Líyuán ànshì yuèfǔ xīnshēng 梨園按試樂府新聲
New Music-Bureau Sounds Tested in the Pear-Garden edited anonymously (Yuán); collation by 盧前 (撰校記)
About the work
The Líyuán ànshì yuèfǔ xīnshēng 梨園按試樂府新聲 (“New Yuèfǔ Sounds Tested in the Líyuán”) is a Yuán-period sǎnqǔ anthology, three juǎn, preserved in fragmentary form. The title declares the volume as a working collection of qǔ tested-in-performance at the Líyuán — the imperial / aristocratic xì-troupe theater — i.e. a practical performance-anthology rather than a critical literary one. The SBCK preserves the YuánMíng text-line as transmitted, with collation-notes (xiàojì) by the Republican-era qǔ-scholar Lú Qián 盧前. The compiler is anonymous and was almost certainly a court / aristocratic yuè official rather than a literary figure.
Prefaces
(The _000.txt source file for KR4j0082 is missing from the project tree. The standard SBCK reprint preserves Lú Qián’s modern collation introduction together with what little YuánMíng prefatory matter survives.)
The anthology has no separately attributed Yuán preface. Lú Qián’s xiàojì (modern collation notes) describe the manuscript line as comparable to the Tàipíng yuèfǔ KR4j0081 in organization but distinct in textual transmission: where the Tàipíng yuèfǔ is preserved through the well-known Yǐnhóng yí line, the Yuèfǔ xīnshēng survives only through one principal YuánMíng manuscript-line, with Lú’s modern collation supplying the rest.
Abstract
The Líyuán ànshì yuèfǔ xīnshēng is one of the principal Yuán-period working qǔ-anthologies; together with the Tàipíng yuèfǔ KR4j0081 and the Yángchūn báixuě, it constitutes a third major textual stream of Yuán sǎnqǔ — though smaller in scope (3 juǎn against 9). The composition window c. 1300–1330 is approximate, set by the Da-dū references in the surviving pieces and by the chronological reach of the named writers. The volume’s significance is mostly textual: many of its individual pieces are duplicates of Tàipíng yuèfǔ readings, but variants in tune-attribution, line-break, and rhyme-fall are sometimes earlier or more reliable. Lú Qián’s modern xiàojì (compiled in the 1930s for the Yǐnhóng yí jí) is the standard collation. The work is the basis for several pieces unique to this anthology in Sūi Shùsēn’s Quán Yuán sǎnqǔ (1964), and a major source for the Yuán qǔ-canon as preserved.
Translations and research
- Suí Shù-sēn 隋樹森, Quán Yuán sǎn-qǔ 全元散曲 (Zhōnghuá shū-jú, 1964) — uses Yuè-fǔ xīn-shēng as a major textual source.
- Sūn Kǎi-dì 孫楷第, Cāng-zhōu jí — relevant bibliographic studies.
- Wilt L. Idema and Stephen H. West, Chinese Theater 1100–1450: A Source Book.
Other points of interest
The work is unusual among Yuán qǔ anthologies in its proximity to actual performance: where the Tàipíng yuèfǔ is preserved as a literary anthology with explicit critical apparatus, the Yuèfǔ xīnshēng survives as a Líyuán working-book — the sort of compilation a yuè official would have used to test what qǔ the company could play. This makes it a small but precious window onto Yuán qǔ as practical performance.