樂府詩集

Yuèfǔ shījí 樂府詩集

Collected Songs from the Music Bureau by 郭茂倩

About the work

The definitive Chinese anthology of yuèfǔ 樂府 (Music-Bureau / song-form) poetry, 100 juǎn compiled by Guō Màoqiàn 郭茂倩 (1041–1099) in the Northern Sòng Yuányòu and Shàoshèng periods. The work organises song-poetry from the TángYú (legendary Yáo and Shùn) period to the Five Dynasties — but with the actual compilation beginning systematically from the Hàn jiāosì (Han imperial sacrificial hymns) — into twelve principal sub-categories:

1. Jiāomiào gēcí 郊廟歌辭 — imperial sacrificial hymns
2. Yànshè gēcí 燕射歌辭 — banquet and archery hymns
3. Gǔchuī qūcí 鼓吹曲辭 — military / parade songs
4. Héngchuī qūcí 橫吹曲辭 — frontier / wind-instrument songs
5. Xiānghè gēcí 相和歌辭 — exchange songs
6. Qīngshāng qūcí 清商曲辭 — Qīngshāng tunes (WúChǔ and post-Hàn south Chinese music)
7. Wǔqū gēcí 舞曲歌辭 — dance songs
8. Qínqū gēcí 琴曲歌辭 — qín-zither pieces
9. Záqū gēcí 雜曲歌辭 — miscellaneous songs
10. Jìndài qūcí 近代曲辭 — recent (i.e. Táng) tunes
11. Zágē yáocí 雜歌謠辭 — popular songs and folk ditties
12. Xīn yuèfǔ cí 新樂府辭 — the new-style yuèfǔ of Bái Jūyì, Yuán Zhěn, etc.

Each piece is preceded by a scholarly headnote (序解) drawing on the Hànshū yuèzhì, the Sòngshū yuèzhì, the Suíshū yīnyuèzhì, the JiùTángshū yīnyuèzhì, and various Sòng yuèshū — making the book a double resource: it is both a comprehensive anthology of approximately 5,290 pieces and an encyclopaedia of pre-Sòng musical and song-literary scholarship.

Tiyao

Yú Jí’s preface translates, in part: “Tàiyuán Guō Màoqiàn collected the yuèfǔ shī in one hundred juǎn, taking up from the TángYú songs above and reaching to the Táng below, but arranging them to begin with the Hàn jiāosì — for Màoqiàn intended this to be a continuation of the Four Shī (the Fēng, Yǎ, Sòng, plus the absent fourth). Jiāosì corresponding to Sòng; Náogē (military) gǔchuī to Yǎ; qínqū and miscellaneous songs to the Fēng (Guófēng). Because it begins from the Han, it is titled Yuèfǔ shī: yuèfǔ is the bureau of musical instruction; in the Yīn called Gǔzōng; the Zhōu inherited the Yīn arrangement; there is the Dàsīyuè office; in the Han the yuèfǔ name appears. Màoqiàn miscellaneously took poems and songs, not all set to strings — and later writers’ compositions, often not centring on antiquity, generally with extravagant heart, he still recorded and did not cut, because their intent or attachment may yet have something. Time grew on it and the book was about to be lost. The Censor Péng Shūyí of Jìnán formerly received the book and personally collated it, correcting its gaps and corruptions, and now further purchased a sound copy in the WúYuè region for re-collation; commissioned Wénxué Tóng Wànyuán 童萬元 to engrave it at the xuéguān.”

Zhōu Huìsūn’s preface affirms: “Tàiyuán Guō Màoqiàn compiled and classified ancient and modern gēqū from TángYú above to the late dynasties below, naming it Yuèfǔ shījí. Whatever song-text is canonical-pure, whatever tune is fresh and beautifully ornate, light-tone and dialect, long and short song — none is omitted. The fēng yǎ sòng and the transformation of generations can be perused in one volume. The sāorén mòkè (poets) who work the brush by ember and sunset will find here the means to evoke their hidden feelings.“)

Abstract

Date: the book itself does not carry a date of completion. From Guō Màoqiàn’s biography in the Sòngshǐ indirectly and from the Yuányòu and Shàoshèng dating of similar projects, the consensus is that compilation was substantially completed by ca. 1090–1099 in the Northern Sòng. The transmission then proceeded through manuscript copy: by the Yuán-period collation of Zhìzhèng 1 (1341), the text was already corrupt; the recovery by Péng Shūyí and the re-collation in WúYuè (with further copies from elsewhere) at the Xiàntái are the source of the Yuán block-print.

The book is foundational and indispensable for at least four bodies of scholarship: (1) Han, Wèi, and Liùcháo yuèfǔ, where it is the principal surviving authoritative anthology — Yán Kějūn’s Quán shànggǔ Sāndài liùcháo wén and the modern XiānQín Hàn Wèi Jìn nánběicháo shī of Lù Qīnlì draw on it extensively; (2) Táng yuèfǔ and the xīn yuèfǔ movement, where it canonises Bái Jūyì’s and Yuán Zhěn’s xīn yuèfǔ as a distinct sub-tradition; (3) Sòng pre-history of cí, where the jìndài qūcí sub-category preserves popular-song titles and texts in TángSòng transition; (4) Chinese musicological history, where Guō’s headnotes are the principal source for early musical institutions, music-categories, and tune-titles.

In modern scholarship the book is read alongside Shěn Yuē 沈約’s Sòngshū yuèzhì, Wèi Zhēng’s Suíshū yīnyuèzhì, and the Liú Xù JiùTángshū yīnyuèzhì as the four foundational pre-Sòng musical-literary sources; the Yuèfǔ shījí is the latest of the four but the most comprehensive in literary scope.

Translations and research

• Anne Birrell, Popular Songs and Ballads of Han China (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1988) — translations and analysis of yuè-fǔ drawn from this anthology.
• Charles Kwong, “The Origins of Chinese Yuefu Poetry,” Asia Major 6.2 (1993): 67–101.
• Joseph R. Allen, In the Voice of Others: Chinese Music Bureau Poetry (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, 1992).
• Wang Yunxi 王運熙, Yuè-fǔ shī shù-lùn 樂府詩述論 (Shanghai: Shanghai gǔjí, 1996) — foundational modern monograph.
• Cài Méng-bì 蔡蒙弼, Yuè-fǔ shī-jí jiào jiān 樂府詩集校箋 (Beijing: Zhōnghuá, 2017) — recent critical edition.

Other points of interest

The original Sòng compilation appears to have suffered very heavy textual corruption between the Sòng and Yuán; the Yuán Zhìzhèng 1 (1341) Jínán xíngshěng edition under Péng Shūyí, with Tóng Wànyuán as cutter and Zhōu Huìsūn / Yú Jí as preface-writers, is the principal textual ancestor of all received forms. The WYG copy descends from this Yuán edition through the Míng Mǎ Yuántiáo 馬元調 re-print of 1582.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §30.3, §31.4.
• ctext
• Wikipedia, “Yuefu”