Music, Cosmology, and the Politics of Harmony in Early China

Erica Fox Brindley

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781438443140, 9781438443133
• eBook ISBN: 9781438443157
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Chinese History

Winner of the 2013 Reading Committee Accolade for a Specialist Publication in the Humanities presented by the International Convention of Asia Scholars In early China, conceptions of music became important culturally and politically. This fascinating book examines a wide range of texts and discourse on music during this period (ca. 500–100 BCE) in light of the rise of religious, protoscientific beliefs on the intrinsic harmony of the cosmos. By tracking how music began to take on cosmic and religious significance, Erica Fox Brindley shows how music was used as a tool for such enterprises as state unification and cultural imperialism. She also outlines how musical discourse accompanied the growth of an explicit psychology of the emotions, served as a fundamental medium for spiritual attunement with the cosmos, and was thought to have utility and potency in medicine. While discussions of music in state ritual or as an aesthetic and cultural practice abound, this book is unique in linking music to religious belief and demonstrating its convergences with key religious, political, and intellectual transformations in early China.

PART ONE

Music and the State

CHAPTER ONE

Music in State Order and Cosmic Rulership

Afterwards, the House of Zhou deteriorated and became decadent; the rites collapsed and music went bad; the various feudal lords acted according to their whims and competed in the enjoyment of local practices. The tunes of Sang Jian on the upper banks of the Pu River,¹ as well as those from the states of Zheng, Wei, Song, and Zhao, filled the air and traveled far. Plugging and clogging up one's heart and ears, so that one forgot all sense of harmony and balance, throwing government into disorder, and causing harm to the people, these tunes caused extreme illness and docked years off of one's life.²

Music in early China was especially valued for its intimate connection to ritual and the state. As one of the Six Classics of the pre-imperial period, music was officially revered as a critical part of Central States and Zhou cultural identity.³ Even prior to the rise of the Six Classics as an intellectual genre and course of study, music in the Zhou period was linked to ritual and the royal court in a variety of ways. First, it constituted an integral part of ritual services to ancestors and other spirits, whether in the form of sacrificial rites, divination, or worship. Second, it could be expressed in the form of the Odes (詩),—a select musical repertoire of the Zhou royal court—that garnered value for its lyrical insights into the everyday life and moral, emotional strivings of aristocrats and, possibly, commoners.⁴ Third, it was considered to be one of the Six Arts in which a man of higher status in Zhou society would be educated.⁵ As a critical part of Zhou education and the rites, music developed and was cherished in conjunction with them, often promoted most publicly by Confucians (more precisely: the Ru) and other members of society invested in helping construct and maintain a sense of cultural heritage and social coherence.

The following brief summary of various ritual uses of music at court prior to the Warring States revolution in cosmological thought—ca. the fourth century BCE—should situate the reader within a context of public, and often political, musical performances that were part and parcel of Zhou court ritual. These public contexts provide the backdrop for most early Chinese discussions of music and the state. Audiences usually consisted of rulers, elites, and noblemen, rather than lower classes. As Ingrid Furniss has demonstrated in her recent book on instrumental arrangements in tombs, when Eastern Zhou ensembles of instruments appeared with bell and chime stone sets (often, in the central compartment of a tomb), this usually signified the use of music in formal ritual ceremonies.⁶ Wooden instruments, when they appeared without bells and chime stones, were generally separated from ritual vessels and placed in a side compartment. Such an arrangement seems to signify their use in warfare or more private forms of entertainment and chamber music.⁷

Since Shang and Zhou times, it had been a long-standing practice in ancient China to use music to conduct religious ceremonies to appease and glorify one's ancestors and heroes. Certain forms of Zhou music, such as the “Elegantiae” (ya 雅) and “Lauds” (song 頌),⁸ which later constituted parts of the Canon of Odes, were known to have been the musical standards at the Western Zhou court and were integral to various rituals involving human connection to the spirit world.⁹ Through ritual procedure and proper performance of the Odes, humans could establish ties with particular deities or ancestors. They could make requests, give thanks, celebrate victories and glorious powers, and honor an array of willful and cognizant deities. For instance, in the Canon of Odes, Mao version, Ode number 274 (“Mao 274,” for short), singers proclaim how they seek blessings from Zhou ancestors such as the illustrious King Wu, King Cheng, and King Kang, using the expressive potential of an imposing array of bells, drums, stone-chimes, and pipes.¹⁰ We see here that humans, with the help of music and other ritual behaviors, could link together the social and spiritual realms, communing and communicating in a lasting way with the spirit realm.

