The Music Teacher The Professionalizatio PDF

The Music Teacher: The Professionalization of Singing and
the Development of Erotic Vocal Style During Late Ming China
Peng Xu
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Volume 75, Number 2, December 2015,

pp. 259-297 (Article)
Published by Harvard-Yenching Institute

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jas.2015.0016
For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/629187
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The Music Teacher:
The Professionalization of Singing and the
Development of Erotic Vocal Style During
Late Ming China
Peng Xu 徐芃
Swarthmore College
O ver the past decades,scholars of early modern China and

Japan have examined popular songs as part of mass culture.1
These s tudies have engaged with the economic motives and ideological
implications behind changes to singing styles, courtesans’ singing prac-
tices as communication with their patrons, and the influence of popular
songs written in local languages on literati publishing enterprises and
Abstract: I focus on the professional singing teacher as a new social identity during the
late Ming, particularly their social transformation from anonymous grifters to meaning-
ful names in the elite singing culture of kunqu. A close, intertextual reading of different
versions of Wei Liangfu’s (fl. 16th century) singing thesis, Nanci yinzheng—combined
with historical, fictional, dramatic, and poetic accounts of musical performance given
by professional singing masters and their courtesan students—reveals how the profes-
sionalization of teaching music resulted in the low rate of musical literacy among com-
moner-singers and the renowned erotic vocal style of the late Ming. In this process, moral
critique, sensual pleasure, and technical criticism were more closely intertwined than has
been generally believed.
摘要：本文關注晚明曲師如何從無名小輩升級為崑曲演唱之精英文化中的關鍵
人物。通過《南詞引正》版本比勘，分析有關曲師和妓女演唱的文獻，本文闡述
晚明音樂職業化的後果：普通人視唱的低水平和演唱的色情風格 ——一個道德批
判、感官享受和細節批評同時並存的歌唱文化。
1
Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Joseph Lam and other participants at the
international symposium “Musiking Late Ming China” at the University of Michigan, May
4–7, 2006, where an early version of this article was presented. My gratitude also goes
to library curators who share my enthusiasm for rare music imprints. Among them are
Yuan Zhou (University of Chicago Library), Chen Xianxing (Shanghai Library), Martin
Heijdra (Princeton Library), and Youqing Cheng (National Library of China).
Gerald Groemer, “Edo’s ‘Tin Pan Alley’: Authors and Publishers of Japanese Popular
Song during the Tokugawa Period,” Asian Music 27.1 (1995–1996): 1–36; also Groemer’s
Published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute HJAS 75.2 (2015): 259–297 259

