Sui & Tang Dynasty Music

The ones which had a fairly great influence on later generations were the crooked-necked pipa and the bili, and the percussion instruments clappers, gongs and cymbals. As far as musical influences are concerned, the music of Koryo in the east, of the kingdoms of Qiuci, Shule and An in the west and of India in the south first flowed into northern China. The music of Qiuci mingled with that of the regions which are now Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, coming to be known as "Qin and Han music". The name changed to "Xiliang music" at the time of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and later was called simply "national music", as by that time it was regarded as the indigenous music of the area. This influx of musical influences from outside peoples resulted in the flourishing of nine or ten types of musical troupes at the time of the Sui and Tang dynasties (581-907), a phenomenon rarely seen in Chinese history.

Worthy of special mention is the production of musical scores. Extant records show that the writing down of musical scores began at an early period. The Book of Rites, which dates from about the second century BC, includes sets of symbols, called touhu and yanshe, guiding the playing of large and small drums at ceremonies; squares and circles represent the beats. It records that the states of Lu and Xue had different methods of drumming, so this system must have been handed down since the Spring and Autumn Period. The drum is the most ancient musical instrument, and, as it is comparatively easy to record drumbeats, it is easonable to suppose that drum scores were the first to be produced. The writing down of song tunes also started early.

There are records of such scores in library catalogues dating from the first century BC, one being titled, Seven Compilations of Zhou Songs from South of the Yellow River, and another, Seven Compilations of Melodies of Zhou Songs from South of the Yellow River. This latter volume doubtless contained the scores of the music. Unfortunately, these books have been lost, so we have no way of knowing what method was used to record the scores. The oldest musical score still extant is one for the qin. They use Chinese characters to represent the positions of the fingers of the right and left hands, and from this we can work out the music. Although this score was written in the Tang Dynasty, it originated in the State of Liang, one of the Southern Dynasties (the sixth century). The tune is called Stone Tablet Air . Youlan. It was originally a folksong, called A Trip to West of Gansu, but later was adapted for the singing of Cao Cao's Stone Tablet Lines, and so was called Stone Tablet Air. Later, the poem "Youlan" was added to it, giving it its present name. This work is in four sections, known as pai, which correspond to the original four stanzas of Stone Tablet Air. The tune expresses the pathos felt by ancient scholars.

Following several hundred years of mingling of the musical traditions of the different nationalities, the tranquillity of the Sui and Tang dynasties ushered in a period in which these influences were absorbed and digested. The Sui and Tang dynasties both had special court troupes which played the most influential schools of foreign music. There were seven under the Sui, later expanded to nine, and nine, and later ten under the Tang. In the former case, to the original seven were added troupes playing music from the Shule and Kang kingdoms; in the latter case, the Singing Troupe was added to the original nine. All these influences had been extant in Chinese music for some 100 years before they were officially recognized; they did not simply emerge when the troupes were set up. The music of one of the ten, Qingshang or Qing music, was a descendant of the music of the Han and Wei dynasties. Yan music, which was played at the beginning of banquets, was of a laudatory nature; yanhou, or libi music was played to wind up song-and-dance performances.

The other troupes, apart from those which played Xiliang music and Koryo music, which kept some traditional Han nationality musical instruments, such as the sheng, xiao and zheng, used bili, horizontal flutes, crooked-necked pipa and five-stringed pipa as their major instruments. They also used a wide variety of drums, and some added bronze cymbals. Of these typical foreign instruments, only the five-stringed pipa and the crooked-necked pipa failed to survive; the others, along with the growing popularity of the ten troupes, became the representative instruments of the new historical era. For instance, the pipa became the leading instrument during the Tang Dynasty, which produced some famous performers. At that time, four plectrums were used to play the pipa, while the other stringed instruments of the central parts of China, like the se, qin and zheng were plucked with the fingers; the Han pipa, the crooked-necked pipa and the five-stringed pipa were played with bows. The qin did not have bridges, while the se and the zheng had a bridge for each string, and the Han pipa, recumbent zither, crooked-necked pipa and five-stringed pipa had one bridge for all the strings. This clearly reflects the differences in two cultural traditions at that time.

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