This same function for music can be observed in the Zhou yi (Book of Changes) under the hexagram for Yu 豫: “The ‘Commentary on Images’ states: ‘Thunder issuing forth and Earth being aroused. (These are the tri-grams that make up) Yu. The former kings thereby composed their music to honor virtue, presenting it grandly to Shangdi, the high god of the Shang and Zhou peoples, and matching it up with that for their oldest ancestor 象傳: 雷出地奮, 豫。先王以作樂崇德, 殷荐之上帝, 以配祖考.’”¹¹ In this hexagram passage, music was thought to have been an explicit creation of rulers to commemorate virtue and thereby please their various gods and ancestors. It was therefore a tool for ritual communion that likewise served the selfsame function as the sacrificial object presented to the spirits for their pleasure and appeasement.

The Zhou state also sanctioned official musical performances to promote harmony and continuity, not just with respect to the ancestral and spiritual realms but with respect to dynastic and cultural longevity as well. As Martin Kern states: “Its sacrificial hymns not only constitute the ritual situation and celebrate the core ideology of lineage continuity, they also, by their very linguistic structure, represent ritual coherence and continuity as such.”¹² Many of the Odes found in the Canon of Odes mention how music might be used to express social order as well as the power and prestige of the royal court. Mao 242 emphasizes the organization and ritual layout of musical performances prepared for the purpose of appeasing the dynastic ancestors. At the same time, it impresses upon its audience the majesty and organization of the Zhou ruling house:

虡業維樅, 賁鼓維鏞。於論鼓鍾! 於樂辟廱! 於論鼓鍾! 於樂辟廱! 鼉鼓逢逢, 矇瞍奏公。

On the upright posts and cross-beams with their spikes; Hang the big drums and large yong-bells. Oh, well-ranged are the drums and bells, And merry is the Moated Mound. Oh, well-ranged are the drums and bells! And merry is the Moated Mound. Bang, bang go the fish-skin drums; The sightless and the eyeless (musicians) ply their skill.¹³

This jubilant passage glorifies the ritual arrangement of King Wen's famed “Moated Mound,” named Bi Yong 辟廱. Since King Wen had set up a prosperous, continuous dynasty, it is fitting that his musical instruments would be properly arranged in ritual readiness to celebrate and express the glory of the Zhou social sphere. Not only does the name, Bi Yong, connote harmony, but the spatial layout of musical instruments signifies dynastic and far-reaching social order by pointing to an organized and impressive arrangement of resources and men.¹⁴

The commemorative tradition of dynastic musical performance continued in a similar vein during the Spring and Autumn (722–481 BCE) and Warring States (481–221 BCE) periods, even as more variegated stories of legendary sages and heroes began to emerge in the literature and lore of the period. In texts dating from the Warring States, we gain a sense of the state regularization and codification of certain dances and musical styles. Music gained meaning not only as a medium of specific spiritual and dynastic goals but as it became defined by stylistic repertoires with moral implications as well. In the “Canon of Emperor Shun,” a chapter of the Canon of Documents (Shu jing 書經) that likely dates from the later Warring States period, the author describes state music as a highly organized institution, requiring an official functionary, who is both specialized master as well as innovative sage-leader:

帝曰:「夔! 命汝典樂, 教冑子。直而溫, 寬而栗, 剛而無虐, 簡而無傲。詩言志, 歌永言, 聲依永, 律和聲。八音克諧, 無相奪倫, 神人以和。」夔曰:「於! 予擊石拊石, 百獸率舞。」

Emperor Shun says: “Kui, I command you to codify the music and instruct the noble sons in it…. Let them use poems to verbalize their intents; songs to chant their speech; sounds to support their chants, and pitch-standards to harmonize their sounds. The eight [instrumental] timbres in tune with one another, none usurping another's position—thus may humans join with the spirits in harmony.” Kui responded: “Yes, indeed! For when I strike the stones and tap the chimes, the hundred beasts are compelled to dance.”¹⁵

This intriguing passage highlights the various aspects of a royal musical performance, which, it states, spans a continuum from the recitation of poetry and speech to the harmonization of the eight instrumental timbres with each other, ultimately resulting in dancing among all humans and beasts. The overall effect is a harmonious and coordinated chorus of action that joins earthly beings with spirits. Indeed, such a performance could symbolize the state's ability to bring all beings together in organized, patterned harmony.

