Non-Chinese connoisseurs
have long savored Chinese achievements in literature,
the visual arts, and speculative thought. For complex
reasons, there is no comparable recognition of Chinese
achievements in music. History is largely to blame for
this, as the social, political, and ideological tumult
of the past two centuries has forced change after change
on China at a dizzying rate, and much of traditional
culture has been swallowed up, forgotten, or
misunderstood in the process. Today there are many
top-grade musicians who play something called “Chinese
music” or “national/ethnic music”, but many fail to
realize just how modern and how Westernized a music this
is.
Turn back the clock a hundred years, and the musical
landscape of China appears vastly different. The
conservatory system and the sea of professional performing
ensembles—the backbone of contemporary Chinese music
practice—are largely absent. Instruments use unequal
temperament, have quiet silk strings (as opposed to the
metal strings that dominate today), and play heterophonic
rather than harmonized ensemble music; there are no
conductors, no professors, no orchestras modeled on Western
precedent, and no high-class Chinese intelligentsia
appreciating “Chinese music” in concert halls. In the
concert halls (that is, in colonial concessions) there is
Western classical music; indigenous Chinese music exists
mainly at the folk or popular level, and in the studies of
the literati. It is to this folk music and to literati
music that we must look for indigenous Chinese sources and
structures of musical expression. It is also this folk and
literati music that was found wanting by decades of music
reformers enamored of Western musical achievements.
Of the two, Chinese folk and popular music is marvelous,
varied, and interesting, and has made a strong contribution
to the contemporary “Chinese music” synthesis. Indeed,
“Chinese music” today can be seen largely as Chinese
folklore on Western steroids, and it has propelled the
careers of generations of professional musicians. Today
when people hear and learn about something called “Chinese
classical music”, it is usually the folkoric/Western
synthesis that gets the most airtime and attention. Despite
the strength and interest of this system, the specialist in
Western classical music, or in Carnatic music, or in
Ottoman music, or in any of the world’s other classical
traditions will probably find something wanting in the
result. Strip away the Western contributions (which
themselves are not always well-digested), and most “Chinese
music” seems unsystematic, unsubtle, and formally
crude—bearing no comparison with the vast powers of the
symphony, the intricate architecture of the
ragam-tanam-pallavi,
or the gripping exploration of taksim.
There is some delicate expression in this music, as in folk
music everywhere, but its range is rather muted, and little
attention is given to the abstract or the exploratory. The
guiding ideologies of much 20th-century Chinese music have
not helped in this regard: romanticism, populism, and
socialism have tended to encourage sentimentality at the
expense of abstraction. And when abstraction has been
sought, it is to the West that composers and performers
have turned.
Few professional musicians in China today have been guided
by the indigenous
classical tradition of China, which is
very real and very alive, but relatively marginalized and
seldom listened to. Chinese elite culture has been among
the world’s most sophisticated for thousands of years, and
it would be odd if there were no musical legacy to match
its well-known achievements in other areas. Indeed, from
earliest times Chinese philosophers and writers have been
deeply interested in music and its effects on the human
psyche and on nature itself; they have left enormous
volumes of theoretical and practical reflections on music
as well as accounts of musical life both inside and outside
their immediate social context. Archaeological excavations
have demonstrated that the technology of musical instrument
production was extremely advanced by the mid-1st millennium
BCE, as was state investment in orchestras and other music
professionals. In addition to ritual and entertainment
music for elite audiences, there existed a strong tradition
of using music for self-cultivation and refinement of
character. Chinese writers of all periods are grandiose in
their praise of music and lavish in their descriptions of
its possibilities for effecting social order and shaping
individual personality. Where then did all “this music” go?
It certainly seems a far cry from the opera and folk
instrumental traditions that now constitute most people’s
vision of Chinese music.
While elite music had a strong public character through the
1st millennium CE, the “court” tradition of performance
gradually weakened, until it barely existed apart from folk
music by the 19th century. The use of orchestras declined,
some instrument technologies were lost, and the old mammoth
compositional forms gradually disappeared. If indigenous
Chinese classical music had kept a more public face, and a
more vital performing tradition, it might have better
withstood the winds of Westernization. (Witness the
contrast with India here.) But by the 19th century, the
continuing traditions of musical classicism had long been
the near-exclusive domain of the literati class. While
attitudes varied among the literati, there was little
emphasis on “outreach” or even public performance of any
kind. This tradition emphasized solo over ensemble work,
and musical depth over communication—typically one was
expected to perform only for a few worthy friends or
acquaintances. Playing was mainly for self-cultivation,
meditation, and solitary exploration. This profoundly
private tradition nurtured phenomenally sophisticated
theory, composition, and playing techniques, but it has
been overwhelmingly distant from most Chinese people’s
musical lives. As such, the living tradition of Chinese
classical music is a kind of “hidden treasure” that is not
easily found unless one knows where to look.
While Chinese classical aesthetics can be expressed in any
musical idiom (vocal, instrumental, ensemble, etc.), the
literati have long prized the guqin
above all other
instruments, and the guqin
is held to express
classicism with unique focus, refinement, and scope.
Literati music is also commonly rendered on the end-blown
flute xiao,
on the bridged zither guzheng,
on the lute pipa,
and in certain vocal contexts; one could conceivably do
literati music on an electric guitar or bagpipes. But thus
far the guqin
has always retained
pride of place, partly for historical and partly for
musical reasons. The rest of this website will focus
exclusively on guqin
music, but
guqin
music can be taken
as normative for Chinese classical music—even moreso than
vocal music is normative for Indian classical
music.