Chinese Music Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

scan of opening pages and Introduction

- by Jonathan Stock
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- Ethnomusicology, China, Chinese Music, Musical Analysis

Écouter, WuYuan » , premier album de ce projet signé par le musicien Li Chao, c'est se plonger dans une expérience unique et singulière, c'est écouter les histoires de fantôme prendre vie, se laisser happer par une forme sombre et vaguement humaine. Pour Li Chao :« Les histoires sont juste une facette, ancienne et terrible. C'est ça Enmity. ». Au travers d'Enmity il met en musique les esprits malfaisants en « nombre infini et partout présent » décrit par Marcel Mauss : « Les uns sont des émanations, des âmes, des êtres qui hantent et qui doublent la nature et ses produits. Ce sont les démons de la montagne, du désert, de la forêt. Il est curieux qu'ils ne soient pas les agents les plus fréquents du cauchemar ; ce sont plutôt les esprits des plantes et des choses inanimées qui tiennent ce rôle. La plupart ont des aspects d'animaux, mais ce n'est ni nécessairement ni exclusivement à ces représentations qu'ils sont astreints. Les esprits des montagnes ont une seule jambe et figure de chèvres ou de chiens ; ils peuvent aussi, semble-t-il, revêtir par instants, comme s'ils étaient les simples opposés du loup-garou, des formes humaines, plus ou moins terribles, colossales, monstrueuses, fugaces, grotesques. Les esprits des eaux ont, naturellement, des formes serpentines ; ceux des arbres, alternativement, se distinguent de leurs habitats et se confondent avec eux. Les statues sont naturellement animées ; il en est de même d'autres choses qui n'ont même pas les aspects extérieurs de la vie, comme le balai, le bois à brûler, qui sont des démons. »

- by Spok William
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- Anthropology, Anthropology of Music, Chinese Studies, Ethnology

The author’s composition for string quartet, “…from thatched hut” (2011) was written in response to an exhibition of furniture designed by Khai Liew, and was premiered in the exhibition space. The designer’s Chinese heritage and the nature of his work, which fuses modern Western design principles with techniques and aesthetics of Ming dynasty furniture, influenced the form and content of the music. The author’s own long engagement with Chinese culture led to the composition of a seven-movement work that fused techniques of contemporary Western music and Chinese traditional music. The work also drew inspiration from Chinese philosophy and poetry, in particular the work of Li Bai and Du Fu. There are many Chinese composers who have assimilated Western techniques – it is standard practice in China, where students are taught Western composition. However, examples of Western composers drawing on Chinese musical elements are rare in comparison, while other Asian musical traditions – from Indonesia, Japan and India – have exerted widespread influence in the West. In this paper the author examines the challenges of a transcultural approach to composition, and considers questions of influence and authenticity.

- by Stephen Whittington
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- Musical Composition, Music Aesthetics, String Quartets, Chinese Music

Through 12 Chinese rock songs, this playlist “Chinese Rock: Mapping Modern China” tries to demonstrate different musical traditions & fashions and different social situations reflected across China geographically. We may be able to have a... more

- by Demi Wu
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- Popular Music, Ethnomusicology, Chinese Studies, Chinese Music

Song-writing competitions are only apart of 'chuangzuo' cultural form, in which youths seek after identity construction, and also a settlement for their enthusiasm in their engagement in 'chuangzuo'. It is undeniable that they are keen on the pursuit of music cultivation with the approach in their engagement. On the other hand, they manifest a language of 'transnational culture', which is believed to grow in many parts of the world.

