'There Is No Music in Chinese Music History': Five Court Tunes from the Yuan Dynasty (AD

1271-1368)
Author(s): Joseph S. C. Lam
Source: Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 119, No. 2 (1994), pp. 165-188
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Royal Musical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/766518
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 'There is No Music in Chinese Music
History': Five Court Tunes from the Yuan
Dynasty (AD 1271-1368)
JOSEPH S. C. LAM

'THEREis no music in Chinese music history." This paradox is often ex-

pressed by music scholars in Hong Kong, a moder metropolis in which
Chinese and Western musics and music scholarship mingle and thrive.
Highlighting the contrasts between traditional Chinese and contem-
porary Western views of music and music historiography, the paradox
refers to the scholars' observation that Chinese music histories include few
descriptions of actual music, and that performances of early Chinese
music are often inauthentic. Published accounts of China's musical past
include little hard evidence about the structure and sounds of specific
musical works. Thus, the scholars argue, the accounts are more
theoretical than factual, and their musical descriptions disputable.2
Public performances and recorded examples of early Chinese music
reveal obvious use of Western tonal harmony and counterpoint, and thus
cannot be authentic music from China of the past.3 The scholars'
arguments, however, cannot refute that in Hong Kong many Chinese
music masters and audiences find the so-called early Chinese music
authentic and its histories credible.
The paradox raises many fundamental issues concerning relationships
between the musical past and present, traditional Chinese and contem-
porary Western music historiography, and the dynamics involved in the
reconstruction and perpetuation of a musical heritage. These issues lead
to a barrage of questions, some of which can be presented as follows.
What is a piece of early Chinese music? How do music scholars verify
what it was and/or is? How is it incorporated into historical narratives of

I would like to thank Profs. John M. Ward of Harvard University, Evelyn Rawski and Bell Yung of
the University of Pittsburgh, and William Prizer of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
They read earlier drafts of this paper and offered many helpful suggestions.
'Between 1988 and 1991 I taught in Hong Kong, and I often heard students and colleagues
express this paradox.
2 In his
Zhongguo gudaiyinyue shigao (Draft History of Ancient Chinese Music) (Beijing, 1981),
the standard text of Chinese music history, Yang Yinliu devoted 800 (out of 1,070) pages and 50
musical examples to his description of the history of Chinese music from its beginning to AD 1550.
Only four of these musical examples (nos. 3, 7, 8 and 14) are preserved in documents contem-
poraneous with the music being discussed.
3A
representative commercial recording of such examples is SongJiang Baishi gequ shiqishou:
zuoyu 1176-1196 nian (Seventeen Songs by Jiang Baishi Composed in 1176-96) (China Records,
AL-50, 1986).
166 JOSEPHS. C. LAM

Chinese music? Who formulates such narratives? For whom? Why? And
how do such narratives relate to histories of Western art music and world
music? Such questions have no easy answers, for they involve a multitude
of issues in critical theories, cultural studies, ethnomusicology,
historiography, musicology and sinology. Generations of Chinese and
Western scholars have wrestled with the questions one way or another.
Still their debates continue, discussing data and theories which transcend
the boundaries between Chinese and Western musics, and which
underscore the universal and theoretical nature of the questions.4
Through a case-study of five court tunes (hereafter referred to as tunes
1-5) from the Yuan dynasty (AD 1271-1368) of China, this paper
discusses historiographical issues of methodology, objectivity, relevance
and practicality. The tunes are preserved as notated music in a section of
chapter 53a of the DaMing jili (Collected Ceremonies of the Ming), a
multi-volume manual on Chinese court ceremonials compiled in
1369-70. (Hereafter, the section will be referred to as the source, and its
host as the DMJL.) The tunes are hitherto unknown examples of Yuan
dynasty court music; this paper is the first discussion of this repertory in
any language. Being thus unknown to present-day Chinese or Western
music scholars, musicians and audiences, the tunes have neither a recep-
tion history nor generally accepted meanings. They are ideal material
for theoretical examination of historiographical issues.5
To present the tunes and to discuss the historiographical issues they
raise, this paper proposes the following definitions and assumptions.
Early Chinese music is defined as music which was created before 1550;
which is transmitted to the present through words and notation only; and
which is reconstructed and performed in the present.6 Early Chinese
music is irrelevant to present-day musicians and audiences unless it is ex-
plained as historical music and performed as such. A history of early
Chinese music is constructed with narratives which are formulated with
verifiable evidence (words, notation, musical instruments and so forth)
and non-verifiable hypotheses (historical constructs) which aim to explain

4 Three current publications on the questions, which also constitute a general foundation for this
paper, are Liu Nianci et al., 'Yinyue shixue fangfalun yantao' ('Symposium on Methods of Music
Historiography'), Zhongguo yinyuexue (1989/2), 66-89; Leo Treitler, 'The Politics of Reception:
Tailoring the Present as Fulfilment of a Desired Past', Journal of the Royal Music Association, 116
(1991), 281-98; Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James Clifford
(Berkeley, 1986).
5 For reasons why the
DMJL remained unknown, see Joseph S. C. Lam, 'Creativity Within
Bounds: State Sacrificial Songs from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)' (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard
University, 1988), 311-17.
6
The year 1550 is a convenient dividing line in Chinese music history. No known genre of
Chinese music can trace and verify that its performance tradition has been continuously and orally
transmitted to the present from a time prior to 1550. In contrast, Kun operatic arias (Kunqu) and
certain schools of qin (Chinese seven-string zither) music, which developed in the mid-sixteenth cen-
tury and are still thriving, have contestable claims to such a kind of continuous oral transmission.
Historiographical issues concerning these two other genres are related to but different from the issues
discussed in this paper, which limits its purview to Chinese music created before 1550. I use the term
'early Chinese music' to draw an analogy to the early music of the West. The two repertories share
fundamental problems of performance practice, authenticity and relationships between facts and
fiction. For an introduction to theories of early music of the West, see Authenticity and Early Music,
ed. Nicholas Kenyon (Oxford, 1988).
'THERE IS NO MUSIC IN CHINESE MUSIC HISTORY' 167

music of the past.7 All narratives of early Chinese music are selective: the
past cannot be comprehensively reconstructed and explained in the
present, and can be viewed only through modern selective perspectives.
This paper presumes that upon discovery of the notated source of the
tunes, Hong Kong music scholars, masters and audiences would employ
their typical methodologies and perspectives to formulate various nar-
ratives. Eight such narratives are hypothesized here, and arranged in the
following sequence for convenience of discussion. These narratives would
explain the tunes as:
(1) court music from the Yuan dynasty;
(2) authentic court music from the Yuan dynasty, because the source and its
transmission are reliable;
(3) outlines of pitches which do not reveal full musical identities;
(4) musical works with distinctive structural features;
(5) specimens of banquet music and secular ceremonial music from the Yuan
court;
(6) musical works whose instrumentation and performance context are
similar to other pieces of the above two genres;
(7) evidence of musical exchange between different ethnic groups of Chinese
people;
(8) early Chinese music which can be reconstructed and performed in the
present.
The above narratives are hypothetical but serve as case samples to iden-
tify verifiable facts and non-verifiable hypotheses in music histories, to
analyse their formulation processes and to assess their practicality, accep-
tance and rejection in different musical and scholarly communities.
Through these case samples, this paper argues for a Chinese music
historiography that not only combines objectivity and cultural sensitivity,
but also contributes to universal and theoretical understanding of music
of the past.

