Gǔ yuè jīng zhuàn 古樂經傳
The Ancient Music Classic with Commentary by 李光地 (Lǐ Guāngdì)
About the work
A five-juan reconstruction-and-commentary of the lost Yuè jīng 樂經 (Music Classic), one of the legendary Six Classics, by the Kāngxī-era Grand Secretary Lǐ Guāngdì. Lǐ holds — against the long-standing position that the Yuè jīng perished in the Qín book-burning — that what is called the Yuè jīng may be reconstructed by extracting the Dà sīyuè and twenty associated music-officer chapters from the Zhōu lǐ and treating them as the canonical Jīng, with the Lǐ jì Yuèjì serving as their authoritative Zhuàn commentary. To this he adds two appendices, the Fù Yuè jīng 附樂經 and the Fù Yuèjì 附樂記, also occupying five juan total. The “Yuè jīng” and “Yuèjì” parts were edited by Lǐ himself; the two further sections (Yuèjiào 樂教 and Yuèyòng 樂用) were assembled posthumously by his grandson Lǐ Qīngzhí 李清植 from his surviving manuscripts.
Tiyao
[Your servants] respectfully report: Gǔ yuè jīng zhuàn in 5 juàn, by Lǐ Guāngdì of our dynasty. Lǐ Guāngdì’s Shàngshū jiěyì and other works have been catalogued separately. The present book is his Gǔ yuè jīng jiěgǔ — taking the Dà sīyuè and the twenty officers below it as the jīng-text, treating the Yuèjì as its jì (commentary), and adding Fù Yuè jīng and Fù Yuèjì; in total 5 juàn. The Yuè jīng and Yuèjì parts were edited by Lǐ Guāngdì himself; the two essays Yuèjiào and Yuèyòng were assembled by his grandson Lǐ Qīngzhí from the surviving manuscripts. — The Yuè jīng’s most stubborn problem and the cause of a thousand years of dispute is the Dà sīyuè chapter. After the time of Master Dòu its transmission was long lost; Kāngchéng’s [Zhèng Xuán’s] commentary too is recondite and difficult, and scholars produced their own readings until everything was tangled and there was no point of judgement. Lǐ holds that the chapter’s “yuánzhōng serves as gōng” should be read “huángzhōng serves as gōng” — meaning huángzhōng itself is gōng. “Huángzhōng serves as jué” means huáng-zhōng-of-jué mode, with gūxǐ as the cadential pitch in starting and ending the tune. “Tàicù serves as zhǐ” means tài-cù-of-zhǐ mode, with nánlǚ as the cadential pitch in starting and ending the tune. “Gūxǐ serves as yǔ” means gū-xǐ-of-yǔ mode, with dàlǚ as the cadential pitch. From this it follows that “huángzhōng serves as jué” really is “gūxǐ serves as huángzhōng’s jué”; “tàicù serves as zhǐ” really is “nánlǚ serves as tàicù’s zhǐ”; “gūxǐ serves as yǔ” really is “dàlǚ serves as gūxǐ’s yǔ”. The classical text accordingly should read “huáng-zhōng-of-jué”, “tài-cù-of-zhǐ”, “gū-xǐ-of-yǔ” — and not “huángzhōng as jué”, etc. Lǐ Guāngdì’s cross-comparison and accommodation are circuitous and not entirely intelligible, but his deployment of the antecedent passage on the music for sacrificing to the heavenly spirits and the sìwàng as evidence is itself meaningful. Although it borders on forced reading, it is right to preserve it as one further explanation supplementing what previous scholars have not provided. The other doctrinal arguments are mostly sound, soundly verified, and finely argued. His effort is profound, and far surpasses what scholars who teach themselves and rely on private intuition could attain. Respectfully edited and presented in the sixth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Editor-Generals: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Editor-in-chief: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Lǐ Guāngdì’s Gǔ yuè jīng zhuàn is the principal early-Qīng attempt at recovering the lost Yuè jīng. Lǐ’s reconstruction is philological-formal: he denies that the Yuè jīng was lost in the Qín book-burning and argues that its core had always been embedded in the Zhōu lǐ music-officer chapters (the Dà sīyuè and the twenty subsidiary officers); the Lǐ jì Yuèjì, on this view, is its zhuàn commentary. The form (jīng + zhuàn) deliberately mirrors the orthodox structure of the Lǐ jì Sāngfú jīngzhuàn and the Yílǐ Sāngfú zhuàn. The work is in 5 juàn: the Yuè jīng proper, the Yuèjì (commentary), the supplementary Fù Yuè jīng and Fù Yuèjì, and the two posthumous essays Yuèjiào (Music as Teaching) and Yuèyòng (Music in Use), the last two assembled from surviving manuscripts by his grandson Lǐ Qīngzhí (1690–1744). Lǐ’s most controversial position, on the Dà sīyuè mode-and-tone passage, is the topic of the Sìkù tiyao’s reservations: he reads “yuánzhōng (round-bell) as gōng” as a textual error for “huángzhōng as gōng” — emending the canonical text — and the consequent re-derivation of the modal cycle is, the Sìkù compilers note, “circuitous.” Composition is not precisely datable; the work draws on Lǐ’s lifetime of study (he died in 1718), with the posthumous essays added by Lǐ Qīngzhí by 1740 at the latest (he served as a Hànlín official in the YōngzhèngQiánlóng transition; died 1744). The bracket 1690–1740 spans the period of Lǐ Guāngdì’s mature scholarship through the posthumous editorial completion.
Translations and research
- 楊儒賓. 2003. “李光地《古樂經傳》論.” 清華學報 33.2. — Detailed analysis.
- 蕭啟慶. 1999. 清史稿 李光地傳. Treatment in standard biographical reference works.
- No further substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The Gǔ yuè jīng zhuàn is one of the few orthodox Confucian works to reject the standard Hàn shū yìwénzhì claim that the Yuè jīng was destroyed in the Qín book-burning, and is consequently a key source for the late-Qīng debate over whether the Six Classics ever included a separate Yuè (most modern scholarship now favours the view that the Yuè was always embedded liturgically in the other Five and never had a separate text — a position whose lineage runs from Hé Xiū through Zhū Xī to Lǐ Guāngdì).