Huángyán dìngshēng lù 皇言定聲錄
Record of Tones Settled by the Imperial Word by 毛奇齡 (Máo Qílíng)
About the work
The eight-juan theoretical core of Máo Qílíng’s late-Kāngxī music trilogy. The work consists of over a hundred discrete propositions on lǜ (pitch-pipe) and yuèlǜ (musical theory) and sixteen diagrams. Máo presents the work as a development out of Kāngxī’s pronouncements on music — hence the title’s “Huángyán” (“Imperial Word”). His most distinctive doctrinal claim, on which he insists at length, is the doctrine of nine tones and seven modes (jiǔ shēng qī diào 九聲七調): the five orthodox tones plus four “clear-tones” (qīnggōng, qīngshāng, qīngjué, qīngzhǐ) make nine tones; the five orthodox tones plus the two derived tones (biàngōng, biànzhǐ) make seven modes. Máo argues that the song-melody itself does not use the èr biàn, but the instrumental fingering uses seven-mode notation, so that nine-and-seven coexist. He also reverses the orthodox positioning of the biàngōng (after yǔ, before gōng) and biànzhǐ (after jué, before zhǐ) — placing them respectively after the principal tones in the rotation cycle.
Tiyao
[Your servants] respectfully report: Huángyán dìngshēng lù in 8 juàn, by Máo Qílíng of our dynasty. The book throughout expounds yuèlǜ — over one hundred propositions in all, with sixteen diagrams. Máo asserts that he has based the work on the august Kāngxī Emperor’s plain instructions on music and has set forth what he himself sees, hence the name. — The doctrine on which he insists at length is the nine tones / seven modes theory: combining the five tones with qīnggōng, qīngshāng, qīngjué, qīngzhǐ makes nine tones; combining the five tones with the biàngōng and biànzhǐ makes seven modes. He holds that the song-tone does not use the two biàn (derived tones), yet the instrumental colouring (qìsè, fingering-marks) uses seven modes’ fingering-marks to respond to it; hence nine tones serve as tones, seven modes serve as modes. He further argues that earlier writers’ placement of the biàngōng before gōng and the biànzhǐ before zhǐ is mistaken, and shifts the two biàn to after the two principal tones. — But this is precisely what is familiar to anyone who plays the flute or the xiāo: when one rotates the gōng by changing modes — “use gōng, follow yǔ” — yǔ becomes gōng, and so gōng falls in shāng position, shāng in jué, jué in zhǐ, zhǐ in yǔ, all shifted by one position. Hence the biàngōng originally between yǔ and gōng shifts and now sits between gōng and shāng; the biànzhǐ originally between jué and zhǐ shifts and now sits between zhǐ and yǔ. This is what is in everyday use among the guǎnsè (pipe-coloring) markers, and not something Máo has independently invented for himself. — His other arguments, where he develops his own opinions, often attack the ancients with a tone that is on the immoderate side. But because his discussions are clearly erudite, we shall preserve them for purposes of comparative reference. 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 Huángyán dìngshēng lù is the most substantial of Máo Qílíng’s three music treatises and the principal exposition of his musical xuéshuō. The “nine-tones-seven-modes” doctrine is its central proposition and reflects Máo’s familiarity with actual pipe-and-flute performance practice in late seventeenth-century Hangzhou. The Sìkù compilers’ qualified reception is interesting: while they identify Máo’s most prized “innovations” as in fact ordinary musicianly knowledge of his time (already standard among practising flute players), they preserve the work for its erudition and its argumentative interest. The work is the chief monument of the xīhé (Máo’s hào) school of music theory and is the principal late-Kāngxī antagonist of the Lǜlǚ zhèngyì / Sòng-Confucian orthodoxy. Composition: Kāngxī 31 (1692) original draft (this work and KR1i0015 and KR1i0017 were originally one project); presented to the throne 1699 with the rest of Máo’s music writings.
Translations and research
- 蕭水順. 1995. 毛奇齡學術研究. 臺北: 文史哲出版社. — Includes detailed analysis of the Huáng-yán dìng-shēng lù.
- Joseph S. C. Lam. 2007. “Reading the Manchus: Music and the Politics of Yuè in Early Qing.” In: Asian Musicology 12. — Treats Máo’s late-Kāngxī musicology as a key site of yí-mín / Manchu-court negotiation.
- No further substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The eight-juan structure with over a hundred numbered propositions (interspersed with sixteen diagrams) is unusual for the genre and gives the work a notebook-like quality. Several propositions are explicitly polemical against 蔡元定 (e.g. on the role of clear-tones in modal rotation) and against the orthodox Lǜlǚ xīnshū tradition more generally; this anti-Sòng-orthodoxy stance is consistent with Máo’s broader scholarly programme.