Gǔ yuè shū 古樂書
Treatise on Ancient Music by 應撝謙 (Yìng Huīqiān)
About the work
A two-juan music-theoretical treatise by the early-Qīng Hángzhōu yímín (Míng-loyalist) Yìng Huīqiān (1615–1683). The upper juàn treats the foundations of lǜlǚ in the manner of Cài Yuándìng’s Lǜlǚ xīnshū (KR1i0003), supplemented by the Shuōwén annotations and Zhū Xī’s positions; the lower juàn treats instrumental construction, drawing principally on Chén Xiángdào’s Lǐshū and Lǐ Zhīzǎo’s Pàngōng lǐyuè shū. The work’s most distinctive contribution is its careful re-construction of the bell-shape geometry of the Kǎogōng jì’s Fúshì wéi zhōng chapter, with two precise illustrative diagrams (zhèngtǐ 正體 — frontal view, and cètǐ 側體 — side view) that for the first time clearly resolve the long-disputed dimensions of xiǎnjiān 銑間 (“gap between the bell-mouth horns”).
Tiyao
[Your servants] respectfully report: Gǔ yuè shū in 2 juàn, by Yìng Huīqiān of our dynasty. Huīqiān’s zì was Sìyín; he was a man of Rénhé. The book’s upper juàn discusses the foundations of lǜlǚ and is in main outline based on Master Cài’s Xīn shū, with reference to the zhùshū tradition and Master Zhū’s account. The lower juàn on instrumental construction follows mainly Chén Xiángdào’s Lǐshū and Lǐ Zhīzǎo’s Pàngōng lǐyuè shū. The argumentation is sound and the textual examination is precise and concise — he has the essential point. — Among his arguments, those that fail to fit are: in his 60-tone diagram he takes gōng to be the lowest tone, holding that the xuángōng rotation among the twelve pitches descends so that, beginning from huángzhōng, in the línzhōng mode the tàicù and gūxǐ pitches are “líng gōng” (overrun-gōng); in the nánlǚ mode the tài, gū, and ruí three pitches are “líng gōng”; his rationale is that tài and gū are longer than línzhōng’s 6-cùn length, tài, gū, ruí are longer than nánlǚ’s 5-and-some-cùn length, hence yīngzhōng is the shortest pitch and in the yīngzhōng mode the four pitches zhǐ, shāng, yǔ, jué are all “líng gōng”. He fails to recognize that the xuángōng method is grounded in the xiāngshēng of the twelve pitches, not in length-and-shortness as the basis for xiāngshēng. The “long generates short, short generates long” principle, “down-generation, up-generation” — these distinguish only the direction; they do not mean that zhǐ must be shorter than gōng, or shāng shorter than zhǐ. His error stems entirely from the dictum “gōng is the most muddy”; not knowing that gōng is the central tone, he reaches this confusion. — Yìng Huīqiān further holds that the ancients, when saying the huángzhōng is 9 cùn, meant that one must add another cùn to make the foot-rule, on the ground that one cannot make 9 cùn into 1 chǐ; nor can one say 9 cùn is 8.1 cùn — and so on. But the huángzhōng of 9 cùn is the foundation: when one constructs the foot-rule, that 9 cùn makes the new 9-cùn / 1-chǐ — i.e. the horizontal-millet measure; reducing it to 8.1 cùn yields the vertical-millet measure. So saying “9 cùn” or “1 chǐ” or “8.1 cùn” is not three different things. Yìng Huīqiān’s forced division here is also off the mark. — Yet his other precise treatments are often genuinely useful. As when the Kǎogōng jì Fúshì wéi zhōng says: “the two horns of the bell are called xiǎn, the gap between xiǎn is called gǔ (drum), above gǔ is called zhēng, above zhēng is called wǔ (dance); ten parts of xiǎn — two of them is zhēng; zhēng is taken as the xiǎnjiān’s 2 fēn lessening; that lesser as gǔjiān; using the gǔjiān as wǔxiū’s 2 fēn lessening; that lesser as wǔguǎng”. The text does not specify the dimensions of zhēngjiān and gǔjìng. Zhèng’s note