- by Owwei Chow
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- Musical Composition, Popular Music Studies, Youth Studies, Popular Music

Jay Chou is undeniably the most successful star in East Asia. He has received accolades for being a singer, musician, songwriter, producer, actor and even director. His overwhelming popularity is not confined to the music industry as he has crossed over to the film industry and acted in eight national and international films. Chou’s stardom is unprecedented as no other stars have generated similar impact in the East Asia’s entertainment industry. Looking at his impressive achievements, one cannot help but ask, “Why is Chou so successful?” Organised in four parts, this paper aims to investigate the factors that propel Chou to stardom and establish him as the most iconic star in East Asia. Firstly, using Richard Dyer’s theory of star image, the relationship between Chou’s star image and his charisma is examined. This paper posits that Chou’s star image is a hybrid of “modern” and “traditional” qualities based on his representation of contemporary notion like “cool” and traditional aspects of Chinese values. Next, this paper proceeds to apply Homi Bhabha’s concept of hybridity to analyse how Chou has altered the landscape of East Asia’s music industry with his hybrid star image and distinctive “Chou Style” music. The term “Chou Style” is used to describe Chou’s unique brand of music that consists of an innovative hybrid of musical styles. Through a detailed analysis of his musical style, this paper focuses on how Chou has combined Western musical styles like R&B, rap and rock with Chinese musical styles and cultural themes to create a new genre of “China Wind” music. Thirdly, the commodification of Chou’s stardom is explored through a study of his product endorsements and music concerts. Extending David Marshall’s discussion on the interactions between celebrities and their capital formation, this paper explores how Chou’s stardom is commoditised into cultural and economic capital. Chou’s stardom facilitates the marketing of his star image, and through this process, his hybrid star image and music become commoditised. The last section of this paper investigates Chou’s crossover from music to film through an analysis of his significant films. Chou’s progression from a music to a film star is examined through an analysis of his appearances in his prominent films. The dynamics between Chou’s star image and music facilitates the development of his stardom based on a hybrid model of Chou as both a music and film star. Finally, this paper concludes by looking at the impact of Chou’s success on East Asia’s entertainment industry. Chou has revitalised the Chinese popular music industry with his “Chou Style” as his hybrid style of music has become a “formula” for success. Under Chou’s influence, hybridity has become a “formula” for generating new types of music in the Chinese popular music industry. Ultimately, Chou’s success in East Asia marks a new and exciting chapter in the Chinese music and film industry.

- by Wendy Ng
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- Popular Music Studies, Popular Music, Popular Culture, Hybridity
- by Patricius Coamceuvensis
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- Chinese Music

The attitude in how Western classical music is perceived has drastically changed since Mao was in power in China. So much so, that it has become a hub of classical music in the world. I chronicle some of the political and social changes... more

- by John O'Keefe
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- Musicology, Jewish Studies, Ethnomusicology, Chinese Studies

The article analyzes the current position of traditional Chinese song culture in the modern semiotic Chinese city space. The development of the cultural environment of Chinese city is characterized as a factor in achieving the singing unity of the Chinese nation. The role of the cultural environment in improving the moral, ethical and value orientations of all social groups at all age stages is identified. The spirituality of Chinese folk music is described in the context of nationally characteristic philosophical and aesthetic views and traditions of modern city life. The features of musical art in the traditional culture of China in the semiotic space of a modern city are revealed.

- by Zhang Yingli
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- Aesthetics, Urbanism, Music Aesthetics, History of Music Theory
- by Polina Lemenkova
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- Chinese Studies, Chinese Art, Chinese Language and Culture, Chinese Music
- by Xavier Bouvier
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- Chinese Music, History of Republican Period China, Cultural Diplomacy
- by Patricius Coamceuvensis
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- Chinese Music
- by Patricius Coamceuvensis
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- Chinese Music

Two chapters that I wrote for a booklet about the guqin, published by the British Museum in association with the London Youlan Qin Society and the Prince's Charities Foundation (China) as part of the Four Arts series, of which only this... more

- by Charles Tsua
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- Chinese Music, GuQin, four arts

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in China and the West saw a wave of skeptical approaches to metaphysics, ethics, and the physical sciences, including a related interest in "playing devil's advocate" for seemingly weak propositions. This paper analyzes two works of musical theater from these geographically remote traditions to argue that use of historically problematic romances to explore the relationship of ethics, emotion, and reason resulted in novel depictions of attachment emotions as neither purely selfless "gut reactions" nor calculating facades. Scenes depicting lovers' quarrels and morally flawed characters may paradoxically strike audiences as more authentically romantic because they dramatize an aspect of attachment emotions' functioning recently elucidated by cognitive science, namely that of "body budgeting" (allocation of energy resources by the brain). Monteverdi and Busenello's Coronation of Poppaea and Hóng Shēng's Palace of Lasting Life use contrastive poetic and musical styles to dramatize the "debate-like" quality inherent to such negotiations, further revealing a strong connection between the affective "ingredients" that make up socially mediated emotion states and the mechanisms by which music and prosody affect them.

