Yuèshū 樂書
Treatise on Music by 陳暘 (Chén Yáng)
About the work
A monumental 200-juan encyclopaedic treatise on music, the largest single work in the SKQS yuèlèi 樂類. Chén Yáng presented it to the throne while Mìshūshěng zhèngzì 秘書省正字 (Editor in the Imperial Library) during the Jiànzhōngjìngguó / Chóngníng era (1101–1106). The first 95 juàn anthologize and gloss every passage on music in the Three Rites, the Shī, Shū, Chūnqiū, Yìjīng, Xiàojīng, Lúnyǔ, and Mèngzǐ; juàn 96–200 is a self-standing treatise on lǜlǚ 律呂, instruments, ritual songs, and the use of music in the Five Rites, illustrated throughout. With Ruǎn Yì and Hú Yuán’s Huángyòu xīn yuètú jì (KR1i0001) it is one of only two complete Northern Sòng music treatises to survive.
Tiyao
[Your servants] respectfully report: Yuèshū in 200 juàn by Chén Yáng of the Sòng dynasty. Yáng’s zì was Jìnshū; he was a man of Mǐnqīng 閩清. He passed the zhìkē in the Shàoshèng era and rose to Lǐbù shìláng; his life is given in his Sòngshǐ biography. The book was the work he presented while serving as Mìshūshěng zhèngzì in the Jiànzhōngjìngguó reign. From juàn 1 to 95 he cites the Three Rites, the Shī, Shū, Chūnqiū, Yìjīng, Xiàojīng, Lúnyǔ, and Mèngzǐ, glossing each as he goes. From juàn 96 onward he focuses exclusively on the foundations of lǜlǚ, on the instruments, on the ritual songs, and on the deployment of music in the Five Rites; whoever uses music there is figured in the yuètú lùn 樂圖論 (“Discourses with Illustrations on Music”). His citations are vast and his discriminations precise. Compared with his elder brother Chén Xiángdào’s 陳祥道 Lǐshū 禮書 it is roughly its peer; but where the Lǐshū gives only the institutional measurements of the Three Dynasties, this work pushes back further into the foundations of lǜlǚ and forward into the elegant and popular musical genres of later ages. Therefore Chén Zhènsūn’s 陳振孫 Shūlù jiětí says: “Vast it certainly is, but it has not avoided being weedy” — yet Yáng’s intent was to comprehend successive ages and rehearse the entire prior tradition: he wished to give the entire genealogy, and could not but treat both the orthodox and the deviant. Were Zhènsūn to have taken up the brush to write history, would he have struck out every account of misgovernment and broken law down through the ages? — this is the cramped and absurd judgement of a Southern-Sòng man, and is not authoritative. Within the work, only two passages — the discussions of the èr biàn 二變 (“the two derived tones,” biànzhǐ and biàngōng) and the sì qīng 四清 (“the four clear-tones”) — are demonstrably mistaken. From antiquity those who have argued the sì qīng have done so on a sociological basis (the commoner avoiding the lord, hence “high” and “low” tones distinguished by rank); this is already a strained accommodation. Yáng goes further and says: “From huángzhōng 黃鐘 to jiāzhōng 夾鐘, the four clear-tones serve as supplements to the principal tones in succession.” His meaning is that they are placed there for the four gōng 宮 modes from yízé 夷則 to yīngzhōng 應鐘. But once you say the sì qīng run from huángzhōng to jiāzhōng, and once you say they are also installed for yízé through yīngzhōng, you have made two sets of four clear-tones — and a four-mode set must always have a five-tone scale. The yízé mode follows yínánwúyīng 夷南無應 in succession but lacks a jué 角 tone, which must be supplied by the clear huángzhōng as its jué; the nánlǚ mode follows nánwúyīng but lacks both yǔ 羽 and jué, which must be supplied by the clear huángzhōng as yǔ and the clear dàlǚ as jué. Spoken of as scales it is yínánwúyīng, four pitch-pipes; spoken of as tones it is the four clears of huáng, dà, tài, jiā — there are not two sets. The reason for using the clear-tone rather than the principal tone is that musical pitch must move by gradation, with no abrupt leaping high or low; in the yízé mode, if one used the four principal pitches yínánwúyīng the tones rise step by step, but suddenly to use the principal huángzhōng — though it lies in the same mode — would be jarring. Hence the clear huángzhōng is required to harmonize. Yáng’s invocation of Lǐ Zhào’s 李照 twelve-bell theory is especially mistaken. — On the èr biàn he says: “The five tones are music’s thumb and fingers; the èr biàn are the supernumerary digit on the five tones. If the five tones can be augmented to seven sounds, then can the five planets, five elements and five virtues also be augmented to seven? The doctrine of the èr biàn begins in the Shàngshū and proliferates through the Zuǒzhuàn, Guóyǔ, the commentaries to the Shū, and the Hànshū yuèlǜ zhì.” This is to misunderstand. The Shū’s “Yìjì” passage on “in governance whether to give attention or to be neglectful” presents the five tones but no qīshǐ 七始; the Guóyǔ’s “seven tóng 同” presents four gōng but no zhǐ 徵. The “seven sounds” of the Zuǒzhuàn refers in