Tunes 1-5 begin to exist as early Chinese music with the formulation of
narrative 1: they are court music from the Yuan dynasty. The tunes have
existed in notation for more than 600 years, but that existence has resided
in meaningless receptacles of data from the past, and has neither
historical nor musical significance for the present. In narrative 1, the
tunes acquire a present meaning which is formulated with literal
understanding of hard evidence, namely the words and notation con-
tained in the source. Anyone who reads Chinese characters and has some
familiarity with Chinese music history and notational signs would for-
mulate this same understanding upon encountering the source.
Headed 'Yuan yuequ' ('Tunes from the Yuan Dynasty'), the source
includes 12 folios of words and notation. It preserves the tunes in 83
columns of gongche and lilii notation, specifying their pitches but not
rhythm or any other details needed for reconstruction and performance

7 Robin Idea of History (London,

George Collingwood, 1946), 231-49.
168 JOSEPHS. C. LAM

in the present (see Figure 1).8 In addition to the notated data the source
includes the following verbal information: a list of ten song names, titles
of the tunes, two technical terms and modal labels for tunes 4 and 5.
There are no song texts. The list of ten song names, which appears at the
beginning of the source, designates specific pieces of banquet music from
the Yuan court. Three of the ten song names are common designations of
constituent arias in musical dramas (zaju) or song cycles (santao) of the
Yuan period.9 The titles of the tunes, which in each case precede the
notation, are: Yeketangwu, Weiwuer, Weiwuer guopian, Szji wan-
nianhuan (The Four Seasons in Ten Thousand Years of Happiness) and
Wansuiyue (Music for Ten Thousand Years); Yeketangwu and Weiwuer
appear to be Chinese imitations of non-Chinese words, and their mean-
ings are, for the time being, unknown. The two technical terms refer to
structural aspects of the music. The first term, guopian, which is ap-
pended to the title proper of tune 3, means 'an expanded version'. The
second term, wei, which marks the last phrase of tune 4, can be
translated as 'coda'. The modal labels mark specific phrases or sections in

"
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-.j - , ?c.

i'.. ?
1-*;l _ X,6 I j = I e (
CD

-*f *
~ ^r 4 ? I
. ,,,
* ~t
^i$7] ~ L ir I 9trt; I I s
"
--&
^1 ^~~~~~~~~~
/^
-5-m~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~c
--ifc
~ J::c.
Mo A

*
i ."'- .
^

Figure 1. The first folio of the source, and its translated and simplified representa-
tion in English. (Note: Chinese documents are to be read from right to left and top to
bottom.)

8 The liilii notation uses 12 terms to denote the 12 pitches inside an octave; the notation does not
include symbols for rhythm. The gongche notation uses ten characters to denote pitch; the notation
does include optional signs to indicate rhythm. Rhythmic signs are absent from the source. For fur-
ther information about the notational systemssee Rulan Chao Pian, Sonq Dynasty Musical Sources
and their Interpretations (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 59-98.
The names of all ten songs can be found in the Yuanshi(Standard History of the Yuan) (1370;
Beijing Z;honghua
Zhonghua shuju edn, 1976), 71.1773-7.
'THERE IS NO MUSIC IN CHINESE MUSIC HISTORY' 169

the notation of tunes 4 and 5, specifying modal categories with theoretical

(proper) and practical (popular) terms.

The narrative described above is a simple explanation, and its verifiable

data and straightforward hypothesis are insufficient to specify how the
tunes are to be understood as performable music. A search for additional
information would quickly lead to the conclusion that little is known
about music in the Yuan court.'? Standard historical documents about
the Yuan dynasty, such as the Yuanshi (Standard History of the Yuan) of
1370, testify to the existence of a variety of music: state sacrificial music,
banquet music, secular ceremonial music, military music, recreational
music and other genres. Thus, despite a lack of direct evidence, it is
reasonable to presume that the tunes did exist in the Yuan court. With
acceptance of this presumption, authenticity of the tunes becomes an
urgent issue which cannot, however, be solved definitively. Past existence
of the tunes is unrecoverable. One can nevertheless formulate narrative 2:
the tunes are authentic because the source and its transmission are
reliable. Equating musical authenticity with bibliographical reliability,
the narrative is open to challenge, but it provides a justification for
examining the tunes as early Chinese music and for constructing histories
about them. Without the narrative, there is neither reason to pursue the
tunes as early Chinese music nor a theoretical framework in which to
examine the few pieces of surviving evidence.
An investigation into the reliability of the source and its host, the
DMJL, entails scrutiny of the bibliographical and historical data that are
available. The DMJL is a Ming dynasty (1368-1644) manual on court
ceremonials, which was compiled, upon imperial order, by Xu Yikui
(1318-c. 1400) and other scholar-officials during 1369-70. From descrip-
tions found in standard documents of the Ming dynasty, such as the
Wenyuange cangshu shumu (Catalogue of the Wenyuange Library) of
1440, the Ming Shizong Shuhuangdi shilu (Veritable Records of the
Ming: Emperor Shizong) of 1577 and the Mingshi (Standard History of
the Ming) of 1739, it is clear that the manual has existed in four editions:
(1) an original edition of 50 chapters, which existed only in manuscripts
and is now lost; (2) a 1530 edition, which has 53 chapters, was edited by
Li Shi (1471-1539) and was printed inside the palace; (3) a Honan
printed edition, a copy of which is now kept in the Gest Collection of
Princeton University Library; and (4) the Siku quanshu (Imperial
Library) edition of the 1770s, which is now available in facsimile print-
ings. " 15 of the 53 chapters of the manual include extensive descriptions

0 There is
only one known publication which specifically discusses music in the Yuan court of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: Moerjihu's 'Yuandai gongting yinyue chutan' ('A Preliminary
Study of Music in the Yuan Court'), Yinyue yishu (1990), 16-23.
'' For an introduction to documents about the
Ming, see Wolfgang Franke, An Introduction to the
Sources of Ming History (Kuala Lumpur, 1968). For further details of Ming dynasty musical sources,
see Lam, 'Creativity Within Bounds', 319-34. For general information on Chinese historical
documents mentioned briefly, see Endymion Wilkinson, The History of Imperial China: A Research
Guide (Cambridge, Mass., 1975).
170 JOSEPHS. C. LAM

of music (instruments, histories, theories, musicians, etc.). Seven of the

15 chapters (nos. 2, 3, 4, 9, 11, 13 and 14) include liilii notation for Ming
dynasty state sacrificial music. Only chapter 53a, which consists of 39
folios, preserves notated music from the Yuan court. The source for tunes
1-5, i.e. the section that includes the notation, appears as folios 26-37V.
The compilation and transmission history of the DMJL suggest that the
manual is reliable. Compilation of the DMJL began in 1369, the year
after the formal ending of the Yuan dynasty, an opportune time when in-
formation about musical practices in the Yuan court was still available.
Many Ming scholar-officials and musicians, such as Zhu Sheng
(1299-1371), Sung Lian (1310-81) and Leng Qian (c.1310-1371),
matured during the Yuan dynasty, and carried their musical-ritual ex-
pertise to the Ming court.'2 That there was a certain continuity between
the Yuan and the early Ming courts is now generally accepted among
scholars of Chinese history.'3 Compilation of the DMJL was part of a
large-scale attempt to construct a new system of secular and religious
ceremonials. Thus it is reasonable to hypothesize that the manual in-
cluded reliable information. Such a hypothesis assumes that compilers of
the manual made no editorial mistakes, chose typical examples and
represented Yuan court music as it was. The assumption is optimistic, but
there are no foolproof methods to identify inaccuracies, if they exist, in
the DMJL.
Subsequent editions of the DMJL have probably transmitted the con-
tents of the manual faithfully. Court records indicate that the 1530
edition was prepared before manuscript copies of the original edition
perished, and was produced as a replacement. 4 The 1530 edition differs
from the original edition in certain features such as the number of
chapters, but its faithfulness to the exemplar is obvious.'5 As Figure 2
shows, the editor of the 1530 edition left blank spaces in the notation
rather than substitute inauthentic text. These lacunae cannot have arisen
through an omission in editing or printing, because the 1530 edition
shows signs of meticulous production. It is inconceivable that the editor
would have left such glaring spaces and have risked offending the
emperor by presenting him with a defective manual. The only logical but
non-verifiable argument is that the editor did not want to supply in-
authentic materials; he did not dare tamper with a document that was
respected as part of the legacy of the founder of the Ming dynasty.16 The
1530 edition, of which only very few copies are now accessible for study, is

