Society for Ethnomusicology

The Music of China: A Short Historical Synopsis Incorporating the Results of Recent
Musicological Investigations
Author(s): Fritz A. Kuttner
Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 8, No. 2 (May, 1964), pp. 121-127
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/849856
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 THE MUSIC OF CHINA: A SHORT HISTORICAL
SYNOPSIS INCORPORATING THE RESULTS OF
RECENT MUSICOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS1
Fritz A. Kuttner

hina's musical civilization is not the earliest in known antiquity, but

it is the only one spanning more than 30 centuries of uninterrupted
tradition and development. Its earliest recognizable manifestations reach
into the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries B.C., according to recent inter-
pretations by Oriental archeo-musicology, while the first documentary evi-
dence of a highly developed musical life can be placed in the tenth century
B.C.* There is, to be sure, a rich mythological tradition of pre-historic
China which reports the beginnings of the nation's music activities as early
as 2700 or even 4000 B.C. However, many Chinese and Western authors
have given too much credence to these famous legends which should be
considered in the same light as other music myths of Asian antiquity all of
which place the beginnings or "invention" of music into times immemorial.
This does not mean that Chinese mythology must be discarded for all
purposes of historical interpretation; many Asian legends contain a sedi-
ment of credible facts which can be used with caution as supporting evi-
dence for the interpretation of archeological findings or as guidance for
the establishment of working hypotheses. Thus it seems certain, as the
legends state, that initial stimuli and theoretical knowledge came from far
west, Central or even West Asia, migrating most probably along the south-
ern borders of the Gobi Desert, into the Yellow River bend in Honan Prov-
ince where the first great Chinese civilizations Shang I (1766-c.1400) and
Shang II (c.1400-c.1027 ?) flourished.* It can also be assumed, in accord-
ance with mythology, that the first musical system, if any, used tuned bam-
boo pan-pipes and, possibly, primitive bamboo flutes during Shang I.*
Shang II already offers incontrovertible evidence of tuned cast bronze bells
with tuning processes applied both during, and after completion of the ac-
tual casting.* At roughly the same time, the first tuned lithophones (sets

1. Ed. note: Originally written for an encyclopedia, but not published, this pa-
per is essentially a survey rather than a specialized study. It contains, however,
mention of many original findings and the results of special research by the author,
largely unpublished, and for this reason is presented in ETHNOMUSICOLOGY. The
editor suggested that the author mark, with asterisks, those passages which are the
results of his original research. Dr. Kuttner agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to pro-
vide these markings, which are presented here as an experiment in editorial pro-
cedure. We should like to state the belief that this article, although a survey of a
large field, provides a view of Chinese music history quite different from that given
in previous descriptions.
121
122 KUTTNER: THE MUSIC OF CHINA

