Conference Agenda

Ming prince Zhu Zaiyu (1536–1611) was a mathematician, scientist, choreographer, and musician, perhaps best known in musical circles for developing the earliest mathematical formula for equal temperament. The full extent of his writings on music, however, is not well known today in the West nor in China. His Yue lü quanshu (樂律全書, “Rules of Music,” 1606) includes illustrations and descriptions of many musical instruments, particularly those that were used in Ming court ceremonies. My paper demonstrates how Zhu’s writings influenced illustrations and descriptions of instruments in Joseph-Marie Amiot’s (1718-93) manuscripts De la musique chinoise (ca. 1754) and Mémoire sur la musique des chinois, tant ançien que modernes (1776).

Amiot’s Mémoire is the earliest comprehensive study of Chinese music in any European language. In the introduction the author lists sixty-nine Chinese works that he consulted in the preparation of his book. In his discussions of Chinese music theory, Amiot cites Zhu more frequently than any other author. Many of his illustrations and descriptions of musical instruments, however, were clearly copied more or less directly from the Yue lü quanshu, but with no acknowledgement of their source. Noteworthy examples include the sheng (mouth organ) and the qin (seven-string zither).

Comparison of Zhu’s writings with Amiot’s two manuscripts reveals that the instruments used in Chinese court music changed little from the late Ming Dynasty to the mid-Qing. This was due in large part to the fact that the Qing emperors originally were Manchus, not Han Chinese. They adopted many traditional ceremonial practices of the Ming in an effort to validate their legitimacy with the Chinese people, the vast majority of whom were ethnically Han.

Chinese polymath Zhu Zaiyu 朱載堉 (1536 – 1611) is credited as the first person to calculate the correct formula for a twelve-tone, equal-tempered tuning system in the 1580s with his 81-row abacus. As a prolific writer and thinker, Zhu is best known to scholars for his work on music theory and mathematics. His writings on dance, however, are particularly innovative. He regards choreography and bodily movements as integral to ceremonial music, or liyue (禮樂). In order to revive the Confucian tradition of liyue, Zhu thoroughly documented dance notations and word-formation diagrams of choreography in his Yuelü quanshu《樂律全書》 [Comprehensive treatise on music and music theory].

This paper will focus on one reconstructed dance by Zhu Zaiyu and consider the implications for understanding the ontological meaning of dance and its instrumentality in the global seventeenth century. In Ming China, dance was an artistic, liturgical, and scientific manifestation of the human body. Under the Chinese ritual and music system (liyue), dance movements demarcate classes of people, symbolize seasons, and facilitate religious prayers. In our case study, World Peace (天下太平) dance will demonstrate how Chinese numerology was reflected in dance formation and gestures, thus elevating harmonious spirits during Confucianist rituals. In addition, each dance posture is closely tied up with a specific affect and corresponds to textual and liturgical references of the choreography. By exploring the relationship between movement, affect, and ritual in early modern Chinese dance, this paper broadens our understanding of dance in the global seventeenth century and opens new lines of inquiry for dance scholars.

Vocalists trained in Western conservatory style are familiar with the idea that phonology is relevant or even crucial in singing: their years of required diction classes often center on the anatomy of the oral tract and conversancy with International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). In this paper, I argue in the reverse direction: that singing is already a form of phonological analysis, both because it distorts words and because of the kind of listening practices it demands. Specifically, I draw on a series of arguments along these lines from Late Imperial (ca.1550–1911) Chinese Kunqu opera theory, a tradition that often blended music theory and linguistic thought (Hu 2019, 2021; Vedal 2022).

I first examine the Kunqu singing practice (attributed to Wei Liangfu, ca. 1522–73) of decomposing a word into three parts (dong=“do+o+ong”) and how this enhances and systematizes the inevitable distortions that singing makes to words (Li Mark 2019). I then turn to the description of this singing technique by Shen Chongsui (d.1645), who related it to the phonological notation fanqie, which represents words by two characters that give the word’s initial and final sounds (dong=“duan+zhong”). Finally, I show how Wang Dehui and Xu Yuancheng (fl.1851) took Shen’s claim that “Fanqie is the method of singing” and reversed it in their “Essay: Gongche [Musical Notation] is Fanqie.” I argue that their essay relies both on an appeal to the naturalness or inevitability of how words are broken apart by singing, and on an identification of phonological listening practices with musical ones.

In conclusion, I examine some recent scholarly analogues of this line of reasoning by briefly sketching some of the ways that linguists have made use of music in phonological research. Such work illustrates the continuing possibilities for conceptualizing singing as phonology, and for listening phonologically as a musical practice.