12
See their biographies in Dictionary of Ming Biography, ed. L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoy-
ing Fang (New York, 1976).
13 A discussion of the continuity is Edward L. Dreyer, 'The Early Ming Period in Chinese History',
Early Ming China: A Political History, 1355-1435 (Stanford, 1982), 1-12.
14 This is clear from a
description in the Ming Shzzong Shuhuangdizshilu (1577; Taipei Academia
Sinica edn, 1962-8), 116.9a.
15 Besides the differences in the number of
chapters, the 1530 edition has textual discrepancies
with contemporaneous documents over elements which were regarded as anachronistic. None of
these facts, however, casts doubt on the reliability of the DMJL. See Lam, 'Creativity Within
Bounds', 329-32.
16 See
Emperor Shizong's preface in DMJL, l.la-b. Emperor Shizong wrote that the DMJL
preserves ritual guidelines from the founder of the empire that should be followed by all his
descendants.
'THERE IS NO MUSIC IN CHINESE MUSIC HISTORY" 171

Figure 2. DMJL, chapter 14, f. 32a, showing blank space in the 1530 edition.

the source of the Siku quanshu edition of the 1770s.'7 This eighteenth-
century edition reproduces its sixteenth-century exemplar faithfully, and
is now readily available in facsimile reproductions. Thus the very trans-
mission of the DMJL demonstrates, if circumstantially, the reliability of
the document.
This view is corroborated by three other historical-bibliographical
cross-references. First, the titles of tunes 2 and 3 have counterparts in Tao
Zongyi's Chuogenglu (Notebook Written While at Rest from Farming) of
1366, a highly acclaimed and trusted source of Yuan history. 8 In chapter
28 of his book, Tao commented that the music and the musical in-
struments of the Tartar, a Mongolian tribe, were different from those of
the Han people, and provided three lists of musical works. 9 In the list of
multi-movement musical works (daqu), Tao registered the title Weiwuer,

'7 A copy of this 1530 edition exists in the Harvard-Yenching Library in Cambridge, Mass.
s8 Tao Zongyi, Chuogenglu (1366; Taipei Shijie shuju edn, 1963), 430-1. For Tao's biography,
see Dictionary of Ming Biography, s.v. 'T'ao Tsung-i'.
'9 The Chinese population includes many ethnic groups. In this paper, the term Han will refer to
the dominating group of Han people, non-Han to all other groups of Chinese peoples.
172 JOSEPHS. C. LAM

which is identical to that of tune 2 and the title proper of tune 3. Such
matching of a distinctive title found in two contemporaneous documents
cannot be accidental. At the least, it demonstrates that musical works
with this title existed in the Yuan period. Whether tunes 2 and 3 are the
same Weiwuer heard by Tao Zongyi is not an issue. Many Chinese
musical works share a title; nevertheless, the appearance of a distinctive
and identical title in two contemporaneous documents leaves no doubt
that at least one musical work with this title must have existed. If the
DMJL preserves music whose title is proved to have existed in the Yuan
time, by that very fact the reliability of the document is enhanced.
Second, the ten names of Yuan songs listed at the beginning of the source
have counterparts in contemporaneous documents, such as the Yuanshi
and Zhu Quan's Taihe zhengyinpu (Manual on Harmonious and Proper
Music) of 1398. Third, the modal labels listed in the source also match
those that are registered in Shilin guangji (A Comprehensive Record of
the Forest of Affairs), a Yuan dynasty encyclopedia which included a
considerable amount of musical materials of the time.20
Further corroboration of the reliability of the DMJL comes from
historical data about the liilii and gongche notation used in the manual.
The two notational systems were, by the fourteenth century, established
means of representing music, and all scholar-officials and court
musicians should have been able to use the notational signs accurately
and reliably.21 The 12 liilii terms, which were first mentioned in the
Liishi chunqiu (Spring and Autumn of Lii Buwei), prior to 235 BC,
became standardized references to pitch by the Former Han dynasty (206
BC-AD 23), and appeared repeatedly in standard music treatises, such as
the Yueji (Monograph on Music), prior to 7 BC. The exact date for the
first appearance of the gongche notation as used in the source is not yet
clear, but the system can be traced at least as far back as the Northern
Song dynasty (960-1127).22 By the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368), the
gongche notation was widely known, and was even exported outside
China. An example of such export is Lin Yu's Dasheng yuepu (Collection
of Dasheng Music) of 1349, through which Korean scholar-officials in
King Sejong's court (1418-50) learnt 16 tunes of Confucian ritual
music.23 If the liilii and gongche notation were, by mid-fourteenth cen-
tury, established means of representing music, one has to presume that
the compilers of the DMJL used the notation accurately. In other words,
the notated music in the manual should be reliable.
The above claim of reliability for the source, the arguments and the use
of corroborative data, constitute the basis for formulating narrative 2: the
tunes are authentic court music from the Yuan dynasty because the
source and its transmission are reliable. The narrative is significant
because it renders the tunes historically meaningful, even though it may

20 For an introduction to the

encyclopedia and its musical contents, see Pian, Sonq Dynasty
Musical Sources, 23-9.
21 There are
many references to the use of notation in the Yuan court. See 'Zhiyue shimo' ('History
of Instituting Music [in the Yuan Court]'), Yuanshi, 68.1691-9.
22
Pian, Sonq Dynasty Musical Sources, 59, 97-8.
23
Robert Provine, Essays on Sino-Korean Musicology (Seoul, 1988), 116-33.
'THERE IS NO MUSICIN CHINESEMUSICHISTORY' 173

only be a 'partial truth'.24 If the tunes are inauthentic, they cannot be

court music from the Yuan dynasty. Scholars and musicians can still
examine the tunes as they are, but such an examination is not an exercise
that engages China's musical past.

If the tunes are authentic, they constitute the earliest extant examples of
Chinese music from the Yuan period. Qin (Chinese seven-string zither)
music of the Yuan period may have been preserved in Zhu Quan's Shenqi
mipu (The Mysterious and Precious Notation) of 1425, but such musical
pieces are not yet identified. Yang Yinliu and other Chinese scholars have
claimed that Yuan songs are preserved in the Jiugong dacheng nanbeici
gongpu (A Comprehensive Anthology of Texts and Musical Notation of
Southern and Northern Arias in Nine Modes), but that document was
compiled in 1746 and authenticity of the music awaits confirmation.
Thus, for the time being, the tunes are the only readily available
examples of Yuan dynasty music. As such, they give rise to many ques-
tions about themselves and about musical practices in the Yuan court.
One must, for example, assess the musical information preserved in the
notation.
Such an assessment leads to narrative 3: as preserved in the source, the
tunes are only outlines of pitches which do not reveal full musical iden-
tities. The liilii and gongche signs in the source constitute only an im-
precise representation of music. The liilii notation, which identifies the
12 pitches inside an octave with 12 specific terms, is conceptually a
precise system. In practice, however, it can only be a rough representa-
tion: its signs cannot reflect pitch variations which may have resulted
from tuning differences. The Yuanshi reports that musical instruments in
the Yuan court were appropriated from various peoples, and that there
were different attempts at tuning musical instruments by different
musicians.25 Lacking more specific information about the instruments
with which the tunes were once performed, the lilii notation cannot be
said to represent the exact pitches of the music.
The same is true of the gongche notation which names relative pitches
with ten Chinese characters. Since it originated from tablatures for wind
instruments and is still widely used among traditional musicians, the
gongche notation seems to be a faithful representation of pitches as they
are performed. In reality, the rigid gongche signs cannot express the
fluidity of pitch manifestations during performance. Exact pitch varies
with, for example, the speed with which a flautist's finger covers a
fingerhole on a flute, and the extent to which the hole is covered. Thus
analysed (and conceived), the lilii and gongche notation can preserve the
tunes only as rough pitch outlines. Furthermore, as the Hong Kong music
scholars would observe, both the liii and the gongche notation in the