of sonorous stones) made of limestone and similar substances appear near

An-Yang, capital of the Shang II Dynasty, along with okarina-type clay in-
struments capable of emitting the pitches of a pentatonic (five-tone) one-
octave scale.* It has been argued that the most primitive lithophones and
okarinas did already exist during Shang I; this argument is subject to
doubt.
During the ninth and eighth centuries, in the early period of the Chou
Dynasty (c.1027 ? - 256), bell-casting and lithophone techniques developed
to considerable sophistication, and jade or nephrite became favorite though
costly materials for acoustical and musical experimentation.* The earli-
est near-complete lithophone sets excavated so far (at Lo-Yang in Honan)
have been dated by this author somewhere near 900 B.C.; they represent a
semitonic scale of 12 tones per octave (16 stones per set), tuned at incred-
ible precision to the so-called "Pythagorean" scale which, in fact, was
probably not known in its full compass in the Mediterranean orbit of Greek
culture until 150 years after Pythagoras.* Since these sets also contain the
interval of the major third in just (acoustically pure) intonation side by side
with the wider "Pythagorean" interval, it is evident that the early Chou
craftsmen had already considerable mathematical and acoustical knowl-
edge.* It is quite possible that all or most of this scientific information
came originally from Mesopotamia and/or Northern Iran where there is
ample evidence of highly advanced bronze casting techniques around the
middle of the second millenium B.C. Since bronze objects of highest tech-
nological and artistic perfection suddenly appear around 1300 to 1200 B.C.
in An-Yang, seemingly out of no-where, some Orientalists believe that
Persian bronze artisans must have arrived in Honan Province in the thir-
teenth century, and it is not unreasonable to assume that these craftsmen
brought also superior mathematical and acoustical knowledge with them.*
During the middle Chou period extensive collections of poems, to be
sung to music, came into existence (Book of Odes), and the great Chinese
system of philosophical and sociological thought on music began to take
shape. Again, some part of this musico-philosophical system seems influ-
enced by early West Asian thought and bears certain resemblances to as-
pects of Greek philosophy of the 6th to 4th centuries B.C. We can assume
that some of these ideas originated in Mesopotamia, radiating from there
eastward into India and China, westward into the Mediterranean, and that
they were assimilated differently by either civilization.
The bulk of documentary information on the music of the Chou deals
with its ceremonial, ritual and ethical functions, but there are also reports
on folk music and musical entertainments, such as archery contests and
folk dances to musical accompaniments. No doubt folk song on all events
of human life (love and courtship, childbirth, harvest and seasons, festive
occasions, sickness and death, war, hunger, catastrophes, fishing and hunt-
ing, etc.) must have flourished in great variety. However, little of this
material has been preserved in tradition.
At the time of Confucius (551-479 B.C.) philosophical thought on music
reached the proportions of a vast cosmological system, and the ritual and
ceremonial framework of musical functions in society became rigidly es-
tablished. By then the Chinese had learned to use spun silk for strings,
and a variety of plucked string instruments, ranging from three to
 KUTTNER: THE MUSIC OF CHINA 123

twenty-five strings, had entered the arsenal of musical resources, along

with various percussion instruments and idiophones made of skin, wood
and bronze. Tuned bells and lithophones continued their important exis-
tence in the performing ensembles, but so far we have no clear picture of
the role wind instruments of bamboo or wood played in the first millenium
B.C. Very early in their musical history the Chinese began to attach enor-
mous importance to the precision and maintenance of standard performing
pitches and relative scale pitches, whose "correctness" and immutability
were believed to have far-reaching cosmological and social consequences.
The invention and arduous development of tuned bells and sonorous stones,
uniquely Chinese among the other musical cultures of the Orient, aimed at
the creation of reliable and nearly imperishable pitch standards for all
times to come. In fact, the Lo-Yang lithophones mentioned above have, to
a considerable extent, preserved their pitches for over 2500 years.* Under
these circumstances it is likely that wind instruments, with their uncertain
and flexible intonation, may have been excluded from most ritual and cer-
emonial ensemble functions and limited to folk music or individual playing
activities.*
During the sixth century B.C. a considerable change in musical styles
and techniques must have taken place, something comparable to a transi-
tion from "classical" to "romantic" music or to the emergence of the med-
ieval "ars nova" in Europe. The Confucian Analects and other classics
contain comments on this situation, with Confucius and other conservatives
deploring the lawlessness, licentiousness, and contempt for tradition of the
"new music," with warnings that Chinese culture is in grave danger. The
opponents are no less outspoken in asserting that the classical tradition
bores them or makes them fall asleep, while "modern music is exciting"
and makes them want to sing and dance. It is healthy to remember that the
perpetual controversy between "tradition" and "revolution" in music is at
least 25 centuries old.*
A great deal has been written about the catastrophic influence, on the
development of arts and letters, of the proscription of books and musical
instruments ordered in 213 B.C. by Ch'in Shih-huang-ti, the first true em-
peror and great unifier of China's territories. When the Chou Dynasty col-
lapsed in 256, the "nation" consisted of ten warring petty states whose
reign had resulted in chaos and near-defenseless exposure to the "barbar-
ian" tribes along the northern and western borders. With an iron fist Ch'in
Shih-huang subdued all feudal states and lords, created the first absolute
monarchy in China and laid the political and economic foundations for the
future great dynasties of the Han, T'ang and Sung. The edict ordering the
burning of books and musical instruments was a political measure to pre-
vent certain traditions of literature, philosophy, the arts and rites from
being ideologically exploited by the Confucian and other conservatives who
tried, in an intellectual underground movement, to restore feudal govern-
ment and to overthrow the monarchistic re-organization of the nation.
Books were not indiscriminately destroyed, and many of them were de-
posited in a government library for study by selected scholars. The bad
press Ch'in Shih-huang has had ever since, is only partly deserved and the
political act, detestable as it was, had probably lesser consequences for the
continuity of Chinese arts and letters than similar events in Western
124 KUTTNER: THE MUSIC OF CHINA

