Society For Ethnomusicology

Society for Ethnomusicology

The Music of China: A Short Historical Synopsis Incorporating the Results of Recent Musicological Investigations Author(s): Fritz A. Kuttner Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 8, No. 2 (May, 1964), pp. 121-127 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/849856 Accessed: 01/10/2009 13:04 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=illinois. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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THE MUSIC OF CHINA:

A SHORT HISTORICAL

SYNOPSIS INCORPORATING THE RESULTS OF RECENT MUSICOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS1 Fritz

A. Kuttner

is not the earliest in known antiquity, but hina's musical civilization it is the only one spanning more than 30 centuries of uninterrupted manifestations reach Its earliest recognizable tradition and development. into the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries B.C., according to recent intereviwhile the first documentary pretations by Oriental archeo-musicology, dence of a highly developed musical life can be placed in the tenth century tradition of pre-historic B.C.* There is, to be sure, a rich mythological as early China which reports the beginnings of the nation's music activities as 2700 or even 4000 B.C. However, many Chinese and Western authors have given too much credence to these famous legends which should be considered in the same light as other music myths of Asian antiquity all of which place the beginnings or "invention" of music into times immemorial. This does not mean that Chinese mythology must be discarded for all purposes of historical interpretation; many Asian legends contain a sediment of credible facts which can be used with caution as supporting eviof archeological dence for the interpretation findings or as guidance for Thus it seems certain, as the of working hypotheses. the establishment knowledge came from far legends state, that initial stimuli and theoretical most or even West Central Asia, migrating west, probably along the southern borders of the Gobi Desert, into the Yellow River bend in Honan Provand ince where the first great Chinese civilizations Shang I (1766-c.1400) It can also be assumed, in accord?) flourished.* Shang II (c.1400-c.1027 ance with mythology, that the first musical system, if any, used tuned bamboo pan-pipes and, possibly, primitive bamboo flutes during Shang I.* evidence of tuned cast bronze bells Shang II already offers incontrovertible with tuning processes applied both during, and after completion of the acAt roughly the same time, the first tuned lithophones (sets tual casting.* 1. Ed. note: Originally written for an encyclopedia, but not published, this paper is essentially a survey rather than a specialized study. It contains, however, mention of many original findings and the results of special research by the author, largely unpublished, and for this reason is presented in ETHNOMUSICOLOGY. The editor suggested that the author mark, with asterisks, those passages which are the results of his original research. Dr. Kuttner agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to provide these markings, which are presented here as an experiment in editorial procedure. We should like to state the belief that this article, although a survey of a large field, provides a view of Chinese music history quite different from that given in previous descriptions. 121

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of sonorous stones) made of limestone and similar substances appear near An-Yang, capital of the Shang II Dynasty, along with okarina-type clay instruments capable of emitting the pitches of a pentatonic (five-tone) oneoctave scale.* It has been argued that the most primitive lithophones and okarinas did already exist during Shang I; this argument is subject to doubt. During the ninth and eighth centuries, in the early period of the Chou Dynasty (c.1027 ? - 256), bell-casting and lithophone techniques developed to considerable sophistication, and jade or nephrite became favorite though costly materials for acoustical and musical experimentation.* The earliest near-complete lithophone sets excavated so far (at Lo-Yang in Honan) have been dated by this author somewhere near 900 B.C.; they represent a semitonic scale of 12 tones per octave (16 stones per set), tuned at incredible precision to the so-called "Pythagorean" scale which, in fact, was probably not known in its full compass in the Mediterranean orbit of Greek culture until 150 years after Pythagoras.* Since these sets also contain the interval of the major third in just (acoustically pure) intonation side by side with the wider "Pythagorean" interval, it is evident that the early Chou craftsmen had already considerable mathematical and acoustical knowledge.* It is quite possible that all or most of this scientific information came originally from Mesopotamia and/or Northern Iran where there is ample evidence of highly advanced bronze casting techniques around the middle of the second millenium B.C. Since bronze objects of highest technological and artistic perfection suddenly appear around 1300 to 1200 B.C. in An-Yang, seemingly out of no-where, some Orientalists believe that Persian bronze artisans must have arrived in Honan Province in the thirteenth century, and it is not unreasonable to assume that these craftsmen brought also superior mathematical and acoustical knowledge with them.* During the middle Chou period extensive collections of poems, to be sung to music, came into existence (Book of Odes), and the great Chinese system of philosophical and sociological thought on music began to take shape. Again, some part of this musico-philosophical system seems influenced by early West Asian thought and bears certain resemblances to aspects of Greek philosophy of the 6th to 4th centuries B.C. We can assume that some of these ideas originated in Mesopotamia, radiating from there eastward into India and China, westward into the Mediterranean, and that they were assimilated differently by either civilization. The bulk of documentary information on the music of the Chou deals with its ceremonial, ritual and ethical functions, but there are also reports on folk music and musical entertainments, such as archery contests and folk dances to musical accompaniments. No doubt folk song on all events of human life (love and courtship, childbirth, harvest and seasons, festive occasions, sickness and death, war, hunger, catastrophes, fishing and hunting, etc.) must have flourished in great variety. However, little of this material has been preserved in tradition. At the time of Confucius (551-479 B.C.) philosophical thought on music reached the proportions of a vast cosmological system, and the ritual and ceremonial framework of musical functions in society became rigidly established. By then the Chinese had learned to use spun silk for strings, and a variety of plucked string instruments, ranging from three to

