal reeds intact; (e) one set of 12 bamboo pitchpipes (yulü), tuned chromatically within a one-octave range; (f) two transverse flutes of the chi type, with finger-holes on one side rather than on the top. These instruments are held by the Hunan Provincial Museum in Changsha.

China, People’s Republic of, §III: Musical instruments

2. ‘Bayin’ instruments.

The bayin (‘eight tone’) system was devised by Zhou court scholars in an attempt to classify the musical instruments of the period. While most instruments were mentioned in the Shijing (Classic of poetry, c7th century bce), the eight-tone system was most clearly articulated in the Zhouli (Rites of Zhou, c3rd century bce). Eight distinct resonating media and/or materials used in construction are identified: metal, stone, earth, skin, silk, wood, gourd and bamboo. The system is based on the ancient lexigraphic practice of classifying language and material culture according to meaning-suggestive radicals (e.g. ‘earth’, ‘bamboo’), thus forming word categories. But the prime motivation behind the eight-part system was to establish a system of cosmological correspondences between these important ritual instruments and the eight trigrams (bagua), eight compass points and other meaningful eight-part systems. Today, the bayin instruments are usually housed at the larger Confucion shrines, notably in Beijing, Qufu and Taipei, where they are occasionally employed in ritual ceremones.

Metal (Jin). Bronze casting, one of the great technological achievements of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, was employed especially for construction of ritual implements such as vessels and bells. The most ancient bell types, the nao, zheng, duo and chun, have declined in usage over the centuries and are now found in museums only. Since the Zhou dynasty, the two most common surviving bell types have been the zhong and bo, both struck externally. The zhong, in its most common form, has a leaf-shaped cross-section and concave mouth, with an elongated handle and a small ring at its base for suspension; the bo has a flat mouth and is suspended by an elaborate loop-shaped hanger on its crown (see Zhong).

Stone (Shi). Historically, stone was thought to be symbolic of longevity and stability, which helps explain its usage in ancestral rituals. Only one instrument type is found in this category, the Qing stone chime, an L-shaped lithophone constructed of resonant limestone or jade, each tuned to a specific pitch.

Earth (Tu). Use of clay in instrument construction is suggestive of the significance of earth (di) as a generative force, complementary to the cosmological dominance of heaven (tian). While the Shijing cites the existence of a musical bowl made of clay (fou), it is the Xun globular flute, an egg-shaped clay flute with between five and eight finger-holes distributed in various patterns, that best exemplifies this category.

Skin (Ge). The skin category is comprised entirely of drums, the historic significance of which is found in the signalling nature of the drums themselves. More than 20 drum types are cited in the Zhouli, Liji and other ancient texts, of which the jian gu, jin gu, tao gu and bofu have shown the most enduring legacy. All have barrel-shaped shells of wood, their two open ends covered with animal skin tacked around the circumference. Most significant is the elaborately decorated jian gu (‘mounted drum’), a large drum mounted horizontally on a post and covered with a richly ornamented canopy. The jin gu (‘Jin [kingdom] drum’) is the largest drum in the Chinese instrumentarium (over 1 metre in diameter), resting vertically in a frame. Both are struck with wooden beaters. More unusual is the twirling drum tao gu, a small drum mounted on a long round handle, with two short, beaded cords attached to the side of the shell. It is sounded by rotating the handle, causing the beads to strike the two drum heads alternately. The bofu (literally ‘strike-slap’) is a drum of moderate size, resting horizontally on a low rectangular frame and struck with the hands.

Silk (Si). Use of silk in the construction of instruments is unique to China. The Liji suggests that silk strings represent ‘purity’ (lian) and ‘determination’ (zhi), an indication of the high value assigned to string instruments. By the time of the late Zhou dynasty, four zither types were differentiated: qin, se, zheng and zhu. The seven-string Qin is the most venerated of instruments among Chinese scholars (see also §IV, 4(ii)(a) below). It differs from the other zithers in its irregular shape, absence of bridges and multitude of symbolic associations with Confucian cosmology and ideology. The se is a larger zither, with rectangular soundbox and 25 (or more) strings, each with a movable bridge. Metaphorically associated with the qin in ancient literature, its usage today is confined to the Confucian ritual. Related to the se (possibly derived from it), the Zhengis a medium-sized zither, with 16 (or more) strings and movable bridges (see also §IV, 4(ii)(b) below). Unlike the se, this zither has won popular acceptance as both a solo and small ensemble instrument. The zhu, a small zither with narrow soundboard and five strings, was reportedly struck with bamboo beaters. This zither is mentioned in ancient texts and old specimens have been found, but it has long been obsolete.

Wood (Mu). The classic texts describe several ancient and very unusual wooden idiophones in this category, of which the zhu and yu are predominant. The zhu idiophone (not to be confused with the zhu zither) is shaped like a wooden box, open at the top, with four outward sloping sides and (on later instruments) a round hole in the wall of one side; it is struck on the inside with a beater. Commentary in the Shijing notes that the zhu is like ‘a lacquered grain container’, suggesting possible historic usage in agricultural rites. The yu idiophone is essentially a carved wooden image of a crouching tiger, with a row of ridges along its back. In performance, a switch of wood or bamboo is drawn across the ridges, producing a rasping sound. The symbolic implications of this act are powerful, though never explicated in the ancient texts. The tiger, lord of all Chinese animals, symbolized many qualities, such as courage and military prowess. Common-practice sayings recognize the importance of subjugating tigers and remaining alert to danger. While some zhu and yu survive from the recent Qing dynasty, no ancient specimens have been unearthed.

Gourd (Pao). This category is unusual in that its primary instrument, the sheng mouth organ, bears closer affinities to ‘bamboo’ than to ‘gourd’ (owing in part to the significant presence of the ‘bamboo’ radical in its character). It is so classified, however, because gourd was formerly used in the construction of windchests. The sheng is comprised of bamboo pipes inserted into a windchest, with a blowpipe on one side; attached to the bottoms of the pipes are free-beating reeds. Several historically related mouth organs include the Sheng, he, yu and chao, most bearing strong symbolic associations with the mythic phoenix.

Bamboo (Zhu). Chinese scholars and poets have assigned deep cultural significance to the use of bamboo in the construction of flute-type instruments. Bamboo's naturally hollow interior was thought to be symbolic of the Confucian values of humility and modesty; its hardiness in winter was symbolic of human endurance and longevity. Various associations with the legendary dragon and poenix are commonly found as well. Over a dozen flute names appear in Zhou texts, though most of these are size variants (and related instruments) for three basic types: transverse flutes, vertical flutes and panpipes. The names of these flutes, however, have undergone confusing changes over the last 2000 years. The chi is a transverse flute of several different styles, constructed from a bamboo variety of relatively large internal diameter (about 3 cm). Scholars now believe that the name chi is etymologically related to the name Di (the more recent transverse flute) and that the two flute types themselves may be related. The vertical flute (formerly known as di, now as Xiao) is constructed with a notch at the blowing end (to facilitate tone production) and five frontal finger-holes plus one thumb-hole. The Chinese paixiao Panpipe is constructed of graded bamboo pipes, bound in one rank with horizontal bracing strips. Historically known by the name xiao, it has been called paixiao only within the last millennium.

China, People’s Republic of, §III: Musical instruments

3. Common-practice instruments.

Musical instruments in popular usage today emerged, for the most part, soon after the end of the Zhou dynasty. With the founding of the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce), continuing through to the eclectic Tang (618–907) and beyond, numerous ideas and artefacts from India and Central Asia were introduced into China with the flow of Buddhism. Imported instruments arrived in several waves. Among the first to be introduced were the pipa lute, konghou harp, di transverse flute, bili reedpipe, tongjiao metal horn, tongbo small cymbals and xiyao gu hourglass drum. These instruments are well described in the Tongdian (801), Yueshu (c1100) and other sources, and are pictured in artwork left in the earlier Dunhuang and Yungang caves (and others) from the 4th century ce onwards, and again in the important Wang Jian reliefs of the early 10th century. (For a comprehensive English-language review of instruments pictured at Dunhuang, see Zheng, 1993.)

The principal repository of instruments surviving from this period is the Shōsōin in Nara, Japan, where numerous specimens of Tang lutes, harps, zithers, flutes and other instruments are preserved (see Hayashi, 1967). Tang and post-Tang instruments surviving in China are kept in various provincial museums. The most comprehensive collection of instruments dated from the late imperial period is housed at the Music Research Institute in Beijing.

The following is a summary of only the most significant common-practice Han Chinese instruments. For instruments of the many ethnic minorities, see §IV, 5 below.

(i) Early plucked string instruments.

(ii) Wind instruments.

(iii) Drums.

(iv) Clappers and woodblocks.

(v) Small bells and cymbals.

(vi) Gongs.

(vii) Later string instruments.

(viii) 20th-century developments.

China, People’s Republic of, §III, 3: Musical instruments, Common-practice instruments.

(i) Early plucked string instruments.

The indigenous plucked string instruments most probably were all zithers, used primarily in ritual performances. The zheng (see §2 above), however, appears to have been a common-practice instrument from the beginning. It has retained its popularity in and out of the court to the present day. Most important among the new string instruments to emerge during the Han period are the Pipa and ruan lutes and related variants (see Yueqin).

The pipa lute is well documented from the Han dynasty onwards. Widely believed to have been introduced from India or Central Asia, its name may be a transliteration of the Sanskrit term vina or other Central Asian lute name. Pipa was initially a generic name for different varieties of plucked lutes: the bent-necked pipa with pear-shaped body and four strings; the straight-necked pipa with slightly smaller pear-shaped body and five strings (wuxian); and the straight-necked lute with round body and four strings (ruanxian). Within a few centuries of its appearance, the bent-necked pipa (which at that time was held in a horizontal position and plucked with a large plectrum) came to dominate the other varieties and became fashionable in court entertainment ensembles. It was readily embraced by musicians during the Tang and Song periods and has continued its popularity to the present day (see §IV, 4(ii)(c) below), remaining one of the indispensable instruments employed in ‘silk-and-bamboo’ ensembles.

The ruanxian, with large, round resonating chamber and long, fretted neck, also emerged during the Han period, though most likely on Chinese soil. While the ruanxian (or ruan) itself declined in common-practice music performance (rthough revised for 20th-century concert-hall music), its two derived variants, yueqin and qinqin, became more prevalent within the recent centuries. The short-necked Yueqin (‘moon lute’) is used primarily in Beijing Opera accompaniment. The qinqin (‘Qin [kingdom] lute’), with its long neck and distinctively scalloped soundbox, is used in both Cantonese and Chaozhou music.

Other historic lutes related to the pipa include the hulei and liuye qin. The hulei (literally ‘sudden thunder’), a small pipa-shaped lute with only two strings and snakeskin-covered sound chamber, was documented during the Tang dynasty. Although large and small specimens survive from this period, the instrument is no longer employed in Han Chinese music. The liuye qin (‘willow leaf’ qin, or simply liuqin), a pipa miniature with (usually) three strings, is also believed to have emerged during the Tang. It is still employed in local opera traditions of eastern China and in concert-hall ensembles.

Finally, several types of harps, known in China as konghou, are mentioned in the literature of the 2nd century bce onwards. Introduced from India or possibly West Asia, harps are described in Chinese sources as being of three sub-types: ‘vertical’ konghou (with lower string-holding arm at right angle to the body), ‘phoenix head’ konghou (with a single long, arching body) and ‘horizontal’ konghou (zither-like in shape, with frets). The ‘vertical’ konghou, which became the most common variant, is clearly described in the Tongdian (801) and other literature and is pictured in the artwork of these periods. An essential element of court entertainment ensembles during the Sui and Tang dynasties, the konghou declined in popularity after the Tang and it eventually disappeared.

China, People’s Republic of, §III, 3: Musical instruments, Common-practice instruments.

(ii) Wind instruments.

While most wind instruments employed in ancient ritual contexts retained their exclusive status as court instruments (i.e. the bayin instruments), the Xiao vertical flute and Sheng mouth organ were also accepted into common-practice music-making. Both are still used in ensemble music, the xiao mostly in southern ensembles and with qin, the sheng in northern ensembles. Principal among the new wind instruments to emerge during the Han period are transverse flutes, reedpipes and horns.

The Di transverse flute, initially known as hengdi and by other names, is believed to have been introduced early in the Han period (although it may have been related to the ancient chi). Initially employed in military ensembles and court entertainment ensembles, by the 16th century a new variant of di (with an extra hole to be covered by a vibrating membrane) became a lead instrument in Kunqu classical opera and other entertainment genres. By the 20th century, it had also become an important solo instrument within the context of the concert hall.

Double-reed instruments are of two types. The bili reedpipe (with large double reed) is thought to be of Central Asian origin. Emerging soon after the Han period, the reedpipe became important in court entertainment ensembles of the Sui and Tang. Subsequently known by the names Guan or guanzi, the instrument is today used mainly in ensembles of north China with the sheng mouth organ and percussion. The Suona shawm type (with small double reed) is one of many worldwide adaptations of related Arab or Persian instruments (e.g. zurna). It is performed in outdoor processional ensembles throughout China.

Traditional horns are of several types. Long, valveless, metal horns (tongjiao) made from copper (or an alloy), with broad-rimmed cup mouthpieces and straight or curved bells, are depicted in Han reliefs (along with drums) as military instruments. Probably introduced from India or Persia, they are described in the Tongdian (801) and Yueshu (c1100) as being like water buffalo horns of metal. Actual animal horns (niujiaohao) with cup mouthpieces are rare today, although they are played occasionally by Daoist or other priests. Straight and curved metal horns, known as laba, haotong and other local names, are still used in outdoor village ceremonies. The very long straight horns used in Tibetan Buddhist ensembles are related instruments.

Another horn type is the conch (hailuo) or ‘Buddhist shell’ (faluo), a shell in which a blow-hole has been cut at or near the small spiral tip (forming a cup mouthpiece). Historically known as bei (‘shell’), the shell horn is well documented in Tang art and literature as being part of court ensembles. It is still used today in Tibetan Buddhist ensembles and some Han Chinese ritual ensembles.

China, People’s Republic of, §III, 3: Musical instruments, Common-practice instruments.

(iii) Drums.

The oldest drums documented in China had barrel-shaped shells, with drumheads tacked to the shell at both ends. Drums introduced from India and/or Central Asia to the Sui and Tang courts (7th to early 10th centuries) were mostly hourglass- or tubular-shaped, with laced drumheads, notably the xiyao gu (‘narrow-waist drum’, or yao gu) and jie gu (‘Jie [tribe] drum’). Most have clear affinities with Indian instruments. While some of these drum types were passed on to Japan and Korea during this period of cultural contact, their importance in Han Chinese ensembles diminished after the Tang, and they eventually disappeared in China, with the exception of some preservations among ethnic minorities.

Drums employed in the accompaniment of opera, narrative singing and instrumental ensembles mostly appeared after the Tang period, including shu gu (‘narrative drum’), a flat wooden drum about 30 cm in diameter, suspended in a three-legged stand, which is used to accompany northern dagu narrative singing; dian gu (‘point drum’), a smaller drum with a thick wooden shell tapered towards the outer perimeter, used in Kunqu and sizhu in central-eastern China; danpi gu (‘single-skin drum’) or ban gu, a frame constructed of thick wedges of hardwood glued together in a circle about 25 cm in diameter, covered on the top end only with pighide or cowhide and wrapped with a metal band, used in opera accompaniment; tang gu (‘hall drum’) and other large barrel drums, of variable size, suspended in a stand, widely used in opera and instrumental music. Flat drums are usually struck with one or two slender sticks of wood or bamboo; the larger barrel drums are struck with thicker beaters.

Numerous other types of drum are found in China, including those employed in dance accompaniment such as bajiao gu (‘octagonal drum’), shi gu (‘lion drum’) and yao gu (‘waist drum’, not to be confused with the historic xiyao gu). Employed in 20th-century concert-hall ensembles are new variants such as pai gu (‘row drums’), bian da gu (‘flat large drum’) and huapen gu (‘flowerpot drum’).

China, People’s Republic of, §III, 3: Musical instruments, Common-practice instruments.

(iv) Clappers and woodblocks.

Clappers and woodblocks are primarily time-marking instruments. The oldest type of clapper in contemporary usage, the paiban (or ban), is constructed of five or six strips of resonant hardwood, bound together with a connecting cord through their top ends. In performance, this instrument is held in both hands and ‘clapped’ together on regular beats. Mentioned in the Tongdian (801) and Yueshu (c1100), and pictured in 10th century art, the multi-strip paiban is still employed in nanguan (nanyin) music in Fujian. A later variant is the three-strip paiban, employed in Beijing opera and other northern genres. This clapper is held in the left hand only (suspended over the thumb), leaving the right hand free to strike a small drum (ban gu) in alternation.

Woodblocks of several types have emerged over recent centuries. The muyu (‘wooden fish’), described in the Ming dynasty Sancai tuhui (1619), is one of the oldest. It is most commonly constructed of mulberry or camphor wood, with a hollow interior resonating chamber, the exterior elaborately carved in a rounded abstraction of a fish (although some older muyu are in fact fish-shaped). The muyu is struck with a beater in accompaniment of Buddhist chant. The woodblock known as nanbangzi (‘southern bangzi’), essentially a muyu in rectangular form, similarly has a lateral slit on one side and an internal resonating cavity. It is struck with a thin beater in accompaniment of Cantonese opera (in place of the older ban gu drum) and other genres. Cantonese musicians identify several sizes, named gok (large), duk (medium) and dik (small), in imitation of their different tonal effects. Bangzi, on the other hand, are concussion sticks, similar to Western claves though of unequal lengths and shapes. They are struck together in accompaniment of the northern bangzi opera. Among the many other local variants of clappers and woodblocks, an especially distinctive instrument is the sibao employed in nanguan music, four short strips of bamboo which are held (two in each hand) and shaken. Other clappers, woodblocks and metal idiophones known to Moule during the early 20th century are examined in his study of 1908 (pp.12ff).

China, People’s Republic of, §III, 3: Musical instruments, Common-practice instruments.

(v) Small bells and cymbals.

Small bells (ling) and cymbals (bo), while morphologically different idiophones, are not always clearly differentiated in historic Chinese sources or by artists in cave reliefs. Pairs of small bells, variously known by the onomatopoeic names pengling, xing, shuangling, lingbo etc., are described in Tang literature and depicted in cave art of the 5th and 6th centuries. Resembling Indian bells, these small, hand-held, clapperless bells (about 5 or 6 cm in diameter) are hemispheric in shape, made of a brass alloy and attached together with a cord through holes in their crowns. Their pitches are tuned, but exact pitches vary from one pair to another. In performance, they are struck together to punctuate Buddhist chant and occasionally instrumental ensemble music. A related bell is the yinqing (or xingzi), a single hemispheric bell mounted on a wooden handle and struck with a thin metal beater.

A larger type of bell is a resonating bowl of hammered bronze, which rests on a cushion and is struck with a padded beater. Commonly known today as zuoqing (‘seated’ qing) or simply qing (not to be confused with the ancient stone chime of the same name), this very resonant bell has been used in Buddhist temples to accompany chant since the Tang dynasty. The largest bell found in Buddhist temples is the clapperless zhong, round in cross-section and flat or scalloped at the bottom, suspended under the eaves of temples and struck to mark periods of worship.

Another idiophone which (unlike the zuoqing) was closely related to the stone chime is the fangxiang (‘square [resonant] sound’), a Sui-Tang substitution for the ancient qing, constructed in sets of 16 rectangular iron bars of varying thickness, suspended in frames. Used primarily in the court ‘banquet music’ of the period, fangxiang idiophones disappeared after the Tang.

Pairs of small cymbals (bo), historically known as tongbo (‘copper [alloy] cymbals’), are described in pre-Tang literature and depicted in earlier cave art. Probably introduced from West or Central Asia, small Cymbals were regularly employed in court ensembles during the Tang dynasty. Cymbals in use today are of various sizes and shapes, including medium-sized jingbo (‘capital cymbals’, used in Beijing opera), and the large ritual cymbals nao and bo. Jingbo and related cymbals are generally between 15 and 20 cm in diameter, with a large raised central bulb through which a strip of cloth or cord is tied for holding. Most cymbals today are employed in opera and ceremonial ensembles.

China, People’s Republic of, §III, 3: Musical instruments, Common-practice instruments.

(vi) Gongs.

Gongs (luo) differ from bells and cymbals in that their area of greatest resonance is at their centres, not at their rims. Chinese gongs are made from ‘resonant bronze’ (xiangtong, an alloy of copper and tin), hammered into various dish-shaped or basin-shaped structures, with shoulders turned back at about 90 degrees. Gong-type instruments may have originated in what is now south-central China, a region heavily populated by non-Han tribal peoples, and in northern areas of South-east Asia. A bronze gong unearthed in Guangxi province, dating to the Han dynasty, measures approximately 32 cm in diameter, with a large, flat, central striking area, rounded shoulders and three metal rings around its edge for suspension. The so-called ‘bronze drums’, which are actually gong types, appeared several hundred years earlier (see Bronze drum, §2). Gong types ‘like large copper plates’ (known as zheng gu) are described in the Tongdian of 801, and possibly related gongs (guchui zheng) are pictured in the treatise Yueshu (c1100). The Japanese shoko (Chin. zheng gu) used in gagaku, with narrow shoulders at 90 degrees, through which cords are inserted for suspension in a frame, may be a survival from this period. Other gongs are pictured and described in Chinese sources, such as the knobbed gong called tong gu in the 1713 treatise Lülü zhengyi.

Chinese gongs today exist in a very wide variety. Small, basin-shaped gongs suspended in frames, struck with thin unpadded beaters, include xiangzhan (‘resonating cup’), a small, flat gong resting in a basket (about 6 cm in diameter), employed in nanguan of Fujian province; zhengluo, a slightly larger gong (about 10 cm in diameter) suspended by three cords in an individual frame; Yunluo (‘cloud gongs’), a set of ten or more similar sized pitched gongs common in northern China. Knobbed gongs are larger (about 25–45 cm in diameter), with a raised boss at the centre and sharply turned-back shoulders. They are suspended by two cords in standing frames, hung from poles (when used in processions) or hand-held, and struck with padded beaters. Most commonly found in south-central China, especially among minority peoples, and in south-eastern China and Taiwan, notably among the Chaozhou people, knobbed gongs bear local onomatopoeic names such as gongluo or mangluo.

Gongs used in the operatic traditions of north and central-eastern China are different in that their surface shapes are convex, with a flattened central striking area and relatively narrow shoulders. Their most distinctive acoustical feature is that their pitches change after being struck. For large gongs (about 30 cm in diameter), known as daluo (‘large gong’) and other local names, the pitch descends; for small gongs (about 22 cm in diameter), known as xiaoluo (‘small gong’) and other names, the pitch ascends. Such gongs are employed in ensembles accompanying northern opera and other instrumental ensembles. They are also used in southern China, together with very large basin-shaped gongs with flat surfaces and wide shoulders, such as the Chaozhou shenbo (literally ‘deep slope’, about 60–80 cm in diameter) and the smaller douluo (‘container gong’).

China, People’s Republic of, §III, 3: Musical instruments, Common-practice instruments.

(vii) Later string instruments.

Beginning with the Song dynasty (960–1279), changes in Chinese taste associated with neo-Confucianism forced many ‘foreign’ instruments out of fashion. While the konghou, wuxian and xiyaogu appear less frequently in period paintings, the hengdi, bili and pipa are regularly pictured in ensembles, often together with zheng, xiao, sheng and paiban. Most significant and widespread of the instruments imported during the late Tang and early Song periods are the bowed two-string fiddles.

Huqin (literally ‘barbarian qin’) is the term applied to the broad family of bowed instruments. All have a thin, round, fretless neck mounted in a relatively small resonating chamber of varying shapes, with (usually) two strings between which the hair of the bow passes. Historic huqin types include the post-Tang xiqin (activated by a thin strip of bamboo), the later mawei huqin (activated with a horsehair bow), and the tiqin (‘hand-held’ qin) of about the 17th century. Among the dozens of more recent huqin varieties still played in regional opera and instrumental ensembles are erxian, erhu, gaohu and banhu.

Another instrument imported into China after the Tang dynasty was the Sanxian, a lute with long, fretless neck and snakeskin-covered resonator. The sanxian (literally ‘three string’), most likely an adaptation of some other three string lute of Central Asia (such as setar), was first mentioned in Chinese sources during the Mongol-dominated Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), though some scholars believe it was in common usage before this. It is still employed in the accompaniment of the narrative arts and other genres throughout China. Distantly related is the huobusi, one of several historic transliterations for the Central Asian lute qobuz, an instrument not well documented until the Yuan period. A specimen preserved in Beijing from about the 15th century has a long neck, narrow sound chamber covered with snakeskin, and four strings – very similar to instruments still played among the Naxi people of Yunnan and non-Han peoples of Xinjiang. (For a useful English-language review of this and other Tang and Song string instruments, see Picken, 1965, pp.82–9.)

One of the last of the string instruments to be introduced before the 20th century was the Yangqin (‘foreign qin’), a trapezoidal dulcimer with seven or more courses of metal strings, struck with two slender beaters. An adaptation of the Persian santur, the yangqin was introduced into south China during the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644), ultimately becoming widely accepted into Chinese ensemble music, both north and south.

China, People’s Republic of, §III, 3: Musical instruments, Common-practice instruments.

(viii) 20th-century developments.

During the first half of the 20th century, many Euro-American jazz and popular instruments were introduced into the coastal cities of Shanghai and Hong Kong, such as banjo, double bass, violin, xylophone, saxophone and piano. Some instruments, notably the banjo and C-melody saxophone, were accepted into the Cantonese tradition; others enjoyed only short-term popularity. But the Euro-American influence was far greater in terms of construction ideals. During the 1950s, the new state-operated instrument factories, with the aim of projecting a progressive worldview and prosperous national image, implemented numerous ‘reforms’: instrument volumes were increased, equal temperament adopted (making modulation to distant keys possible), and many instruments were constructed in families (soprano, alto, tenor, bass). Some of these experiments, such as the jiajian sheng (‘keyed [soprano] sheng’), tenor suona, and daruan (‘large ruan’), now maintain essential roles in contemporary concert-hall ensembles. However, traditionally constructed instruments remain in common use for regional genres.

China, People’s Republic of, §III: Musical instruments

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Most comprehensive among Chinese-language sources are the encyclopedic guides by Liu (1987, 1992) and Li (1996), and the multi-volume province-by-province ‘Compendium of Chinese musical relics’ (Zhongguo yinyui wenwu daxi, 1996–). For an English-language index to relevant studies appearing in Chinese archaeology journals, see DeWoskin (1989).

imperial period

Shijing [Classic of poetry] (c10th–6th centuries bce), trans. J. Legge as The Book of Poetry (London, 1876/R); A. Waley as The Book of Songs (London, 1937/R); B. Karlgren as The Book of Odes (Stockholm, 1950)

Erya [Refined definitions] (c3rd century bce)

Zhouli [Rites of Zhou (dynasty)] (c3rd–2nd century bce)

Liji [Record of rites] (c1st century bce), trans. J. Legge as Li Ki (Oxford, 1885/R)

Xu Shen: Shuowen jiezi [Explanation of graphs and analysis of characters] (c121 ce)

Ying Shao: Fengsu tongyi [Meaning of popular customs] (c175 ce)

Du You, ed.: Tongdian [Encyclopedic history of institutions] (801)

Duan Anjie: Yuefu zalu [Miscellaneous notes on music scholarship] (late 9th century), trans. Gimm, 1966

Chen Yang: Yueshu [Treatise on music] (c1100)

Wang Qi, ed.: Sancai tuhui [Universal encyclopedia] (1619)

Mei Gucheng and others, eds.: Lülü zhengyi [Basic principles of pitch systems] (1713)

Chen Menglei and others, eds.: Gujin tushu jicheng [Synthesis of books and illustrations past and present] (1725)

20th century

A.C. Moule: ‘A List of the Musical and Other Sound-Producing Instruments of the Chinese’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, North China Branch, xxxix (1908), 1–160; repr. separately (Buren, 1989)

Zhongguo yinyue shi cankao tupian [Illustrations for reference on Chinese music history], ed. Minzu yinyue yanjiusuo (Shanghai and Beijing, 1954–64)

K. Hayashi: Dongya yueqi kao [Study of East Asian musical instruments] (Beijing, 1962/R) [with Eng. summary]

L. Picken: ‘Early Chinese Friction-Chordophones’, GSJ, xviii (1965), 82–9

M. Gimm: Das ‘Yueh-fu Tsa-lu' des Tuan An-chieh: Studien zur Geschichte von Musik, Schauspiel und Tanz in der T'ang-Dynastie (Wiesbaden, 1966)

K. Hayashi and others: Shōsōin no gakki [Musical instruments in the Shōsōin] (Tokyo, 1967)

L. Picken: ‘T'ang Music and Musical Instruments’, T'oung Pao, lv (1969), 74–122

Cheung Sai-bung: Zhongguo yinyue shilun shugao [Historical studies of Chinese music] (Hong Kong, 1974–5)

Yang Jialuo, ed.: Zhongguo yinyue shiliao [Historical materials on Chinese music] (Taipei, 1975)

W. Kaufmann: Musical References in the Chinese Classics (Detroit, 1976)

R. Mok: ‘Ancient Musical Instruments Unearthed in 1972 from the Number One Han Tomb at Ma Wang Tui, Changsha: Translation and Commentary of Chinese Reports’, AsM, x/1 (1978), 39–91

Han Kuo-huang: ‘The Modern Chinese Orchestra’, AsM, xi/1 (1979), 1–40

Wu Zhao: ‘Rare Find of Ancient Instruments’, China Reconstructs, xxviii/5 (1979), 28–31

Huang Xiangpeng and others: ‘Suixian chutu yinyue wenwu zhuanji’ [Special issue on the musical relics excavated in Suixian], Yinyue yanjiu (1981), no.1

Yang Yinliu: Zhongguo gudai yinyue shigao [Draft history of ancient Chinese music] (Beijing, 1981)

Tong Kin-woon: Shang Musical Instruments (diss., Wesleyan U., 1983); repr. in AsM, xiv/2 (1983), xv/1 (1983) and xv/2 (1984)

Liang Mingyue: Music of the Billion: an Introduction to Chinese Musical Culture (New York, 1985)

Yuan Bingchang and Mao Jizeng, eds.: Zhongguo shaoshu minzu yueqi zhi [Dictionary of musical instruments of the Chinese minorities] (Beijing, 1986)

Liu Dongsheng and others, eds.: Zhongguo yueqi tuzhi [Pictorial record of Chinese musical instruments] (Beijing,1987) [YYS pubn]

Liu Dongsheng and Yuan Quanyou, eds.: Zhongguo yinyue shi tujian [Pictorial guide to the history of Chinese music] (Beijing, 1988) [YYS pubn]

K. DeWoskin: ‘Sources for the Study of Early Chinese Music’, Archeologia Musicalis (1989)

F. Kuttner: The Archeology of Music in Ancient China (New York, 1990)

Han Kuo-huang: Zhonggue yueqi xunli [A tour of Chinese musical instruments] (Taipei, 1991)

Liu Dongsheng, ed.: Zhongguo yueqi tujian [Pictorial guide to Chinese instruments] (Ji'nan, 1992) [YYS pubn]

Zhao Feng and others, eds.: Zhongguo yueqi [Chinese musical instruments]/The Universe of Music: a History, China, i: Instruments (Hong Kong, 1992) [suppl. vol. with Eng. summary]

L. von Falkenhausen: Suspended Music: Chime-bells in the Culture of Bronze Age China (Berkeley, 1993)

Yang Mu: Chinese Musical Instruments (Canberra, 1993) [incl. cassettes]

Zheng Ruzhong: ‘Musical Instruments in the Wall Paintings of Dunhuang’, CHIME, no.7 (1993), 4–56

Li Chunyi: Zhongguo shanggu chutu yueqi zonglun [Survey of ancient excavated musical instruments in China] (Beijing, 1996)

Zhongguo yinyue wenwu daxi [Compendium of Chinese musical relics] (1996–) [YYS pubn]

A. Thrasher: Chinese Musical Instruments (Hong Kong, 2000)

China, People’s Republic of

IV. Living traditions

Although Chinese scholars have studied living regional traditions since the 1940s and earlier, with much research in the 1950s, wider awareness of the riches of folk music in China has come only since the dismantling of the Maoist commune system in the 1980s. This period saw not only the revival of many forms of traditional culture but also an intensification of collection and research. The main stimulus for this work was the vast project Zhongguo minzu minjian yinyue jicheng (Anthology of Folk Music of the Chinese Peoples), a series including volumes for every province on opera, narrative singing, folksong, instrumental music and dance. Largely based on fieldwork in the early 1980s, volumes began to appear in the late 1980s. For all its flaws, the series, consisting largely of transcriptions into cipher notation, with brief documentation of history and social background of genres, is an indispensable starting-point for fieldwork.

Also useful is the Zhongguo yinyue nianjian (Chinese music yearbook), which lists Chinese research on different genres. Major archives include the Music Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Arts, Beijing, and the CHIME Foundation, Leiden. Regional performance troupes for opera, narrative singing and instrumental music may also preserve valuable unpublished documentary and recorded material.

Traditional genres adapted with difficulty to communist power and were virtually silenced in the 1960s and 70s during the Cultural Revolution. After the dismantling of Maoism in the late 70s, traditions revived. At the same time, many genres that had hitherto resisted political pressure were subject to the new influence of modern popular culture. Nonetheless, traditions have proved more resilient in rural areas than in the towns.

§§1–4 below discuss Han Chinese genres, §5 ‘minority’ traditions, and §6 Western-influenced styles.

1. Musical drama and narrative.

2. Folksong and dance.

3. Religious music.

4. Instrumental music.

5. Minority traditions.

6. Western-influenced styles.

China, People’s Republic of, §IV: Living traditions

1. Musical drama and narrative.

Vocal dramatic music has dominated Chinese taste since at least the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368). As song adds dramatic elements, incorporating speech and recitation with extended narrative content, costume and instrumental accompaniment, the Chinese classification moves from folksong to narrative singing and opera.

Chinese research on regional genres was extensive in the 1950s and has thrived again since around 1980. Apart from the major work of the Anthology of Folk Music, journals include Zhongguo xiju (formerly Xiju bao), Quyi and many others published in Beijing or in regional centres, and in the West, Asian Theatre Journal and CHINOPERL Papers. Many more recordings of regional opera than of narrative-singing are available in China, most collections being held privately by research institutes and performing troupes. Archives include the Xiqu yanjiusuo and Quyi yanjiusuo in Beijing; provincial conservatories and troupes also often have research departments.

(i) Opera.

(ii) Narrative.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

China, People’s Republic of, §1: Living traditions, Musical drama and narrative.

(i) Opera.

(a) History and styles.

(b) Opera under Mao.

(c) The revival.

China, People’s Republic of, §1(i): Living traditions, Musical drama and narrative., Opera.

(a) History and styles.

The Chinese xi, xiqu or xiju, variously rendered in English as opera, drama or theatre, denotes a multi-media performance in which a dramatic story is enacted in costume and make-up, a synthesis of speech, song, dance, acting and acrobatics. Stage props are sparse, and action is highly stylized (fig.11).

A major dictionary of Chinese regional opera, published in 1995, lists and explains the history, features and music of 335 different styles, including Beijing opera. These vary according to music, instrumentation and the dialect or language of the librettos. Apart from the operas of ethnic ‘minorities’, especially Tibetan opera, the stories tend to be consistent from one place to another, though some are particular to one region. Some styles are popular in large areas of the country, others in single provinces, and most in still smaller districts. Whereas in the West an opera is generally identifiable by its composer, in China it is known by its region of origin.

