Yúshān sī chāo 魚山私鈔
Personal Anthology of Mt. Yú [Shōmyō] by 長惠 Chōe (撰)
About the work
A two-fascicle private anthology of shōmyō melodic-textual material from the Tendai-Ōhara gyo-san liturgical-music lineage, compiled by Chōe 長惠 長惠, an Ōhara Raigō-in shōmyō teacher of the Kamakura / Nanboku-chō period. The title — Gyo-san shi-shō, “Personal Anthology” — indicates that this is Chōe’s own working-copy of the principal shōmyō repertoire, with his own additions, annotations, and performance-instructions.
Abstract
The work is doctrinally and musicologically valuable as a practitioner’s text — Chōe was a working shōmyō performer and teacher, and his annotations preserve oral-tradition material not present in the more formal Ōhara compilations. Particular attention is given to: (1) performance practice — breath-control, melodic ornamentation, ensemble coordination; (2) textual variants — different recensions of the same hymn, with notes on which recension is preferred at which liturgical occasion; (3) the lineage transmission — Chōe traces each piece back through the Ōhara lineage to its origin, providing one of the principal documentary sources for the history of the gyo-san repertoire.
The work is especially important for the kōshiki-line shōmyō, which had become by the Kamakura-Nanboku-chō period the most prestigious branch of the repertoire. Chōe records the standard performance versions of the most-performed kōshiki (the Hō-on kōshiki KR6t0376, the Nijūgo zanmai-shiki KR6t0434, the Kannon kōshiki KR6t0439, etc.) with their full melodic notation.
Date. Chōe’s precise lifedates are not securely attested. The work is conventionally placed in the Kamakura / Nanboku-chō period, conservatively c. 1300–1400.
Structural Division
The CANWWW entry (div25.xml, T84N2713) records the work as a 2-fascicle treatise by Chōe with no internal toc sub-list and no related-text cross-references tabulated.
Translations and research
Critical edition: Taishō vol. 84. No English translation. Major studies: Imatomi Yū, Tendai shōmyō no kenkyū (Hōzōkan, 1991); Sawada Atsuko, Nihon shōmyō no kenkyū (Iwanami, 2009); Niels Guelberg, Buddhistische Zeremoniale (kōshiki) (Stuttgart, 1999).
Links
- CBETA online
- Author: 長惠 (Chōe)
- Companion: KR6t0423 (Gyo-san shōmyōshū), KR6t0425 (Gyo-san mokuroku)