fact to eight — the eight materials of instrument-making — and the eight materials take earth as principal, so that without earth the seven other tones do not blend. The Shūyìjì and the Lǐyuèjì both leave one of the eight blank, just as the Dàyǎn leaves one out — and so on. He is unaware that the èr biàn arise from the gradation of high and low; Cài Yuándìng’s 蔡元定 doctrine that “two pitch-pipes apart, the tonal interval is too distant” is the most well-grounded statement of the matter. If one ignores the underlying reason and simply argues by counting, then since seven compared to five yields a surplus of two, twelve compared to five must yield a surplus of seven — must we then deny that there are seven tones, and deny that there are twelve pitch-pipes? Moreover, the five tones and the èr biàn differ as between pipe-pitch and string-fret-distance: half tàicù 太蔟 corresponds to principal huángzhōng, half jiāzhōng corresponds to principal dàlǚ — this principle Yáng particularly fails to grasp. Reducing the seven tones to “eight tones with the earth-tone left blank” is especially forced. — His exposition of the three gōng modes of the Zhōuguān — that the yuán (round) modes huángtàigū are the gōng in heaven and so combine separately into the four hántàigūnán; that hántàigūnán are the gōng on earth and so combine descending into three huángdàtàiyīng; that huángdàtàiyīng are the gōng in man and so combine descending into two — if so, then the heaven-gōng uses eight pitches, the earth-gōng six and the man-gōng four, the difference being purely numerical. But how then are we to explain the round-altar music of six transformations, the square-altar music of eight transformations, and the ancestral-shrine music of nine transformations? — All such matters cannot be taken as authoritative. Nevertheless, since the Táng there has been no music treatise transmitted, and from the Northern Sòng only the Huángyòu xīn yuètú jì and this Yuèshū survive: the residual texts and the principles of arrangement are still verifiable, and how could one discard it for a single blemish? Respectfully edited and presented in the tenth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Editor-Generals: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Editor-in-chief: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Yuèshū is the great Northern Sòng synthesis of Confucian musical learning, completed by Chén Yáng in the early 1100s while serving in the Imperial Library. The 200-juan structure breaks cleanly into two halves: an exegetical concordance of every musical passage in the orthodox classics (juan 1–95) and a free-standing systematic treatise on pitch-pipes, instruments, song, and the use of music in the Five Rites (juan 96–200). The Sìkù compilers’ summary judgement reflects the standard SòngYuánMíng reception: the work’s documentary completeness is unmatched (it is one of the only two complete Northern Sòng music treatises to survive together with KR1i0001), but its theoretical claims about the èr biàn (the two derived tones) and the sì qīng (the four clear-tones) are speculative and were already disputed in the Southern Sòng. Cài Yuándìng’s Lǜlǚ xīnshū (KR1i0003), composed two generations later, was in part a corrective response to Chén Yáng’s positions on these technical matters. The work’s encyclopaedic scope — covering ancient ritual song, instruments, yǎ and popular genres, dance, and notational matters — has made it the indispensable starting point for the historical study of pre-Sòng Chinese music. The catalog meta gives no precise date; on internal evidence (the position-titled in the tiyao plus the regnal designation of his career) the bracket 1101–1106 (Jiànzhōngjìngguó through Chóngníng) for completion and presentation is defensible.
Translations and research
- Joseph S. C. Lam. 2004. “The Yin-Yang System of Modes in Chen Yang’s Yueshu.” In Music in the Age of Confucius, ed. Jenny F. So. Smithsonian/University of Washington Press. — Major English-language analytic study.
- 楊蔭瀏. 1981. 中國古代音樂史稿. Beijing: 人民音樂出版社. — The standard history; uses the Yuèshū throughout as a primary source for Sòng music theory.
- 鄭祖襄. 2003. 中國古代音樂史論彙編. — Includes detailed source-criticism of the Yuèshū.
- 沈知白. 1982. 中國音樂史綱要. — Primary text-critical use.
- Stephen Jones. 1995. Folk Music of China. OUP. — Cites the Yuèshū as a primary source for the late-Northern-Sòng popular and yǎ traditions.
Other points of interest
The Yuèshū is the principal Chinese source for the iconography of musical instruments before YuánMíng. The illustrations of the qín 琴, sè 瑟, zhú 筑, kōnghóu 箜篌, and the various ritual percussion are among the earliest sustained visual records of these instruments and have been heavily used by twentieth-century musicologists, including by Lawrence Picken in his reconstruction of Táng court music.