Báishí dàorén gēqǔ 白石道人歌曲
Songs of the Daoist of White-Stone by 姜夔 (撰)
About the work
The Báishí dàorén gēqǔ 白石道人歌曲 is the Sìkù cí collection of Jiāng Kuí 姜夔 (ca. 1155 – ca. 1221; zì Yáozhāng 堯章, hào Báishí dàorén 白石道人 — “Daoist of White-Stone”), the supreme prosodic-school cí-master and the only Sòng cí-writer whose own musical notation (pángpǔ 旁譜) survives — making this volume the single most musicologically important cí text. The Sìkù form is in 4 juǎn plus a biéjí (supplement) of 18 cí: juǎn 1 contains the Sòng náogē 宋鐃歌 14 + Yuè jiǔgē 越九歌 10 + one qín-piece; juǎn 2 has 33 cí in the lìng (short-form) category; juǎn 3 has 20 cí in the màn (long-form) category; juǎn 4 has 13 zìzhìqǔ 自製曲 (self-composed tunes, with notation in gōngchě pǔ 工尺譜 alongside the characters). The Yuè jiǔgē carries lǜlǚ (pitch-pipe) notation; the qín-piece carries finger-position notation; the zìzhìqǔ and the Géxī méi lìng, Xìnghuā tiān yǐng, Zuì yín shāng xiǎopǐn, Yùméi lìng, Nícháng zhōngxù dìyī carry beat-rhythm marks (pāiyǎn 拍眼). This is the basis of the entire modern reconstruction of Sòng music; from Yáng Yīnliú 楊蔭瀏 (1957) on, every modern attempt to recover Sòngcí singing has begun from this volume.
Tiyao
Báishí dàorén gēqǔ, 4 juǎn, biéjí one juǎn, by Jiāng Kuí of the Sòng. Kuí has the Jiàng tiēpíng, Xù shūpǔ, Shījí, Shīshuō all separately catalogued. This is his yuèfǔ cí. Kuí’s shī-register was lofty-and-elegant, recommended by Yáng Wànlǐ 楊萬里 and others; his cí too is deep-marvellous-luxuriant-fine, especially fine at self-composing new tunes; hence his musicality-and-figuration are matchless. As his own shī line “zì zhì xīn cí yùn zuì jiāo, Xiǎo Hóng dī chàng wǒ chuī xiāo 自製新詞韻最嬌，小紅低唱我吹簫” — the elegance can still be imagined. Only the collection long had no good edition — the old Máo Jìn 毛晉 Jígǔgé cutting had only 34 cí, with the xiǎoxù (small prefaces) under titles often omitting the original text. Kāngxī jiǎwǔ 1714 Chén Zhuàn 陳撰 cut his shī-collection with the cí appended — only 58 cí; xiǎoxù and self-annotations heavily deleted, even worse than Máo. This text is from a Sòng-cut reissue, the most complete: juǎn 1 — Sòng náogē 14, Yuè jiǔgē 10, qínqǔ 1; juǎn 2 — 33 cí, marked lìng; juǎn 3 — 20 cí, marked màn; juǎn 4 — 13 cí, marked zìzhìqǔ; biéjí — 18 cí, no standard title (probably later compilation). The Yuè jiǔgē annotates lǜlǚ (pitch-pipe) at character-sides; the qínqǔ annotates finger-positions at character-sides — both still readable. As for the zìzhìqǔ juǎn and juǎn 2 Géxī méi lìng, Xìnghuā tiān yǐng, Zuì yín shāng xiǎopǐn, Yùméi lìng, juǎn 3 Nícháng zhōngxù dìyī — all annotate beat-marks at character-sides; Sòng qǔpǔ (musical scores) are no longer extant; nobody can sing them today; their note-spacing is beyond identification. Yet the method of cí-singing — just this one thread of survival — preserve and record: who knows whether some xuánjiě zhī shì (someone with the Zhuāngzǐ “free-hanging untying” insight) might recover the distinctions? Lǔ-drum, Xuē-drum — their sound lost, the score preserved — the same idea. The old text prefaced Shīshuō, only three-and-some pages; presumably attached to cí because it couldn’t make a juǎn of its own; but Kuí has the Báishí dàorén shījí; appending shīshuō to cí-collection is incongruous; we move it appended to the shījí and do not duplicate it here. — Compiled, Qiánlóng 46 / 1781, 10th month.