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twenty-five strings, had entered the arsenal of musical resources, along with various percussion instruments and idiophones made of skin, wood and bronze. Tuned bells and lithophones continued their important existence in the performing ensembles, but so far we have no clear picture of the role wind instruments of bamboo or wood played in the first millenium B.C. Very early in their musical history the Chinese began to attach enormous importance to the precision and maintenance of standard performing pitches and relative scale pitches, whose "correctness" and immutability were believed to have far-reaching cosmological and social consequences. The invention and arduous development of tuned bells and sonorous stones, uniquely Chinese among the other musical cultures of the Orient, aimed at the creation of reliable and nearly imperishable pitch standards for all times to come. In fact, the Lo-Yang lithophones mentioned above have, to a considerable extent, preserved their pitches for over 2500 years.* Under these circumstances it is likely that wind instruments, with their uncertain and flexible intonation, may have been excluded from most ritual and ceremonial ensemble functions and limited to folk music or individual playing activities.* During the sixth century B.C. a considerable change in musical styles and techniques must have taken place, something comparable to a transition from "classical" to "romantic" music or to the emergence of the medieval "ars nova" in Europe. The Confucian Analects and other classics contain comments on this situation, with Confucius and other conservatives deploring the lawlessness, licentiousness, and contempt for tradition of the "new music," with warnings that Chinese culture is in grave danger. The opponents are no less outspoken in asserting that the classical tradition bores them or makes them fall asleep, while "modern music is exciting" and makes them want to sing and dance. It is healthy to remember that the perpetual controversy between "tradition" and "revolution" in music is at least 25 centuries old.* A great deal has been written about the catastrophic influence, on the development of arts and letters, of the proscription of books and musical instruments ordered in 213 B.C. by Ch'in Shih-huang-ti, the first true emWhen the Chou Dynasty colperor and great unifier of China's territories. lapsed in 256, the "nation" consisted of ten warring petty states whose reign had resulted in chaos and near-defenseless exposure to the "barbarian" tribes along the northern and western borders. With an iron fist Ch'in Shih-huang subdued all feudal states and lords, created the first absolute monarchy in China and laid the political and economic foundations for the future great dynasties of the Han, T'ang and Sung. The edict ordering the burning of books and musical instruments was a political measure to prevent certain traditions of literature, philosophy, the arts and rites from being ideologically exploited by the Confucian and other conservatives who tried, in an intellectual underground movement, to restore feudal government and to overthrow the monarchistic re-organization of the nation. Books were not indiscriminately destroyed, and many of them were deposited in a government library for study by selected scholars. The bad press Ch'in Shih-huang has had ever since, is only partly deserved and the political act, detestable as it was, had probably lesser consequences for the continuity of Chinese arts and letters than similar events in Western