Chinese sung drama originated during the 12th century under the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279), but the regional operas performed today developed mainly during the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1911). The largest in scale among the styles belong to several main ‘systems’ of opera, notably gaoqiang, Kunqu, bangzi qiang and pihuang.

The great majority of regional opera styles were for the masses; the educated élite looked down on these plays. The oldest of the surviving systems of popular opera is gaoqiang, also known as Yiyang qiang after its place of origin, Yiyang in Jiangxi province. Characteristics include fast metres and the use of a small chorus, which in some cases entirely replaces wind and string instruments. Major examples are Sichuan opera (Chuanju) and Chaozhou opera (Chaoju), both of which still use the small chorus.

The more sophisticated style of Kunqu evolved in the Suzhou area of east-central China during the 16th century. It influenced the later development of Beijing opera but was losing popularity by the 20th century. It is an aristocratic style characterized by a slow and regular 4/4 rhythm with much melisma, accompanied by di transverse flute and sanxian three-string lute.

A third system common in northern China is clapper opera (bangzi qiang), which was originally accompanied by a date-wood clapper. All clapper opera styles use string instruments, especially a two-string bowed fiddle (see Huqin). Like the Yiyang qiang, their librettos are based mainly on colloquial language. Major examples of this system are the operas of Shaanxi (Qinqiang) and Shanxi (Jinju).

The fourth main system is pihuang, a combination of erhuang and xipi, modes with their different affects. The main example of this system is Beijing opera; another is Cantonese opera (Yueju), with its mellifluous and slightly sensuous tonalities; the saxophone and other Western instruments were introduced into this opera in the first half of the 20th century.

Apart from styles belonging to these four systems, there is a plethora of small-scale folk regional styles. Their plays have small casts, with very few instruments accompanying the singers and simple and repetitious melodies. The stories are comic, many revolving around a flirtatious couple and clearly designed for entertainment. Both imperial and modern authorities frequently castigated the operas as lewd, with frequent bans and edicts against them. A major example of a style that began as folk theatre but expanded in scale after becoming urbanized early in the 20th century is Shaoxing opera (Yueju, written differently from the characters for Cantonese opera). The music is softer, more lyrical and less percussive than that heard in most of China’s main regional styles, although of course the orchestra includes percussion.

Apart from its function as entertainment, opera is also part of folk ritual in many parts of China. Buddhist plays using a regional style in their musical accompaniment were incorporated into these rituals. Plays such as Mulian jiumu (‘Mulian Saves his Mother’), about the virtuous Mulian who seeks, finds and saves his sinful mother from hell, became extremely popular, forming the basis of religious rituals. David Johnson has suggested that the main reason for the close connection of ritual and opera is because both were scripted performances in a culture where doctrine was always of slighter significance than behaviour.

Standard role types are sheng (male), dan (female), jing (painted face, male) and chou (clown) (fig.12). Although Shaoxing opera began the practice of all-female casts in the first half of the 20th century, until the mid-20th century most actors were male, including those who performed female roles; thereafter the tradition of males playing female roles largely died out. Actors were very low in class, despite the extraordinary skills their art demanded, and enjoyed no protection at all under the law. Even the performers of Kunqu were low in status and included the slaves of the aristocracy.

Musically, Chinese regional operas have been classified as ‘metrical melody’ (banqiang) and ‘labelled melody’ (qupai) forms. In the former, skeletal musical phrases (often in pairs) are varied and elaborated to fit the text, metre etc. In the latter, by contrast, the unit of variation is the ‘labelled melody’, a large repertory of pre-existing tunes, to which the text is adapted or composed. The styles belonging to the clapper opera and pihuang systems follow the first pattern, while the great majority of other styles accord with the second.

The instrumental accompaniment is often divided into ‘civil’ and ‘martial’ arenas (wenchang, wuchang). Apart from bowed and plucked fiddles and flute, a shawm plays overtures and codas and marks the entrance of imposing characters such as emperors or generals. The percussion section is led by a drum-master playing a high-pitched ‘single-skin’ drum (danpi gu) and clappers, with punctuation from gongs and cymbals.

China, People’s Republic of, §1(i): Living traditions, Musical drama and narrative., Opera.

(b) Opera under Mao.

The policy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on regional drama has moved through different phases. Before the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), regional theatre was encouraged as a popular art form loved by the masses. The government invested money in establishing professional troupes that would maintain and enhance the various regional forms. It set up and paid for training schools to foster a new generation of performers. It persuaded ‘old artists’ to use their talents to reconstruct arts that were dying out and to work in the training schools. The social status of actors of the regional opera was even lower than in Beijing opera, and the CCP tried to improve their position, lionizing such stars as the Kunqu actor Yu Zhenfei, the Shaoxing opera actress Yuan Xuefen (b 1922) and the Cantonese opera performer Ma Shizeng (1900–64).

In the 1950s, the CCP also undertook extensive reforms of the regional theatre in order to eliminate politically untoward content that could be construed as anti-socialist. At the same time folk opera troupes, though also affected by reform, showed themselves remarkably resistant to modernized styles of music or content. At all times, they have preferred their own traditions.

A new form of traditional opera was inherited from the northern Shaanxi zones that the CCP had held in the 1930s and 40s. Called ‘newly arranged historical drama’ (xinbian lishi xi), this form had several characteristics. The music was composed especially for each new play but followed the style of the original traditional regional opera, with only inessential changes such as increasing the size of the accompanying orchestra. Scenery was made more spectacular and complicated than in any traditional regional opera. Librettos were especially written to suit the music of the regional opera style and for a story set in the dynastic period. Instead of short episodic scenes, such as characterize traditional opera, the newly arranged plays feature dramatic tension, rising to a climax and dénouement. The themes had to accord with socialist demands and express what CCP Chairman Mao Zedong (1893–1976) described as ‘the democratic essence’ of the Chinese people. So operas about rebels against the feudal society or women asserting their right to play a part in public life were especially favoured.

The Cultural Revolution saw the banning of all traditional regional operas. Even the most politically correct of the ‘newly arranged historical dramas’ were banned. The most rigid censorship replaced them with adaptations of the model Beijing operas favoured by Mao’s wife Jiang Qing. Actors associated with the traditional theatre were harassed, humiliated and persecuted.

Early in 1978, following a major political turnabout in Chinese politics, the new power-holder Deng Xiaoping (1904–97) effected a change in policy on regional theatre. An avid supporter and lover of Sichuan opera, he had seen at that time a private performance of some traditional items in the provincial capital Chengdu. With Deng’s explicit approval, Sichuan opera became the first of the major regional styles to reintroduce traditional plays.

China, People’s Republic of, §1(i): Living traditions, Musical drama and narrative., Opera.

(c) The revival.

Since 1978, two trends have been obvious. The state-subsidized regional theatre troupes at first revived significantly but then fell off. According to figures in the annual State Statistical Yearbook, the total number of state-subsidized troupes of all regional opera styles in 1986 was 2013, giving 397,000 performances of which 286,000 were in the countryside. By 1997, these figures had fallen, respectively, to 1472, 254,000, and 195,000. Audiences had fallen by about a quarter. Government subsidies had about halved over the same period and although performance takings had nearly trebled, this was because of much higher ticket or entrance prices, at least in part through performances for tourists. Some of the surviving troupes exist more in name than reality. Although many items performed belong to the category ‘newly arranged historical drama’, the majority are on traditional themes, with very few indeed on modern or contemporary topics.

The second trend is the revival of regional opera that is entirely independent of the state financially and often purely folk (minjian). These types of opera can be performed by amateur folk troupes. There are also professionals who make part of their living from their performances, working as ordinary peasants or at some other job for some of the year, and in opera for some of it. Entry into these troupes, even the folk companies, can be quite competitive, members being trained in their arts. Those in the countryside perform only on special occasions, such as at festivals or for a wedding or funeral. They do not usually perform in a theatre but in a covered enclosure built specially for the purpose or in the open air, often opposite a temple. The audience may pay for tea or tip the singers by throwing them money during the performance, but there is seldom a system of entrance payment. Sometimes if a regional opera company cannot make money in its own home, it will simply uproot and go elsewhere for a spell in the hope of finding better remuneration. The operas that such troupes perform are mainly classical, with traditional singing style and few accompanying musicians (fig.13).

One striking revival is that of ritual opera performed by lay clergy as part of an extended funeral or other ceremony. In southern Fujian province there are several ancient styles of regional opera, including the opera of Putian and Xianyou (Pu-Xian xi). Operas about Mulian are again performed as part of funeral and other rituals in this style, mainly by Buddhist priests. In some areas Daoist funeral ceremonies include ritual opera.

Another common form of regional opera found in various styles is known as nuo (fig.14). The name means ‘to cleanse or exorcize’, suggesting a strong ritual emphasis. Indeed, nuo is usually performed either at the spring festival to welcome the (lunar) new year, or at the autumn harvest festival to pray for a good harvest. However, provided they can pay, anybody can request a performance to alleviate a disaster such as drought, infertility or illness, to accompany a funeral or other special occasion or, increasingly in the 1990s, just for entertainment. Nuo opera is very ancient; like many ritual traditions thought to have died out under the People’s Republic, it re-emerged as a living tradition during the 1980s, attracting considerable interest both in China and abroad.

Nuo opera has been studied in Shanxi, Anhui and Guizhou. In Guizhou, a province with many minority nationalities, it is found among both the dominant Han and eight of the minority nationalities of the region – Miao, Yao, Yi, Bouyei, Dong, Shui, Gelao and Yao. One distinctive feature of all nuo styles is the use of masks, although not all nuo performances include masked characters. The masks vary enormously from region to region and even within a particular style. Masks are not usual in Chinese opera, the infinitely varied patterns of the painted face appearing to make them unnecessary. Some scholars have suggested a link between the nuo styles and Tibetan opera, which also uses masks. The music of the nuo styles is generally similar to other regional opera and folksong of its particular area in melody, instrumentation and rhythm. Although a few of the stories deal with topics such as the origin of the people among whom they are popular, the majority are traditional love stories, military tales of the 3rd-century Three Kingdoms period etc., rather similar to most other regional operas.

The actors of the nuo operas are members of the community, mostly male, and serve to reinforce community spirit. There are also folk amateur troupes that will perform on demand at a price. An informant stated in 1990 that the total number of troupes was very substantial, with at least one in every county in Guizhou and three or more in many. Scornful of the professional troupes, he added that the folk troupes provided much the best opera to be found in Guizhou province. The actors and administrators are mostly peasants and are thus mainly active during the slack agricultural seasons. The usual site for a nuo opera is in any large space in the open air, but they can also be found in formal theatres.

A province especially noted for its traditional theatre is Sichuan. The main style, known as Sichuan opera (Chuanju), combines musical elements from the main systems noted above with local melodies and instrumentation. Of these elements the most prominent, termed gaoqiang, derives from the Yiyang qiang system; the vocal texture has an identifiable high-pitched quality, with accompaniment restricted to a very small chorus and percussion instruments.

From 1982 there was a major officially sponsored movement aimed at ‘reviving Sichuan opera’ (zhenxing Chuanju), with the number of state troupes reaching about 100. By the mid-1990s this number had fallen to 80, of which nearly half were inactive, existing in name only. There are still formal schools for Sichuan opera, notably the Sichuan Provincial Opera School in the capital Chengdu, which is very active. Although audiences in the cities are mainly small and fairly to very old, there is still a following in the villages, including among the young. Many villages still have their own folk troupes, with ordinary people able to sing Sichuan opera. They perform not only on the major festivals but on any special occasion, such as a wedding, or during the slack agricultural season.

Two other features of the Sichuan opera scene are worth noting. One is that this style has produced the writer who has created what are perhaps the most interesting – and certainly most controversial – new operas in China since the 1980s: Wei Minglun (b 1941). His most noted opera is Pan Jinlian (1986), described as ‘a Sichuan opera of the absurd’. It takes the form of a contemporary trial, presided over by a female judge. The title character is a woman traditionally castigated as evil, being noted for debauchery and for murdering one of her husbands. The judge’s verdict is that blame rests not with Pan herself but with Chinese patriarchal society and its oppression of women.

The second feature concerns the revival of the Mulian dramas, which was part of the movement to ‘revive Sichuan opera’. Although very ancient in Sichuan (the first documented performance being in 829), the Sichuan opera Mulian dramas were moribund by the late 1950s and were totally suppressed during the Cultural Revolution. However, a revived performance took place in the first five days of September 1993, with the focus on the temple stage of the Fuleshan park in Mianyang, not far north-east of Chengdu. The significance of the dates is, first, the length of the performances and, second, that they corresponded, in the traditional way, with the Avalambana Festival on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, marking the Buddha’s advice to Mulian to offer food, incense and paper money to rescue his mother from hell. The performance adopted a highly traditional style, including the religious ritual so central in the past. The distinction between performers and audiences was blurred, with action both on the stage and among the audience and inside and outside the temple.

Puppetry (kuilei) is another ancient art form that contributed to and benefited from the thriving urban culture of the Song dynasty. Although puppetry exists all over the country, regions famous for this art are eastern Hebei, Shaanxi and southern Fujian. In general, the music, dialect and themes of puppet styles accord with those of the local human opera. Under the CCP, professional troupes have been set up to foster puppetry. However, folk performers still operate in many regions and, at least in the countryside, it is they who provide their art’s main contact with ordinary people. Puppetry also has a ritual background, often being associated with Daoism.

There are several surviving forms, as opposed to musical styles, of puppetry, including marionettes, string puppets and cloth puppets. The marionettes are about a metre high and manipulated from behind with three rods attached to the head and hands. String puppets are about two-thirds the size of the marionettes and are controlled from above with strings. The much smaller cloth puppets are manipulated by inserting the fingers. The marionette theatre of southern Fujian still preserves full versions of the Mulian story, which can be performed in association with religious rituals. Other than the fact that marionettes replace people on stage, these performances are musically similar to counterpart regional opera styles; for example, the marionette version of the Mulian story as performed in Putian, central Fujian coast, is the same musically and in other ways as that of the Pu-Xian opera.

China, People’s Republic of, §1: Living traditions, Musical drama and narrative.

(ii) Narrative.

The Chinese narrative arts, known as quyi or shuochang, comprise a body of orally performed genres in which linguistic communication and musical delivery are complementary. Compared to Chinese operatic forms, the narrative arts use simpler costuming, props and instrumentation. Attention is focussed primarily on a single performer's ability to assume all the roles of the various characters in the story, including that of narrator. As a transportable, cost-effective form of entertainment that has appealed to a broad cross-section of patrons, the narrative arts have served several important traditional functions: as a communication technology for illiterate patrons, as an outlet for veiled social protest and as a source of aesthetic pleasure for the connoisseur who delights in the beauty of the marriage between text and tune.

(a) Stories.

The narrative arts are commonly believed to have descended from the Tang dynasty (618–907) bianwen (‘transformation texts’), which were Buddhist-inspired stories performed by professional storytellers who sometimes used large paintings to illustrate various points of the text. This multi-media form attracted large audiences from a number of social strata and became a popular form of entertainment during the Tang period.

Bianwen was prohibited by governmental decree at the beginning of the Song dynasty (960–1279), but secular narratives continued to gain in popularity. Stories told by professional storytellers in urban commercial centres were often written down in the vernacular of the day in storytellers' scripts, which also served as source materials for other narrative performers.

The interrelationship between oral and literary traditions was particularly evident in the prose fiction from the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) periods. Examples such as Shuihu zhuan (‘Water Margin’) and Honglou meng (‘Story of the Stone’) were not only written episodically, as if each chapter were being told as part of an instalment within a longer saga, but these and other novels have also provided a wealth of source materials for orally performed stories up to the present day. The stories that have been ‘borrowed’ from novels are often favourite episodes that lend themselves particularly well to being told orally: episodes with a lot of action, emotional turmoil or descriptive interest.

In addition to borrowing stories from prose fiction, the narrative arts have traditionally used other sources for stories as well, such as current topical themes or romanticized historical subjects. Stories may be tragic, comedic, satirical or descriptive, and different genres tend to specialize in a particular type of story and feature a particular kind of ‘literary’ style that corresponds to its characteristic delivery style.

(b) Delivery styles.

In addition to their value as entertaining stories, Chinese narrative forms exhibit the greatest variety of delivery styles of any performed narrative in the world. The approximately 150 types of modern narrative genres have been divided into the following four categories: pinghua (spoken storytelling); xiangsheng (comic routines); kuaiban (clappertales); and guqu (sung genres). Guqu is by far the largest category, representing over 100 of the 150 genres.

The sung genres have been grouped generally into eight broad categories according to regional variation, instrumentation, musical form and choreographic features. Guci are genres from north China that feature the accompaniment of drum, clapper and stringed instruments; tanci are from central China and feature plucked lute accompaniment; shidiao xiaoqu feature popular tunes that are used as models for writing new texts; daoqing are accompanied by percussion instruments; paiziqu are similar to shidiao xiaoqu but use more than one melody per piece; qinshu feature the struck dulcimer yangqin; zouchang are dance narratives; and zaqu are miscellaneous vocal genres (fig.15).

In addition to their variety in musical form, instrumentation and performance style, the sung genres also differ broadly in length, featuring either extended tales or the shorter vocal narrative. The extended tales are told by a performer in two-hour instalments over a period of several months as continuous entertainment for both rural and urban audiences. The shorter, vocal narrative, sung in its entirety in about 20 minutes, has become the preferred length in modern urban China. Extended tales may still be heard in rural settings, however.

(c) Musical settings.

Despite differences in the length of a performance, accompaniment or delivery style, one of the most striking characteristics of all sung genres is the careful way in which stories are set to music. Because these are narrative genres, communicating the story is of paramount importance. The setting of lyrics to music is a process in which the textual message must penetrate the musical treatment, and performers often say that they must ‘first convey text, then sing the tune’ (xian nianzi hou changqiang). The two basic ways in which melodic and linguistic parameters are balanced are the text-setting processes known as banqiang and qupai forms. Although each of these processes includes a number of variants, the following discussion introduces each system in simplest terms.