- by Casey Schoenberger
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- Cognitive Psychology, Emotion, Ethnomusicology, Chinese Music

成玉磵《琴論》是研究宋代古琴美學與技巧最重要的資料之一。作者從演奏角度來論述古琴音樂，從而表現出他對當時古琴狀況有著深層之理解。《琴論》是為較早期而有系統地描述古琴技巧的文章之一，內容包括指法之講解和實際地把音樂理論應用於演奏風格上。以上古琴美學對後期之琴人有著深遠之影響，如徐上瀛《溪山琴況》。

- by Luca Pisano
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- Chinese Music, 古琴, GuQin
- by Michelle Loh and +1
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- Music, Singapore, Chinese Diaspora (Migration and Ethnicity), Chinese Music
- by Patricius Coamceuvensis
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- Chinese Music

Selected papers presented at the conference are published in the journal Music in Art XXXVIII/1-2 (2013)

- by Zdravko Blazekovic
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- Chinese Music, Iconography (Music), Music Archaeology, Music and Visual Arts

Pythagoras and Plato established the basic ideas of the occidental theory of “cosmic music”: the relations between intervals of music and numbers, the character of the scales and their influence in nature and society, the harmony of the planetary spheres, etc. Occidental philosophy and theology went back to these concepts, up to their influence in Johannes Kepler’s famous work “Harmonice mundi”. Non-western cultures developed ideas of “cosmic music”, too. Ancient China e.g. created a very complex system of relations between the different tones of the scale, elements of the calendar and social phenomena. According to the concepts of other people the celestial bodies sound while moving around, or the creation itself happened by sound. Some kinds of music instruments were meant to embody these ideas, to show the connections between music and cosmos, and to enable man to manipulate these relations in an active manner. The article presents an overview about some correlations between cosmos-related ideas and music across ancient cultures.

- by Barbara Rappenglueck
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- Archaeology, Acoustics, Music, Music History

Confucian practice, like spiritual disciplines in every other great cultural tradition, involves the integration of body, mind and spirit through the experience of self-submission and self-transcendence mediated by the refined rhythms of music, art and ritual. The Yueji (Record of Music) chapter of the Liji (Classic of Ritual), one of the only surviving ancient Chinese writings focusing on the topic of music and its relation with ritual, is a precious resource for seeing into precisely how the Confucian school came to regard music as an essential part of the art of government, going beyond its role in self-cultivation that had been adumbrated by Confucius. This study first examines the basic terminology of the text that forms the logical foundation for the rest of the exposition, and then goes on to examine some of the salient ideas that characterize the text’s overall vision of world-transformation through music. Finally, the study reflects on the points of congruity or potential congruity between the Yueji’s rather profound vision and certain revivalist phenomena in the music scene today, proposing that the latter could be enhanced and facilitated in crossing cultural boundaries with the aid of the Yueji’s philosophy of music. The core message is that the preservation and revival of pre-modern musical and music-dance traditions in both the West and the East is absolutely essential for healing the disintegrated soul of modern man and reconnecting it with the well-springs of spiritual renewal that remain embodied in our premodern cultural traditions.