24 For a discussion of the

concept of 'partial truth' and its intellectual contexts, see James Clifford,
'Introduction: Partial Truths', Writing Culture, 1-26.
25
In addition to making new instruments, the Yuan government collected musical instruments
from the Jin, Northern Song and Southern Song courts. For a brief survey of the different tuning
standards used in these courts, see Yang Yinliu, Zhongguo yinyue shigang (Outline of Chinese Music
History) (Shanghai, 1953), 288-300.
174 JOSEPHS. C. LAM

source offer no information about rhythm, timbre, dynamics and other

elements which are necessary for realizing and performing the tunes as
audible music in the present.

Still, the notation leads to narrative 4: even as rough pitch outlines, the
tunes display distinctive structural features. Such a narrative is based on
structural analysis of the tunes as notated music which is graphic and
verifiable. This narrative is however not free of hypothetical elements.
Structural analyses of notated music may include subjective and non-
verifiable aspects. There is, for example, no way of knowing whether such
analyses reflect the way people in the Yuan court experienced the tunes.
Structural analyses of the tunes simply render the music meaningful to
their analysts.26
The tunes share a similar general style (see Examples 1-5). With regard
to pitch, they employ scales which are essentially heptatonic. Tunes 2, 3
and 5 use the straightforward heptatonic scale C-D-E-FO-G-A-B or its
transpositions. Tune 1 employs the scale C-D-E-F-F-G-A, while tune 4
uses only six pitches within an octave (C-D-E-FO-G-GO). Tunes 2 and 3
have identical initials and finals, a feature which traditional Chinese
music theory assigns to the demonstration of modal identity. Within the
narrow tessitura of a sixth, tunes 1-3 move mostly in seconds and thirds,
displaying an undulating and flowing contour. The few repeated notes
and large-interval leaps create only localized diversions. The melody of
tune 4 is characterized by prominent semitone motion, while the melody
of tune 5 is disjunct.
The formal structure of tunes 1-4 demonstrates no distinctive patterns,
apart from a general regularity in phrase length. Tunes 2 and 3 share six
identical musical phrases, the latter being an expanded version of the
former. Tune 5 has a binary structure, whose eight phrases divide into
two almost identical parts. With regard to structural relationships be-
tween individual pitches and phrases, tunes 1-4 demonstrate a sense of
musical coherence and flow that results from similarity between adjacent
phrases, strategically located repetitions and a gradual introduction of
new musical ideas. If the similar melodic patterns are conceived as basic
musical ideas, they are the most prominent and memorizable features of
the tunes. By comparison, tune 5 lacks such musical coherence and flow:
its phrases employ strong cadences, prominent use of leaps larger than a
third and contrast between adjacent phrases.

The distinctive structural features of the tunes imply specific genres,

identification of which might further clarify what the tunes are about,
providing clues to when, why and how they were performed in the Yuan
court. No known data explicitly identify the genres of the tunes or
describe their musical features, but many clues implicitly lead to nar-
rative no. 5: the tunes are specimens of banquet music and secular
ceremonial music from the Yuan court.27
26 See Leo Treitler's discussion of various types of analysis in his Music and the Historical Imagina-
tion (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 67-78.
27 There are various classifications of music in Chinese courts:
proper music or state sacrificial
music (yayue), vulgar music (suyue), entertainment music (yanyue), non-Han music (huyue), out-
'THERE IS NO MUSICIN CHINESEMUSICHISTORY' 175

Two verifiable facts strongly, though indirectly, suggest narrative 5.

First, banquet music and secular ceremonial music are the subject-matter
of the whole of chapter 53a of the DMJL. Second, external data confirm
this interpretation of the nature of the tunes. The names of the ten songs
listed at the beginning of the source also appear in a Yuanshi account of
banquet and secular ceremonial music. The songs are registered as con-
stituent pieces in four standard large-scale music programmes from the
Yuan court - the New Year celebrations, imperial birthday celebrations,
imperial auditions and devotional celebrations.28 Judging by the fact that
the list of the ten songs and the tunes appear under the same heading
('Yuan yuequ'; 'Tunes from the Yuan Dynasty') and in the same docu-
ment, one can presume that the songs and the tunes belong to the same
genres.
The tunes must have been intended as banquet music and secular
ceremonial music, because they do not satisfy the criteria for state
sacrificial music, military music or recreational music - i.e. for any of the
prominent genres of court music.29 The tunes cannot have been state
sacrificial music for the following reasons: (a) they do not carry formal
and ritual titles; (b) they include no song texts, which are indispensable to
express the ritual ideas of imperial sacrifices; (c) their musical structure
does not match any extant texts of Yuan dynasty state sacrificial songs, all
of which share a textual structure of 32 syllables/characters divided
equally among eight phrases.30 The tunes cannot have been military
music or recreational music: official ritual manuals, such as the DMJL,
were not designed to describe such genres, and none of the manuals of
court ceremonials produced between the fourteenth and late nineteenth
centuries I have studied includes notation of either military music or
recreational music. The distinctiveness of their titles argues that the tunes
cannot have been recreational music practised inside or outside the Yuan
court. Except for Tao Zongyi's reference, the titles of the tunes have no
counterparts among the approximately 600 known names of Yuan songs,
the most popular genre of secular and dramatic music during the Yuan
dynasty.
The evidence that the tunes may have belonged to two different genres
of court music comes from the music: the structure of tune 5 is
significantly different from that of the other four tunes. Tune 5 has a
simple binary structure in which the second to fourth phrases are
repeated (see Example 5). It is described and notated as a set of 12 modal

door processional music (yizhang), recreational music for leisurely enjoyment, and so forth. To
facilitate discussion, banquet music and secular ceremonial music, both of which belong to the
general category of entertainment music, are defined as follows. Banquet music was music per-
formed as entertainment at court functions, such as banquet parties which followed New Year
celebrations, coronations, and other formal and ritual activities. Secular ceremonial music was music
performed to accompany secular ceremonies, such as a formal toast, in secular court functions.
28 'Yuedui'
('Musical Orchestras'), Yuanshi, 71.1773-7.
29 The term recreational music refers to those
genres emperors, noblemen and court citizens en-
joyed privately and/or during their leisure. Such genres, which ranged from the seven-string zither
music of the Confucian scholars to popular musical dramas, were also enjoyed by the general public.
Thus, those genres are seldom discussed as court music.
30 An example is the first song for a Yuan dynasty state sacrifice to Heaven and Earth, performed
in 1302, which was entitled Qianning zhi qu (Music of Heavenly Peace).
176 JOSEPHS. C. LAM

Example 1. Tune 1: Yeketangwu.

11212 2 1 2

' *
J +_ , * , + *, *, * * * ' U

1 2 1 3

1 3 1 3

7 8 9 9

9 10 10 10

T[ 99 9 II 9* 1 9 U 9 i ^ ^ ^ ^
"g ff Ihi

11 11 11 12

13 13 13

.zzzzz4zzzzw
6677zzazzKzzT IPzzzzIl4
'THERE IS NO MUSIC IN CHINESE MUSIC HISTORY' 177

Example 2. Tune 2: Weiwuer.