260 Peng Xu
on elite literary expression. Few, if any, scholars have focused on the

social identity of music teachers, who worked in Suzhou’s brothels, or
their pedagogies of singing as a commodity. This article explores these
uncharted topics. Through the lens of “professionalization,” I examine
singing teachers and their courtesan-students as agents and creators of
popular music, zooming in on the demimonde of late Ming society to
explore the culture of kunqu 崑曲 singing (kunshanqiang 崑山腔 , or
kunqiang 崑腔 in late Ming terminology). Kunqu is the musical sys-
tem developed in the Suzhou region that was favored by late Ming lite-
rati as the “proper” musical genre to render chuanqi 傳奇 , or southern
romantic comedy.2 In this article, I also grapple with a historiographi-
cal issue. I question prevailing assumptions about modern academic
discourse on the rise of kunqu as a high artistic genre, the purview of
elite amateurs, divorced from the professional singing masters who
plied their trade in the underworld of Suzhou. By emphasizing the role
of these professional teachers and their courtesan students in creating
the singing culture of kunqu, my argument flies in the face of current
Chinese scholarship that locates the origins of kunqu in a fourteenth-
century elite-sponsored singing coterie.
Evidence suggests that singers lacking specific musical literacies
were barred from advancement in the singing world, creating a need
for professional assistance. Crucial to the training of courtesans and
“Dodoitsubō Senka and the Yose of Edo,” Monumenta Nipponica 51.2 (Summer 1996):
171–87; Ōki Yasushi 大木康 , Fū Bōryū ‘Sanka’ no kenkyū: Chūgoku Mindai no tsūzoku kayō
馮夢龍『山歌』の研究 : 中国明代の通俗歌謡 (Tokyo: Keisō shobō, 2003); Kathryn
Lowry, The Tapestry of Popular Songs in 16th- and 17th-Century China: Reading, Imitation,
and Desire (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Judith T. Zeitlin, “‘Notes of Flesh’ and the Courtesan’s
Song in Seventeenth-Century China,” in The Courtesans’ Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives,
ed. Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp.
75–105; also Zeitlin’s “The Pleasure of Print: Illustrated Songbooks from the Late Ming
Courtesan World,” in Gender in Chinese Music, ed. Rachel Harris, Rowan Pease, and Shzr
Ee Tan (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2013), pp. 41–65; Ōki Y asushi and
Paolo Santangelo, Shan’ge, the “Mountain Songs”: Love Songs in Ming China (Leiden: Brill,
2011).
2
For musicologists’ understanding of kunqu, see Isabel K. F. Wong, “Kunqu,” in The
Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, vol. 7: East Asia: China, Japan, and Korea, ed. Robert
C. Provine, Yoshiko Tokumaru, and J. Lawrence Witzleben (New York: Routledge, 2002),
pp. 326–33, accessed through alexanderstreet.com; and Marjory Bong-Ray Liu, “Tra-
dition and Change in Kunqu Opera” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles,
1976). Some scholars believe that despite the popularity of kunqu among chuanqi play-
wrights, some preferred to write chuanqi using local musical systems instead of kunqu.
See C atherine C. Swatek, Peony Pavilion Onstage: Four Centuries in the Career of a Chinese
Drama (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 2002), pp. 3–5.
The Professionalization of Singing in Late Ming 261
singing boys was the employment of a singing tutor capable of teaching

