Northern-Sòng cí-master and the supreme musical theorist of the cí form (1057–1121); zì Měichéng 美成, hào Qīngzhēn jūshì 清真居士 (“Recluse of Pure Reality”); a man of Qiántáng 錢塘 (modern Hángzhōu). In the Yuánfēng period (early 1080s) he presented the Biàndū fù 汴都賦 — an extended fù on the Northern Sòng capital — and on its strength was summoned to be Tàixué zhèng 太學正 and ultimately Dàyuè zhèng 大樂正, head of the imperial Music Bureau, where he played a central role in Huīzōng’s Dàshèng yuè 大晟樂 reform: reorganizing the yànyuè 燕樂 tune-system and standardizing the metric patterns into which cí were composed. Under Huīzōng he rose to Huīyóugé dàizhì 徽猷閣待制; held governorships at Shùnchāng 順昌府 and Chǔzhōu 處州, where he died in Xuānhé 3 / 1121. The Sòng shǐ Wényuànzhuàn (vol. 444) notes him as personally somewhat dissolute, deeply musical, and the most refined of his generation in chángduǎnjù. His Piànyù cí / Qīngzhēn jí KR4j0015 preserves around 186 cí; the precision of his tonal-prosodic patterning (not merely píngzè but the four-way distinction píngshàngqùrù) made him the paradigm for the Southern-Sòng gélǜ 格律 school, and the model that Fāng Qiānlǐ 方千里 KR4j0019, Yáng Zémín, and Chén Yǔnpìng each “matched” character-by-character through entire collections. The principal critical biographies are by Lóng Yúshēng 龍榆生 and (in English) Stephen Owen, “Meaning the Words” (1994), and Kang-i Sun Chang’s Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry (1980).