Shíèr tiáozi shì 十二調子事
On the Twelve Modes [compiler unknown]
About the work
A single-fascicle treatise on the twelve melodic modes (十二調子 jūnichōshi) of the Japanese Buddhist shōmyō tradition. Anonymous; medieval (12th–14th c.). The work provides the theoretical reference for the mode-system in which the shōmyō repertoire is organized, and is one of the principal medieval Japanese contributions to the East Asian musical-modal theory.
Abstract
The twelve modes of medieval Japanese Buddhist music descend from the Tang-Chinese twelve-pitch-pipe system but are adapted for the specific melodic-rhythmic character of shōmyō performance. The treatise treats each mode in turn: its principal note, its secondary notes, its characteristic intervallic structure, its standard liturgical-occasion association, and the standard pieces in the repertoire that exemplify it.
The mode-system is structurally analogous to the medieval European church modes (Dorian, Phrygian, etc.) — both are systems of melodic organization that mediated between a tonal-pitch system and a repertoire of liturgical pieces. The Japanese shōmyō modes have been studied comparatively against the European modes by mid-20th-c. ethnomusicologists (Curt Sachs, Eta Harich-Schneider) as one of the principal non-Western parallels to the Western modal tradition.
The treatise is musicologically essential for understanding the theoretical structure of the shōmyō repertoire and is the principal medieval Japanese source for the jūnichōshi mode-theory.
Date. Anonymous compilation. Conservatively c. 1200–1400 on the basis of textual style and vocabulary.
Structural Division
The CANWWW entry (div25.xml, T84N2719) records the work as a single-fascicle anonymous text 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); Eta Harich-Schneider, A History of Japanese Music (Oxford UP, 1973), ch. on shōmyō; Steven G. Nelson, “Court and Religious Music in Heian Japan,” in The Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 2 (CUP, 1999).
Links
- CBETA online
- Companion: KR6t0423–KR6t0432 (Ōhara shōmyō corpus), KR6t0427 (Raigen, Onritsu shōkeshū)