fashionable singing styles. Particularly popular were singing masters
associated in some way with a new “reformist” school of singing, alleg-
edly led by Wei Liangfu 魏良輔 (fl. sixteenth century). In response to
such demand, a new body of specialized singing professionals emerged
around the 1540s, when some Nanjing-based literati promoted Wei’s
treatise on singing—Guide to the Refined Singing of Southern Songs
(Nanci yinzheng 南詞引正 ) in their circles.3 These professional singing
teachers worked in wealthy households, tutoring servants and concu-
bines, and worked with private theatrical troupes; they also instructed
courtesans in the pleasure quarters. However, the pedagogical meth-
ods of professional teachers—who were driven by their economic
need to secure long-term employment—deliberately resulted in a low
rate of musical literacy among commoner-singers, especially courte-
sans. In contrast, literati singers by definition had privileged access to
written musical knowledge, thus guaranteeing both their superiority
among singers and their access to professional help during their own
creative process of writing lyrics. Recognition of this singing-related
knowledge’s worth led to the flourishing of songbooks and manuals for
song composition edited by renowned literati-singers during the last
three decades of the Ming dynasty.
Historiography, both during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) and
the twentieth century, has focused on how Wei Liangfu rose from
his sixteenth-century anonymity to become the leader of the musi-
cal reform movement resulting in the creation of kunqu. This scholar-
ship further asserts that he turned the kunqu musical genre into an elite
art form, giving it a highbrow epistemic status, an achievement resem-
bling that of the legendary Zeami in the history of Noh theater.4 As
“kunqu studies” is now a field unto itself, revising the received image of
3
For the discovery of the manuscript in the early 1960s among the collections of the
modern scholar Lu Gong 路工 , see Wu Xinlei 吳新雷 , “Guanyu Mingdai Wei Liangfu de
qulun Nanci yinzheng” 关于明代魏良辅的曲论《南词引正》, Hebei shiyuan xuebao 河北
师院学报 , no. 1 (1993): 68–72; see also Wu Xinlei, Zhongguo xiqu shi lun 中國戲曲史論
(Nanjing: Nanjing daxue chubanshe, 1996), pp. 272–81. The manuscript itself is in fact lost
but was transcribed and published with annotations by Qian Nanyang 錢南揚 and first
published as Qian Nanyang, “Nanci yinzheng jiaozhu” 南词引正校注 , Xiju bao 戏剧报 7.8
(1961): 58–66; a slightly revised edition appears in Qian Nanyang, Han shang huan wen-
cun: Liang Zhu xiju jicun 汉上宦文存 : 梁祝戏剧辑存 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2009),
pp. 81–100.
4
For Zeami’s (ca. 1363–ca. 1443) acting theories and practices, see Thomas Blenman
262 Peng Xu
Wei and his followers by including the social dimension of this trans-
formation is to risk blasphemy. For awestruck visitors to the National
Kunqu Museum in Suzhou who are standing in front of Wei’s larger-
than-life bronze statue, it is almost unthinkable to associate the father
of this elegant vocal style with the debauched and impecunious sing-
ing tutors who associated with pimps and procured women and boys
for Suzhou tourists during the sixteenth century. A recent kunqu stage
production, entitled Qusheng Wei Liangfu 曲聖魏良輔 (Wei Liangfu,
the god of singing), presents Wei’s life and work in a way quite faithful
to current kunqu scholarship.5
Wei Liangfu’s treatise, Guide to the Refined Singing of Southern
Songs, has been read as a manifestation of a sudden, single break-
through by an individual prodigy, a contribution of Wei Liangfu’s
unique musical genius.6 Fortunately, a number of versions survive, and
careful comparisons between these textual variants offer important
evidence for a new understanding of singing teachers’ tutorial prac-
tices. These texts include a sixteenth-century manuscript and a few
seventeenth-century woodblock imprints that appear in the form of
attachments to some woodblock-printed songbooks. The versions of
the treatise most important to my argument appear in the following
songbooks: Wuyu cuiya 吳歈萃雅 (A selection of refined songs from
Suzhou), Cilin yixiang 詞林逸響 (Beautiful sounds from the forest of
songs), and Wusao hebian 吳騷合編 (Songs of the Southeast).7 Many
Hare, Zeami’s Style: The Noh Plays of Zeami Motokiyo (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1996).
5
The production, as part of the sixth kunqu festival, premiered at the Suzhou Great
Hall of the People 蘇州人民大會堂 (Suzhou renmin dahuitang) on October 19, 2015.
6
Fu Xueyi 傅雪漪 , Kunqu yinyue xinshang mantan 昆曲音樂欣賞漫談 (Beijing: Ren-
min yinyue chubanshe, 1996); “Nanci yinzheng jiaozhu,” in Qian Nanyang, Han shang
huan wencun, pp. 81–100.
7
I compare the transcription of the sixteenth-century manuscript, found in “Nanci
yinzheng jiaozhu,” to the five versions of Wei’s treatise, which appear under different titles,
in the following five seventeenth-century printed texts: (1) “Qutiao” 曲條 is the foreword
to Yuefu mingci 樂府名詞 . The text of the foreword (Wei’s treatise) is transcribed in Wu
Xinlei, “Ming keben Yuefu hongshan he Yuefu mingci zhong de Wei Liangfu qulun” 明刻本
《乐府红珊》和《乐府名词》中的魏良辅曲论 , Nanjing shifan daxue wenxueyuan xue
bao 南京师范大学文学院学报 , no. 1 (2005): 133. The songbook is a late Ming imprint;
according to Beijing tushuguan shanben shumu 北京圖書館善本書目 , 8 vols. (Beijing:
Zhonghua shuju, 1959), v. 4, p. 3112, it was published by a commercial publisher named
Zhou Jingwu 周敬吾 . (2) “Fanli ershitiao” 凡例二十條 (1602) is the foreword to Qin
huai Moke 秦淮墨客 , Yuefu hongshan 樂府紅珊 (imprint of 1800), 16 juan in vols. 10–11
of Shanben xiqu congkan 善本戲曲叢刋 , ed. Wang Qiugui 王秋桂 (Taipei: Taiwan xue
of the artistic ideas and singing pedagogies included in these versions