- by Barry D Steben
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- Philosophy of Music, Chinese Music, Baroque Music, Renaissance music

Music festivals are becoming increasingly popular around the world. It is one of the few industries, in the age of digital music and music streaming, which is growing sustainable in the slump in music sales. The size and longevity of outdoor music festivals in China have developed remarkably over the past ten years as well, which have been used as an urban characteristic and a new industry model in some metropolises. However, some music festivals kept losing from beginning to end, and even some well-known festivals are cancelled behind the flourishing exterior of Chinese music festivals. This dissertation will explore the reason why some music festivals in China experienced difficulties and attempt demonstrate that some Chinese outdoor music festivals are likely to have potential bankruptcy crisis in the near future.

- by Zixuan Song
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- Festivals and music, Chinese Music, Music festivals, Music Festival Culture
- by Patricius Coamceuvensis
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- Chinese Music
- by Luqman Lee
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- Chinese Music, Malaysian Music, Huayue Tuan, Chinese Orchestra

傳統國樂合奏作品，已大量融會「多元文化音樂素材」於作品中，如古曲、民間音樂、戲曲音樂。但多數國樂合奏作品主要限於運用「漢族傳統音樂素材」或「中國少數民族音樂素材」創作，也就是「多元文化音樂素材」主要限於「大中華地區」。近年來，各樂團開始力邀作曲家創作「非漢族傳統音樂素材」的作品，使音樂會的曲風更廣，開拓「非大中華地區」風格的國樂曲目，展現出多元文化風格。可惜的是，「非大中華地區」的「多元文化音樂素材」與中國音樂特性相差甚遠，不如「漢族傳統音樂素材」或「中國少數民族音樂素材」與中國音樂擁有許多相同的音樂語彙，兩者融合性較高。因此，許多作品因完整度與可聽性不高，僅演出一次，無法達到作品的普及性。因此，對於此類型委約作品產生質疑聲浪四起。本文將以新加坡作曲家王辰威（1988-）《姊妹島》為例，此作品於2006年獲得新加坡作曲家獎，並於創作後十年間，不間斷於新加坡以及「大中華地區」演出。筆者將分析作曲家王辰威《姊妹島》如何能適當掌握每一種中國樂器的特性與聲響，並結合印尼甘美朗、馬來舞蹈、中東音樂之「多元文化音樂素材」，討論國樂合奏作品與「多元文化音樂素材」融合之可行性，並綜合討論「大中華地區」國樂團對於「多元文化」的概念與新加坡的不同。

- by Ming-yen Lee 李明晏
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- Composition (Music), Chinese Music, Chinese Orchestra

This dissertation aims to understand the significance of qin songs (songs accompanied on the qin, the seven-stringed zither) to their practitioners in late imperial China. The qin was known as an instrument for self-cultivation throughout Chinese history. However, our current knowledge of how qin music was used for self-cultivation purposes in premodern China is largely limited to the ideological aspect, awaiting to be supported or modified by investigations of specific historical practices. Looking into different qin practitioners’ works, activities, social connections, and life experiences, this dissertation shows how they made various use of qin song—the musical form and activities related to it—to achieve their goals of becoming the ideal self.
I argue that late imperial qin songs were often composed and edited for the purpose of communicating general moral principles and particular moral exemplarity to a larger community of the like-minded (zhiyin). As a result, activities related to these songs allowed the practitioners to extend their social influence on their way of pursuing sagehood. The social function of the songs challenges today’s widespread assumptions that both qin music and self-cultivation are primarily meditative and solitary.
I further argue that many qin songs emerged and evolved as a result of qin practitioners’ emphasis on the communicative power of music compared to mere words, which responded to the new changes and concerns during the late imperial period. Their continuous quest for the most effective means of moral communication may also help explain the eventual decline of qin song—as opposed to the purely instrumental form of qin music—by the eighteenth century, which awaits further studies.

