Half Sound, Half Philosophy

Aesthetics, Politics, and History of China's Sound Art

Jing Wang

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781501374777
• eBook ISBN:
  9781501333491
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Chinese History

From the late 1990s until today, China's sound practice has been developing in an increasingly globalized socio-political-aesthetic milieu, receiving attentions and investments from the art world, music industry and cultural institutes, with nevertheless, its unique acoustic philosophy remaining silent. This book traces the history of sound practice from contemporary Chinese visual art back in the 1980s, to electronic music, which was introduced as a target of critique in the 1950s, to electronic instrument building fever in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and to the origins of both academic and nonacademic electronic and experimental music activities. This expansive tracing of sound in the arts resonates with another goal of this book, to understand sound and its artistic practice through notions informed by Chinese qi-cosmology and qi-philosophy, including notions of resonance, shanshui (mountains-waters), huanghu (elusiveness and evasiveness), and distributed monumentality and anti-monumentality. By turning back to deep history to learn about the meaning and function of sound and listening in ancient China, the book offers a refreshing understanding of the British sinologist Joseph Needham's statement that "Chinese acoustics is acoustics of qi." and expands existing conceptualization of sound art and contemporary music at large.

1

Sound, Resonance, the Philosophy of Qi

Sound has been interpreted as numbers (Pythagoras), vibration (Galileo), objects (Pierre Schaeffer), sonic flux (Cox 2018), waves (Helmreich 2015), and events (O’Callaghan 2007). These different (sometimes overlapping) ways of understanding sound suggest different lineages of theories, methodologies, and even worldviews. To an already rich collection of theoretical discussions of sound, I am going to propose another one, informed by Chinese qi-philosophy unfortunately undervalued in modern and contemporary times.

To think of sound through the philosophy of qi is to recontextualize sound studies in a worldview that emphasizes correlationality, resonance, process, and transformation. In this chapter, I trace back to ancient and premodern China to learn how sound is perceived, conceived, and practiced through qi-philosophy and qi-cosmology. Joseph Needham has done substantial research and discussion on the history of Chinese acoustics. His observation that Chinese accoustics is the acoustics of qi has been an inspiration for this project. While finding Needham’s discussion on Chinese acoustics original and substantial, I find it unsatisfying for a lack of thorough discussion of essential acoustic notions, which I believe are long-lasting and still influential in today’s sound practices. This is not to blame Needham since it has never been a project for him to pursue from the very beginning.

To begin, it is necessary to point out two commonly made mistakes in discussing qi. Almost unavoidably, in contemporary time, the notion of qi has been framed within a discourse of materialism or been reduced into the formula of matter-energy. As the American sinologist Benjamin Schwartz reminds, the notion of qi “embraces properties of psychic, emotional, spiritual, numinous, and even ‘mystical’” and hence neither Western definitions of “matter” and the physical which systematically exclude these properties from their definition nor the word “energy” used in the West to describe a force that relates to physical mass corresponds to qi (1985, 181). Another mistake is related to a critique in Chinese thinking in general in the confusion of subject and predicate in classical Chinese philosophical writing. That is, Chinese thinking never consolidates on the notion of a subject and does not distinguish the thing and its medium or the thing and its action. As the art historian John Hay points out, Chinese conceptual language is more precise in identifying functions rather than things (John Hay, 1985). For example, in the sentence by Song Dynasty scholar Zhang Zai we will be discussing later “gui-shen is the intuitive and intrinsic nature of qi,” gui-shen can be understood both as subject (ghosts-spirits) and actions (contraction and expansion). For some, this may be a defect in Chinese thinking, but it can also be a valuable resource to circumvent issues in another thinking system. As François Jullien has convincingly argued that there is no ontology in Chinese thinking in the sense that Chinese thinking does not concern much with questions of being but more with the ungraspable, the evasive, and allusive (Jullien 2018b).

In this chapter, instead of rehearsing Needham’s discussion on acoustics, I only focus on sections where he discusses sound and qi. I will begin with ancient Chinese acoustics based on Needham’s discovery and proceed with discussing how sound is understood through the philosophy of qi, particularly emphasizing the notion of resonance. The ancient Chinese distinguished sheng (sound)(声) from yin (notes)(音) and from yue (music)(乐). My focus is on sheng (sound) and its experience, but as Needham also noted, it is sometimes difficult to separate in classical texts the primarily acoustic works from those primarily musical (127).

Ancient Chinese Acoustics

In the opening of the discussion of Chinese acoustics in Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4: Physics and Physical Technology (1965), Joseph Needham, together with Kenneth Robinson, uses a story of resonance to demonstrate the general difference between the Chinese and European approaches. It was a story narrated in Chunqiu Fanlu (春秋繁露, The Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals) by the Western Han Dynasty (202 BC–9 BC) thinker Dong Zhushu (179 BC–104 BC), who Needham speaks highly of as “among the most scientific and philosophical minds of his age” (130).