seem to be original to Wei, with no known precedents.
Inspired by the work of French philosopher Michel de Certeau, I
propose to shift our focus from virtuoso singing hailed in literati writ-
ings about kunqu to singers of low social status and their part in the
kunqu enterprise. This rereading must examine the profession of late
Ming vocal teachers and their lowlife context, including the courte-
sans who transmitted the new erotic singing style. To borrow de Cer-
teau’s metaphor, people walk through the grids of city streets, making
turns and detours, following their own “rhetoric of walking,” refusing
the “imposed system” of explicit rules.8 In the commoners’ world of
singing—people walking in the many urban marketplaces of the late
Ming, daydreaming of success at the Suzhou singing festivals—artis-
tic genres did not necessarily correspond to social divisions, nor did
musical taste and ideas necessarily trickle down from the intellectual
elite to the general public. Rather, people sang in ways that defied the
established social hierarchy. From the perspective of everyday practice,
new vocal styles did not result exclusively or even primarily from the
efforts of a single visionary man and his dedicated, reformist f ollowers.
Instead, new styles emerged gradually through a cultural give-and-
take among many social strata, in a process of compromise that carried
important artistic implications for the professionalization and erotici-
zation of singing.
What distinguishes my inquiry from earlier Chinese scholar-
ship on kunqu is its unique juxtaposition of diverse source materials
and analysis of the conflicting messages these varied materials convey.
Whereas music history respectfully records the names of individual
singing experts, in literature these professional singers are often treated
as stereotypes and spoken of in derogatory terms. In the literary world,
a reference to “the singing master” conjures up an image of the impure,
sheng shuju, 1984) [hereafter referred to as SXC], v. 10, pp. 7–13. (3) “Qulü” 曲律 [the
1616 text] is the foreword (dated 1616) to Zhou Zhibiao 周之標 , Wuyu cuiya, 4 juan in
vols. 12–13 of SXC, v. 12, pp. 23–32. (4) “Kunqiang yuanshi” 崑腔原始 [the 1623 text] is
the foreword to Xu Yu 許宇 , Cilin yixiang (1623 edition), 4 juan in vols. 17–18 of SXC, v. 17,
pp. 13–20. (5) “Wei Liangfu qulü” 魏良輔曲律 [the 1637 text] is the foreword to the 1637
(combined) edition of Wusao hebian. This entire work is reprinted in Juyi tang ji 居易堂
集 , ed. Xu Fang 徐枋 , vol. 49 of Sibu congkan guangbian 四部叢刊廣編 (Taipei: Taiwan
shangwu yinshuguan, 1981); the foreword appears on pp. 15–16.
8
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984), pp. 99, 30–32, respectively.
264 Peng Xu
ugly side of society—prostitution, carnality, and illegal deal-making.