1 2
A

8 9

10 11

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

Example 3. Tune 3: Weiwuer guopian.

1 2 3 4

i .j,#i d, i .i ii ,
Related pitch groups: a b bl

5 6 7 2

b2 b3 b4 c a

8 9 10

cl a

11

. 11^ @ -a_w '

- _0w _. _ r_1III

cl
 _

178 JOSEPH S. C. LAM

Example 4. Tune 4: Sji wannianhuan.

A

Related \ V V V
pitch a al a2 a3 b
groups:

V VV
a4 a

4
<-- 0 ' *
'- - e e'#- #*- , ,- 11

Example 5. Tune 5: Wansuiyue.

* ' I '
^ ^ w ,

.-. _ .,,^. 11

-1 An1_
_____ _ _ II

U -

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

'THERE IS NO MUSIC IN CHINESE MUSIC HISTORY' 179

transpositions in the source. This modal feature is distinctive of ritual

music in Chinese courts, reflecting the ritual-cosmological theory of the
monthly rotation of musical modes: if a piece of ritual music is employed
throughout the year, it must appear in distinctive modes in each of the 12
months.3' Thus, tune 5 may be ritual music. Furthermore, it may have
been intended as secular ceremonial music because it cannot be sung as a
state sacrificial song. If tune 5 is secular ceremonial music, then tunes 1 -4
must have belonged to a different genre of court music. They reveal such
obvious differences in their structure that they cannot have belonged to
the same genre as tune 5; theoretically, musical pieces of the same genre
should share substantial similarity which is often found in their structure.
Unlike tune 5, which is organized as two nearly identical parts, tunes 1 4
are through-composed, and their structure demonstrates a distinctive
musical coherence and flow (Examples 1-4).
The above genre identification leads to questions concerning the
instrumentation and performance context of the tunes, musical data
which are needed to understand how the tunes sounded. Such data are
not described in the source, and can be probed only on the assumption
that musical works belonging to the same genre share basic features and
that data about a musical work can be applied to other works of the same
genre. Thus, one can formulate narrative 6: the tunes share similar
instrumentation and performance contexts with other pieces of banquet
music and secular ceremonial music from the Yuan court. In other
words, the instrumentation and performance contexts of the tunes must
be similar to those described in the four aforementioned standard
programmes of Yuan dynasty court music.32
According to narrative 6, tunes 1 -4 were probably performed with one
of the following types of instrumentation, which were employed for
banquet music in the Yuan court: (1) the grand orchestra (dayue); (2) an
ensemble of three flutes (longdi); three hour-glass drums (zhanggu), a
small drum (jingong xiaogu) and a set of wooden clappers (ban); (3)
simultaneous performance by the grand orchestra and an ensemble of
three flutes, three oboes (xianli) and two hour-glass drums; (4)
simultaneous performance by the grand orchestra and an ensemble of
three flutes, three oboes, three small hour-glass drums (zhagu), a hand-
held drum (hegu) and a set of wooden clappers.33 Tune 5, as secular
ceremonial music, was probably performed by the terrace orchestra
(dengge).34 Such understanding of the instrumentation is abstract, but it
provides a theoretical basis from which to explore how the tunes sounded.
31 Wang Mengou, 'Yueling', Lii jinzhu jinyi (Book of Ceremonial, Annotated and Translated)
(Tianjin, 1988), 201-40.
32 Yuanshi,
71.1773-7.
33 As described in the Yuanshi
(71.1771-3), the grand orchestra included the following in-
struments: organ (xinglongsheng); pear-shaped four-string lute (pipa); 13-string fretted zither
(zheng); four-string lute (huobusi); two-string fiddle (huqin); metal-slab chime (fangxiang); flute
(longdi); oboe (touguan); mouth organ (sheng); harp (konghou); gong chimes (yunluo); vertical
flute (xiao); bamboo pole (xizhu); suspended big drum (gu); hour-glassdrum (zhanggu); small hour-
glass drum (zhagu); hand-held drum (hegu); seven-string zither (qin); three-hole flute (jiangdi);
wooden clappers (paiban); bronze bowls (shuizhan).
34 As described in the Yuanshi
(71.1700-5), the terrace orchestra includes the following in-
struments: a set of bell chimes; a set of stone chimes; a one-string zither (qin); two three-string
180 JOSEPHS. C. LAM

So far, this discussion has dwelt on technical details, and has offered no
hints as to how the tunes and their narratives may contribute to the
understanding of China's musical past. Are the tunes musical trivia which
happen accidentally to have been preserved? Do they lead to narratives
about the musical scene in the Yuan court? Are such narratives com-
patible with current histories of China's musical past? One answer to
these issues is narrative 7: the tunes are evidence of musical exchange
between different ethnic groups in China. This narrative is historio-
graphically significant because it presents the tunes as rare and verifiable
evidence to illuminate musical relationships between Han and non-Han
peoples in the Yuan court.
All current histories of China's musical past agree that non-Han music
contributed much to the development of Han Chinese music, but they
provide few clarifications.35 Such an inadequacy results from a scarcity of
musical evidence and from the view that China's musical past and present
constitute a continuous and essentially Han-Chinese tradition which
absorbs foreign elements without losing its own distinctive characteristics,
whatever those characteristics were and/or are. There is as yet no clear
description of the musical exchange between Han and non-Han peoples
during the Yuan dynasty, a period which followed centuries of ethnic-
political struggles and which was politically dominated by Mongolians
and other non-Han peoples.36 Even though non-Han influence is con-
sidered a factor leading to the more 'dynamic' style of the Yuan songs,
there has been little clarification of what that non-Han music was, where
it originated, and how it affected Han-Chinese music.37
In such a context, the musical features of the tunes appear as sug-
gestive traces of China's musical past: they confirm, in two ways, the con-
ventional view that non-Han musical elements were always sinicized and
then absorbed into the Han culture. First, the Yuan court, which was
controlled by Mongolian and non-Han peoples, adopted distinctive Han
orchestras of stone chimes and bell chimes, and related practices of large-
scale ceremonial and banquet music. Second, the tunes were adjusted to
Han-Chinese scales: the heptatonic scale C-D-E-Ff-G-A-B and its

zithers; two five-string zithers; two seven-stringzithers; two nine-string zithers; four 25-string zithers;
two sets of panpipes; two flutes (di); two flutes (yue); two flutes (chi); four large 19-pipe mouth
organs (chaosheng); four small 19-pipe mouth organs (hesheng); a seven-pipe mouth organ (qix-
ingbao); a nine-pipe mouth organ (jiuyaobao); a 13-pipe mouth organ (yunyubao); two ocarinas
(xun); two drums (bofu); a wooden rectangle (zhu); a wooden tiger (yu).
35 See Yang Yinliu,
Zhongguo gudai yinyue shigao, 421-2. Throughout the monograph, Yang
alludes to issues of non-Han music without detailed discussions. Section 6 of Yang's book, pp.
275-456, is entitled '[Music in the] Liao, Song, Xixia andJin dynasties, 937-1279', but discussion is
devoted to music of the Song empires of Han people; only pages 421-2 discuss court music in the
Liao (Khitan people; 907-1125) and Jin (Jurchen people; 1115-1234) dynasties. See also note 36
below.
36 While the Northern
Song government of Han people ruled over the central part of China
(960-1127), the Khitan, theJurchen and the Tanguts peoples of Xixia (1032-1227) occupied various
areas in north and north-west China. Genghis Khan (1162-1227) established the Mongolian empire
in 1206. The empire was renamed as the Yuan in 1271, eight years before it conquered the Southern
Song dynasty of the Han people and achieved full control of the whole Chinese land. Contacts
between the various non-Han and Han peoples were constant.
37 For example, Cheung Saibung believes that importation of non-Han peoples' plucked lutes led
to the rise of rhythmicallyfast melodies and the use of padding words in song texts. See his Zhongguo
yinyueshi lunshugao (Historical Studies of Chinese Music) (Hong Kong, 1975), 353-6.
'THERE IS NO MUSICIN CHINESEMUSICHISTORY' 181