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cultural history, e.g., Savanarola's mass destruction of art objects, manuin Florence in 1494, or the burning of books by scripts and instruments Jewish and other proscribed authors in Nazi Germany by Joseph Goebbels' storm troopers in 1933. Officially, the ban was repealed after twenty-two years in 191 B.C., but it could not have been really effective after the colThe lapse of the dynasty in 208-206, i.e., for only five or seven years. critics of the emperor usually forget about the colossal achievements of his reign, among them the unification of writing, weights and measurements, economic and legal administration, completion of the Great Wall from the piecemeal the beginnings of a few feudal states. Incidentally, treasuries contained a number of complex and ingenious musiemperor's cal automatons, one of them consisting of a group of twelve musicians, cast of bronze each 27 inches high, playing guitars and mouth organs with reed pipes; driven by mechanical pulleys and pneumatic devices, "they made music just like real musicians." This account shows the degree of music had reached at that time, and reflects favorably on sophistication the emperor's interest in things musical.* The Former and Later Han Dynasties (206 B.C. - 220 A.D.) added imto the organization of musical life, especially the esportant developments tablishment of a ministry of music (!) with a government-operated school of ceremonial music and dance, and the creation of no less than four official orchestras in the capital (rites, court ceremonial, official entertainment at court functions, military orchestras) which employed a total of 829 musicians and several hundred dancers. The instrumental arsenal became enriched by a few wood winds of the flute and double reed types and of fanciful and bizarre percussion instruparticularly by many varieties ments; all groups were trained and led by "music masters" (conductors !). Most remarkable, from the artistic point of view, were the famous Han bronze drums whose beautifully ornamented and engraved tops were thin metal diaphragms capable of producing several pitches, depending on the Sonorous carved jade plaques of transspot hit by the padded drumsticks.* cendent artistic beauty were created and helped to form the nation's sound ideal for the next two-thousand years. Jade sound is gently undulating in pitch and not unlike the sounds of the spoken Chinese tone language in which subtle pitch inflections alter the meaning of most word syllables in an otherwise unchanged "pronunciation."* Musical theory, accoustics and mathematics under the Han, continuing the distindeveloped significantly of the late Chou period in these fields. guished achievements Among other a Han scholar, King Fang, calculated a precise subdivision developments, of the octave into 60 micro-intervals, a feat that was raised to 360 subdivisions by another theorist around 400 A.D.; this second mathematical tour de force might be called an early, though impractical, of the precursor which became so important in Western music theory of equal temperament since the middle of the sixteenth century.* It seems that Han music had many aspects characteristic of a period of classicism, or of a kind of renaissance of Confucian and pre-Confucian from the end of the Later Han until ideals, while the next four centuries, the beginning of the T'ang Dynasty constituted an epoch of "expressionism," or "neo-romanticism." The era was torn by political strife, wars and rapid changes of dynastic powers, and the unrest of the times was reflected

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in the contents and approaches of musical creation.* This transformation of styles is vividly reflected in the countless figurines of female dancers and musicians which have come down to our times. The statuettes of the third and early fourth centuries are erect, stylized, unemotional and dignified, while the figures of the following two centuries are full of expressive movement with flying gowns, depicting a great variety of postures and sometimes almost violent motions of limbs and body. Although we know very little about the musical sound of that time, it is evident that it must have been very different from the music of the previous dynasties.* Dance became more important than ever before in all official and festive functions, and rhythm, as the form-giving principle of dance, assumed a governing role. In all musical civilizations, whenever the dance tends to push music into the secondary roles of accompaniment and entertainment, we can observe that refinement and inventiveness of musical creation begins to degenerate or to take refuge in formalism. This appears to have happened during the periods of the "Six Dynasties" (222-589 A.D.) and the Sui Dynasty (589-618). Furthermore, the hostility of Buddhist philosophy (very influential in these 400 years of China's spiritual life) against "sensualism" and "superficiality" in the arts, must have contributed to a temporary decline of creative music during that epoch, apart from influencing performance styles.* With the advent of the T'ang (618-907) and Sung (960-1279) Dynasties, the golden age of Chinese arts and letters arrived, producing a seemingly endless stream of great painters, poets, writers, and scholars. In due course, always somewhat later than the other arts, musical art reached a culmination, particularly in certain forms of highly sophisticated home and chamber music favoring small groups of 3 to 15 instruments. The large official orchestras of several hundred persons continued, of course, to take charge of all ritual, ceremonial and court functions. T'ang poetry began to form intricate metric and rhyme patterns which in turn influenced the intimate forms and contents of chamber music. The seven-stringed zither ch'in, since Confucius' time the favored instrument of the intellectual elite, experienced a renaissance of techniques and contemplative improvisation in cultured homes where it might be compared to the role the virginal and harpsichord played in Western civilization in the 16th-18th centuries. The Imperial Courts of the T'ang and Sung enlarged the training facilities for musicians and dancers by adding new state academies to those already in existence since the Han, and by increasing the total number of students to several thousand. While the large ceremonial orchestras and choral groups continued to function with 800 to 1,500 members, interest in small foreign orchestras and dancers began to mount. Already in late Chou times the courts had started to exchange performers with other nations and to import foreign groups, but from now on numerous small ensembles are permanently maintained in the capital, from Kashgar, India, Cambodia, Samarkand, Turkey, and from the "barbarian tribes" in the north and south of the Empire. The interest in foreign "primitive" music became very much the vogue, not unlike the trend we notice at present in Western countries. Although the scale and pitch structures of Chinese music underwent many changes during its history of three millenia, two essential features