cultural history, e.g., Savanarola's mass destruction of art objects, manu-

scripts and instruments in Florence in 1494, or the burning of books by
Jewish and other proscribed authors in Nazi Germany by Joseph Goebbels'
storm troopers in 1933. Officially, the ban was repealed after twenty-two
years in 191 B.C., but it could not have been really effective after the col-
lapse of the dynasty in 208-206, i.e., for only five or seven years. The
critics of the emperor usually forget about the colossal achievements of
his reign, among them the unification of writing, weights and measure-
ments, economic and legal administration, completion of the Great Wall
from the piecemeal beginnings of a few feudal states. Incidentally, the
emperor's treasuries contained a number of complex and ingenious musi-
cal automatons, one of them consisting of a group of twelve musicians,
cast of bronze each 27 inches high, playing guitars and mouth organs with
reed pipes; driven by mechanical pulleys and pneumatic devices, "they
made music just like real musicians." This account shows the degree of
sophistication music had reached at that time, and reflects favorably on
the emperor's interest in things musical.*
The Former and Later Han Dynasties (206 B.C. - 220 A.D.) added im-
portant developments to the organization of musical life, especially the es-
tablishment of a ministry of music (!) with a government-operated school
of ceremonial music and dance, and the creation of no less than four offi-
cial orchestras in the capital (rites, court ceremonial, official entertain-
ment at court functions, military orchestras) which employed a total of
829 musicians and several hundred dancers. The instrumental arsenal be-
came enriched by a few wood winds of the flute and double reed types and
particularly by many varieties of fanciful and bizarre percussion instru-
ments; all groups were trained and led by "music masters" (conductors !).
Most remarkable, from the artistic point of view, were the famous Han
bronze drums whose beautifully ornamented and engraved tops were thin
metal diaphragms capable of producing several pitches, depending on the
spot hit by the padded drumsticks.* Sonorous carved jade plaques of trans-
cendent artistic beauty were created and helped to form the nation's sound
ideal for the next two-thousand years. Jade sound is gently undulating in
pitch and not unlike the sounds of the spoken Chinese tone language in which
subtle pitch inflections alter the meaning of most word syllables in an
otherwise unchanged "pronunciation."* Musical theory, accoustics and
mathematics developed significantly under the Han, continuing the distin-
guished achievements of the late Chou period in these fields. Among other
developments, a Han scholar, King Fang, calculated a precise subdivision
of the octave into 60 micro-intervals, a feat that was raised to 360 subdi-
visions by another theorist around 400 A.D.; this second mathematical tour
de force might be called an early, though impractical, precursor of the
theory of equal temperament which became so important in Western music
since the middle of the sixteenth century.*
It seems that Han music had many aspects characteristic of a period
of classicism, or of a kind of renaissance of Confucian and pre-Confucian
ideals, while the next four centuries, from the end of the Later Han until
the beginning of the T'ang Dynasty constituted an epoch of "expressionism,"
or "neo-romanticism." The era was torn by political strife, wars and
rapid changes of dynastic powers, and the unrest of the times was reflected
 KUTTNER: THE MUSIC OF CHINA 125