variants employed in the tunes are closely associated with proper music
(yayue) in Han-Chinese courts. Both are clear cases in which non-Han
elements were either replaced or sinicized to conform to Han standards.
At the same time, the tunes also lead to doubts on that prevalent view,
which arise from the following observations. First, tunes 1-4 on the one
hand and tune 5 on the other demonstrate contrasting strategies of
organizing pitches in musical works. Second, Tao Zongyi, a fourteenth-
century Han Chinese, commented that Tartar music was different from
its Han counterparts. Third, the non-Han origin of tunes 1-3 is apparent
from their non-Han titles. Fourth, the Han origin of tune 5 is evident
from its set of 12 modal transpositions, a musical feature which reflects a
ritual-cosmological theory of Han Chinese. Considered together, the
above observations point to the deduction that the contrast between tunes
1-4 and tune 5 may reflect what Tao Zongyi perceived as different
musics.
The reflection is noteworthy because it implies that non-Han and Han
people in the Yuan period used different strategies of organizing pitches,
and that non-Han musical features may resist sinicization. In other
words, musical exchange in the Yuan court of the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries may not be an entirely one-sided process of sinicizing
non-Han elements, and certain non-Han elements, such as particular
strategies of organizing pitches, may not have been assimilated into the
tradition of Chinese music. What happened between non-Han and Han
music in the Yuan court? Are there other residues of non-Han music in
Chinese music as it is experienced today? How can they be identified?
These issues transcend the scope of the present article. And yet, the very
fact that the questions arise from the tunes renders them a reminder that
current histories of China's musical past are formulated from Han-
Chinese perspectives. Are those histories objective and representative?

Such significance of the tunes begs questions of how they sounded in the
past, and how they can be performed in the present. These questions are
critical, because the tunes were music (expressions of/through sounds),
and because present-day performance is the only way through which the
tunes can be understood and experienced as music. Unless answered, the
questions generate scepticism concerning all theoretical narratives about
the tunes as early Chinese music. Unless they describe musical sounds, nar-
ratives about the tunes will always appear abstract, drawing attention to
the non-verifiable and hypothetical arguments which are inevitable in
historical-musical investigations.38 Before abandoning any narrative of
the tunes as too abstract or musically irrelevant, however, one must assess
it on its own merits. What would be the standards for such an assessment?
Who set those standards and by what authority? Are those standards
absolutely and universally objective?39
38 See EdwardHallett Carr, 'The Historian and his
Facts', What is History?(London, 1987), 7-30;
Michael Stanford, 'The Evidence of History', The Nature of Historical Knowledge (New York,
1986), 56-75.
39 See Thomas L. Haskell, 'Objectivity is not
Neutrality: Rhetoric vs. Practice in Peter Novick's
That Noble Dream', History and Theory, 29 (1990), 129-57.
182 JOSEPHS. C. LAM

For the Hong Kong music scholars who complain that there is no music
in Chinese music history the standards are positivist methodologies and
values which are prevalent in Hong Kong and other Westernized Chinese
communities.40 In other words, the scholars are arguing that narratives
about the tunes must be formulated with autographs, sketches and other
similar pieces of hard evidence, and that credible narratives are verifiable
and would eventually lead to a definitive edition and authentic historical
performance of the tunes.4' The scholars also realize that such a positivist
approach to studying the tunes is impossible and limiting.
A scarcity of notated sources and other documents means that there is
little opportunity to formulate any narrative of the tunes with only hard
evidence and verifiable hypotheses.42 The disappearance of historical
performance practices leaves no basis for reconstructing the tunes as
musical sounds. Traditional Chinese musicians' licence in 'updating' pre-
existing musical works ensures that the tunes will never sound as they did
once, even had they been transmitted continuously. In fact, if the
scholars insist on hard data and verifiable arguments, they will have to
conclude that the tunes will forever remain a historical mystery because
there are simply too many unknowns. Such scepticism is not merely
academic dialectic. As ethnic Chinese, the Hong Kong scholars would
want to claim the tunes as part of their musical heritage and to under-
stand them in this context. And yet they cannot accept narratives which
violate positivist tenets. They want at once to appropriate the tunes and
to reject them.
For its theoretical presumptions, foreignness to China's musical past
and crippling implications, the Hong Kong scholars' positivist under-
standing of the tunes cannot be the final verdict.43 Sooner or later,
traditional Chinese music masters - namely, Chinese musicians and
researchers who are knowledgeable about traditional Chinese music, who
exercise the traditional practice of rearranging pre-existing music for
present-day needs, and who do not hold inflexible belief in hard evidence
and verifiability - will produce their own narratives and reconstructions
of the tunes. Such an alternative approach to understanding the tunes is
not only the insiders' view, but may also be a practical solution to the
problems of Chinese music history.
Traditional Chinese music masters always reconstruct and/or adjust
pre-existing musical works to suit contemporary needs.44 Descriptions of
40 For a history of modern
Chinese acceptance of scientism and positivism, see Daniel W. Y.
Kwok, Scientism in Chinese Thought, 1900-1950 (New Haven, 1965).
41 This sentence
reports what Hong Kong music scholars emphasize as characteristics of Anglo-
American musicology as it relates to Western art music. For a discussion of Anglo-American
musicology, see Joseph Kerman, Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology (Cambridge,
Mass., 1985). See also Leo Treitler's review, 'The Power of Positivist Thinking', Journal of the
American Musicological Society, 42 (1989), 375-402, and 'Historyand Music', New LiteraryHistory,
21 (1990), 299-319.
42 There are numerous verbal descriptions of China's musical past, but there are
relatively few
notated sources. See Zhongguo yinyue shupuzhi (Bibliography of Chinese Music Books and Scores)
(Beijing, 1984).
43 For an analysis of the fundamental presumptions in music histories of Western art music, see
Leo Treitler, 'The Present as History', Music and the Historical Imagination, 95-156.
44 See Fang Kun et al., 'A Discussion on Chinese National Musical Traditions', Asian Music, 12
(1981), 1-15. For discussionof the dapu processin which qin music preservedin historical notation is
'THERE IS NO MUSICIN CHINESEMUSICHISTORY' 183