- by Zeyuan Wu
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- Ming Dynasty, Chinese Music, Qing Dynasty (Ch'ing Dynasty), Confucianism

This dissertation examines what is commonly known as the Kangxi Emperor (r. 1661-1722)’s fourteen-tone temperament, a 1714 reform to Chinese musical tuning that effectively uses the familiar Pythagorean proportions to divide the octave into fourteen parts. Besides examining the ideological and cultural contexts of the tuning reform and correcting many longheld misconceptions, I argue that the reform largely resulted from an epistemological shift that rearticulated the empirical process of sounding and listening vis-à-vis the historicist studies of texts and records in producing musical knowledge. Besides examining it in the context of traditional Chinese scholarship, I shed particular light on the transregional and even global scale of this shift. I argue that the series of experiments and studies on which the fourteen-tone temperament was based took place within the specific political structures of the Qing Empire (1636-1912) as a conquest regime that subjugated China under its minority Manchu ruling class. I also show that the shift was itself inspired by a global exchange of musical knowledge, in which the concept of octave equivalence in Western music theory was misunderstood yet appropriated to advocate an empirical term in music theory and a reform to Chinese opera, both in turn harnessed for Qing-imperial ideological purposes. What is more, by comparing the
fourteen-tone temperament to roughly contemporary discourses on texts vs. sounds, writing vs.speech, and historicism vs. empiricism, both within the Qing Empire and beyond, I argue that the Qing’s reform to musical tuning, despite its apparent parochialism, potentially reflected a much broader transformation that took place on a global scale, or what I call the “Phonological Revolution.” In concluding this dissertation, I make a case for further examining how seemingly discrete rearticulations of the relation between historicism and empiricism across different discourses and praxes of language, music, writing, and songs may reveal a coeval and co-constitutive epistemological shift on a global scale in the early modern world.

The is a set of labels and photographs documenting the 2009 exhibition of Chinese musical instruments and iconography at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition was augmented by audio/visual presentations as well as lectures and... more

This chapter suggests that the musical concept of timbre can function as an ideational “trading zone,” or Unscharfer Begriff. It explores some diverse treatments of timbre in Western and in Chinese music performance practice, in composition, and in musicological scholarship. The chapter discusses a parallel between the respective epistemic function of “atmosphere” and of “timbre,” as vague concepts in music scholarship. A combination of phenomenal dimensions together, atmospherically, form a gateway to such experiential possibilities. That they can be loosely conceived of as a single conceptual entity, timbre, Klangfarbe or yinse, speaks to the epistemological productiveness and affective power of vagueness. The chapter argues that in the West the notion of timbre has served as a mid-level conceptual “placeholder,” in the absence of more concrete analyses of acoustics and perception. As such it has travelled between music, aesthetics, psychology, physiology, acoustics and studies of culture more generally.

- by Ruard Absaroka
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- Ethnomusicology, Auditory Culture, Sound studies, Vagueness

Since the early transformation of European music practice and theory in the cultural centers of Asia, Latin America, and Africa around 1900, it has become necessary for music history to be conceived globally – a challenge that musicology has hardly faced yet. This book discusses the effects of cultural globalization on processes of composition and distribution of art music in the 20th and 21st century. Christian Utz provides the foundations of a global music historiography, building on new models such as transnationalism, entangled histories, and reflexive globalization. The relationship between music and broader changes in society forms the central focus and is treated as a pivotal music-historical dynamic.

- by Christian Utz
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- Music History, Globalization, Multiple Modernities, Chinese Music

For almost a thousand years, Chinese scholars have debated the existence of a Classic of Music in pre-Qin times. Some say the text once existed but was later lost; others say it was incorporated into other works, or that it only existed as a collection of musical scores. Some say it never existed at all. Though Western scholars have tended to sidestep the issue, most have at least assumed that it was believed during Han that a music classic had once existed. Not only is there no convincing evidence that a music classic existed during the Warring States era, however, few if any in the Han believed that it had. Indeed, the first claims that a Classic of Music had once existed emerged only in the latter part of the Six Dynasties era. This article will introduce the debates that have animated scholars on this controversy, examine the evidence for the existence of a pre-Qin music classic, and identify when Chinese scholars came to believe that such a text had once existed. I will argue that the belief that a classic music text had previously been extant reflects early medieval misunderstandings of the role occupied by written texts in antiquity.