Standard historiography, however, ignores this dimension of the pro-
fession and instead emphasizes the role of great singers in producing
new vocal styles. Acknowledging the contrasts within contemporane-
ous source materials allows us to see a fuller picture of the late Ming
world of singing. Complicating the dominant narrative, which empha-
sizes the elegant and elite, we can discover a long-ignored side of the
history of musical aesthetics by recognizing the importance of lewd
mass culture.
Important examples of the traditional origins of the dominant
view include works by prolific aficionados, including Yu Huai 余懷
(1616–1696), Zhang Dai 張岱 (1597–ca. 1684), Shen Chongsui 沈寵
綏 (?–1645), and Yuan Hongdao 袁宏道 (1568–1610). Current schol-
arship, led by the pioneering work of Lu Eting 陸萼庭 on the early his-
tory of kunqu, aestheticizes history by embracing the romantic image
of singing painted in this rich literature, centering on a genealogy of
famous singers in terms remote from their social identity, values, and
norms.9 What has been ignored in this historiography is the discourse
of professionalization—by which I mean the ability or need to earn a
living wage by teaching others to sing—and its manifestations: namely,
professional teachers increased their earnings by encouraging a low
level of musical literacy and by selling an erotic vocal style to their
courtesan students. In contrast to earlier scholarship, I call attention to
the musical sophistication and professional benefits of Wei Liangfu’s
new erotic vocal style—a style that was technically delicate, aestheti-
cally and thematically amorous, and was an important component of
late Ming erotic culture (especially in the demimonde of the pleasure
quarters).
The best evidence of the strong liaison between the singing pro-
fession and the pleasure quarters is found in Aina’s 艾衲 (fl. late sev-
enteenth century) collection of short stories, Idle Talk under the Bean
Arbor (Doupeng xianhua 豆棚閒話 ).10 In the story entitled “Jia, an Idle
Retainer of Tiger Hill, Proposes an Alliance,” the author first delineates
9
Lu Eting, Kunju yanchu shigao 昆劇演出史稿 , rev. ed. (Taipei: Guojia chubanshe,
2002), pp. 77–86. See also, for example, Hu Ji 胡忌 and Liu Zhizhong 劉致忠 , Kunju
fazhanshi 昆劇發展史 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2012), pp. 33–40.
10
Aina jushi 艾衲居士 , Doupeng xianhua, vol. 11 of Guben xiaoshuo jicheng 古本小說
集成 , 3rd series, ed. An Pingqiu 安平秋 et al. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1990).
the marketplace with twenty-two poems that evoke the shops (selling
pickles, wine, seafood, tea, bonsai, garden plants, incense, and the like)
and the tourist-oriented professions (courtesans, monks, beggars, cat-
amites, and so on) thriving along Suzhou’s streets between the bridge
over the Shantang River outside the Golden Chang Gate (Chang men
閶門 ) and Tiger Hill (Huqiu 虎丘 ), an area famous for housing cour-
tesans.11 Full of ironies, these poems point to Suzhou’s questionable
public morals or, in the narrator’s recurrent phrase, “Suzhou’s depraved
ways” (Suzhou fengqi jiaobo 蘇州風氣澆薄 ). Elsewhere in his fiction,
Aina frequently uses an equivalent term: “Suzhou con men” (Su kong-
tou 蘇空頭 ), a phrase that Liu Yongqiang 劉勇強 identifies as a pop-
ular expression during the late Ming.12 The sardonic narrator claims
that, of all the occupations satirized in these poetic accounts, the pro-
fessional singing teacher is not only the most typical manifestation of
Suzhou con men’s feckless quality but is actually the most debased,
entirely dependent as it is on prostitution.
The protagonists of Aina’s story are two professional singing
teachers, whom the title labels “idle retainers” (qingke 清客 ), a for-
mal term for hangers-on whose social role stands outside the four
Confucian social categories in China (scholars, peasants, craftsmen,
and merchants).13 In the story, singing professionals go by the name
“old penniless connoisseurs” (laobaishang 老白賞 ). They are desti-
tute, unconcerned with morality of any kind, and aggressively pursu-
ing small profits, “just like worms feeding on dung.”14 They are also
greedy, always “feasting their eyes on other people’s landscape-gardens,
antiques, women, or what have you—yet never paying a cent.”15 In the
same vulgar language and sardonic spirit, Aina’s narrator introduces
11
Aina jushi, “Jia qingke Huqiushan jiemeng” 賈清客虎丘山結盟 , in Guben xiaoshuo
jicheng, ser. 3, v. 11, ze 則 10, pp. 285–327. See also Ya-chen Ma, “Picturing Suzhou: Visual
Politics in the Making of Cityscapes in Eighteenth-Century China” (PhD diss., Stanford
University, 2006).
12
Liu Yongqiang, “Fengtu, renqing, lishi: Doupeng xianhua zhong de Jiangnan wenhua
yinzi jiqi shengcheng beijing” 风土·人情·历史 : 《豆棚闲话》中的江南文化因子
及其生成背景 , Qinghua daxue xuebao (zhexue shehui kexue ban) 清华大学学报 (哲学
社会科学版 ) 25.4 (2010): 54–66.
13
Ōki, Chūgoku yūri kūkan: Min Shin shinwai gijo no sekai 中国游里空間 : 明清秦淮妓
女の世界 (Tokyo: Seidosha, 2002), pp. 170–72.
14
糞裏臭蛆相似 . Aina jushi, “Jia qingke Huqiushan jiemeng,” p. 296.
15
不管人家山水園亭骨董女客 , 不費一文 , 白白賞鋻 . Aina jushi, “Jia qingke Huqiu
shan jiemeng,” p. 297.
266 Peng Xu
other terms for professional singers: “bamboo strips” (miepian 篾片 )