four prominent cases will illustrate such confidence and practice. As early
as the second century, Du Kui consulted classical documents and descrip-
tions of historical musical practices to reconstruct ancient music (guyue)
for Cao Cao (155-220), the king of the Wei.45 (Can music be
reconstructed from verbal descriptions of historical music and practices?
How?) In 1186, the famous poet and composer Jiang Kui discovered, in a
pile of old documents belonging to a certain musician, the notation of the
Nishang yuyiqu (Costume of Rainbow Feather), which was composed
between 745 and 756.46 After analysing the modal and formal structure
of the notated music, identifying its discrepancies with historical descrip-
tions and commenting on its antiquated style, Jiang set a new poetic text
to one of the sections of the music. (Why did Jiang superimpose a creative
and contemporary feature on authentic historical music?) In 1968, the
Taiwanese scholar Chuang Penli claimed to have reconstructed the Ming
dynasty (1368-1644) version of Confucian ritual music from verbal
descriptions and sketchy notation.47 Since 1986, the Qing dynasty
(1644-1911) version of Confucian ritual music has been revived in Con-
fucius's home town, Qufu, China, celebrating the philosopher's birthday
and attracting international attention.48
Even today, traditional Chinese music masters still firmly believe that
their 'updated' performances of musical works are representative of the
past.49 The rationale behind this traditional Chinese approach can be
tentatively explained as follows. Traditional Chinese music masters
understand a pre-existing musical work more as the representation of a
certain 'essence' and less as a musical object with a particular structure.
The essence represents what is unique and meaningful in the work;
however, what is unique and meaningful is always defined according to
musical values of the present.50 Furthermore, traditional Chinese music
masters believe that the essence of a musical work is independent of its
structural features, which are merely the means of communicating the
essence - content is independent of its form. These beliefs transform into
actions and results as follows. Traditional Chinese music masters change
their musical values from time to time. Whenever such changes occur,
the essence of a pre-existent musical work is redefined and its structural
features adjusted (changed) accordingly. Such adjustments are deemed
necessary to reveal better the essence of the musical work to contem-
reconstructed in the present, see Bell Yung, 'Da Pu: The Recreative Process for the Music of the
Seven-String Zither', Music and Context: Essays for John M. Ward (Cambridge, Mass., 1985),
370-83, and 'Historical Interdependency: A Case Study of the Chinese Seven-StringZither',Journal
of the American Musicological Society, 40 (1987), 82-91.
45
Jiaozhu Songshu yuezhi (An Annotated Edition of the Music Chapters in the History of the
Song), ed. Sujinren and Xiao Lianzi (Jinan, 1982), 11-12.
46 Yang Yinliu and Yin Falu,
SongJiang Baishi chuangzuo gequ yanjiu (Studies of the Songs Com-
posed byjiang Baishi of the Song Dynasty) (Beijing, 1957), 47.
47 See
JiKong liyuezhi gaijin (On Improzing the Ritual and Music of the Sacrifice to Confucius)
(Taipei, 1970).
48 A detailed study of the reconstructed music is in progress.
49 A written example of such an attitude is Ge Hong's 'Weiyi xiaode xingqiaocui' ('For Music, He
is Exhausted: A Biographical Sketch of [Shanghai] Qin Musician Gong Yi'), Renmin yinyue
(1991/4), 25-7.
50 The traditional music masters may however consult and accept historically established mean-
ings of a musical work.
184 JOSEPHS. C. LAM

porary audiences. The musical work thus changed is still considered

representative of what it was.
This traditional Chinese approach encourages the reconstruction of
musical works which have ceased to be performed. As long as one can
find the essence of those works, one can either gloss over certain gaps in
available data about their structural details or substitute appropriate
ones from current practices. Such optimism operates with the belief that
the tradition of Chinese music is long and continuous, and that many
current practices are either identical or similar to earlier ones. 5 Thus the
predominance of binary rhythm, heterophonic texture, stable dynamic
levels and other so-called traditional features is considered typical of past
and present genres of Chinese music. Indeed, these traditional features
are materials with which early Chinese music can be reconstructed and its
missing data filled in. This optimistic attitude towards the reconstruc-
tion of music of the past has been exercised in China for centuries: the
eleventh-century philosopher Zhang Zai (1020-77) declared that music of
the past could always be reconstructed in the present unless one was lost
in the details. 52
The traditional Chinese approach includes many internal contradic-
tions. For example, if the essence of the tunes is defined according to
present musical values, that essence is not something received from the
past. If reconstruction of the tunes depends on substitutes, the
reconstruction can never be what the tunes were. Still, the traditional
Chinese approach is a way of understanding the Chinese musical past,
rendering it meaningful for the present. With verifiable data and non-
verifiable hypotheses, the traditional Chinese approach formulates nar-
ratives about the tunes which lead to reconstruction of their sounds,
rendering the tunes relevant to the general Chinese music audience.
The traditional Chinese approach is also an effective way of connecting
China's musical past and present. The approach accepts changes intro-
duced in the present without rejecting the past. It guarantees legitimacy
of the new and smoothness in the transition from the 'old' to the
'reconstructed', confirming the notion that the tradition of Chinese music
is long and continuous. The traditional Chinese approach is also
pragmatic. No musical works can sound absolutely identical in different
times. Besides pitch, rhythm, timbre and other fundamental ingredients,
music is subject to change by the acoustic qualities of the performance
locale, the relationship between performers and audience, and other con-
textual factors. Even if all the structural ingredients of the tunes are
reconstructed in the present, the minds and ears experiencing the
reconstruction belong to a present-day audience.

The pragmatic nature of the traditional Chinese approach encourages

reconstruction of the tunes. Traditional Chinese music masters can

5 A recent article illustrating such a belief is Guo Naian's 'Zhongguo chuantong yinyue di fengge'
('Musical Styles of Traditional Chinese Music'), Wenhua: Shjie renmin di jiaoliu (Culture:
Dialogues among Peoples of the World) (Beijing, n.d.), 58-64.
52
Yinyue Yanjiusuo, 'Zhang Zai lunyue' ('Zhang Zai Discusses Music'), Zhongguo gudai yuelun
xuanji (A Selection of Ancient Chinese Music Theories) (Beijing, 1981), 188-9.
'THERE IS NO MUSIC IN CHINESE MUSIC HISTORY' 185

reconstruct the tunes as soon as their musical essence has been grasped,
and as soon as substitutes can be found for their missing features. The
fact that the tunes are preserved only as rough pitch outlines in the source
is not an insurmountable obstacle. Rhythm, dynamics and other details
needed for the reconstruction will be found in descriptions of orchestras
and music programmes in the Yuan court, and in knowledge about tradi-
tional Chinese music. In other words, traditional Chinese music masters
who want to reconstruct the tunes would always find clues as to their
musical identities. The masters would formulate and believe in narrative
8: the tunes are early Chinese music which can be reconstructed and
performed in the present.
A search among extant descriptions of Yuan court music produces data
which can be transformed into clues about the sounds of the tunes. If one
presumes that the tunes share fundamental similarities with traditional
Chinese music, the following clues (i.e. speculations) are obvious. First,
the tunes would have sounded like a collection of tone colours that did
not blend together. Instruments of court orchestras or ensembles, as
described in the Yuanshi, would have produced contrasting timbres,
namely, heterogeneous sounds. The crisp and short sounds of stone
chimes in large court orchestras would, for instance, stand apart from the
metallic tones of the bell chimes. Music played by an ensemble of flutes,
oboes and hour-glass drums would sound like a combination of three
distinctive timbres. Second, the tunes would have had few sudden and
wide dynamic changes, as may be deduced from the fact that traditional
Chinese music employs few. Third, the tunes, as played by court
orchestras or ensembles, would have had a heterophonic texture. Tradi-
tional Chinese music, including that of the Mongolian minorities, is
heterophonic. Fourth, tunes 1-4, interpreted as banquet music, would
have had a performance style different from that of tune 5, which is sup-
posedly intended to be secular ceremonial music. The two genres of
music had distinctive functions. Fifth, tunes 1-4 would have appeared in
lively rhythm and tempo because banquet music always accompanied
lively and rhythmic dances. In contrast, tune 5, which would have
accompanied ceremonial movements, would have appeared in steady and
slow rhythm and tempo. With these five speculations, reconstruction of
the tunes as musical sounds is a straightforward task of finding the
appropriate features of traditional Chinese music.
One hypothetical example will illustrate such a reconstruction and
explain why the Hong Kong music scholars would reject it. One may
postulate that tune 5 was performed to accompany ceremonial walking
inside a palace hall. The 12 modal transpositions of tune 5 conform to the
ritual-cosmological theory of the monthly rotation of musical modes; the
same practice of monthly transpositions was applied to the processional
music that accompanied a prime minister's ceremonial approach to the
emperor in the imperial auditions.53 One may thus infer that tune 5 was
performed by a terrace orchestra, which was assigned to provide secular
ceremonial music inside a palace hall. One may presume that the indi-

53 Yuanshi, 67.1667.
186 JOSEPHS. C. LAM

vidual pitches in tune 5 were performed as sustained notes, as was con-

ventional in Chinese court ceremonial music.54 One may assume that
tune 5 was performed in a tempo that matched a prime minister's proces-
sional movements. Similar assumptions will establish that the texture of
tune 5 was, like most traditional Chinese music, heterophonic, and that
ornaments were added to the notated pitches. The introduction of such
ornaments is a common practice known as 'adding flowers' (jiahua).
Finally, knowledge about traditional ritual music reveals that various
kinds of drum patterns marked the musical phrases of tune 5. With the
above speculations, tune 5 becomes early Chinese music, performable
and relevant to the general Chinese music audience.