Banqiang form is a system for setting texts in which the music functions as a subsidiary element to the text. This is accomplished by means of recurrent melodic and rhythmic formulae used at appropriate points in the text. In other words, the melodic formulae in a banqiang genre emerge differently in each line according to the tonal and rhythmic requirements of the text and the aesthetic preferences of the singer. At the same time, however, the musical rendition of every textual line preserves the essential pitch structure, characteristic melodic movements and cadential patterns of the system. Consequently, no two pieces composed according to the same banqiang will sound alike to the uninitiated listener, since different texts demand individual settings; only the seasoned connoisseur can discern and fully appreciate the way in which the banqiang form is used. This process of setting texts is flexible and is used to accommodate virtually any text written according to the basic literary conventions of the genre.

The qupai genres are more melody-centred. Drawing from a repertory of pre-existing tunes, the creator of a piece using the qupaitext-setting process selects one or more tunes as models for composing new texts. These models, known as qupai (‘labelled melodies’) or paizi (‘standards’), then become part of the standard repertory of a genre, and despite some changes over the years, they often retain their original names. The most popular tunes that are also the most easily adaptable for setting new lyrics have been selectively retained by performers, and new texts are written according to rules implied by the original, prototypical text in a process referred to as tianci or ‘filling in the lyrics’. Pieces written to the same qupai will sound similar musically, even though there will be slight variations from piece to piece in the form of different grace notes added to textual syllables with a different tonemic contour than the corresponding syllables of the prototypical text.

(d) Current centres and prospects.

Two urban areas have emerged as particularly important regional centres because of the local emphasis placed on narrative performance: Tianjin in the north and Suzhou in central China. As the centre for the performance of northern styles, the city of Tianjin boasts some of the finest performers in north China, the regional training school for all northern genres and one of the largest troupes of professional narrative performers in the country. Genres are performed in either standard Beijing Mandarin or in local Tianjin dialect. Because of the close relationship between language and music, the dialects used determine the way the melodies are rendered. The primary instruments of choice in Tianjin are the sanxian (three-string plucked banjo), sihu (four-string bowed fiddle) and pipa (four-string plucked lute). Narrative genres performed in Tianjin are generally representative of the performance traditions in Beijing, Jilin, Shandong and other areas in north China where narrative-singing flourishes.

As the centre for performance styles in central China, the pingtan traditions that flourish in the Shanghai-Suzhou area are also locally and nationally recognized for their musical and artistic beauty. The major distinctions between this and narrative traditions in other areas are the following: the use of local dialect, which determines not only the semantic intelligibility of the genres to local people but also the nature of the melodic rendition, since melody must conform to the idiosyncracies of the dialect; a different instrumentarium, which features the pipa and a smaller sanxian as the main accompanying instruments; and banqiang and qupai forms peculiar to the region. On one level there are popular stories derived from sources that are beloved throughout China. In addition, however, there are also stories of local interest. As with similarities and differences in cuisine throughout China, local areas share certain general musical preferences for the telling of stories to musical accompaniment with other areas in China, and yet each region displays certain unique characteristics with regard to dialect, its melodic accommodation, accompaniment and popular stories. (See also Jiang Yuequan, Xu Lixian and Zhang Jianting.)

Despite the revival since the 1980s, narrative traditions have suffered, especially in urban areas, first under the extreme period of socialism in the Cultural Revolution, and then as advances in modern telecommunications challenged the narrative arts as a communication technology and as a source for inexpensive entertainment. The state of the narrative arts in rural China is still little known, although the narrative volumes of the Anthology of Folk Music (see §IV Introduction above) now offer leads. Some genres that have attracted the attention of Chinese scholars include erren tai, erren zhuan and Yulin xiaoqu in northern China, kuaishu in Shandong and wenchang in Guangxi; Sichuan also has several styles.

China, People’s Republic of, §1: Living traditions, Musical drama and narrative.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

and other resources

general

Grove6 (C. Stevens)

Huadong xiqu juzhong jieshao [Introduction to opera genres of eastern China] (Shanghai, 1955)

A.C. Scott: The Classical Theatre of China (London, 1957)

C. Mackerras: The Chinese Theatre in Modern Times: from 1840 to the Present Day (London, 1975)

W. Dolby: A History of Chinese Drama (London, 1976)

C. Mackerras: The Performing Arts in Contemporary China (London, 1981)

I. Tanaka: Chūgoku saisi engeki kenkyū [Ritual theatre in China] (Tokyo, 1981)

Zhang Geng and Guo Hancheng: Zhongguo xiqu tongshi [General history of Chinese opera] (Beijing,1981)

B.S. McDougall, ed.: Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1979 (Berkeley, 1984)

R.H. Stalberg: China’s Puppets (San Francisco, 1984)

Xiqu yinyue yanjiu congshu [Compendium of research on opera music] [series, Beijing, c1985–, incl. vols. on many regional genres]

J. Riley and E. Unterreider, eds.: Haishi Zou Hao: Chinese Poetry, Drama and Literature of the 1980’s (Bonn, 1989)

C. Mackerras: Chinese Drama: a Historical Survey (Beijing, 1990)

M.D. Lopez: Chinese Drama: an Annotated Bibliography of Commentary, Criticism, and Plays in English Translation (Metuchen, NJ, 1991)

C.K. Wang: ‘Studies in Chinese Ritual and Ritual Theater: a Bibliographic Report’, CHINOPERL Papers, xviii (1995), 115–30

Wang Qiugui and others: Zhongguo difang xiqu congtan [Collected notes on Chinese regional opera] (Xinzhu,1995)

Zhongguo xiqu juzhong da cidian [Dictionary of genres of traditional Chinese opera] (Shanghai, 1995)

J. Riley: Chinese Theatre and the Actor in Performance (Cambridge, 1997)

Siu Wang-Ngai and P. Lovrick: Chinese Opera, Images and Stories (Vancouver, 1997)

regional opera

Lu Eting: Kunju yanchu shigao [Draft history of the performance of Kunqu] (Shanghai, 1980)

Hu Du, Liu Xingming and Fu Ze: Chuanju cidian [Dictionary of Sichuan opera] (Beijing, 1987)

Gu Piaoguang and others: Zhongguo nuo wenhua lunwen xuan [Selected papers on the nuo culture of China] (Guiyang, 1989)

D. Johnson, ed.: Ritual Opera, Operatic Ritual, ‘Mu-lien Rescues his Mother’ in Chinese Popular Culture (Berkeley, 1989)

Liu Zhizhong and Hu Ji: Kunju fazhan shi [History of the development of Kunqu] (Beijing, 1989)

B. Yung: Cantonese Opera: Performance as Creative Process (Cambridge, 1989)

Chan Sau Yan: Improvisation in a Ritual Context: the Music of Cantonese Opera (Hong Kong, 1991)

Jiang Yuxiang: Zhongguo yingxi [Chinese shadow theatre] (Chengdu, 1992)

S.P. Jain: ‘Helping, Striking, and Singing’: the Role of Qupai in Structuring Sichuan Opera Gaoqiang Performance (diss., U. of Hawaii, 1994)

U. Dauth: ‘Sichuan Mulianxi in Mianyang (in September 1993)’, Theatralia X: the Bamboo-Leaf Boat, the Magic of the Chinese Theatre, ed. D. Kalvodová (Prague, 1996), 185–205

U. Dauth: Strategies of Reform in Sichuan Opera since 1982: Confronting the Challenge of Rejuvenating a Regional Opera in Post-Mao China (diss., Griffith U., Brisbane, 1997)

narrative

Shuochang yinyue [Narrative-singing], ed. Zhongyang yinyue xueyuan Zhongguo yinyue yanjiusuo (Beijing, 1961)

Shuochang yinyue quzhong jieshao [Introduction to genres of narrative-singing], ed. Zhongyang yinyue xueyuan Zhongguo yinyue yanjiusuo (Beijing, 1961)

C. Stevens: Peking Drumsinging (diss., Harvard U., 1975)

Hou Baolin and others, eds.: Quyi gailun [Survey of the narrative arts] (Beijing, 1980)

Yang Xianyi and G. Yang: The Courtesan's Jewel Box: Chinese Stories of the Xth-XVIIth Centuries (Beijing, 1981)

Zhongguo xiqu quyi cidian [Encyclopedia of Chinese opera and narrative] (Shanghai, 1981)

Zhongguo dabaike quanshu, xiqu, quyi [Encyclopedia Sinica: opera and narrative] (Beijing, 1983)

F. Ferguson [Rebollo-Sborgi]: Dualistic Relationships in Northern Chinese Narrative Arts (diss., U. of Washington, 1988)

V. Mair: Painting and Performance: Chinese Picture Recitation and its Indian Genesis (Honololu, 1988)

V. Mair: T'ang Transformation Texts (Cambridge, MA, 1988)

Pen-yeh Tsao: The Music of Su-chou T'an-tz'u: Elements of the Chinese Southern Singing-Narrative (Hong Kong, 1988)

Lian Bo, ed.: Zhongguo minzu yinyue daxi, quyi yinyue juan [Compendium of Chinese folk music: narrative music volume] (Shanghai, 1989)

Xue Baokun: Zhongguo shuochang yishu shilun [On the art of Chinese narrative-singing] (Shijiazhuang, 1990)

H. Rees: ‘An Annotated Bibliography on Shuochang (Narrative Singing)’, CHIME, no.3 (1991), 88–96

Ni Zhong: Quyi minsu yu minsu quyi [The folklore of narrative and narrative in folklore] (Beijing, 1993)

F. Rebollo-Sborgi: ‘The Musicality of Oral Performance: the Case of Tianjin Shidiao and the Musical Expression of Urban Identity’, AM, xxvi/1 (1994), 9–52

Duran Yuming: Zhongguo shijing wenhua yu chuantong quyi [Chinese urban culture and traditional narrative singing] (Changchun, 1992)

R.C. Pian: ‘Text Setting and the Use of Tunes Types in Chinese Dramatic and Narrative Music’, Text, Tone, and Tune: Parameters of Music in Multicultural Pespective, ed. B.C. Wade (New Delhi, 1993), 201–33

recordings

Zhongguo xiqu yishujia changqiang xuan [Selected vocal melodies of Chinese opera artists], ed. Zhongguo yishu yanjiuyuan Xiqu yanjiusuo, China Record Co. (c1980–)

An Introduction to Chinese Opera, Marco Polo 8.223930-3 (1994)

Opera du Sichuan: la légende du serpent blanc, Buda 92555-5 (1994)

Le pavillon aux pivoines: opéra chinois kunqu, perf. Hua Wenyi and others, Maisons des Cultures du Monde W 260060 (1994–5)

Huangmei xi Tianxian pei [The Huangmei opera ‘A Fairy's Marriage’], rec. 1956, Shanghai Audio-Visual Press CD-0075 (1995)

Ka-lé: la cérémonie du bonheur, AIMP VDE CD-911 (1996)

Jinye lai changxi/The Beauty of Chinese Folk Opera, Wind Records TCD-1021 (1998)

Shiba duan quyi/Shuochang: the Ultimate Art of Storytelling, Wind Records TCD-1022 (1998)

China, People’s Republic of, §IV: Living traditions

2. Folksong and dance.

(i) Folksong.

People throughout rural Chinese society participate in folksinging. There is evidence of traditionally distinct repertories for peasants, cowherds, fishermen, women doing indoor work, itinerant beggars, pedlars, house-builders and numerous other groups. The spread of literacy in China has deeply influenced folksong repertories. Booklets of lyrics circulated among literate folksingers in the 19th century, and the constant interplay between oral and written forms appears to have roots going back to the late 16th century or earlier. In the 20th century, folksinging waned in many areas, owing to industrialization, changing agricultural patterns and political censorship.

There is an abundance of local genres and local terms for folksongs. Chinese folksong theorists tend to distinguish three major categories: haozi, xiaodiao and shan'ge. Haozi (‘cries’) is a fairly general word for rhythmic working cries, often sung in antiphonal form by two groups of singers, or by a lead singer and a chorus. These cries support repetitive physical movements during work.

Xiaodiao (‘lesser tunes’) are described as lyrical, mellifluous songs (usually solo songs) in a regular rhythm, often sung indoors in a soft voice and accompanied by instruments like erhu (bowed fiddle) and clappers or other small percussion instruments. Some xiaodiao have a musical refrain. Some scholars view xiaodiao mainly as an urban genre, and some describe it as a (professional) artists' genre, a type of music suited for stage production or for adaptation by instrumental ensembles. Others associate it primarily with popular festivals, notably in the New Year period. More likely, xiaodiao is a generic term for a number of functionally and artistically different genres. To a lesser extent, this may also be true for songs of the third category, shan'ge.

Shan'ge (‘mountain songs’) are generally defined as improvised songs in free rhythm, sung loudly during work outdoors (specifically during the work of weeding and harvesting). Shan'ge are more explicitly associated with peasant life than the other two genres. A typical shan'ge may include a loud and piercing falsetto passage, as in ex.3, in which the singer boasts he has so many songs in his belly that he could make the whole lake overflow by singing them. The dividing lines between shan'ge, xiaodiao and other generic folksong terms should not be drawn too sharply. Numerous intermediate forms occur, and many genres are not covered by the theoretical division in three major genres. Local terms used by folksingers deserve more attention and lead to a more differentiated picture of song genres and performance contexts (Schimmelpenninck, 1997).

Solo songs are the most common type of folksongs in China, but homophonic part-singing, with various performers singing a solo part in turn, is also quite common. The most familiar genre of this kind is duige (dialogue songs). More complicated song forms involve three to eight (or even more) singers who sing in alternation and may partly overlap one another. True polyphony (in the sense of simultaneous parts with elaborate chordal effects) is rare, except in minority areas (Fan Zuyin, 1994). Most outdoor songs sung during work in the fields are unaccompanied, although exceptions occur, such as the many varieties of ‘gong-and-drum weeding songs’ (collectively known as haocao luogu) of Hubei province.

Most folksingers in China apply the middle and high ranges of their voices. Falsetto parts may be sung by both men and women. Solo songs and duige are usually stanzaic, with stanzas of two or four lines of text, linked in performance with an equal number of melodic phrases. But many alternative structures exist. The music of bridal laments and funeral songs is often a one-phrase melody ending in a sob (ex.4). Folksongs in regular rhythm usually have either two- or four-beat patterns, though three-beat structures and other patterns may also be found. Most melodies rely essentially on an anhemitonic pentatonic framework, in which semitones may occur as ‘passing notes’. The tonal make-up of a regional folktune repertory usually depends more on overall melodic contours and shared formulae of progression and cadence than on any specific mode.

Little is known about folksong traditions in the past. Some ancient text collections, such as the Shijing (Classic of odes) of the Zhou dynasty (1122–256 bce), the Tang period (618–907) manuscripts from Dunhuang, and Guo Maoqian's Yuefu shiji of the 12th century include what are believed to be folksong texts. But no written music for these repertories has survived, and the original performance traditions of the songs remain a matter for conjecture. Feng Menglong's Shan'ge, an anthology of mainly erotic folksongs from early 17th-century Jiangsu, is of interest because many of the texts resemble lyrics sung in southern Jiangsu today. Some early musical notations of Chinese folksongs have survived from the 19th century (Yang Yinliu, 1981, pp.749–811).

Modern textual studies of folksong were initiated in the early 1920s, partly inspired by previous folklore movements in Russia and in the West and partly by a search for new cultural and social values. Musicological study of folksongs was introduced on a small scale in the 1930s. The first substantial collection of folk melodies took place in the 1940s and 50s, mainly for political purposes; tunes were borrowed to set propaganda texts to music. However, some substantial fieldwork was also made in the 1950s in regions such as Hunan and north-western Shanxi. In-depth ethnomusicological research started in the early 1980s, with the appearance of numerous articles in music journals and the publication of the first folksong volumes of the Anthology of Folk Music (see §IV, Introduction above). Song Daneng (1979) and Jiang Mingdun (1982) wrote the first extensive monographs on Chinese folksong. Recently Chinese scholars have paid much attention to the existence of so-called ‘colour areas’, referring to important stylistic differences between the folksongs of various regions within China (Miao Jing and Qiao Jianzhong, 1987). Most sound recordings of rural folksongs date from the period since 1978. Commercial recordings of folksongs in China are usually modern arrangements sung by radio and TV artists.

(ii) Dance.

Dance traditions in China are numerous, and many dances are related to specific musical, theatrical or religious repertories. There is dancing in rural areas purely for amusement, for example in combination with drumming or accompanied by folksongs (as in the traditionally popular yangge, ‘rice-planting songs’). During the New Year festival, a vast variety of dances are performed with the help of attributes such as lanterns, paper boats or stilts. Buddhist and Daoist practices and numerous local religious cults and exorcist rites, such as the nuo theatre of southern China (see §1(i) above), all have their own dance traditions. In nuo performances the dancers wear masks. Lion dances (shiwu) and dragon dances (longwu) are known all over China and, like many other types of dances with masks, are believed to originate in exorcist practices and old totemistic beliefs. In contemporary contexts, lion and dragon dances are often danced primarily for amusement. ‘Flower drum’ (huagu) and ‘tea-picking’ (caicha) dances have evolved in similar fashion in central and southern China.

The steps and movements of many folkdances are relatively free and improvised, except in staged and choreographed performances that frequently incorporate elements of Western ballet and modern dance. Both men and women participate in the dancing. Dancers often use small props such as fans, sticks, swords and shields. In their movements, performers may try to convey the images of phoenix, crane, butterfly or other animals that symbolize notions such as longevity or loyalty in traditional Chinese culture. Unlike most folkdances, dance genres incorporated in the martial arts or in traditional theatre often require a high degree of technical skill and many years of training, and can only be witnessed in stage performances by (semi-)professional dancers.