and “bench sleepers” (huban 忽板 ; 忽 may be a flawed transcription
of 笏 hu)—both of which come from brothel jargon. Based on recol-
lections of his tours in Suzhou, the narrator gives a long speech that
discloses not only music teachers’ ties to prostitutes but also the pro-
fession’s daily working routine: music teachers “walk the customer to
knock at the brothel gates one by one, to visit weaver-girls or to seduce
young catamites,” “offer their companionship at the drinking party”
in the brothel until late at night, and sleep on a bench until dawn. In
the morning, they “walk to the riverbank to wash their faces.” With a
few coins saved from the previous night, the teachers purchase some
jasmine flowers, “pin the flowers into their hair, cover them with a
hat, and then dress in threadbare Daoist robes.” Ready for a new day
of business now, “they roam the streets aimlessly until their ten toes
lead them to bump into a [new] customer.”16 This caricature is too
scurrilous to be taken at face value.17 Yet it does capture the profes-
sional singer’s double life: by day a guest at drinking parties, by night
a penniless scrounger; on the surface a musician, at the core a mor-
ally degraded good-for-nothing. Like the fragrance of jasmine covering
the odor of their dirty hair and smelly hats, the musical skills of such
hangers-on only thinly mask their immoral doings.
Aina’s unremittingly negative characterization is critically relevant
because it reminds us that the notion of kunqu as exclusive territory
for the literate elite is false. The dominant theoretical model offers a
deterministic picture of musical styles: identifying kunqu as elite and
the three other main musical genres (yiyang 弋陽 , yuyao 余姚 , and hai
yan 海鹽 ) as vernacular.18 Rigidly affixing musical styles to a single
social stratum, this model allows no room for discussion of individ-
ual responses to what musicologist John Shepherd calls “the specific
details of lived cultural–musical realities.”19
Our shift in focus to lowbrow figures leads us to envisage a differ-
16
Aina jushi, “Jia qingke Huqiushan jiemeng,” pp. 297–98.
17
Patrick Hanan, The Chinese Vernacular Story (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1981), p. 196.
18
See, for example, the seminal essay by Ye Dejun 葉德均 , “Mingdai nanxi wu da
qiangdiao jiqi zhiliu” 明代南戲五大腔調及其支流 , in Xiqu xiaoshuo congkao 戲曲小說
叢攷 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), pp. 1–67; Zeng Yongyi 曾永義 , Xiqu benzhi yu
qiangdiao xintan 戲曲本質與腔調新探 (Taipei: Guojia chubanshe, 2002).
19
John Shepherd, “Music and Social Categories,” in The Cultural Study of Music: A
ent history—the vibrant, erotic, emerging world of professional sing-

ing and ideas about singing in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries. Like Aina, I bring the dimension of professionalization back
to the familiar stories of Suzhou singers; unlike Aina, I use social con-
notations of the singing profession to further consider the aesthetics
of the new singing style. To reveal the power dynamics of professional-
ization, I focus on two of its manifestations—first, the limited musical
literacy of courtesan students, and second, the rise of an erotic vocal
style—and the role that music teachers played in both. Of necessity, I
work within the constraints of sources, offering “soft” evidence via lit-
erary analysis. To examine the limited spread of musical literacy within
the singing profession, I begin with a close reading of Wei Liangfu’s
treatise and then turn to historical and fictional accounts of tutorial
lessons to suggest the pecuniary raison d’être for his ineffective vocal
pedagogies. In the last section, I show the profession’s cultivation of an
erotic singing style by using both late Ming music criticism and dra-
matic presentations to document kunqu’s musically erotic attributes
and its intrinsic role in the decadent culture of love (qing 情 ).20
Wei Liangfu’s Vocal Pedagogies and the