- by Luke Waring
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- Chinese Music, Classical Chinese literature, Early China, Han Dynasty

The paper theoretically reconstructs the Daoist conception of music and musical experience based on the writings ascribed to Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Xi Kang. It is shown that in the eyes of the Daoists the experience of musical harmony is ineffable and nonrepresentational, transcending the limits of the human realm and requiring the emptying of one's mind and its inner feelings. This absolute Harmony, sometimes referred to as the directly inaudible Great Sound, was treated as another name for Dao-the Way things truly and spontaneously are. For Laozi, the Great Sound exists in all sounds as their totality, while for Zhuangzi thus understood "Heavenly music" consists in an endless harmony of the different tones spontaneously produced by all beings in the universe. Developing these approaches, Xi Kang argues against attributing human emotions to music and finally for the "categorial" separation between heart-mind and its feelings, which are released when stimulated by music, and the absolute Great Harmony. Xi Kang's arguments were also targeted at the Confucian view of music as representing the feelings of the people, but his elaboration on the non-representational nature of harmony and the non-intentional character of musical experience shows that these polemics were rooted in a positive standpoint, which, just as in the case of Laozi and Zhuangzi, successfully meets the definition of mystical experience.

- by Dawid Rogacz
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- Chinese Philosophy, Zhuangzi, Daoism, Chinese Religions

This study uses the case of the Taipei Chinese Orchestra (Taibei shili guoyue tuan 臺北市立國樂團, hereafter TCO), the first professional Chinese orchestra in Taiwan to be fully sponsored by the Taiwanese government, to demonstrate how Taiwan’s Chinese orchestras developed Chinese orchestral music to distinguish themselves from other Chinese orchestras in China and in Sinophone regions in general. It suggests that the TCO, which initially served to showcase Taiwan’s cultural ties with China, gradually evolved to highlight the characteristics of “Taiwan guoyue” (台灣國樂). By “Taiwan guoyue,” I refer to the use of Chinese orchestral music as a deliberate nationalist tool to emphasize a Taiwanese identity as separate from a mainland Chinese one. I argue that Taiwanese composers and musicians created a distinction between “mainland guoyue” (外省國樂) and “Taiwan guoyue” to present Taiwanese musical identity and to display their musical 68 Ming-yen Lee characteristics differently from China and other Chinese orchestras in Sinophone regions. By commissioning and performing pieces that incorporate musical elements from the music of southern Hokkien (Minnan 閩南), Hakka (Kejia 客家), and Indigenous peoples (yuanzhumin 原住民), the TCO attempted to make Chinese orchestral music less mainland Chinese and more Taiwanese (Taiwan hua 台灣化) for its local and regional audience.

- by Ming-yen Lee 李明晏
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- Ethnomusicology, Taiwan Studies, Chinese Music, Chinese history (History)

As global capitalist consumerism pervades our methods and choices in this global information age, we need to review the pedagogy and information presented to students in the 21st century. As lamented by Tam and Nan (in Lau, 2010) and more optimistically observed in Burgin's (2017) field studies, guqin instruction as a traded commodity and regulated by modern institutions has all but replaced traditional magi-magister immersion education methods, and an increasingly standardized and 'mechanized' modern pedagogy removes all but a façade of a preserved tradition. This paper criticizes and diverges from this viewpoint that rather than the modern guqin 'industry' destroying tradition, the quality and content of this 'industry's' uniform production fall short to the demands and expectations of a personalized, pluralized digital modernity and its consumption habits, material and intellectual. This paper will attempt to:
1. Provide a critique of both the modern Chinese musical pedagogy in conservatory and commercial environments, as well as the imagination of the “traditional magi-magister” counterpoint as an extension of an Orientalist approach.
2. Provide observations and comparisons of qin learning patterns amongst students of Canadian and Chinese education background, based on teaching experiences in Toronto, Canada from 2005 to 2018, and
3. Provide suggestions towards building a China-centered, holistic approach to guqin curricula, particularly with more focus to integrating musicology and its historical development to its practical application in performance and pedagogy.