The dance volumes of the Anthology of Folk Music provide information about regional genres and performance contexts and include detailed descriptions and illustrations of dance-steps, dance formations, costumes and musical instruments used.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

and other resources

folksong

Feng Menglong: Shan'ge [Mountain songs], 1610–19, repr. in Ming-Qing min'ge shidiao ji, i (Shanghai, 1987), 245–444

J.P. van Oost: ‘Chansons populaires chinoises de la région sud des Orthos’, Anthropos, vii (1912)

Minjian gequ [Folksongs], ed. Zhongyang yinyue xueyuan Zhongguo yinyue yanjiusuo (Beijing, 1963)

Song Daneng: Minjian gequ gailun [Survey of folksongs] (Beijing, 1979, 2/1986)

Yang Yinliu: Zhongguo gudai yinyue shigao [Draft history of ancient Chinese music] (Beijing, 1981)

Jiang Mingdun: Hanzu min'ge gailun [Survey of Han Chinese folksongs] (Shanghai, 1982)

Miao Jing and Qiao Jianzhong: Lun Hanzu min'ge jinsi secaiqu de huafen [An approximate division of Han Chinese Folksongs into local colour areas] (Beijing, 1987)

S. Tuohy: Imagining the Chinese Tradition: the Case of Hua'er Songs, Festivals, and Scholarship (diss., Indiana U., 1988)

Yang Mu: Folk Music of Hainan Island, with Particular Emphasis on Danxian County (diss., U. of Queensland, 1990)

Yang Minkang: Zhongguo min'ge yu xiangtu shehui [Chinese folksong and rural society] (Jilin, 1992)

Zhou Qingqing: Zhongguo min'ge [Chinese folksongs] (Beijing, 1992, 2/1996)

H. Schaffrath: Ein hundert chinesische Volkslieder, Studien zur Volkslied-Forschung, xiv (Berne, 1993)

Fan Zuyin: Zhongguo duoshengbu min'ge gailun [Survey of Chinese multi-part folksongs] (Beijing, 1994)

Yang Mu: ‘Academic Ignorance or Political Taboo? Some Issues in China's Study of its Folk Song Culture’, EthM, xxxviii (1994), 303–20

Yang Mu: ‘On the hua'er songs of North-Western China’, YTM, xxvi (1994), 100–15

A. Schimmelpenninck: Chinese Folk Songs and Folk Singers: Shan'ge Traditions in Southern Jiangsu (Leiden, 1997) [incl. CD]

Qiao Jianzhong: Tudi yu ge: chuantong yinyue wenhua jiqi dili lishi beijing yanjiu [Land and songs: study of traditional music culture and its geographical and historical contexts] (Ji'nan, 1998)

dance

Chang Renxia: Zhongguo wudao shihua [Talks on the history of Chinese dance] (Shanghai, 1983)

Peng Song and others: Zhongguo wudao shi [History of Chinese dance] (Beijing, 1984)

Zhongguo dabaike quanshu: yinyue, wudao [Encyclopedia Sinica: music and dance] (Beijing, 1986)

Wang Kefen: Zhongguo wudao fazhan shi [History of the development of Chinese dance] (Shanghai, 1989)

D. Holm: Art and Ideology in Revolutionary China (Oxford, 1991)

Yin Yazhao: Zhongguo guwu yu minwu yanjiu [Study of ancient dance and folkdance in China] (Taipei, 1991)

Zhang Hua: Zhongguo minjianwu yu nonggeng xinyang [Chinese folkdance and rural folk religion] (Changchun, 1992)

recordings

Aspects of Chinese music, coll. J. Body, Gong Hong Yu and N. Wheeler, Asia Pacific Archive [Wellington] 004 (1991)

Tudi yu ge [Songs of the land in China: labour songs and love songs], rec. 1953–96, ed. Qiao Jianzhong, Wind Records TCD 1020 (1996)

China, People’s Republic of, §IV: Living traditions

3. Religious music.

(i) Introduction.

The definition of religious music of the Han Chinese is still somewhat ambiguous. The vocal liturgy of Buddhist and Daoist temples is discussed below, but a more complete discussion of music for folk ritual and ceremonial should also include para-liturgical melodic instrumental music and the substantial ritual components of opera, folksong and narrative-singing, as well as the kinetic aspects of ritual. The music of other religious practitioners, including Christian communities and folk shamans, also requires further study.

Buddhist and Daoist liturgy has a history of nearly 2000 years and is still widely practised in China today. Large, official ‘institutional’ temples, in towns and on the great religious mountains, transmit orthodox versions and have been the main focus of research; but since Chinese religion had a long history of vernacularization even before the 20th century, current research also often extends wisely to ‘diffused’ observances among lay ritual specialists in rural areas, whose practice may be derived from the temples. Strict traditions in the major temples, both Buddhist and Daoist, recognize only vocal liturgy and ritual percussion. The texts are written, but the music is largely orally transmitted.

Buddhism was introduced from India in the early years of the first millennium (see also Buddhist music). Contact with Indian monks was frequent until the Tang dynasty (618–907); early Indian influence on vocal liturgy and gradual sinicization have been posited. Buddhist vocal liturgy is known as fanbei. Daoist liturgy developed in competition with the new religion. The Tang dynasty was the often-cited ‘golden age’ of religion, but much of the liturgy practised today is based on texts revised in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and the mutual influence between Buddhism and Daoism goes back long before then. Han Chinese ritual traditions have also been considerably influenced by Tibeto-Mongolian Tantric Buddhism. Many rituals, such as the Releasing Flaming Mouth (Fang Yankou) ceremony, and melodies such as hymns and incantations are shared by Buddhists and Daoists, and the two often co-exist, indeed compete, within a region. Zhengyi folk Daoists are now more common than priests of the Quanzhen monastic sect.

Despite the impoverishment of religious practice through the 20th century, and especially during the Cultural Revolution, a substantial revival has occurred since the 1980s. Both temple and folk traditions are perhaps more lively in southern China; Buddhist and Daoist music-ritual in Taiwan (see Taiwan, §3) and elsewhere in South-east Asia are also related. But mainland groups now maintain a lesser part of the repertory that was performed before the 1940s, as social demand has been constricted.

(ii) Rituals and venues.

Morning and evening services are the basic duties of the temples. The practice of more complex and lengthy calendrical or occasional rituals has been simplified in many temples since the 1940s, although ritual manuals such as the Buddhist Chanmen risong are still standard. Apart from calendrical rituals, funerary services (pudu, daochang etc.) are most commonly observed, often including Water-and-Land (shuilu) and Releasing Flaming Mouth rituals. The lengthy Daoist Offering (jiao) ritual is performed in some areas for the peace of the community.

Of the major Buddhist temples today, the Tianning si in Changzhou has been most influential in modern times. Others include the Tiantong si in Ningbo, the Luohan si in Chongqing, the Kaiyuan si in Chaozhou and the Guanghua si in Putian. Northern liturgy is less well known, but Beijing still has major temples (the Guangji si, Guanghua si and Fayuan si), and the Wutaishan mountain temple complex remains an important centre for both Han and Tibeto-Mongolian practice. In recent centuries the southern influence on northern temples has been substantial. The vocal liturgy of all the major religious mountains, including Emeishan, Putuoshan, Jiuhuashan, Tiantaishan and Huangshan, deserves study.

For Daoism, the vocal liturgy of the Baiyun guan temple in Beijing is more authentic than its instrumental music. Temple and folk practice are lively in Zhejiang, Fujian and Shandong (Taishan, Laoshan). Studies have been made of the music of the Wudangshan, Qingchengshan, Longhushan, Taiqing gong (Shenyang) and Qingyang gong (Chengdu) temples. Around Shanghai, areas such as Maoshan, Changshu and Suzhou (Xuanmiao guan) have major traditions.

(iii) Music.

Various forms of recitation as well as singing are employed in both Buddhist and Daoist vocal liturgy. Sung genres include hymns (zan), as well as some incantations (Sanskrit dhāranī; Chinese zhou) and sung poems (Sanskrit gāthā; Chinese ji). The liturgy includes both solo and choral sections, and melisma is common. While many transcriptions have been made, melodic analysis of these still substantial repertories is much to be desired (for some preliminary clues see Hu Yao, 1986); comparison with Western, and indeed other Eastern, liturgical chants is suggested.

The ritual percussion section (faqi) consists of large drum and bell, small cymbals, ‘wooden fish’ woodblock (muyu), metal bowl (qing), small bowl on stick (yinqing), gong in frame (dangzi) and often large nao and bo cymbals (fig.16). These instruments accompany the vocal liturgy and punctuate it with independent interludes.

(iv) Current research.

Some major temples now have training academies for ritual and music, part of a long tradition seeking to standardize liturgy nationally, although regional traditions have remained distinctive.

The coverage of religious music in the Anthology of Folk Music is unsatisfactory: traditions are covered in passing and often divided between the volumes on folksong and instrumental music. However, the project has stimulated much research and debate, often published in the journals of regional conservatories such as Huangzhong and Yinyue tansuo. The ritual opera projects of C.K. Wang (Xinzhu, Taiwan), for example the series Minsu quyi congshu, are also relevant. For Daoist music, the Wuhan Conservatory has led research; see also volumes from the major project led by Tsao Pen-yeh (Chinese University, Hong Kong). For Buddhist music, Tian Qing has been prominent in publishing articles and recordings. For fuller bibliographies, see Tsao and Shi, 1992, Tian Qing, 1994, Gan Shaocheng, 1995, Jones, 1995, pp.14–32, and Zhongguo yinyue nianjian annually.

Many audio and video recordings, not yet widely available, have been made and may be sought in conservatories, music research institutes and temples in China. Many commercial recordings purporting to represent Buddhist or Daoist meditational music use urban professional arrangements.

See also Buddhist music.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

and other resources

C.K. Yang: Religion in Chinese Society (Berkeley, 1961/R)

Hu Yao: ‘Woguo Fojiao yinyue diaocha shuyao’ [Fieldwork report on Chinese Buddhist music], Yinyue yanjiu (1986), no.1, pp.104–10

Shi Xinmin and others, eds.: Zhongguo Wudangshan Daojiao yinyue [Daoist music of Wudangshan in China] (Beijing, 1987)

Pen-yeh Tsao: Taoist Ritual Music of the Yu-lan Pen-hui (Feeding the Hungry Ghost Festival) in a Hong Kong Taoist Temple (Hong Kong, 1989)

Pen-yeh Tsao and D.P.L. Law, eds.: Taoist Rituals and Music of Today (Hong Kong, 1989)

Min Zhiting: Quanzhen zhengyun puji [Edited scores of the orthodox vocal music of Quanzhen Daoism], ed. Wuhan yinyue xueyuan Daojiao yinyue yanjiushi (Beijing, 1991)

Tsao Pen-yeh and others, eds.: 1991 nian Xiang Gang Di'erjie Daojiao keyi yinyue yantaohui lunwenji [proceedings of the 1991 second conference on Daoist ritual music] (Beijing, 1991)

Hu Yao: Fojiao yu yinyue yishu [Buddhism and the art of music] (Tianjin, 1992)

Tsao Pen-yeh and Shi Xinmin: ‘Current Research of Taoist Ritual Music in Mainland China and Hong Kong’, YTM, xxiv (1992), 118–25

Tian Qing, ed.: Zhongguo Fojiao yinyue xuancui [Anthology of Chinese Buddhist music] (Shanghai, 1993)

Zhongguo Longhushan Tianshidao yinyue [The music of the Heavenly Masters sect on Longhushan, China], ed. Wuhan yinyue xueyuan Daojiao yinyue yanjiushi (Beijing, 1993)

Tsao Pen-yeh and Pu Hengqiang: Wudangshan Daojiao yinyue yanjiu [The Daoist music of Wudangshan] (Taipei, 1993)

Tian Qing, trans. and adapted by Tan Hwee-san: ‘Recent Trends in Buddhist Music Research in China’, British Journal of Ethnomusicology, iii (1994), 63–72

Zhou Zhenxi and others: Daojiao yinyue [Daoist music] (Beijing, 1994)

Gan Shaocheng: Jian'guo yilai youguan zongjiao yinyue cankao wenxian yilan (1949–1994) [Bibliography on religious music since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1994] [distributed at Disijie gaodeng yishu yuanxiao yinyue yanjiusuo xueshu yantaohui conference, Chengdu, 1995]

S. Jones: Folk Music of China: Living Instrumental Traditions (Oxford, 1995, 2/1998 with CD)

Wang Qiugui [C.K. Wang], ed.: Zhongguo yishi yanjiu tongxun [Newsletter of Chinese ritual studies], i (Taipei,1995)

B. Yung, E.S. Rawski and R.S. Watson, eds.: Harmony and Counterpoint: Ritual Music in Chinese Context (Stanford, CA, 1996)

Tsao Pen-yeh, ed.: Zhongguo chuantong yishi yinyue yanjiu [Studies of traditional Chinese ritual music] (Taiwan, 1997–)

Tian Qing, ed.: Zhongguo zongjiao yinyue [Chinese religious music] (Beijing, 1997)

1998 nian Foxue yanjiu lunwenji: Fojiao yinyue [Collected articles of Buddhist research: Buddhist music], ed. Foguang shan (Taipei, 1999)

recordings

Zhongguo Daojiao yinyue [Chinese Daoist music], ed. Chen Dacan, China Record Co., Shanghai branch HL 508 (c1985–) [ser. incl. music from Shanghai (Baiyun guan), Maoshan and Changshu]

Chine: fanbai, chant liturgique bouddhique: leçon du soir au temple de Quanzhou, coll. F. Picard, Ocora C559080 (1989)

Zongjiao yinyue xilie: Zhongguo Fojiao yinyue [Series on religious music: Chinese Buddhist music], ed. Tian Qing, Zhongguo yinxiang dabaike [Audio and video encyclopedia of China], YAF 1–5, 6–7 (1989–) [ser. incl. liturgy from Wutaishan, Tianjin, Changzhou (Tianning si), Chongqing (Luohan si), Chaozhou (Kaiyuan si), Yunnan and Beijing]

Chine: fanbai, chant liturgique bouddhique: leçon du matin à Shanghai, rec. Tian Qing, ed. F. Picard, Ocora C560075 (1995)

China, People’s Republic of, §IV: Living traditions

4. Instrumental music.

Han Chinese instrumental music is traditionally played mainly in ensemble. Although some genres may feature a leading instrument such as a di or shawm, ‘solo’ or concerto-type pieces are largely a product of the 20th-century urban repertory (see §IV, 6 (i) below). Major exceptions are the three plucked instruments, qin, zheng and pipa.

(i) Ensemble traditions.

(ii) Solo traditions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

China, People’s Republic of, §4: Living traditions, Instrumental music.

(i) Ensemble traditions.

Living folk traditions of instrumental music among rural Han Chinese are largely for ensemble. Many groups perform for ceremonial occasions, including weddings, funerals and gods' days; the Chinese New Year is the most lively period for folk arts. Amateur ensembles also perform for self-cultivation, mainly along the south-eastern coast.

Though mostly now practised in folk contexts, many of these genres may be considered ‘classical’ traditions, on the basis of both their articulated theory and notation (often derived from imperial courtly, literati and temple genres) and their local prestige. While some scholars have attempted to trace links with the Tang dynasty (618–907), and aspects of ‘ancient music’ doubtless survive in individual genres, these traditions have continued to adapt, incorporating instruments and repertory, and they belong largely to the period since the Ming dynasty, from the 14th century. Despite a certain impoverishment of old contextual repertories under the secularizing movements of the 20th century, instrumental traditions survive over a wide area of rural China today.

Chinese scholars, led by Yang Yinliu, have studied these genres since the 1950s, interrupted only by the Cultural Revolution. Local studies are important, such as Li Shigen's work on the ceremonial music of Xi'an. Since 1979, the vast national Anthology of Folk Music project (see §IV Introduction above), though consisting largely of transcriptions, has been a major stimulus to fieldwork and is a valuable starting-point to discover regional riches. Southern coastal genres display a more natural continuum between folk and urban styles and until recently have been the object of more research and recordings; northern and inland genres are more isolated. Apart from the genres introduced below, others (such as groups in Sichuan and Hunan, and Han ensembles in Yunnan) may soon become more accessible through the Anthology.

The focus below is mainly on rural ceremonial and entertainment ensembles. Instrumental ensembles accompany vocal and dramatic music, including opera and narrative-singing, in which they may also play independent instrumental pieces as overtures or at transitional points. Percussion ensembles, sometimes with shawms, also accompany dance genres such as yangge and huagu. But it is the ceremonial and entertainment genres that have been considered the basis of folk instrumental traditions.

Modern Chinese sources often distinguish chuida (‘blowing-and-beating’) and sizhu (‘silk-and-bamboo’) ensembles, said to belong mainly to north and south respectively. Some further distinguish guchui (‘drumming-and-blowing’) and chuida. Guchui has been applied mainly to northern wind-and-percussion ensembles, led mainly by shawm or double-reed pipe guan; chuida generally denotes a larger instrumentation including strings, with a large and important percussion section, found mainly in the south. Silk-and-bamboo denotes chamber ensembles using plucked and bowed strings as well as aerophones such as flutes, rather than double reeds. But such a simple classification cannot encompass local conditions. More marginal parts of the modern Chinese classification are luogu (gong-and-drum) percussion ensembles and xiansuo string ensembles; the latter tends to overlap with silk-and-bamboo.

Chordophones are by now rare in northern instrumental music, but they are still important as accompaniment to vocal-dramatic genres. String chamber ensembles are found in Shandong and Henan; other genres such as erren tai and the ‘lesser melodies’ of Yulin in northern Shaanxi mainly accompany narrative-singing. Solo traditions, both literati and folk, for pipa plucked lute and zheng plucked zither still survive in some parts of northern China. The repertory performed by Manchu and Mongol literati around Beijing in the Qing dynasty before 1911, known as xiansuo shisan tao (‘13 suites for strings’), now survives mainly in the Xiansuo beikao score of 1814.