says “zhēngjiān must also be 6,” hence “the zhēng is 6, the gǔ is 6, the wǔ is 4. This bell’s mouth-10 has a length of 16.” But if zhēngjiān and gǔjiān are both 6 in dimension, and if the text further says “the great bell uses one-tenth of the gǔjiān for its thickness, the small bell uses one-tenth of the zhēngjiān for its thickness,” then gǔjiān and zhēngjiān cannot have the same measure. Yìng Huīqiān argues that zhēngjiān and wǔguǎng are both 4 — comparing this with Zhèng’s note, the matter becomes intelligible. — Furthermore, the xiǎnjiān’s “yú” had no clear gloss in the earlier Confucians. Yìng Huīqiān gives the zhèngtǐ and cètǐ diagrams (showing the bell from the front and from the side); the lower segment of gǔjiān, hanging down between the two horns, is precisely the xiǎnjiān. The ancient bell was made like a hand-bell (líng 鈴) and not round — the diameter at the gap between the two horns is 10 fēn, the body-length from the two horns down to the gǔjiān is 8 fēn, but the outer body at the very gap of the two horns has a missing portion. So Zhèng’s note “the bell length is 16” does not count the xiǎnjiān; if all four names yú, gǔ, zhēng, wǔ are taken as parts of the bell-body, then the xiǎnjiān itself has its own body-length. Yìng’s two diagrams are genuinely the most lucid available. Respectfully edited and presented in the eighth month of Qiánlóng 45 (1780). Editor-Generals: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Editor-in-chief: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
The Gǔ yuè shū is a representative early-Qīng Hangzhou yímín music treatise: doctrinally orthodox (in the Cài Yuándìng tradition) and especially distinguished for its visual treatment of the Kǎogōng jì bell-geometry. The two diagrams zhèngtǐ (frontal view) and cètǐ (side view) are the first published illustrations to render the Kǎogōng jì bell as the historically-actual flat-mouthed bell with its slightly missing arc at the xiǎnjiān — a reading that, the Sìkù compilers note, makes Zhèng Xuán’s commentary intelligible and resolves the two-thousand-year-old confusion over the bell-body’s actual length. The work draws on Cài Yuándìng (foundations), Chén Xiángdào’s Lǐshū (instrumental design), and the late-Míng Lǐ Zhīzǎo’s 李之藻 Pàngōng lǐyuè shū 頖宮禮樂疏 (Confucius-temple music), the last being the principal Wàn-lì-era handbook of Confucian-temple ritual music. The Sìkù compilers identify two technical errors in Yìng’s argumentation: (1) the conflation of “gōng as central tone” with “gōng as lowest tone,” producing his erroneous línggōng doctrine, and (2) his forced over-distinction of the multiple meanings of “9 cùn” in the huángzhōng tradition. Composition cannot be precisely dated, but the work is mature and post-conquest; the bracket 1660 (Yìng’s mature scholarly career under the early Qīng) to 1683 (his death) is defensible.
Translations and research
- 楊蔭瀏. 1981. 中國古代音樂史稿. — Treats the Gǔ yuè shū as the principal early-Qīng Hangzhou-school treatise.
- 戴念祖. 1994. 中國聲學史. — Notes Yìng’s bell-geometry diagrams as a standard reference.
- No further substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The zhèngtǐ and cètǐ diagrams in juan 2 — the first systematic visual reconstruction of the Kǎogōng jì flat-mouthed bell — became the standard illustration in subsequent ritual-music handbooks and were reprinted in late-Qīng treatises. Yìng’s identification of the xiǎnjiān with the lower-segment “drop” between the bell’s two horns is a textual-philological contribution rather than a musical one, but it has shaped all subsequent commentary on the Fúshì wéi zhōng chapter.