- by Juni Yeung
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- Music Education, Chinese Music, GuQin

'Real' and 'fake' in filmic representation is a long-standing dilemma. Reality is an age-old anthropological and philosophical debate characterized by the dialectical tension within things as they appear through our representation and what they 'really' are. Film as an audiovisual representation of the world is a textual " construct " in the same way as the written text; writing on musical cultures as well as filming musical cultures are both unavoidably form of " creative " treatment of a (musical) reality. The 'crisis of representation' of the 1970s in visual anthropology studies brought inevitably to redefine the boundaries between fictional and documentary film, encouraging new audiovisual languages, such as the docu-fiction or "ethno-fiction", as result of the hybridization of the documentary-style languages and the narrative conventions of fictional-theatrical film. This article offers an overview of different ways of representing traditional music-with a particular enphasis on documentary, fictional and docu-fiction films dealing with traditional music in China-through the use of a variety of cinematic languages, interweaving brief historical notes of the development of early Chinese cinema with different theoretical approaches expressed in visual anthropology and ethnomusicology.

- by Leonardo D'Amico
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- Ethnomusicology, Chinese Music, Documentary Filmmaking

This article draws on historical linguistic evidence, archeological finds, and written accounts of ancient practices to argue that, in the pre-Qin and Han periods of Chinese history, an important stratum of knowledge related to earthly energies, vibrations, pitch, tonality, music, memory, and recitation existed in conceptual parallel to systems of visual knowledge of heavenly bodies, light, color, and the written record. Masters of the former set of skills were frequently blind and entrusted with a distinct set of ritual and advisory functions, including ushering in the seasons, pronouncing on elements of the calendar, predicting military fortunes, and performing official policy admonishments. Of particular importance to this group of experts was the concept of "winds" or "airs" (fēng) and a closely related verb for "sing," "chant," or "remonstrate" (fĕng). The etymological relationship of these words, along with words for listening, smell, sounds, and fragrance, led to a conceptual blending whereby the "energy" (qi) of wise words and "fragrant" virtue could carry on "winds" of oral transmission to correct public morality and governance. This led to an etiological hierarchy, in some ways inverted by current standards, in which the purpose of studying pitch and tonality was not, first and foremost, analysis of music qua art, but rather the encoding, transmission, and influence of natural energies and social harmony.

- by Casey Schoenberger
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- Asian Studies, Music, Chinese Philosophy, Ethnomusicology

The Huainanzi text (淮南子 presented in 139 b.c.e. compiled by Liu An 劉安 179–122 b.c.e.), while defining itself as a political guide, is replete with references to Music (yue 樂) itself and music-related terms. While no chapter of the work's twenty-one chapters is specifically dedicated to the subject of music, no single chapter of it is without musical references. This gives rise to the question: Which functions could music possibly have in such an overtly political text? What this article will examine are the interactions between music and the social and political spheres in the Huainanzi. An analysis of the text's musical references reveals an intriguing, multidimensional attitude toward music, touching upon moral discourse, discourse on political power, cosmological perceptions, and much more. The article suggests a dual function of music in the text—on the one hand, music serves as a rhetorical tool for the authors of the Huain anzi, and on the other hand, it is a subject of discussion in its own right. For each of these functions of music, a model is proposed. The first model depicts the innovative musical conceptions of the Huainanzi; the second demonstrates how, through an analysis of musical references in the text, a model of sagely rulership is revealed. These models are illustrated and embodied in the human realm.

- by Avital Rom
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- Music, Chinese Music, Early China, Word and Music Studies
- by Patricius Coamceuvensis
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- Chinese Music

The earth moves with attitude in Paul Plimley’s left hand’s opening notes. It takes no nonsense from his right. Mei Han, Paul’s right hand zheng master, gives none. The immediate results are a flash breeze of recognition between the distant string cousins, followed by their settlings into their more distinctive voices (jazz-tinged piano, traditional zheng)...

- by Michael Heffley
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- Music, Improvisation, Ethnomusicology, Chinese Music
- by David W Hughes
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- Chinese Music, Japanese music history, Japanese traditional music, Japanese Music