Try tuning musical instruments such as the chhin [qin] or the se. The kung [gong] note or the shang note struck upon one lute will be answered by the kung or the shang notes from other stringed instruments. They sound by themselves. This is nothing miraculous, but the Five Notes being in relation: they are what they are according to the Numbers (whereby the world is constructed). (130)

For Needham, the story is exemplary in showing ancient Chinese thinking as correlative and the ancient Greek as analytic (128). It surprises Needham that Dong Zhongshu did not find the phenomenon of resonance bemused; “This is nothing miraculous.” It means for Needham that the seemingly mysterious phenomenon of resonance fits well into ancient Chinese organic worldview.

With this difference (correlative versus analytic) identified, Needham proceeds to propose his observation that Chinese acoustics is the acoustics of qi. It is worth confirming that Needham not only attends to classical writings by scholars but also stresses the value of the oral tradition of craftsmen (130). According to Needham, the earliest hint of sound being produced through qi appeared in Yue Ji (乐记, Record of Music, second and first centuries BC). He quotes:

The chhi [qi] of the earth ascends above; the chhi [qi]of Heaven descends from the height. The Yang and Yin come into contact; Heaven and Earth shake together. Their drumming is in the shock and rumble of thunder; their excited beating of wings is in wind and rain; their shifting round is in the four seasons; their warming is in the sun and moon. Thus the hundred species procreate and flourish. Thus it is that music is a bringing together of Heaven and Earth.”¹ (205)

Written in Western Han Dynasty, Yue Ji is still one of the most important texts of Chinese aesthetics. The above passage from Yue Ji establishes a direct relation between the heaven-earth and sound-music. In Yue Ji, music plays an essential role in regulating and maintaining social, political, and moral hierarchy for the ruling class. For example, sound, notes, and music are classified through hearing, “Music is connected to human relations and morality. Hence, beasts only know sound and do not know notes. The common people know the notes, but they do not know music. Only the noble man knows music.”² The cosmic relation between music and the heaven-earth precisely legitimizes music’s social, political, and moral functions.

Yue Ji is a chapter collected in one of the Confucian classics Li Ji (礼记, Book of Rites, 202 BC–9). Li (rites, ritual) (礼) is one of the most important concepts for Confucius. The Chinese philosopher Li Zehou identifies three characteristics of Li (2015/2018). First, li needs to be carried out in practice, specifically referring to “the behavior and etiquette of the individual in actual life,” including “actions, bearing, speech, and even appearance . . . to be carried in proper and regulated sequence” (108). Secondly, li requires normalization of all aspects of social life through rituals, including the way to treat guests or getting married. Even greeting, eating, walking, and leaving home has ritual regulations. The third and most important characteristic is li’s sanctity. Li Zehou explains,

Ritual comes from shamanism, and shamanism involves the divine. Because of this, the norms of “ritual regulations” are not simply laws among humans. The Zuozhuan connects the “ritual” enacted by humans with the principles and rightness of heaven and earth. They are given by heaven and earth to regulate human life. Thus violating ritual regulations is not merely transgressing customs, regulations, or laws of the human realm, but more severely offends the deities. That, of course, results in various calamities and punishments. . . . Thus, people’s “actions” (behavior, activities, demeanor, speech, appearance, and so forth) must accord with the norms of “ritual regulations” in order to be in harmony, accordance, and connection with the natural cosmos and the divine . . . the divine lies within this world, including within the “ritual regulations” of the human realm. Human ritual ceremony is the prescript of the divine. Humans and deities occupy a single world, and therefore “ritual edification” became China’s “religious teachings.” (112)

Music originates before li, but is later incorporated into li in the school of Confucianism. Music serves the same function as artificial objects known as li qi (礼器) which is to “nurture moral sensibility” and “to stabilise and restore the moral cosmology through ritual” (Yuk Hui, 109–10). Moreover, Yue Ji suggests that ritual is for the earth and music is for the heaven. “The sages make music in response to heaven, and frame rituals in response to earth. In the wisdom of completeness of their rituals and music, we see the directing power of heaven and earth.”³ In general, Yue Ji’s discussion of music fits into what the contemporary Chinese Confucian thinker Du Weiming calls anthropocosmic worldview of Confucianism, a vision that addresses the interplay between heaven’s creativity as expressed in the cosmological process and human’s creativity as embodied in heaven’s life-generating transformation (Tu 2010).

Since Yue Ji mainly discusses...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Sound, Resonance, the Philosophy of Qi
• 2 A Brief History of Sound in China’s Contemporary Art
• 3 A Brief History of Electronic and Experimental Music in China
• 4 Shanshui-Thought in Experimental Music Practices
• 5 In Praise of Strange Sounds of the Shamanistic
• 6 Ubiquitous Control: From Cosmic Bell, Loudspeakers to Immanent Humming
• Glossary of Terms
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright