Scholarship
Song Dynasty Music Research
In 1960, under the guidance of Professor Yang Liansheng of the Department of East Asian Languages and Professor John Ward of the Department of Music, Rulan Chao Pian received a PhD from Harvard University with her dissertation Musical sources of the Sung Dynasty (960-1279). It was completed at a time when overseas literature was scarce and academic resources in mainland China were unavailable for access.
Soon after, the book Sonq Dynasty Music Sources and Their Interpretations was published (1967), and the next year it won the Otto Kinkeldey Award, the largest monetary award offered by the American Musicological Society. Due to the influence of this award, the music of the Song Dynasty became better known to people in the western world and there was a small upsurge in the study of Song music in the west.
Professor Pian always tried to explain Chinese music from a musicological perspective rather than a purely historical one. She regarded Song music as an important musical phenomenon and gave a comprehensive interpretation of Song Dynasty music from the perspectives of theory, history, practice, technique, creation, and criticism. Her work has also been the main reference material for western Song music research. Due to the differing circumstances in the West at that time, it is methodologically different from the study of Song music in China.
Professor Pian’s dissertation and the resulting book, along with a description of Song Dynasty music in the 1699 Japanese edition Jirin kōki, comprise most of what we know about that music. In order to write her doctoral thesis, Rulan Chao Pian went to East Asia to do research in the 1950s. In Japan, she read the records of Song Dynasty singing and learning music in Jirin kōki and converted the Song Dynasty suzi notation in that book into staff notation. Here is Professor Pian’s comparison of the suzi notation of "Yuan cheng shuang ling" and "Yuan cheng shuang man" from the suzi notation in Jirin kōki. The staff notation of the same song appears in the work, so that today we can simply read the music in order to feel the music of 800 years ago.
Guqin Music Research
Contributed by Bell Yung.
Guqin, or qin, a seven string zither, is one of the most important musical instruments of Chinese culture and one of the quintessential embodiments of the spirit of Chinese literati. Among her works, Professor Pian also includes research on guqin music.
In her Autobiographical Sketches, Professor Pian wrote:
“From 1958 to 1959 with a grant from the Harvard-Yenching Institute I went to Japan for nine months. Part of my purpose was to look up the source materials on Chinese music for my thesis; these could only be found in certain Japanese libraries.
“Besides studying gagaku instruments, I had the chance to attend performances of the Bunraku puppet show, the Noh and the Kabuki dramatic shows. For my thesis I visited such institutions as the Seikado Library and the Library of the Imperial Household. At the Library of the Cabinet, among other things, I finally was able to actually see and even touch the 15th century copy of the 13th century Chinese encyclopedia, the Shilin Guangji, one of the Song dynasty musical sources that I was working on. By the end of March, I finally finished the first draft of my thesis.
“Considered from the point of view of historical source materials, including the large body of musical examples in notation, the qin is of course one of the oldest and most important musical instruments in China. However I never thought seriously about playing it until I saw an old instrument in a second-hand musical instrument shop in Japan which I purchased at a very low price. Later, a qin repair man in Hong Kong examined it and said it was at least three hundred years old.”
From then on, Professor Pian began her journey of guqin study. She started taking lessons on the qin in 1959 when she had a short stay in Taiwan.
When Professor Pian and I arrived in Hong Kong in September of 1978, we immediately paid a visit to qin master Tsar Teh-yun and asked if she could be our qin teacher. At age 73, Tsar did not easily take on students; she nevertheless readily accepted us without hesitation, no doubt in part because of Professor Pian’s reputation as a renowned scholar, as Yuen Ren Chao’s daughter, and her being the mentor to Cheung Sai-bung, one of Tsar’s favorite students. Thus began a memorable three months in which Professor Pian and I took joint lessons from Tsar laoshi (an honorific address of one’s teacher). Once a week, we journeyed from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in the New Territories to Tsar’s tiny apartment on Hong Kong Island, first taking a train, then a ferry, then walking several blocks through busy North Point streets.
During those three months when Professor Pian and I studied with Tsar laoshi together, we learned the short pieces for beginners, including Song of the guqin (古琴吟), Poetry of the Autumn Breeze (秋風詞), Moon over the Mountain Pass (關山月), Lamenting over the Past (概古引) and of course the famous Parting at Yangguan (陽關三疊), which is sung to the poem “Song of the City of Wei” by the Tang dynasty poet Wang Wei. In March of 2014, at the memorial for Professor Pian and her husband Theodore Pian, I played this piece to commemorate our taking qin lessons together decades ago and to bid farewell to her. Before playing, I read Wang Wei’s poem, as translated by Professor Pian:
In the city of Wei, the morning rain wets the soft dust;
At the guest house, green, green are the fresh hues of the willows.
I urge you to empty another cup of wine;
West of Yangguan there will be no more old friends.
I choked up before I finished reciting.
As early as the 1970s, Professor Pian used new video technology to record guqin music - notably for Lü Zhenyuan of Los Angeles in 1972, for Yao Bingyan of Shanghai in 1982, for Tsar Teh-yun of Hong Kong in 1983 and for Zhang Ziqian of Shanghai in 1984.
Professor Pian’s first research on qin is in Chapters 2 and 3 of her dissertation, In Chapter 2, she examines two of the earliest sources of notation for the qin: Songs of Whitestone the Taoist (白石道人歌曲) of 1202 and Comprehensive Record of the Forest of Affairs (事林廣記) of 1269. In Chapter 3, she explains in detail the qin notation from these two sources. In Chapter 4, she transcribes the notation from those two documents into Western staff notation.
In 1959, Professor Pian completed her dissertation; to celebrate, one of her advisors, Professor Yang Liansheng, painted an ink-brush work “Qin player and listener (琴人圖)”, to capture her spirit as a guqin player. The painting featured proudly on her wall for 50 years, until her passing.
Qinpu (琴譜, pronounced as chin-poo, often translated as Qin Handbook), is among the most important historical documents in qin history and tradition. These qinpu contain musical compositions in their own specialized notation, but are also often complemented with philosophical essays, practical guides to the playing of the qin, and explanations of the notational symbols. The earliest qinpu is a single composition in qin notation from the 6th century AD, preserved in Japan. Since the early 13th century, probably due to the wider use of printing, a large number of old qinpu have survived. Over 100 extant qinpu, from about 1200 to the mid-1900s, have been reprinted in a 30-volume Compendium of Qin Compositions (Qinqu Jicheng 琴曲集成 QQJC), published in 2010.
Professor Pian donated four qinpu to the library. From oldest to newest, they are:
“Two Qinpu in One” (琴譜合璧), published in 1609, consists of reprints of two older qinpu’s: “Surviving Sound from Remote Antiquity” (太古遺音) of 1511, and “Boya’s Deep Understanding” (伯牙心法), date unknown. This qinpu has only seventeen known existing copies. According to QQJC, the content of this qinpu is nearly identical to “True Transmission of the Authentic Qinpu” (真傳正宗琴譜) of 1598, which is reprinted in QQJC volume 7.
“Qin Notation from the Pavilion of Wind in the Pines” (松風閣琴譜) of 1677. QQJC’s introduction to this qinpu (in volume 12) reads: “This qinpu introduces new playing techniques and increases the number of symbols of the notation. It is among the most commonly circulating in the public at its time, and the only qinpu from the Qing dynasty to be included in The Complete Library of the Imperial Collection (四庫全書)… It focuses on those pieces that were not known widely at the time. One distinctive feature is that each composition is given its composer or the transmitter, so that the names of many late Ming and early Qing qin musicians are documented who otherwise may be lost to history.”
“Qinpu of Cherishing the Memory of Parents” (蓼怀堂琴譜) of 1702. This qinpu’s unusual name is a testimony to the compiler’s personal feelings for his mother. Yun Zhigao wrote in his preface that he was separated from his mother at age six. For over thirty years, he lived with much anguish for the loss, which he dealt with by playing the qin. After “the grey-haired mother and this forty-year-old orphan were finally re-united, my mother, knowing that I loved qin, often asked me to play a few pieces while she listened by my side. There was much joy.” This qinpu is rare for having a section called “Sources of some qin notational symbols” that singles out the origins of unusual notational symbols. QQJC says that such an explanation is rare among qinpu.
“Qinpu of the Five Knowing” (五知齋琴譜) of 1722. As QQJC describes it in volume 14: “What distinguishes this qinpu from others are that it codifies the notation symbols to make them consistent and more detailed; that each composition is followed by critical comments, and notes the school of playing that pieces belong to; and if there are changes to the notation, then which school of playing made these changes. Even on such details as the speed and emphasis of particular phrases or notes and their expressions, their sources are annotated. From these annotations one can see the artistic and aesthetic thoughts of the editors: that they stress the retention of the tradition, but even more so, care about innovation and creativity…” This qinpu has been used by the qin community during the Qing dynasty and later, and was reprinted many times. As a result, there exist many versions.
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