in the contents and approaches of musical creation.* This transformation

of styles is vividly reflected in the countless figurines of female dancers
and musicians which have come down to our times. The statuettes of the
third and early fourth centuries are erect, stylized, unemotional and dig-
nified, while the figures of the following two centuries are full of expres-
sive movement with flying gowns, depicting a great variety of postures and
sometimes almost violent motions of limbs and body. Although we know
very little about the musical sound of that time, it is evident that it must
have been very different from the music of the previous dynasties.* Dance
became more important than ever before in all official and festive func-
tions, and rhythm, as the form-giving principle of dance, assumed a gov-
erning role. In all musical civilizations, whenever the dance tends to push
music into the secondary roles of accompaniment and entertainment, we
can observe that refinement and inventiveness of musical creation begins
to degenerate or to take refuge in formalism. This appears to have hap-
pened during the periods of the "Six Dynasties" (222-589 A.D.) and the Sui
Dynasty (589-618). Furthermore, the hostility of Buddhist philosophy (very
influential in these 400 years of China's spiritual life) against "sensualism"
and "superficiality" in the arts, must have contributed to a temporary de-
cline of creative music during that epoch, apart from influencing perform-
ance styles.*
With the advent of the T'ang (618-907) and Sung (960-1279) Dynasties,
the golden age of Chinese arts and letters arrived, producing a seemingly
endless stream of great painters, poets, writers, and scholars. In due
course, always somewhat later than the other arts, musical art reached a
culmination, particularly in certain forms of highly sophisticated home and
chamber music favoring small groups of 3 to 15 instruments. The large
official orchestras of several hundred persons continued, of course, to take
charge of all ritual, ceremonial and court functions.
T'ang poetry began to form intricate metric and rhyme patterns which
in turn influenced the intimate forms and contents of chamber music. The
seven-stringed zither ch'in, since Confucius' time the favored instrument
of the intellectual elite, experienced a renaissance of techniques and con-
templative improvisation in cultured homes where it might be compared to
the role the virginal and harpsichord played in Western civilization in the
16th-18th centuries. The Imperial Courts of the T'ang and Sung enlarged
the training facilities for musicians and dancers by adding new state acad-
emies to those already in existence since the Han, and by increasing the
total number of students to several thousand. While the large ceremonial
orchestras and choral groups continued to function with 800 to 1,500 mem-
bers, interest in small foreign orchestras and dancers began to mount. Al-
ready in late Chou times the courts had started to exchange performers
with other nations and to import foreign groups, but from now on numerous
small ensembles are permanently maintained in the capital, from Kashgar,
India, Cambodia, Samarkand, Turkey, and from the "barbarian tribes" in
the north and south of the Empire. The interest in foreign "primitive"
music became very much the vogue, not unlike the trend we notice at pres-
ent in Western countries.
Although the scale and pitch structures of Chinese music underwent
many changes during its history of three millenia, two essential features
126 KUTTNER: THE MUSIC OF CHINA