Abstract
The transmitted Báishí dàorén gēqǔ descends through a Sòng-cut reissue (Lù Zhōnghuī 陸鍾輝 cut, Yōngzhèng 12 / 1734, base for the WYG). Modern editions: Xià Chéngtāo 夏承燾, Jiāng Báishí cí biānnián jiānjiào 姜白石詞編年箋校 (Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1958; rev. 1981) is the standard critical edition; Lóng Yúshēng 龍榆生, Jiāng Báishí shī cí xuǎn (1953) for English readers Lin Shuen-fu, The Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition: Chiang K’uei and Southern Sung Tz’u Poetry (Princeton, 1978) is the standard study. Reconstructed corpus: approximately 87 cí with xiǎoxù; together with the Yuè jiǔgē, the qínqǔ, and the Sòng náogē, around 130 pieces. Jiāng’s birth-date is conventionally placed ca. 1155 (no precise record); death is ca. 1221 in Línān, in straitened circumstances (he never held official post, surviving by patronage of Xiāo Dézǎo 蕭德藻, Yáng Wànlǐ, Fàn Chéngdà 范成大, Zhāng Jiàn 張鑑). The signature pieces — Yángzhōu màn · Huáizuǒ míngdū 揚州慢·淮左名都 (1176, composed at twenty-two visiting the Jīn-ravaged Yángzhōu), Àn xiāng 暗香 and Shū yǐng 疏影 (1191, the zìzhìqǔ on plum-blossoms composed for Fàn Chéngdà) — are among the most consciously crafted and the most influential single cí of the Sòng. The zìzhìqǔ juǎn in particular establishes the principle of self-composed tune as the supreme prosodic achievement of the cí form.
Translations and research
- Lin Shuen-fu, The Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition: Chiang K’uei and Southern Sung Tz’u Poetry (Princeton, 1978) — the standard English-language study.
- Xià Chéng-tāo 夏承燾, Jiāng Bái-shí cí biān-nián jiān-jiào 姜白石詞編年箋校 (Zhōng-huá shū-jú, 1958; rev. 1981) — the standard critical edition.
- Yáng Yīn-liú 楊蔭瀏 and Yīn Fǎ-lǔ 陰法魯, Sòng Jiāng Bái-shí chuàng-zuò gē-qǔ yán-jiū 宋姜白石創作歌曲研究 (Yīn-yuè chū-bǎn-shè, 1957) — the foundational musicological reconstruction.
- Picken, Laurence, “Twelfth-Century Secular Cantatas and Chamber Music in China” (in Musica Asiatica and elsewhere) — Western-language musicological discussion.
- Stephen Owen, “The Stages of Lyric Practice in the Tang Dynasty,” and related papers on the cí tradition.
Other points of interest
The Báishí dàorén gēqǔ is the single most important pre-modern document of Chinese music theory. The Sìkù compilers’ xuánjiě zhī shì hope — that future scholars might “untie” the notation system and recover the singing of Sòng cí — was at least partly fulfilled by the 1957 work of Yáng Yīnliú and Yīn Fǎlǔ. The volume is also a major case of zìzhù 自註 (self-annotation) practice: Jiāng’s xiǎoxù under each cí preserves the composition occasion, often in literary prose that rivals the cí itself (the Yángzhōu màn small preface is an essay in its own right).
Links
- Quán Sòng cí 全宋詞 (Jiāng Kuí)
- Wikipedia 姜夔
- Wikidata Q716212