Báixuězhāi xuǎndìng yuèfǔ Wúsāo hébiān 白雪齋選訂樂府吳騷合編
White-Snow Studio’s Edited Compendium of Music-Bureau and Wú-sāo Combined edited by 張楚叔 (同輯) and 張旭初 (同輯)
About the work
The Báixuězhāi xuǎndìng yuèfǔ Wúsāo hébiān 白雪齋選訂樂府吳騷合編 is the late-Míng (Chóngzhēn) reissue and “combined edition” of the famous Wúsāo 吳騷 series of Sūzhōu-region xìqǔ and kūnqǔ anthologies, edited by the brothers Zhāng Chǔshū 張楚叔 (elder) and Zhāng Xùchū 張旭初 (younger). Four juǎn in the SBCK arrangement. The Wúsāo (literally “Wú-songs / Wú-style Sāo”) line had been issued in successive Míng cuttings under titles like Wúsāo jí 吳騷集 and Wúsāo èrjí 吳騷二集; the Hébiān presented here is the editor’s final combined and corrected edition.
Prefaces
(The SBCK _000.txt prefatory matter preserves Zhāng Chǔshū’s own preface; no Sìkù tíyào exists.)
Zhāng Chǔshū’s preface, Bīngzǐ dōngmiǎo (winter, end of 1636): “The qǔ as a genre arises from the inmost twist of the heart; its undulation and folding gives quick utterance to deep emotion. Hence its diction is its own colour. From of old, those who command the stage have plied shāng and chiseled yǔ; their dancing-glamour is heaven-given, and every fine line that drops into one’s dream-train tastes more on rumination and grows in savour. Truly: it is full of qǔ-essence! And yet qǔ has its encounter (yù 遇): the writer formerly used the long phrase and the lone word to release a moment’s grievance; only with the rise of later students do the wise admirers chant his qǔ — and as they chant, they seem to see the man himself, elegant in countenance, his voice ringing in their mouths, the yīn of the harmonious ǎi finding its way down into the lungs. Composer and singer recognize each other across time — is that not what qǔ’s encounter is?…” The preface goes on to denounce contemporary corruption of qǔ-style — broken phrasing, vulgar invasions, xiānglián (boudoir) effacements masked as innovation, mis-engravings ruining the tradition — and to set the editorial standard of the present volume as a remedy. The volume was first broadly gathered by Chǔshū, then strictly reviewed by his younger brother Xùchū: not by reputation of author but by the work’s intrinsic worth. The preface closes: “Chóngzhēn dīngchǒu spring 2nd month, Sāoyǐn jūshì Chǔshū fù inscribes at Xiǎo Mòmò jū.”
Abstract
The Wúsāo hébiān is one of the principal late-Míng kūnqǔ anthologies, gathering pieces by Sūzhōu-region qǔ-poets centered on the kūnqiāng tradition. The contents are organized by gōngdiào and tune-form, with attribution to authors (typically by hào — e.g. Zhōu Qiūtīng 周秋汀, Chén Qiūbì 陳秋碧, Féng Èryǒu 馮二酉) and not by name; this is the late-Míng kūnqǔ anthology convention. Modern kūnqǔ scholarship (Wú Méi 吳梅, Qǔxué tōnglùn 曲學通論; Wáng Jìsī 王季思 et al.) treats the Wúsāo series — Wúsāo jí, Wúsāo èrjí, and the Hébiān — as the principal contemporary record of the Sūzhōu kūnqǔ repertoire just before its mid-Qīng transformation. The editor’s emphasis on excluding xiānglián and corrupted texts, and on testing each piece by an independent yīnyùn control rather than by reputation of author, is also a methodological statement of mid-17th-century qǔ-philology.
Translations and research
- Wú Méi 吳梅, Qǔ-xué tōng-lùn 曲學通論.
- Cyril Birch, Scenes for Mandarins: The Elite Theater of the Ming (Columbia, 1995) — context.
- Catherine Swatek, Peony Pavilion Onstage: Four Centuries in the Career of a Chinese Drama (Michigan, 2002) — context for the kūn-qǔ anthology tradition the Wú-sāo belongs to.