always predominated: (1) the tone system is usually based on "Pythagor-

ean" intonation (a circle of 12 perfect fifths subdividing the octave into 12
semitones); (2) out of the total of 12 available tones only five are selected
to build scales and modes. For varying periods seven-and even nine-tone
scales were experimentally introduced, making occasional use of non-
Pythagorean, microtonic intervals, but these modifications never survived
for long; the Chinese nation likes its five-tone system so much better that
all other systems have failed to take hold. The same is true of repeated
attempts to introduce harmony in its Western sense or polyphony into Chi-
nese music; throughout the ages the nation's music has remained essential-
ly an art of monophonic melody, rhythm and delicate variations of tone
colors, with subtle pitch inflections and undulations - an art in which har-
mony has little place and meaning.
By the end of the Sung Dynasty the arsenal of musical instruments had
reached vast proportions, with over 300 different types of construction and
sound principles. If we add to these types the sub-categories of pitch and
size, we arrive at an estimated figure of known and used instruments in
excess of 2,000!* Quite a few of these were introduced by, and taken over,
from foreign music civilizations, either used as they were or adapted to
domestic preferences, while many others were always Chinese in origin.
The art of making fine gongs, bells and cymbals has never been really
mastered by other nations until recently, and modern symphony orchestras
the world over still try to get their metal percussion instruments from
China. *
The bowed string instrument is one of China's step-children. The bow
itself was first brought to China in the ninth century from Persian or Mon-
golian sources and became widely used under the YUan (Mongol) Dynasty
(1280-1368). Essentially, the Chinese two-stringed violin erh-hu remained
a primitive instrument restricted to use by street musicians, or to the
small (4-7 persons) ensembles of the Chinese theater and opera. Incident-
ally, the Chinese always used silk and (more recently) metal strings, re-
jecting cat or sheep gut as unclean and highly objectionable. Anyone who
has seen the messy and unappetizing processing of gut string manufacture,
will understand this Chinese idiosyncrasy.*
Chinese music notation developed a variety of systems. The oldest of
them, employing the characters for the twelve semitone pitch names, may
have been in use already in Pre-Confucian times, while another method
based on the names of the five scale degrees is of a later date, probably of
early Han origin. Apart from these and other notations, several tablature
systems, especially for the four-stringed lute p'i-p'a and the zither ch'in,
played an important role. The most notable of these is the ch'in tablature
because of its complexity; more than sixty different characters have been
designed to indicate pitches, touches, tone colors, string numbers, finger-
ing, duration of tone, ornaments, slides, etc. P'i-p'a and ch'in tablatures
have been known since the late Chou period and were greatly refined under
the Sung.
In the nineteenth century a modern synthesis of Chinese five-degree
notation and Western duration symbols developed which is still in general
use.
 KUTTNER: THE MUSIC OF CHINA 127

The earliest extant manuscript of Chinese music is dated as late as

the early T'ang Dynasty and is, as yet, undeciphered. More numerous and
decipherable specimens of music in notation or tablatures originate from
the Sung Dynasty; thus, all attempts of musicological reconstruction or in-
terpretation before c.1,000 A.D. are based on speculation and hypotheses,
and the bulk of the enormous output and practice of Chinese music prior to
that date is likely to remain in the realm of archeo-musicology.*
The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) brought a magnificent culmination of
musical and historical scholarship and saw the final developments of the
classical Chinese opera, with its rich repertory of legendary and histori-
cal topics, a dramatic creation which began during the Yian period.
The end of the Ch'ing Dynasty (1644-1911) witnessed the gradual but
rather complete disintegration of China's musical tradition to an extent
where the skills of instrumental performance and the great compositions
of the past were virtually forgotten. When, in 1912, the imperial court
theaters and orchestras disbanded upon the abdication of the last dynasty,
the last highly trained artists were forced into inactivity, and whatever
survived of the nation's music must be classified as simple, somewhat
artless folk music and the cheapened mass entertainment of popularized
opera, - the last remnants of the world's greatest musical civilization.
The most musical nation in the history of mankind had become silent.*
Into this untenable musical vacuum fell suddenly,since the beginning
of the Republic (1912), the enormous impact of Western music, and a na-
tion starved for great music avidly swallowed up whatever the West could
offer. In less than one generation ten thousands of young Chinese began to
study Western music with amazing success, understanding and talent, and
soon every branch of musical activity was represented: remarkable vir-
tuosity of instrumental and vocal performance, teachers, composers, con-
ductors. Western orchestras consisting entirely of Chinese musicians, be-
gen to develop and flourish. Music festivals and well-organized recital
schedules became the order of the day in all regions that were in frequent
contact with the Western world. Finally the first Chinese music critics of
Western concert activities made their appearance in the daily press. Quite
a few of these musicians qualified for permanent artistic residence in
Western countries where they make a living and are respected by their
Western colleagues.*
It is impossible to predict how this trend may develop under the Com-
munist regime; since 1949, the new government has greatly encouraged the
further development of Western music, but also insisted upon reviving the
ancient musical traditions, with strong emphasis on the indigenous folk
arts and folk opera. The emergence of a new Chinese musical civilization,
or the development of a complex synthesis of Sino-Western music, are
both among the possibilities of the future.* The musical talent and poten-
tial of the Chinese nation has always been, and still is, enormous; they
may easily be the most musical race on earth and could provide the West
with great surprises in the future.*

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