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(1) the tone system is usually based on "Pythagoralways predominated: ean" intonation (a circle of 12 perfect fifths subdividing the octave into 12 (2) out of the total of 12 available tones only five are selected semitones); to build scales and modes. For varying periods seven-and even nine-tone scales were experimentally use of nonintroduced, making occasional microtonic but these modifications never survived Pythagorean, intervals, for long; the Chinese nation likes its five-tone system so much better that all other systems have failed to take hold. The same is true of repeated attempts to introduce harmony in its Western sense or polyphony into Chinese music; throughout the ages the nation's music has remained essentialof tone ly an art of monophonic melody, rhythm and delicate variations and undulations - an art in which harcolors, with subtle pitch inflections mony has little place and meaning. had By the end of the Sung Dynasty the arsenal of musical instruments reached vast proportions, with over 300 different types of construction and sound principles. If we add to these types the sub-categories of pitch and in size, we arrive at an estimated figure of known and used instruments excess of 2,000!* Quite a few of these were introduced by, and taken over, from foreign music civilizations, either used as they were or adapted to domestic preferences, while many others were always Chinese in origin. The art of making fine gongs, bells and cymbals has never been really mastered by other nations until recently, and modern symphony orchestras the world over still try to get their metal percussion from instruments China. * The bowed string instrument is one of China's step-children. The bow itself was first brought to China in the ninth century from Persian or Mongolian sources and became widely used under the YUan (Mongol) Dynasty the Chinese two-stringed violin erh-hu remained (1280-1368). Essentially, a primitive instrument restricted to use by street musicians, or to the of the Chinese theater and opera. Incidentsmall (4-7 persons) ensembles ally, the Chinese always used silk and (more recently) metal strings, rejecting cat or sheep gut as unclean and highly objectionable. Anyone who of gut string manufacture, has seen the messy and unappetizing processing will understand this Chinese idiosyncrasy.* Chinese music notation developed a variety of systems. The oldest of for the twelve semitone pitch names, may them, employing the characters have been in use already in Pre-Confucian times, while another method based on the names of the five scale degrees is of a later date, probably of early Han origin. Apart from these and other notations, several tablature for the four-stringed lute p'i-p'a and the zither ch'in, systems, especially played an important role. The most notable of these is the ch'in tablature because of its complexity; more than sixty different characters have been designed to indicate pitches, touches, tone colors, string numbers, fingerslides, etc. P'i-p'a and ch'in tablatures ing, duration of tone, ornaments, have been known since the late Chou period and were greatly refined under the Sung. In the nineteenth century a modern synthesis of Chinese five-degree notation and Western duration symbols developed which is still in general use.

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The earliest extant manuscript of Chinese music is dated as late as the early T'ang Dynasty and is, as yet, undeciphered. More numerous and decipherable specimens of music in notation or tablatures originate from the Sung Dynasty; thus, all attempts of musicological reconstruction or interpretation before c.1,000 A.D. are based on speculation and hypotheses, and the bulk of the enormous output and practice of Chinese music prior to that date is likely to remain in the realm of archeo-musicology.* The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) brought a magnificent culmination of musical and historical scholarship and saw the final developments of the classical Chinese opera, with its rich repertory of legendary and historical topics, a dramatic creation which began during the Yian period. The end of the Ch'ing Dynasty (1644-1911) witnessed the gradual but rather complete disintegration of China's musical tradition to an extent where the skills of instrumental performance and the great compositions of the past were virtually forgotten. When, in 1912, the imperial court theaters and orchestras disbanded upon the abdication of the last dynasty, the last highly trained artists were forced into inactivity, and whatever survived of the nation's music must be classified as simple, somewhat artless folk music and the cheapened mass entertainment of popularized opera, - the last remnants of the world's greatest musical civilization. The most musical nation in the history of mankind had become silent.* Into this untenable musical vacuum fell suddenly,since the beginning of the Republic (1912), the enormous impact of Western music, and a nation starved for great music avidly swallowed up whatever the West could offer. In less than one generation ten thousands of young Chinese began to study Western music with amazing success, understanding and talent, and soon every branch of musical activity was represented: remarkable virtuosity of instrumental and vocal performance, teachers, composers, conductors. Western orchestras consisting entirely of Chinese musicians, begen to develop and flourish. Music festivals and well-organized recital schedules became the order of the day in all regions that were in frequent contact with the Western world. Finally the first Chinese music critics of Western concert activities made their appearance in the daily press. Quite a few of these musicians qualified for permanent artistic residence in Western countries where they make a living and are respected by their Western colleagues.* It is impossible to predict how this trend may develop under the Communist regime; since 1949, the new government has greatly encouraged the further development of Western music, but also insisted upon reviving the ancient musical traditions, with strong emphasis on the indigenous folk arts and folk opera. The emergence of a new Chinese musical civilization, or the development of a complex synthesis of Sino-Western music, are both among the possibilities of the future.* The musical talent and potential of the Chinese nation has always been, and still is, enormous; they may easily be the most musical race on earth and could provide the West with great surprises in the future.* New York City