The role of the royal Music Master in the passage above is pivotal in enabling the entire ritual communion to take place. Kui, as commanded by Emperor Shun, is not only a teacher to the noble sons leading the performance. He is the mastermind who “codifies (dian 典),” or regulates and systematizes, musical ritual so that harmony and beneficial communication with the spirits might occur in a consistent fashion throughout the ages. This reference to the codification of music represents an attempt to give justification to what was already by the time of this writing an emergent cultural repertoire of music, including a vast array of song lyrics so admired by members of the aristocratic and shi classes, including Confucius and his followers. The reference points not just to ritual music, but to the phenomenon of officially sanctioned music that is the organized possession of the state, as well as to the official sage-bureaucrat, or the royal Music Master, who enables such music to be spiritually efficacious in the first place.

The Zuo zhuan depicts ritual contexts that reveal not only the various uses of music in society, but also its use as a tool for proper diplomatic communication. The Odes were a part of ritual performances sung at court not only to entertain and impress guests, but to convey from one state authority to another diplomatic intents and meanings in a poetic and thinly veiled manner. The following excerpt from Zuo zhuan 6.3.6 depicts how the ritualized interactions of two heads of state convey meaning. In it, the performance of an Ode clearly takes a prominent place alongside ceremonial behavior and speeches:

莊叔以公降、拜。曰:「小國受命於大國, 敢不慎儀? 君貺之以大禮, 何樂如之? 抑小國之樂, 大國之惠也。」晉侯降, 辭。登, 成拜。公賦《嘉樂》

Zhuangshu [Shusun Dechen; advisor to the young Duke Wen of Lu] allowed our lord to descend and bow to the Duke of Jin and say: “When [our] small state receives the Decree from [your] large state, can we afford not to pay heed to the rules of etiquette? You, my Sir, grace us with the great ritual; is there happiness greater than this?¹⁶ Oh, but it is the generosity of your great state that really makes our small state happy!”¹⁷ The Duke of Jin descended, declining to accept [the polite treatment by the Duke of Lu].¹⁸ Both then ascended the steps to the dais, bowed to each other, and sang the Ode “Jia Le [Superb Happiness].”¹⁹

The singing of this Ode, which confers blessings to a noble lord of upright conduct, helps consolidate the intent behind a series of ritualized interactions between the two dukes described above. The Ode extols a lord who is embraced by the common people, Son of Heaven, and Heaven alike. Such a lord is a model ruler who follows the rules and does not venture past his rank and role in society.²⁰ Not only does the meaning of the Ode normalize relations by highlighting the goal of fair play and ritual conformity, but the act of performing it between noblemen of different states serves the purpose of exposing one's certain, publicly acceptable desires and intentions in a conventionalized and predictable way. As a politico-religious Hymnal, the Odes offered a set and delimited form for expressing sentiment and intent—a rare commodity at the diplomatic level—so that a sense of trust between parties could be secured in a controlled fashion.

Through these select examples, we see that music, as a key element of state rituals in Zhou China, served as a vital tool in state government, interstate diplomacy, and the maintenance of court power and prestige. Musical performance and lyrics were valued for their role as ceremonial tools that helped facilitate interactions and establish trust between different political parties. Similarly, music served as an accompaniment to the ritual act of celebrating or transferring power and favor, and was performed at various religious sacrifices and rites as well. Given the aforementioned roles of music in state ritual, its meteoric rise as a form of its own that sometimes transcended the meaning and significance of ritual will seem surprising. Yet, as cosmologies of resonance became increasingly prominent in the political rhetoric and religious mindset of the day, music at court changed subtly from a celebratory, communicative ritual device to a means by which the state could verify its authenticity as legitimate heir to cosmic powers and processes. In its expanded capacity as a symbol for cosmic authority, music acquired new valences of meaning that had repercussions for how courts and their rulers should relate to it.

THE ROLE OF MUSIC IN ORDERING STATE AND COSMOS

Displacing older visions of spiritual ancestors and natural deities interacting with humans according to anthropomorphic types of interactions, a newer, more systematic cosmology sprang up sometime by the fourth century BCE.²¹ According to this new type of religious vision, the world was broken down...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• Introduction: Music and Cosmological Theory
• Part One: Music and the State
• Part Two: Music and the Individual
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Works Cited