The most common type of instrumental ensemble in China is the shawm (suona)-and-percussion band. These bands are often called guyue ban ‘drum music band’ or gufang ‘drum household’, the musicians chuigushou ‘blowers-and-drummers’. In northern China, sheng-guan ritual ensembles led by sheng (free-reed mouth organ) and guanzi (double-reed pipe) are also common; such ritual associations may go by the name hui (often xianghui ‘incense association’). Amateur entertainment groups are often called she, ‘society’. Folk names commonly used to denote instrumental ensembles over much of rural China include shifan, ‘multiple variations’, and bayin, ‘eight tones’, terms with a long historical pedigree. The term tuan (‘troupe’) generally denotes an officially supported urban ensemble performing modernized arrangements for the concert stage.

(a) Social background.

(b) Shawm-and-percussion bands.

(c) Sheng-guan ensembles.

(d) Southern Jiangsu ensembles.

(e) Fujian and Guangdong ensembles.

(f) Musical principles.

(g) 20th-century changes.

China, People’s Republic of, §4(i): Living traditions, Instrumental music., Ensemble traditions.

(a) Social background.

Musicians of most ensembles are male. Many shawm bands consist of members of the same family. Ritual specialists, too, are often related, with hereditary transmission the norm. The musicians of shawm bands have traditionally been of low social status and still are today; they may be blind. Shawm bands play outside the gateway of the house or temple, while the more prestigious sheng-guan ensemble occupies the central space at the ritual arena.

Shawm bands are hired to perform. Ritual specialists are also generally paid, but some groups, such as the music associations in Hebei province or the ritual groups around Xi'an, are strictly amateur, performing mainly within and on behalf of the village, as a religious or social duty. Some south-eastern amateur ensembles perform as a social pastime.

The aesthetics of southern entertainment ensembles often derive from refined Confucian literati culture and Kunqu vocal-dramatic music. The ethos of northern and inland ceremonial groups is quite remote from this world. Sheng-guan music inhabits a world of religious devotion, appealing to the gods for assistance in survival. The ethos of shawm bands is highly macho, and it is a matter of pride that many shawm players breathe their last while playing. Although village shawm players perform with virtuosity for some parts of their repertory, the affected stage-gestures of urban professionals remain quite foreign to traditional music-making.

Both ritual and entertainment musicians often sit around a table to perform; the music is for the gods, or for their own self-cultivation, rather than for any mortal audience. They are often versatile at most of the instruments, both melodic and percussion, and may play different instruments during the course of a performance.

Much folk ensemble music throughout China is performed in conjunction with three main types of ritual, all of which may require instrumental music: (a) calendrical (birthdays of gods, temple fairs, New Year, the ‘Ghost festival’ in the 7th moon etc.); (b) life-cycle, especially weddings and funerals, the latter retaining more of their traditional observances; (c) occasional (exorcism, rain-prayers, the blessing of a new house or the opening of a new shop etc.). All of these persist today, despite the intensification of campaigns against ‘feudal superstition’ from imperial times and since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. The Cultural Revolution was a severe blow, but with the greater economic freedoms of the 1980s, traditional customs have revived significantly in many areas.

Instrumental music in ritual is one part of a complex whole: vocal liturgy is important, and opera may also be performed. Vocal liturgy is accompanied by the ritual percussion. Melodic instrumental music is para-liturgical, accompanying ritual but lacking specific ritual content; it is more closely related to local folk traditions. Melodic instruments sometimes also accompany the melodies of vocal liturgy.

The more exalted traditions of both Buddhism and Daoism reject melodic instruments in theory, taking the view that vocal liturgy should be accompanied only by the ritual percussion. But in practice, melodic instrumental music has long been a part of village, and even temple, ritual in both northern and southern China. Folk Daoists of the Zhengyi sect, living among people, are important practitioners of instrumental music in Chinese society; some of the most outstanding musicians of modern times, such as An Laixu in Xi'an, or Zhu Qinfu in Wuxi, have been Daoists.

China, People’s Republic of, §4(i): Living traditions, Instrumental music., Ensemble traditions.

(b) Shawm-and-percussion bands.

The shawm-and-percussion band is the most popular form of instrumental music in China (fig.17). Northern genres have been most studied by Chinese scholars, but shawm bands are found throughout the country. The neutral term ‘shawm’ is adopted here since suona is little used by folk musicians; a common folk term is laba (‘horn’). The word Suona, common in historical sources, is used mainly by urban educated people. As the name suggests, the instrument spread from Central Asia by around the 15th century. Its use soon expanded from the Chinese court and armies to opera and folk ceremonial. The shawm has a conical bore, a small reed (not lipped) with pirouette and a loose-fitting brass bell; it has seven finger-holes and one thumb-hole. Shawm players often make their own instruments.

The north-east (the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang, as well as eastern Hebei) has a remarkable funerary style for large shawms, including solemn and lengthy hanchui suites. Shandong, notably the south-west around Heze, is famed for a more popular and rather mellifluous style, much influenced by the local operas, mixing the styles of shawm band and sheng-guan; many pieces are variants of the two standards Kaimen and Dadi jiao. In Shanxi and northern Shaanxi, the shawm style is harsh and macho: a taste may be gained from Chen Kaige's 1984 film Yellow Earth. Shawm bands commonly perform for ceremonial throughout southern China.

Percussion ensembles without melodic instruments are also common in north and south. In the north, drum ensembles accompanying yangge dance in Shaanxi and elsewhere, and other ritual percussion ensembles such as the Dharma-drumming associations (Fagu hui) of the Tianjin area, may comprise several dozen musicians. Melodic genres with substantial independent percussion components include the ceremonial ensembles of Xi'an, Chaozhou and shifan of southern Jiangsu.

Shawms are often a supplement to the pure percussion ensemble. The percussion generally consists of a double-headed barrel drum, small cymbals and gong and/or knobbed gong. A woodblock (bangzi) may be added in fast sections. A long natural trumpet (called by names such as hao) may ‘open the way’ on procession. There are usually two shawms in a band. Large shawms are used for funerals, small shawms (sometimes called haidi) for weddings. In recent years small shawms have become more popular than the large shawms used for solemn funerary suites.

China, People’s Republic of, §4(i): Living traditions, Instrumental music., Ensemble traditions.

(c) Sheng-guan ensembles.

The sheng-guan ensemble spread from temples and courts, along with ritual and vocal liturgy, to folk ritual specialists, absorbing folk influence in differing degrees. This instrumentation, and its core repertory, can also be traced to around the 14th century. Sheng-guan ensembles, again performing for ceremonial, are found mainly in the north. Although they revived in the 1980s, the sheng-guan ensembles are surviving less well than the shawm bands.

The classic sheng-guan ensembles derive from northern Buddhist and Daoist temples, such as those of Beijing (notably the Zhihua si Buddhist temple), Tianjin, Wutaishan, Xi'an and Qianshan. But since melodic instrumental music is now rare in temples, sheng-guan music survives best in folk ritual ensembles. In Hebei province just south of Beijing, music associations (Yinyue hui) serving village ritual are related to the temple music of imperial Beijing and Tianjin. Just further south in Hebei, the ‘songs-for winds’ (chuige) style (traditionally known as ‘southern music’, nanyue) has added large guan, small shawm and other instruments to the basic instrumentation since at least the 1920s. This style was adopted ephemerally by cadres in the 1950s, around the time of collectivization and the Great Leap Forward, but the traditional style persists today in many areas of Hebei.

In Shanxi, sheng-guan music is often played by folk Daoists. Apart from the Buddhist temples of Wutaishan, whose instrumental music is in decline, the ‘eight great suites’ of the Dongye region at the foot of the mountain are well known and still performed for folk ceremonial. In Shaanxi, the ceremonial music of Xi'an (commonly known as Xi'an guyue, Xi'an ‘drum music’ or ‘ancient music’) often uses an expanded percussion section lead by four different types of drum (of which the zuogu drum is rare in China for being played with its face vertical); as the guan double-reed pipe has become less common, the di flute often leads. There are folk Buddhist and Daoist ritual sheng-guan ensembles throughout Shaanxi province. There are also traces of sheng-guan music in temples much further south, such as Wudangshan and Fuzhou.

The melodic instruments are often considered ‘civil’, the percussion ‘martial’. The classic temple instrumentation consists of pairs of the four types of melodic instrument, but folk groups are often large and more flexible, using many sheng. The instruments include Guan, Sheng, Di, Yunluo and percussion. Guan, a small, slender, cylindrical pipe with large double reed has seven finger-holes and one thumb-hole. Large and small guan sometimes play in the same ensemble. Some pieces use a ‘double guan’, two pipes joined together, played simultaneously by the same player. Guan are usually locally made. Sheng, a free-reed mouth organ, generally with ten to 14 sounding reeds, is often bought from urban shops. Di, or mei, a transverse flute with kazoo membrane, is now becoming rarer. Yunluo is a frame of pitched gongs, traditionally ten, arranged in three rows of three with one on top. They are difficult to replace when damaged, and some areas now have frames of only two or three gongs. They are traditionally considered a member of the melodic section. Percussion instruments include a large barrel drum (or, for procession, smaller ‘hand-drum’), small cymbals, gong-in-frame (dangzi); nao and bo, two pairs of large cymbals, playing in hocket; and other ritual percussion (bowl, bell, muyu woodblock etc.). A conch may also be blown during ritual.

China, People’s Republic of, §4(i): Living traditions, Instrumental music., Ensemble traditions.

(d) Southern Jiangsu ensembles.

While urban silk-and-bamboo is accessible in places such as Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou, there are also many fine rural traditions in eastern central China. The classic silk-and-bamboo ensemble, derived from the Kunqu vocal accompaniment, is based on drum (or woodblock) and clappers, di flute and plucked lute sanxian. Fretted plucked lute pipa and bowed lute erhu are thought to have been added more recently. Urban silk-and-bamboo has further incorporated a struck dulcimer yangqin since early in the 20th century. Other instruments may include plucked lutes such as qinqin and ruan, as well as end-blown flute (xiao) and free-reed mouth organ (sheng). A simple percussion accompaniment is provided by small drum or woodblock and clappers.

Such music derives from rural ceremonial ensembles and tangming groups performing for Daoist ritual and Kunqu vocal dramatic music. These groups often add a substantial percussion section to the silk-and-bamboo melodic section. Southern Jiangsu also has two celebrated styles called shifan gu and shifan luogu, both played mainly by folk ritual specialists. The former plays ‘classic’ labelled melodies (see fig.8(b) above) interspersed by solo sections, while in the latter, vocally derived melodies compete on unequal terms with a percussion ensemble of which the instruments (drums, gongs and cymbals) alternate, playing recurring patterns in additive rhythms. Two types of drum are used, the tang gu large barrel drum and the small ‘single-skin’ drum danpi gu. Such music may still be found in the Suzhou-Wuxi, Changshu and Yixing areas.

Just to the south-east in Zhejiang province, percussion ensembles are also renowned, again often performed by folk Daoists. Pitched gongs become more common as one goes further south. Such groups often have separate melodic repertories for shawms and for silk-and-bamboo instruments.

China, People’s Republic of, §4(i): Living traditions, Instrumental music., Ensemble traditions.

(e) Fujian and Guangdong ensembles.

Nanguan (or nanyin), distinctive to southern Fujian, Taiwan (see Taiwan, §3) and other Hokkien communities in South-east Asia, is largely a vocal genre, in which a singer marking the main beats with clappers is accompanied by four melodic instruments: pipa fretted plucked lute, dongxiao end-blown flute, erxian bowed lute and sanxian plucked lute. There are some suites for the instrumental ensemble alone, and a transverse flute or small shawm may lead an augmented ensemble with a distinctive percussion section. Elsewhere in Fujian, other mainly vocal ceremonial genres often incorporate instrumental music (fig.18), including the mixed ensemble called shiyinor shiban, the shiyin bayue of Putian, and shawm bands.

In Guangdong, the most renowned genres are in the eastern area of Chaozhou-Shantou and the Hakka region of Meixian and Dabu inland. Amateur string ensembles (sometimes known as xianshi yue) are led by the high-pitched bowed lute erxian. Bass bowed lutes (dahu, pahu etc.) have been introduced to some ensembles during the 20th century. The plucked zither zheng (whose strings have individual tuning bridges) is also used in smaller-scale chamber music. There are large-scale processional gong-and-drum ensembles, which may use melodic instruments such as flutes and plucked lutes. Distinctive percussion instruments are the large gongs suluo, douluo and the deep-rimmed shenbo, and the knobbed gong qinzi.

The style known as ‘Cantonese music’, as developed in Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Shanghai since the early 20th century, marks the transition to new urban music but has its roots in the rural ceremonial ensembles of the Pearl river delta. Under the colonial influence of Western jazz, dance-hall music and the silent movie industry, composer-performers such as Lü Wencheng created a lively hybrid of Chinese and Western music in the 1920s and 30s. Although it was stultified by institutionalization by the 1950s and has long lost its popularity to newer styles of pop music, aspects of its style were taken over by urban professional troupes, and it remains a popular commercial image of Chinese instrumental music.

China, People’s Republic of, §4(i): Living traditions, Instrumental music., Ensemble traditions.

(f) Musical principles.

A basic device is the interplay of melody and percussion. Indeed, musicians are often versatile on many melodic and percussion instruments. Melodies are based on anhemitonic pentatonic scales, with the fourth and seventh degrees used as passing notes or as part of a temporary new pentatonic scale a 5th above or below the main tonic. In the second excerpt of ex.5b, ambiguity is explored between a la mode on B and a re mode on B. Metres are dominantly duple, although some percussion music uses additive metre, and irregular phrase-lengths and cadences ‘crossing the beat’ create rhythmic variety.

Core repertories consist of ‘labelled melodies’ (qupai) or ‘standards’ (pai), many dating back to the vocal ‘Northern and Southern arias’ of the Yuan and Ming dynasties (1279–1644) and often having spread by way of opera. There is a finite number of titles for these tune families. They are rarely programmatic, except in literati solo string traditions: the titles function more like jazz standards. Different repertories are traditionally performed according to ceremonial context, with strict sequences.

Since the 19th century, popular melodies from local folksong and opera have entered some local repertories: four-square question-and-answer phrases are often a characteristic of such pieces. Semi-improvised ostinato phrases stressing pivotal notes, sometimes called ‘tassels’ (suizi), are often used towards the fast climax of a long suite (ex.6).

Many genres distinguish sitting and processional music (zuoyue, xingyue), contexts respectively for ‘large pieces’ (daqu, or suites, tao) and ‘small pieces’ (xiaoqu). Sitting music, performed at the ritual arena, consists of long suites, sequences of many labelled melodies, often with percussion interludes. A gradual accelerando is made throughout a sequence. A slow free-tempo prelude leads into the ‘body’ of the suite, which contains one or more slow pieces, often long. As the tempo accelerates, suites often climax with a sequence of fast pieces. Processional pieces are generally short, fast and popular.

Several types of variation are commonly employed. Simple technical decoration of the nuclear notes of the score is common in northern wind bands. Metrical augmentation or diminution of a basic melody is sometimes used, similar to ‘metrical melody’ (banqiang) operatic form. North-eastern shawm players may decorate a simple ground most ornately (ex.7). The ground (sometimes called ‘mother piece’, muqu) may also be performed in successive metrically augmented versions, beginning with the slowest and most ornate. This is common in music for strings, especially in the south-east: the melody Lao liuban (Baban) is most often used (ex.8). More often, however, wind-and-percussion music in both north and south uses ‘labelled melody’ (qupai) form, sequences of independent melodies, generally linked by percussion interludes.

Another variation technique to create new pieces is pitch substitution, which is important in some shawm music, notably in the north-east, where it is called ‘borrowing notes’ (jie zi). A basic level of pitch-substitution creates the feeling of temporary modulation within a piece (see ex.5 above). More extensively, a whole new piece may be created by substituting one or more notes throughout the original melody, changing the scale and thus the mode and/or key. This process may be taken through multiple substitutions, modulating round a circle of 5ths. A similar process is used in creating the three different scales of Chaozhou and Hakka music. However, the most common keys in most genres are ‘standard key’ or ‘basic key’ (zheng diao, ben diao) and the key a 5th above or below it, often called fan diao or bei diao (‘reverse key’).

Traditional notation is commonly found for instrumental music but rarely for vocal liturgy. It is an aid to memory and often a prestigious artefact of the group. In northern China, many ritual associations, and some shawm bands, have scores handed down or copied for many generations. Scores were often copied from temples; the earliest known of those still in use today are from the 17th century.

For melodic music, the gongche system is still used. This is a heptatonic system, very like solfège (Table 3; Notation, §II). He and liu are thus an octave apart; so are si and wu. Many genres now use sol-fa-type system with a movable doh, whereby the tonic of each key is always called by the same name. But some sheng-guan ensembles still use the ancient fixed-pitch system, where the note-names always refer to the same pitches irrespective of key.

Unlike many coastal literati genres based on Kunqu vocal music, inland and temple-derived genres often use he, rather than shang, as tonic of their main key. The gongche symbols, too, may differ from standard gongche, in forms resembling notational symbols found in Song dynasty (960–1279) sources (see Table 2 above).

Metre is indicated by dots to the right of the symbol, showing the position of the main beats. Main and subsidiary beats are called ban (or pai) and yan. The simple melodic framework shown in the score is always decorated, each instrument using embellishments appropriate to its technique.

Scores indicate the melodic framework only, not the percussion accompaniment. Separate percussion ensemble music is also sometimes notated, with mnemonics indicating the sounds of different percussion instruments. For both melodic and percussion music, realization depends more on oral-aural transmission. Cipher notation is known by some younger musicians but is still little used outside the towns. Two southern genres use distinctive forms of notation: nanguan uses a form of gongche still basic to the study of the repertory (see Taiwan, fig.8), but the ersi (‘2–4’) notation of Chaozhou string music (see Zheng, fig.3) is now rare.

The musicians in a sheng-guan or silk-and-bamboo ensemble have unwritten rules about blending in the heterophonic realizations of the nuclear notes of the score, playing with sensitivity within a hierarchy of instruments. The texture of free-tempo sections in the sheng-guan ensemble is often hauntingly beautiful. The guan usually leads with a simple version of the melody, while the sheng plays supporting rhythmic patterns; the di may play free descending motifs, while the repeated notes of the yunluo create a halo of sound.

Shawm players tend to decorate the bare bones of the score quite freely and elaborately; sometimes they play almost in unison, but good bands use heterophony, the leader playing a more elaborate version of the basic melody heard on the second shawm.

China, People’s Republic of, §4(i): Living traditions, Instrumental music., Ensemble traditions.

(g) 20th-century changes.

Both music and ritual have become simplified since the 1930s. Folk ritual practice, associated with heterodoxy, has been threatened since at least the 19th century. There was a gradual extension of state control over society until the 1980s. The republican period and the war against Japan were disruptive. The most severe destruction of temples occurred after the Communist Party came to power. Campaigns against religion continued in the 1950s; the economic disasters following the Great Leap Forward were soon followed by the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). Since the liberalizations of 1979, and with the continuing economic relaxations of the 1980s and 90s, traditional culture, including ceremonial music, has made a substantial revival.

With the partial secularization of the 20th century, the practices of many rural groups have been impoverished, but quite a few have otherwise modified their practice substantially. Fewer keys are used: where traditional practice often had four keys, musicians can often now play in only one or two keys. Repertories are dwindling; long suites are often abbreviated, with free-tempo preludes and codas often omitted. There is a certain input from popular ‘lesser melodies’, from folksong, opera and pop songs heard on television or in films.

Shawm bands and sheng-guan ensembles have influenced each other during the 20th century. As ritual specialists have become fewer, some shawm bands have adopted a subsidiary repertory of sheng-guan pieces. Some sheng-guan ensembles have adopted a more popular style, adding small shawms and incorporating new repertory. Since early in the 20th century, shawm bands have often performed popular yangge (song-and-dance) melodies and opera-mimicry (kaxi). In the latter, they perform excerpts from popular local operas, imitating the different vocal roles on their instruments. Trick instruments such as the ‘Lama horn’ and a small reed inserted in the mouth may be used to jocular effect.

The movement initiated by ideologues since early in the 20th century to fabricate a ‘national music’ (guoyue) style supposedly synthesizing regional characteristics has led to the establishment of urban professional troupes whose modern style is often heard in broadcasts, but its influence has been largely limited to the towns. Many virtuosos in the conservatories or professional state-supported urban troupes come from the background of hereditary village ‘folk artist’ families, but they have largely abandoned the traditional ethos in favour of a modernized, virtuoso and partly Westernized style, using a tempered scale, abbreviating pieces considerably and exaggerating dynamics and gestures for stage performance. This ‘conservatory style’ is more accessible but of less complexity than the traditional rural music-making.

Celebrated shawm players who have ‘graduated’ to the professional urban troupes include Ren Tongxiang from Shandong and Yin Erwen from Shanxi. Yang Yuanheng was a Daoist priest who became professor of guan at the Central Conservatory, Beijing; his pupil Hu Zhihou is the current professor. Many musicians from the famous Songs-for-Winds association (Chuige hui) of Ziwei village (Dingxian county, Hebei province), such as Wang Tiechui, have also joined urban troupes. Around Shanghai, dizi-players such as Lu Chunling and Zhao Songting have modified the local instrumental music. In coastal southern China, nanguan and Chaozhou music display a more natural continuum between traditional and urban professional styles. However, traditional instrumentalists serving folk ceremonial still deserve attention.

China, People’s Republic of, §4: Living traditions, Instrumental music.

(ii) Solo traditions.

In addition to the modern ‘conservatory style’ solo intrumental repertories (see §6(i) below), major traditions from imperial times have evolved for the plucked zithers Qin and Zheng and the plucked lute pìpa (see Pipa, §1). Discussed below are the history and performing traditions for each instrument; for construction tunings and notation, see under the individual instrument heading.

(a) Qin.

(b) Zheng.

(c) Pipa.

China, People’s Republic of, §4(ii): Living traditions, Instrumental music., i) Solo traditions.

(a) Qin.

Promoted by the Chinese élite and copiously described in literary and notated sources, qin music is now recognized as one of the great traditions of Chinese music. Basic features of the qin and its history are now clear, but much historical, biographical, organological and music material has yet to be examined and integrated into qin histories.

The history of the qin and its music may be divided roughly into four stages: ancient (from antiquity to 221 bce), medieval (221 bce–907 ce), traditional (907–1911) and modern (since 1911). The qin is said to have been created by the mythical sages Fuxi (c2852 bce) or Shennong (c2737 bce). Shang dynasty ideographs carved on oracle bones show that a form of zither had already appeared by that time (c1766–1122 bce): the ideograph for yue (music) consists of silk strings stretched over a piece of wood; that for qin (zither) graphically suggests strings and sounds of the instrument. By the Zhou dynasty (1122–256 bce) the qin was frequently mentioned in connection with the 25-string zither se. The Zhouli [Rites of Zhou], for example, describes the use of qin and se as instruments in large orchestras that provided music for state sacrifices; poems in the Shijing [Classic of odes] describe playing the qin and se to entertain friends and to serenade ladies. By the Springs and Autumns Period (722–481 bce) solo qin music was documented. The Shiji [Records of the historian] reports that Confucius played the instrument, and learnt the piece Wenwang cao from Master Xiang. By the end of the Warring States Period (475–221 bce), the legend of Boya and Ziqi became widely known, establishing the Chinese ideal of total empathy between expressive performers and knowing listeners (zhiyin), and projecting qin music as sophisticated and communicative (fig.19). However, the ancient qin and its music were quite different from today. Judging from the earliest archeaological specimen, excavated in 1978 from the Zenghou Yi tomb (c433 bce), the qin must have been played mainly with open strings.

In the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce) the 13 hui, inlaid studs that indicate the positions where harmonics and stopped notes may be sounded, began to appear. This is a most significant development, implying the use of just intonation and recognition of a wide gamut of pitches, including those of harmonics. Specialized qin writings also began to appear. The Qindao bian [Essay on the way of qin] by Huan Tan (c23 bce–50 ce) describes performances with Confucian principles; the Qincao [Qin compositions] by Cai Yong (133–92) lists programmatic titles and stories of 47 pieces, most of which appear to be songs.

During the Jin dynasty the qin evolved into an instrument essentially the same as the traditional one of 7 strings and 13 hui played today. Legends about several prominent musicians and compositions appeared. Cai Yan (b 177 ce), the daughter of Cai Yong and an esteemed female performer in later qin narratives, inspired the composition of Hujia shiba pai (‘Eighteen Stanzas of Barbarian Pipe Music’) and a number of related works. Ruan Ji (210–63), a scholar-official and musician, composed Jiukuang (Intoxicated), a version of which is a favourite of modern audiences. Huan Yi played a flute melody that was rearranged into the classical qin piece Meihua sannong (‘Three Variations on Plum Blossom’); variation is a compositional strategy commonly found in tradition qin pieces, and ensemble playing of qin with the vertical flute (xiao) is still common.

But the towering figure in this period is Ji Kang (223–62), a scholar-official and musician who wrote the Qinfu [Poetic essay on the qin] and played a major role in the evolution of Guangling san (also called ‘Nie Zheng Assassinates King Han’), a masterpiece of complex and extensive structure; versions of four compositions attributed to Ji are still performed today. In the Qinfu, Ji described titles and programmes of many compositions, classifying them into refined and vernacular pieces and explaining their structural features and aesthetic principles. His explanations, which are further elaborated in his seminal treatise Sheng wu aile lun [Music has no sorrow or joy], demonstrate a master musician’s insights on performance and composition. Despite Ji’s claim that Guangling san would disappear with his death (he was executed in 262 ce), the piece has been preserved, and its earliest extant version is now notated in a 15th-century score.

As complex instrumental solos and virtuoso performing techniques emerged, notation was developed as an aid. The earliest extant form of qin notation is called wenzipu (‘prose notation’), a Tang dynasty sample of which preserves the earliest known notated qin composition, Youlan (‘Lone Orchid’), attributed to Qiu Ming (493–590). As wenzipu explains pitches and finger movements with prose, it was cumbersome, and simplification was inevitable. By the end of the Tang dynasty, jianzipu (‘simplified character notation’) appeared. In this notation, parts of various Chinese characters are gathered into composite symbols to specify performing techniques and locations where the strings are stopped (see Qin). Jianzipu leaves many aspects of qin music unnotated, in particular the precise rhythm, but it exemplifies traditional aesthetics and practices: a qin composition is not an inflexible object, but must be ‘recreated’ by performers. The process of interpreting the jianzipu of a historical composition and recreating it is called dapu; since the 1950s many pieces notated in early sources have been recreated and issues of the process discussed.

During the Tang dynasty (618–907), qin music became a sophisticated art practised by professional performers and privileged connoisseurs alike. Poems and essays of the time record numerous qin activities and reveal significant advances in repertory, theory, aesthetics and production of the instrument. For example, Zhao Yeli (563–639), a vocational performer, edited qin compositions, compiled a treatise on performance techniques and commented on the distinctive styles of regional performers. His ideal of plucking the strings with both the nail and flesh of the fingers still guides 20th-century performers. Instruments constructed by the Lei family of Sichuan were acclaimed by both professionals and amateurs. Traditionally, qin are not only used as musical instruments but also appreciated as objets d’art.

Features of the tradition living today took shape in the Song dynasty, to which period authentic jianzipu scores and historical accounts still current today can be reliably traced. The Qinshi [Qin history] by Zhu Changwen (1038–98), the first formal and chronological history of the genre, highlights the rise of regional schools and records genealogies of qin musicians. It explains, for example, the prominence of the court musician Zhu Wenji (fl 976–83) and his school. One of his many acclaimed disciples was Yi Hai, a monk whose performance was described as particularly expressive by Shen Gua (1031–95), a leading scholar-official and scientist of the time. In the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279), the Zhejiang school rose to fame, represented by Guo Chuwang (fl 1260–74), whose masterpiece, Xiaoxiang shuiyun (‘Waters and Clouds of the Rivers Xiao and Xiang’), is now a frequently performed classic.

Throughout the Song dynasty, professional qin musicians and musical literati collaborated closely. Ouyang Xiu (1007–72), a great literary figure of the time, wrote an essay that inspired a qin musician to create the Zuiweng yin (‘An Intoxicated Old Man’s Chant’). Jiang Kui (1155–1221), perhaps the most famous poet and composer in ancient Chinese music history, wrote both the melody and the text of Guyuan (‘Ancient Lament’). Musicians and literati also worked together to collect ancient scores and compile multi-volume anthologies of qin music and texts such as Yang Zuan’s Zixia dongpu [Notation of Purple Cloud Cave] and Xu Tianmin’s Xumen qinpu [Notation of the Xu school]. Although these anthologies are now lost, their influence and contents can be traced to some extent in later sources. By the end of the Song dynasty, the qin had become inseparable from the literati. Even encyclopaedias such as the Shilin guangji [Comprehensive record of the forest of affairs] would include a chapter on the genre, explaining its history and practices and providing notation for diaoyi, short preludes performed to test tunings and to introduce the musical affects and modes of lengthy solos. The appearance of these preludes attests to the increasing importance of tunings and modes in traditional qin theory and appreciation.

Qin music flourished in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), producing many new works, notated anthologies and treatises on theory and aesthetics. While Ming qin musicians faithfully maintained pre-existing theories and pieces, they also produced new ideas and compositions. Comparison of different versions of pieces as preserved in scores ranging over several centuries demonstrates not only their shared components but also their structural and theoretical differences. The demand for qin music produced a market for qin anthologies. Their market value is attested by the fact that some anthologies carelessly plagiarized earlier works and were produced solely for financial gain.

Most Ming anthologies are, however, meticulously prepared, reflecting historical and musical interests. The 15th-century edition of the Taigu yiyin [Remnants of ancient sounds], originally compiled in the Song dynasty, preserves no notated music but surveys traditional qin knowledge, stating, for example, the following points. Gentlemen (junzi) use the instrument as a means of self-cultivation. The upper and lower soundboards of the qin are, respectively, made round and flat to symbolize Heaven and Earth; the seven strings represent the five elements (metal, wood, water, fire and earth), rulers and officials in the human world. The instrument produces three kinds of sounds: harmonics, open strings and stopped strings. During performance, which should only occur in appropriate venues, musicians should assume a respectful posture and use fitting techniques to accurately produce pitches and articulate phrases. While performing, musicians should devotedly listen to the sounds produced, and their minds should not wander. They should not care if there is an audience or not: qin musicians, however, did and still do gather to play music and socialize in ‘refined meetings’ (yaji).

Zhu Quan’s Shenqi mipu [Wondrous and secret notation] of 1425 is the earliest extant jianzipu anthology of qin music. Its 1st fascicle preserves 16 pieces from the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127) and earlier; its 2nd and 3rd fascicles preserve 48 pieces composed since the Southern Song. The anthology also includes an informative preface, detailed notes on the individual pieces and programmatic subtitles for their sections. Such verbal descriptions are standard features of traditional qin notated sources and provide essential data for recreating and performing qin music. Xie Lin’s Taigu yiyin [Remnants of ancient sounds] of 1511 is an anthology of 35 qin songs, the melodies of which are syllabically set to poetic texts. As the volume includes not only new songs but also those transmitted from the Tang and Song dynasties, the anthology demonstrates the continued vitality of the vocal branch of the qin tradition. Zhu Houjue’s Fengxuan xuanpin [Wonderful manifestations of customs] of 1539 is noted for its 154 pictograms that illustrate musical, poetic, kinetic and cosmological attributes of various performance techniques. For example, yan, a technique whereby the left thumb lightly taps the top soundboard of the qin, is compared to howling in an empty valley: the illustration for the technique depicts standing on a ridge, howling and listening to echoes.

Two anthologies from the late Ming indicate distinctive trends of their time. The historical and academic interests of the late Ming are reflected in Jiang Kelian’s Qinshu daquan [Compendium of qin documents] of 1590. Encyclopedic in nature, this anthology of 22 fascicles preserved 62 pieces and a vast collection of writings selected from numerous theoretical, literary and historical sources. The refined taste of privileged literati musicians of the late Ming is reflected in Yan Cheng’s (1547–1625) Songxianguan qinpu [Qin notation of the Pine and Silk Studio] of 1614. Preserving 29 pieces, Yan’s anthology embodies the rise of the Yushan school in the Changshu area of Jiangsu province and perpetuates its particular repertory, style and aesthetic. Liangxiao yin (‘Serene Evening’) in this influential anthology has since become a favourite for masters to teach qin music structure and technique. It includes a prelude, an exposition of the main thematic materials, an introduction of additional material, a recapitulation and a coda; both the prelude and the coda feature the use of harmonics and non-metered rhythm. Though brief, the piece employs many standard techniques of plucking, stopping and vibrato.

Yan’s anthology includes neither programmatic subtitles nor explanations; theorizing qin music as a purely instrumental genre, he argued that musical expressiveness lies in the manipulation and production of sounds. Yan’s ideal was later distilled into the motto of ‘clear, subtle, light and broad’ that has been widely accepted as a guiding principle of qin performance. Emphasizing controlled refinement, it reflected the aesthetic preferences of privileged and literary musicians from a scholar-official background. It was balanced by the work of Xu Qingshan, another major figure of the Yushan school, who wrote 24 principles of qin music performance and aesthetics and left a legacy of more than 30 compositions that eschewed the dogmatic application of aesthetic principles.

In the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), qin musicians carried on their tradition, transmitting pre-existing pieces, composing new ones, compiling anthologies and launching new schools with distinctive styles and aesthetics. Dominating the scene was the Guangling school of Yangzhou. Xu Qi, a member of this school, produced the Wuzhizhai qinpu [Notation of the Five Learnings Studio], an anthology that became influential after its posthumous publication in 1722. The score was meticulously edited, creatively revised and comprehensively annotated. Similarly, Dai Yuan produced the popular Chuncao tang qinpu [Qin notation of the Spring Grass Studio] of 1744 and proposed eight practical and insightful principles of qin music-making: it should be expressive, melodious like singing, rhythmically accurate and diversified, and articulated like natural breathing; performers should play not only with the fingers but also with the energy of the whole body, producing clear and harmonious tones, showing a clear understanding of the notation and identifying differences among the various schools and music masters. Zhang Chun (c1779–c1846) experimented with the use of gongche notation to supplement the pitch and rhythmic indications in jianzipu; he also published qin arrangements of vernacular songs, publicly acknowledging the non-élitist roots in qin music. Zhang Kongshan (fl 1851–1904) recreated the piece Liushui (‘Flowing Water’), transforming it into a programmatic piece that not only demonstrates the expressive potentials of the instrument but also challenges the traditional and Confucian ideal of control and moderation. The piece includes 72 rounds of gun and fu, rapid arpeggiandos of the seven strings.

The modern era of qin music begins with the early 20th century, when it was meagerly sustained by an élitist and patriotic group of musicians and intellectuals under the pressures of modernization and westernization. Yang Zongji (1865–1933) laid a musical and objective foundation for contemporary qin scholarship with his encyclopedic Qinxue congshu [Collected writings of qin studies]. Yang taught many students, including Guan Pinghu, a central figure in the modern history of the qin, who recreated a number of historical qin pieces and himself became an influential teacher (fig.20).

The other central figure is Zha Fuxi, a scholar-official and musician whose research and fieldwork transformed qin scholarship. In 1936 Zha organized a society to connect qin musicians; the publication that celebrated the forming of the society, the Jinyu qinkan [Journal of the qin society of contemporary Yu region], includes a wealth of historical and musical data and is a precious record of qin music of the time. Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the qin has been taught in the new conservatories, bringing further communication between regional styles. In 1956 Zha Fuxi led a fieldwork project to interview qin musicians throughout the nation, recording their music and collecting their notated sources. In the same year he published a major index of extant qin compositions, identifying a repertory of 646 pieces and their more than 2000 different versions.

In 1962, the Beijing Qin Research Society, which Zha Fuxi helped launch in 1952, published the Guqin quji [Collection of qin music], an anthology of 79 transcriptions of performances by qin masters. Presenting qin music in both Western staff notation and jianzipu, this anthology and its sequel facilitate modern and comparative analyses. With Zha’s editorial guidance, the Qinqu jicheng [Anthology of qin music] was also launched, a major series of facsimiles of historical scores and anthologies; by 1997, 16 of the projected 24 volumes had appeared, generating much progress in qin music-making and research.

In addition to Guan and Zha, many other 20th-century masters strove to carry on the qin tradition, such as Wu Jinglue, Yu Shaoze, Zhang Ziqian, Yao Bingyan, Cai Deyun and Wu Zonghan, all master musicians noted for their distinctive personal styles. Many of their students have subsequently become successful performers and scholars, including Cheng Gongliang, Gong Yi, Lau Chorwah, Li Xiangting, Liang Mingyue, Lin Youren, Lü Zhenyuan, Tong Kin-Woon, Wang Di, Wu Wenguang, Xu Jian and Bell Yung, who have performed globally and produced many recordings, articles and monographs. Stimulated by these activities, many ethnomusicologists in the West have developed interest and expertise about the genre, resulting in a substantial literature in Western languages. Several composers, such as Chou Wen-chung, Liang Mingyue and Zhou Long, have composed music in an avant-garde idiom inspired by the sound and aesthetic world of the qin. Today qin music thrives, with an ever increasing number of performances, recordings and publications, while gradually adjusting to the social and musical challenges of a rapidly changing China.

China, People’s Republic of, §4(ii): Living traditions, Instrumental music., i) Solo traditions.

(b) Zheng.

Throughout the imperial period the zheng plucked zither was used not only in ensemble music but also as a solo instrument, serving as a source of self-cultivation and entertainment. Since the solo zheng was played mainly by the literati, female members of the imperial family, courtesans and professional musicians serving at court, its music was often associated with romantic subjects, such as the beauty of nature or women, sentimental feelings of love and sad memories.

Since the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), solo repertories have been closely related to regional ensembles incorporating zheng, although since the mid-19th century solo playing has tended to gain a higher profile. In the 20th century, the influence of conservatory teaching has fostered greater technical complexity, but regional styles are still cultivated, with distinctive repertories and techniques. The most common structure of zheng pieces in both north and south is the Baban tune-family, a 68-beat structure with a fixed phrase pattern, often performed in metrical variations of increasing tempi (see §(i) above and §(c) below). Though many regional traditions persist, two broad styles, northern and southern, are commonly identified, the former represented by Henan and Shandong provinces, the latter by the Chaozhou and Hakka regions of eastern Guangdong.

In Henan and Shandong the zheng is part of ensembles accompanying vocal music and playing solo pieces: in Henan the bantou genre, in Shandong the string chamber ensemble genre called peng Baban (‘knocking Eight Beats’). The Henan solo style is known for its lively action, with short descending phrases played with a quick plucking of the right thumb, accompanied by rapid and wide left-hand vibrato. The repertory has two parts: bantou qu and paizi qu. The former, which follows the Baban structure, may be played as prelude to dadiao quzi (‘great melodies’), from which the paizi qu (‘labelled melodies’) also derive. Pieces such as Tianxia datong (‘Universal Harmony’) and Bainiao chaofeng (‘Hundred Birds Honour the Phoenix’) have become widely popular.

The Shandong school is noted for its ‘earthy’ style. Its melodies are often embellished with descending and ascending glissandos around the melodic notes. Repertory includes Lao Baban (‘Old Eight Beat’) and some minor tunes from the local narrative singing genre qinshu; the pieces Gaoshan liushui (‘High Mountains and Flowing Waters’) and Hangong qiuyue (‘Autumn Moon over the Han Palace’) are nationally renowned.

In the south, the Chaozhou and Hakka styles are closely related, and indeed are thought to preserve elements of the ancient music of north-central China. Although not part of larger instrumental ensembles, the zheng is performed both solo and in a chamber ensemble called xianshi (‘string poem’) or xiyue (‘fine music’) in Chaozhou and sixian (‘silk string’) or qingyue (‘pure music’) among the Hakka. The three main modes of Chaozhou zheng music, qing sanliu, zhong sanliu and huowu, have been much studied. Metrical variations are again common. Both Chaozhou and Hakka repertories distinguish between Baban variants and other melodies. The Chaozhou repertory includes Pingsha luoyan (‘Geese Alighting on the Sandy Shore’), Hanya xishui (‘Winter Crows Playing in the Water’) and Liuqing niang (‘Lady Liuqing’); Jiaochuang yeyu (‘Night Rain Sprinkling the Window’) and Chushui lian (‘Lotus Blossoms Emerging from the Water’) are major Hakka pieces.

In modern times the Wulin zheng school, centred in Hangzhou in Zhejiang province and based on the local tanhuang narrative singing style, has been popularized by Wang Xunzhi (1899–1972). Other regional solo and ensemble traditions invite further study, such as those in northern Shaanxi and southern Fujian and the Cantonese nanyin vocal tradition.

As many zheng masters sought to develop their music from regional identities into both personal and national styles during the first half of the 20th century, the solo zheng tradition grew quickly. Except for its use in court, the zheng was little known in Beijing before its introduction in the 1920s by Lin Yongzhi and Wei Ziyou. Their disciple Lou Shuhua rearranged a traditional zheng piece and named it Yuzhou changwan (‘Fishermen Singing in the Twilight’), which subsequently became a model piece for both contemporary practice and performance. Liang Tsai-ping not only rearranged old zheng melodies and composed new ones but assembled Nizheng pu, the first zheng teaching manual, published in 1938 (see ..\Frames/F001172.htmlZheng, fig.2).

In the 1940s, for the first time in Chinese history, a zheng performance course was offered at the national music conservatory at Nanjing (Nanjing Guoli Yinzhuan), and some fine zheng masters taught in conservatories under the People’s Republic. By that time the zheng was also becoming common on the concert stage. Influential performers and teachers include Cao Dongfu (1898–1970) from Henan; Gao Zicheng (b 1918) and Zhao Yuzhai (b 1924) from Shandong; Su Wenxian (1907–71), Guo Ying (b 1914) and Lin Maogen (b 1929) from Chaozhou, and the Hakka Luo Jiuxiang (1902–78). Cao Zheng (1920–98), trained in the Henan style, is also an influential pedagogue. His teacher Liang Tsai-ping has been active in performing and teaching both in Asia and the West since emigrating to Taiwan. The Beijing Zheng Association was founded in 1980, the first of its kind.

Since the 1950s, many new pieces have been composed. Performance techniques have developed further, especially in the use of the left hand to play harmony and counterpoint together with the right hand. Qingfeng nian (‘Celebrating the Harvest’, Zhao Yuzhai, 1955), Zhan taifeng (‘Struggling with the Typhoon’, Wang Changyuan, 1965) and the zheng concerto Miluo River Fantasia (Li Huanzhi, 1984) are hallmarks of the new style. In the 1980s, experimental pieces using atonal idioms were also composed, such as Sandie (‘Three Sections’, Ye Xiaogang, 1984), Jiunong (‘Nine Phrases’, Li Binyang, 1986), and Shanmei (‘The Goddess of the Mountain’, Xu Xiaoling, 1989).

To accommodate such requirements, the instrument itself has been modified since the 1970s. Zhang Kun of the Shenyang Music Conservatory designed and produced a zhuandiao zheng (‘changeable key zheng’), with a harp-like pedal mechanism; a chromatic die zheng (‘butterfly zheng’) was designed by He Baoquan of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. While the 21-stringed zheng is most commonly used now, the traditional 16-stringed zheng is still in use among some musicians.

China, People’s Republic of, §4(ii): Living traditions, Instrumental music., i) Solo traditions.

(c) Pipa.

Before the Tang dynasty (618–907), the pipa, a plucked lute, seems to have been used mainly in ensemble, accompanying singing and dancing for the entertainment of the imperial and noble courts. During the Tang period, it was also used as a solo instrument in both courtly and folk contexts. Later the pipa became a major accompanying instrument for several genres of narrative singing and opera-derived forms, such as tanci and Kunqu in Jiangsu (see §1 above). It also became part of various instrumental ensembles.

Today the pipa is best known as a solo instrument. The music is mainly transmitted orally, and the original composers are unknown; scores are used mainly as an aid to memory. A piece may be played in different versions by players from different regional schools, and individual musicians may add their own creative elements. Although several pipa scores from the late Tang and Five Dynasties periods, written in forms of tablature, were discovered in the 20th century, their interpretation remains controversial, and no further pipa scores have come to light from before 1819. These more recent pipa scores are written in gongche notation. Although pieces in the 1819 score had evidently been handed down from an earlier time, we can only date living traditions of pipa music firmly from that year; however, pieces in this score have been performed continuously since then.

Traditionally, pipa solo was practised by two social groups: literati and musicians of low social status. The major body of extant traditional pieces was played and preserved by literati, who used the pipa as a means of self-cultivation and entertainment. Apart from the controversial Ju Shilin score, said to date from the late 18th century, four early collections of pipa pieces are used today, compiled by Hua Qiuping (1784–1859), Li Fangyuan (b c1850), Shen Zhaozhou (1859–1930) and Shen Haochu (1889–1953). The editors of these collections were themselves pipa players, and their scores made an important contribution to the transmission of their performing schools.

Most traditional pipa pieces have titles that describe natural scenes, historical events or human emotions; there are also some pieces with non-programmatic titles, such as Baban (‘Eight Beats’), the title relating to its musical structure. Traditional pieces are categorized in different ways. They are divided into daqu (‘large piece’ or suite) and xiaoqu (‘small piece’) based on length. About 30 ‘large pieces’ and 150 ‘small pieces’ are notated in extant pipa collections. A ‘large piece’ usually has several sections, whereas most ‘small pieces’ have only one section and a metric structure of 68 ban (‘beats’ or measures). Both ‘large’ and ‘small’ pieces are further divided into ‘civil’ (wen) and ‘martial’ (wu) pieces. Civil pieces are often refined and elegant, and are played at a slower tempo with a soft dynamic; they are considered to be feminine in nature. The well-known Xiyang xiaogu (‘Flute and Drum at Sunset’) is a typical civil piece: it consists of several sections describing the exquisite scenery of a river during a spring night. Other popular civil pieces include Yue'er gao (‘The Moon on High’), Saishang qu (‘Song at the Frontier’) and Pu'an zhou (‘Incantation of Pu'an). On the other hand, martial pieces are often very powerful and mighty, are viewed as being masculine, and are played at faster tempos and at louder dynamics. The most famous is Shimian maifu (‘Ambush from All Directions’). It portrays the historical battle between the warlords Liu Bang and Xiang Yu in 202 bc, when Liu Bang used various ambush-strategies in this battle, routing Xiang Yu. In the piece, special pipa techniques are used to imitate sounds such as the frantic running and neighing of horses, the screaming of soldiers and the clashing of spears. Together these sounds combine to portray a lively sonic picture of the ancient battle. Other famous martial pieces include Haiqing na tian'e (‘Hunting Eagles Catching Swans’), Bawang xiejia (‘The Tyrant Takes Off his Armour’) and Jiangjun ling (‘Command of the General’).

Along with the development of local performing traditions and their transmission from teacher to student, regional performing schools appeared. According to Hua Qiuping's Pipa pu of 1819, there were two pipa performing schools at that time: the ‘southern’ and the ‘northern’ schools. By the late 19th century and the early 20th, four schools had appeared in the Jiangnan (lower Yangtze river valley) area, named after the places where they developed: Wuxi, Pinghu, Chongming and Pudong. The four printed traditional pipa collections belonged to the four schools. During the 1920s and 30s, another school took shape represented by Wang Yuting (1872–1951) in Shanghai. These Jiangnan schools are considered to be extensions of the earlier southern school. At the same time, the earlier northern school, represented by Wang Lu (1877–1921), continued mainly in Shandong province. The major differences among these schools were different repertory and playing techniques, as well as distinct interpretations of the same pieces. But they all belonged to the literati tradition in general and shared many basic features and repertory.

Low-status musicians were another social group transmitting traditions of pipa solo. They played the pipa for their living on the streets or in teahouses. The music was transmitted orally, and their repertory was mainly adopted from folksong or local opera. Longchuan (‘Dragon Boats’) is a good example of their repertory, describing the lively scene of the dragon boat race among ordinary people at a folk festival. It is composed of several so-called ‘gong-and-drum sections’, which imitate the sound of a percussion ensemble, alternating with melodic sections adopted from folk tunes. The blind musician Abing (1893–1950) was an outstanding representative of this social group.

Since roughly the 1920s, another group, that of modern intellectuals, started to influence the pipa solo tradition. These players usually had some training in Western music, and though they learned pipa from traditional literati, they made changes to the music, rearranging the frets of the pipa based on the 12-note equal temperament and using cipher or Western staff notation. Meanwhile, they composed new pieces to describe modern events or feelings. Musically, these works illustrate Western influence in their melodic style and harmonic elements. Gaijin cao (‘Exercise for Improvement’) and Gewu yin (‘Prelude for Song-and-Dance’), both composed in 1927 by Liu Tianhua, are good examples of this kind of composed piece. Influential modern pedagogues include Wei Zhongle and Lin Shicheng.

Since the 1950s, pipa solo has been best known from performances by professional urban players who learned from traditional literati or modern intellectuals and who have tended to synthesize the styles of traditional regional performing schools. They usually work in a professional performing troupe or a music conservatory, relying on notation for transmission more than before. Concerts and mass media have become their major performing arenas. When they play traditional pieces, they often arrange and condense them to appeal to modern tastes. They also play contemporary composed pieces, some of which are popular concert items, such as Yizu wuqu (‘Dance of the Yi People’) by Wang Huiran (1960), Gan huahui (‘Going to the Fair’) by Ye Xuran (1960), Langyashan wu zhuangshi (‘Five Heroes of Langyashan’) by Lü Shao'en (1960) and Caoyuan xiao jiemei (‘Little Sisters of the Grassland’) by Wu Zuqiang, Wang Yanqiao and Liu Dehai (1973).

Today, apart from the contexts of conservatories and concert halls, pipa traditions also survive in silk-and-bamboo ensembles in central-eastern China and in rural areas such as northern Shaanxi and Shandong, where the pipa may be part of a small ensemble that often accompanies narrative singing.

China, People’s Republic of, §4: Living traditions, Instrumental music.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

and other resources

ensemble traditions

The following list includes only general works and writings in English on regional genres. For Further information and bibliography, see S. Jones: Folk Music of China: Living Instrumental Traditions (Oxford, 1995, 2/1998 with CD). For transcriptions, see the relevant vols. for each province of the Anthology of Folk music of the Chinese Peoples (see §IV Introduction above). Few recordings of folk instrumental music are as yet available in China; beware conservatory-style recordings.

Gao Houyong: Minzu qiyue gailun [Survey of Chinese instrumental music] (Jiangsu, 1981)

Ye Dong: Minzu qiyue de ticai yu xingshi [The form and structure of Chinese instrumental music] (Shanghai, 1983)

Yuan Jingfang: Minzu qiyue xinshang shouce [Handbook for the appreciation of Chinese instrumental music] (Beijing, 1986)

Yuan Jingfang: Minzu qiyue [Chinese instrumental music] (Beijing, 1987)

A. Thrasher: ‘Hakka-Chaozhou Instrumental Repertoire: an Analytic Perspective on Traditional Creativity’, AsM, xix/2 (1988), 1–30

A. Thrasher: ‘Structural Continuity in Chinese Sizhu: the Baban Model’, AsM, xx/2 (1989), 67–106

S. Jones and Xue Yibing: ‘The Music Associations of Hebei Province, China’, EthM, xxxv (1991), 1–29

J.L. Witzleben: ‘Silk and Bamboo’ Music in Shanghai: the Jiangnan Sizhu Instrumental Ensemble Tradition (Kent, OH, 1995)

qin

Grove6 (Liang Ming-yueh)

R. van Gulik: The Lore of the Chinese Lute: an Essay in Ch’in Ideology (Tokyo, 1940/R)

R. van Gulik: Hsi K’ang’s Poetical Essay on the Lute (Tokyo, 1941)

Zha Fuxi: Jianzai guqinqu chuanpu jieti huibian chugao mulu [Draft index of extant qin pieces, scores and explanatory notes] (Beijing, 1956)

Zha Fuxi, Xu Jian and Wang Di: ‘1956 nian guqin caifang gongzuo baogao’ [Report on the 1956 fieldwork on the qin], Minzu yinyue yanjiu lunwenji [Collected articles of research on Chinese music], no.3 (Beijing, 1958), 1–8

Guqin quji [Collected pieces for the qin], ed. YYS and Beijing guqin yanjiu hui (Beijing, 1962–83/R)

Lui Tsun-yuan: ‘A Short Guide to Ch'in’, Selected Reports, i/2 (1968): 180–204

Liang Ming-yueh: The Chinese Ch’in: its History and Music (Taipei, 1969/R)

Tong Kin-woon: Qinfu [Qin archive] (Taibei, 1973)

Qinqu jicheng [Anthology of qin pieces], ed. YYS and Beijing guqin yanjiu hui (Beijing, 1981–)

J.C.Y. Watt: ‘The Qin and the Chinese Literati’, Orientations, xii (1981), 38–49

F. Lieberman: A Chinese Zither Tutor: the Mei-an Ch’in-p’u (Seattle, 1983)

Wang Di, ed.: Qin’ge [Qin songs] (Beijing, 1983)

Xu Jian: Qinshi chubian [Draft history of the qin] (Beijing, 1983)

Wang Di: Qinqu Guangling san chutan [Study of the qin piece Guangling san] (Beijing, 1984)