Yuèzhāng jí 樂章集
Collected Song-lyrics by 柳永 (撰)
About the work
The Yuèzhāng jí 樂章集 is the cí collection of Liǔ Yǒng 柳永 (ca. 984–1053), the first great master of the màncí 慢詞 (“long-tune”) form. Where Yàn Shū 晏殊 and Zhāng Xiān 張先 worked in the short xiǎolìng on the Huājiān model, Liǔ — a chronic examination failure who lived for years in the entertainment quarters of Biànjīng 汴京 (modern Kāifēng) before finally passing jìnshì in Jǐngyòu 1 / 1034 — expanded the cí in length, prosody, and topical range: urban-mercantile scenes, courtesan-quarter farewells, frontier-army nostalgia, festival pageantry, and a frankly demotic register that scandalized the elite even as it carried his songs across the empire. The Northern-Sòng Bìshǔ lùhuà of Yè Mèngdé 葉夢得 records the most-cited fact of cí-history: “wherever there is well-water for drinking, people sing Liǔ’s cí” 凡有井水飲處即能歌柳詞.
Tiyao
Yuèzhāng jí, one juǎn, by Liǔ Yǒng of the Sòng. Yǒng was originally named Sānbiàn 三變, zì Qíqīng 耆卿, a man of Chóngān 崇安; jìnshì of Jǐngyòu 1 (1034), serving as far as Túntián yuánwàiláng, whence he was popularly called Liǔ Túntián 柳屯田. Yè Mèngdé’s Bìshǔ lùhuà 避暑錄話 says: “When Yǒng was a candidate, he frequented the alleys and was good at song-lyrics. The musicians of the Jiàofāng 教坊 secured a new tune only by asking Yǒng to fit words; only then did it circulate.” When I was serving in Dāntú, I once met a Western Xià defector who said, “wherever there is well-water for drinking, there they can sing Liǔ’s cí” — to indicate how wide its transmission was. Zhāng Duānyì 張端義’s Guì’ěr jí 貴耳集 also says: “Xiàng Píngzhāi held that for shī one must study Dù, for cí one must study Liǔ — both Dù’s shī and Liǔ’s cí have no decorative virtues, they only state matters plainly.” The cí form was originally the indulgent music of the strings; what Yǒng composed, sinuous and emotional, drew people in. Though somewhat afflicted with vulgarity, lovers of it have never ceased. Chén Zhènsūn 陳振孫’s Shūlù jiětí records the Yuèzhāng jí in three juǎn; the present is only one, owing to the merging-together by Máo Jìn 毛晉. Of all Sòng cí transmitted today, this is the most damaged: Jìn’s edition is sparse in proof-correction, and miscuttings are too many to enumerate. — (The editors list at length specific tune-cuts and character-errors found and corrected against the readings of Wàn Shù 萬樹’s Cí lǜ 詞律 KR4j0087; where the text cannot be made to scan, they preserve the doubt.) — Compiled, Qiánlóng 43 / 1778, 9th month, by Zǒngzuǎnguān 紀昀, 陸錫熊, 孫士毅; Zǒngjiàoguān 陸費墀.
Abstract
The transmitted Yuèzhāng jí descends from Máo Jìn’s Jígǔgé Liùshí jiā cí (late Míng), which collapsed the three-juǎn form noted by Chén Zhènsūn into one and is known to be heavily corrupt; the Sòng shǐ Yìwénzhì and Mǎ Duānlín 馬端臨’s Wénxiàn tōngkǎo Jīngjí kǎo register the three-juǎn version. Modern collation (Xuē Ruìshēng 薛瑞生, Liǔ Yǒng cí jiàozhù 柳永詞校注, Zhōnghuá shūjú 2002; the Quán Sòng cí 全宋詞 of Táng Guīzhāng 唐圭璋, rev. 1965/1999) reconstructs roughly 213 cí, of which some 130 are màncí in the long forms (Bāshēng Gānzhōu 八聲甘州, Yǔ línlíng 雨霖鈴, Wàng hǎi cháo 望海潮, etc.) that he effectively created as a literary genre. Liǔ’s biographical record is thin: he has no biography in the Sòng shǐ and is mentioned only obliquely in the lièzhuàn of others; what is known of his life is reconstructed almost entirely from anecdotal bǐjì and from his cí themselves. The Sìkù editors place him at the head of the “demotic” line of the Sòng cí — Liǔ as the Bái Jūyì 白居易 of the form, Sū Shì 蘇軾 as its Hán Yù 韓愈 (so the Tíyào to the Dōngpō cí KR4j0005).
Translations and research
- James R. Hightower, “The Songwriter Liu Yung,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 41.2 (1981), 323–376 and 42.1 (1982), 5–66 — the most substantial English-language study and translation of Liǔ Yǒng’s cí.
- Xuē Ruì-shēng 薛瑞生, Liǔ Yǒng cí jiào-zhù 柳永詞校注 (Zhōng-huá shū-jú, 2002) — the standard modern critical edition.
- Tsè-tsung Chow 周策縱, “The Early History of the Chinese Word Shih (Poetry),” and related essays; multiple papers by Kang-i Sun Chang 孫康宜 on Liǔ Yǒng’s tune-forms.
- Kang-i Sun Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry from Late T’ang to Northern Sung (Princeton, 1980) — extended chapter on Liǔ Yǒng as the inventor of the literary màn-cí.
- Táng Guī-zhāng 唐圭璋 et al., Quán Sòng cí 全宋詞 (Zhōng-huá shū-jú, 1965; rev. 1999).
Other points of interest
Two famous Sòng anecdotes attach to Liǔ. The first: rejected after several examinations, he wrote Hè chōng tiān 鶴沖天 with the bitter line cáizǐ círén zì shì báiyī qīngxiàng 才子詞人自是白衣卿相 (“the gifted lyric poet is naturally a white-robed minister”); when finally taking jìnshì under his new name Yǒng 永 in 1034, Renzong is said to have remembered the line and snorted “qiě qù tián cí, hé yào fúmíng 且去填詞，何要浮名” (“go on and fill out lyrics — what use have you for empty fame?”), thus capping Liǔ’s career at the modest Túntián rank. The second: when Sū Shì asked a singing-girl how his own cí compared with Liǔ’s, she replied that Liǔ Qīqīng’s cí required “a maid of seventeen or eighteen with red ivory clappers to sing ‘by the willow banks under the dawn wind and waning moon’,” while the Xuéshì’s required “a strapping man of Shànbēi with iron clappers and a bronze pipa to roar ‘great river east-flowing’” — a piece of contrast that has shaped every account of the cí tradition since.
Links
- Quán Sòng cí 全宋詞 (Liǔ Yǒng juan)
- Wikipedia 柳永
- Wikidata Q708160