To positivist Hong Kong music scholars, the above reconstruction of tune

5 is a fantasy. At any rate, the reconstructed music is more a new com-
position than an artefact of early Chinese music. To traditional Chinese
music masters and the general music audience in Hong Kong, however,
the reconstruction qualifies as music from the past. It not only contains a
verifiable pitch outline preserved in a fourteenth-century notated source,
it also conveys to its present audience an essential message - one that is
immanent in tune 5, a piece of music for secular ceremonials in the Yuan
court. The reconstruction employs rhythm, timbres and other musical
elements which are common in traditional Chinese music and which are
associated with China's musical past. Embodying a present understand-
ing of tune 5, the reconstruction and its narratives connect the present
with the past, fulfilling one of the fundamental goals of studying music of
the past.
Furthermore, the reconstruction process of tune 5 is similar to other
attempts to understand music of the past. Traditional Chinese music
masters may not understand tune 5 or any of the tunes through the first
seven narratives presented in earlier sections of this discussion, but they
have to formulate their own narratives with verifiable facts and non-
verifiable hypotheses. They have to convince themselves that the notated
music in the source is authentic music of the Yuan court (cf. narratives 1
and 2). They have to analyse the notated music (cf. narratives 3 and 4)
and supplement their analytical-notational data with verbal ones (cf. nar-
ratives 5 and 6). Upon realizing one or more meaning(s) of the tune (cf.
narrative 7), the pursuit of musical details begins and assumptions will
be made (cf. narrative 8). Once all the details necessary for performance
of tune 5 are found (and/or newly created), a reconstruction is born. And
it will serve to remind the general Chinese audience of a musical past in
the Yuan court.
As described above, there is a method in the ways traditional Chinese
music masters would reconstruct tune 5 or any other piece of early
Chinese music. Historically and historiographically, their reconstructions
and histories cannot be dismissed on the grounds that their narratives are
not based on positivist studies. In fact, traditional Chinese musicians are
not the only professionals who engage in speculative reconstructions and
54 An explicit record of the practice is provided by Yang Jie's arguments for its application (AD
1080). See Songshi (The Standard History of the Song) (1345; Beijing Zhonghua shuju edn, 1977),
128.2981.
'THERE IS NO MUSICIN CHINESEMUSICHISTORY' 187

narratives of historical music. Laurence Picken has reconstructed 'music

from the Tang court'.55 Many musicians and scholars in the Western
world have worked on early music, combining 'facts and fiction' to pro-
duce one of the most energetic music movements of the century. Further-
more, as eloquently argued by Leo Treitler, the positivist pursuit of hard
data' and of formalist analysis is not as objective as it may seem.56 Given
the current state of music scholarship, one has to ask whether positivist
methodologies and values hold the one and only 'objective' way of
understanding the tunes and their story, and of China's musical past. The
answer must be no, if one respects cultural differences. A 'China-
centered' understanding of the tunes and of Chinese music history is
necessary to reveal 'what is happening in that history in terms that are as
free as possible of imported criteria of significance'.57 It is crucial to
reconsider what constitutes a piece of early Chinese music in Chinese and
non-Chinese contexts. What is the essence of a musical work? Is it a 'com-
municative process' as defined by Dahlhaus? If so, what kind of 'text' is
the source and how should one assess a Chinese reconstruction as a docu-
ment of 'a particular mode of reception'?58
Answers are probably not to be found with either postivist or tradi-
tional Chinese approaches. The positivist pursuit may identify some
isolated facts, but it may not lead to an audible piece of early Chinese
music, a verifiable narrative or a history of it. Unless a more flexible and
culturally sensitive interpretation of hard evidence can be accepted, there
is neither early Chinese music nor its history. Chinese reconstructions may
have preserved the essence of historical works of Chinese music, but such
works are more than just their essence, and reconstructions beg the ques-
tion how the originals sounded. Unless a more detailed (and perhaps
more positivist) methodology is found, there is no way critically to under-
stand Chinese music as it was. Perhaps some kind of 'objective' fusion of
the positivist and the traditional Chinese may generate new approaches
and results.59 Then there may be music in Chinese music history, and

55 Laurence Picken and his colleagues have produced a series of 'reconstructed' and 'performable'
scores of 'music from the Tang court' which will not be discussed in this paper for the following
reasons. Picken and his colleagues' distinctive attempts to understand and reconstruct early music of
East Asian cultures are intellectually, socially and musically different from the subject-matter and
issues of this discussion. Picken and his colleagues use a methodology that is based on a Western
tradition of philology and textual criticism, and that does not involve current practices of the musical
cultures they study. The notated sources they have consulted were produced in Japan by Japanese
musicians. The Chinese attributes of that notated music are disputable. The narratives and
reconstructed compositions of Picken and his colleagues exist in specialized and scholarly publica-
tions, and are not commonly known among general Chinese music audiences in Hong Kong or any
other Chinese communities. See Music from the Tang Court, ed. Laurence Picken et al., 5 vols.
(London, 1981; Cambridge, 1985-91). See also Richard Widdess, 'Historical Ethnomusicology',
Ethnomusicology: An Introduction, ed. Helen Myers (New York, 1992), 219-37, and Joseph S. C.
Lam, review of Music from the Tang Court, ii-iii, Ethnomusicology, 33 (1989), 345-8.
56 See Leo Treitler, 'The Power of Positivist Thinking', and Margaret Bent et al., 'Facts and
Values in Contemporary Musical Scholarship', CMS Proceedings: The National and Regional
Meetings, 1985 (Boulder, 1986), 1-52.
57 Paul Cohen, Discovering
History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese
Past (New York, 1984), 196.
58 Carl Dahlhaus, Foundations of Music History, trans.
J. B. Robinson (London, 1983), 39.
59 The word 'objective' refers to the objectivity defined in Haskell, 'Objectivity is not Neutrality'.
He states that 'the most commonly observed fulfilment of the ideal of objectivity in the historical pro-
188 JOSEPHS. C. LAM

Chinese music historiography may become objective, culturally sensitive,

practical and relevant. Suffice it to say, such a historiography would con-
tribute to universal theories and methodologies in the understanding,
reconstruction and perpetuation of any music from any past.

University of California, Santa Barbara

fession is simply the powerful argument - the text that reveals by its everytwist and turn its respectful
appreciation of the alternatives it rejects' (p. 135).

APPENDIX

CHRONOLOGY OF CHINESE DYNASTIES

Xia dynasty 2000?-1500? BC

Shang dynasty 1500?-1066? BC
Zhou dynasty 1066?-221 BC
Qin dynasty 221-206 BC
Former Han dynasty 206 BC-AD 23
Later Han dynasty AD 25 -220
Three Kingdoms era 220-80
Western Jin dynasty 266 -316
Era of North-South division 316 -589
Sui dynasty 581-618
Tang dynasty 618 -907
Five dynasties era 907 -60
Northern Song dynasty 960-1127
Liao dynasty 907-1125
Xixia dynasty 1032-1227
Jin dynasty 1115-1234
Southern Song dynasty 1127-1279
Yuan dynasty 1271-1368
Ming dynasty 1368-1644
Qing dynasty 1644-1911