Problem of Musical Literacy
There can be no doubt about Wei Liangfu’s social identity as a profes-
sional singer and teacher. In Li Kaixian’s 李開先 (1502–1568; jinshi 進
士 1529) posthumous compilation Banters (Cixue 詞謔 , ca. 1570), for
example, Wei Liangfu appears in a cluster of renowned musicians’
names as “a good singer but a bad string player.”21 One can assume
that Wei once worked in Li’s mansion as a professional entertainer.
Early seventeenth-century literati accounts depict him as “an old sing-
ing teacher from the Wu area” 吳中舊曲師 , roughly one generation
older than Liang Chenyu 梁辰魚 (ca. 1519–1590s) and Zhang Fengyi
Critical Introduction, ed. Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert, and Richard Middleton (New
York: Routledge, 2003), p. 75.
20
“Musical erotics” emphasizes the ability of music to signify erotic desire and that
of the contemporary listener to understand the codes. Laurence Dreyfus, Wagner and the
Erotic Impulse (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 14–17.
21
長於唱而劣於彈 . Li Kaixian, Cixue, in Li Kaixian quanji 李開先全集 , ed. Bu Jian 卜
健 , 3 vols. (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2004), v. 2, pp. 1350–51.
268 Peng Xu
張鳳翼 (1527–1613), and an important inspiration for these two lite-

rati singers.22 Wei Liangfu reportedly rendered the older generation of
professional teachers (lao qushi 老曲師 ) mute with admiration for his
wonderful singing technique.23
Different versions of the treatise on singing attributed to Wei
Liangfu are the main historical sources for tracing the written trans-
mission of singing techniques and pedagogies in China during the late
Ming. Other vocal tutors’ treatises for studying singing do not exist;
Wei’s appears to be the single exception. The postscript to the six-
teenth-century manuscript version strongly suggests that it circulated
among the Nanjing cultural elite led by Cao Dazhang 曹大章 (1521–
1575; jinshi 1553) during the 1540s.24 However, the five printed texts
were more widely available to the general public during the early sev-
enteenth century.
Earlier scholarship adheres uncritically to the sixteenth-century
manuscript, identifying it as the authentic version that truly reveals the
mind of the historical Wei Liangfu.25 This scholarship interprets tex-
tual differences between the manuscript and the printed versions as
alterations by the imprints’ seventeenth-century compilers. The five
printed versions are thus seen as coarse textual reproductions filled
with distortions of Wei’s original approach, which is purportedly rep-
resented by the manuscript. Biographical research has gone so far as
to fancifully identify Wei with an elite man of the same name, a jin
shi degree-holder.26 Although this theory is not commonly accepted,
22
See, for example, Xu Fuzuo 徐復祚 (1560–ca. 1630), “Qulun” 曲論 , in Zhongguo
gudian xiqu lunzhu jicheng 中國古典戲曲論著集成 , ed. Zhongguo xiqu yanjiu yuan 中国
戏曲研究院 , 10 vols. (集 ) (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe, 1959), v. 4, p. 246.
23
Yu Huai, “Jichangyuan wenge ji” 寄暢園聞歌記 , in Yuchu xinzhi 虞初新志 (1700
edition), ed. Zhang Chao 張潮 (1650–1707?), 20 juan, in vol. 1783 of Xuxiu Siku quanshu
續修四庫全書 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1995–1999) [hereafter XXSKQS], j.
4, pp. 8a–b.
24
The postscript is in “Nanci yinzheng jiaozhu,” in Qian Nanyang, Han shang huan wen-
cun, pp. 81–100.
25
After recently discovering two woodblock imprints of the treatise, Wu Xinlei still
maintains the traditional hierarchical preference for the manuscript over the imprints;
he explains textual variations using the same linear model of textual evolvement of Wei’s
treatise from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century. See Wu Xinlei, “Ming
keben zhong de Wei Liangfu qulun,” pp. 128–34. Zhou Yibai alone suggests that the man-
uscript version is not superior in value to the woodblock imprints. See Zhou Yibai, Xiqu
yanchang lunzhu jishi 戲曲演唱論著集釋 (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe, 1962), pp.
70–74.
26
See Jiang Xingyu 蔣星煜 , “Wei Liangfu zhi shengping he kunqiang de fazhan” 魏
a second round of antiquarian research revived during the twenty-first

century has attempted to verify the manuscript’s unique mention of
an otherwise unknown Gu Jian 顧堅 , who lived during the fourteenth
century, as the purported founding genius of kunqu.27 This historical-
biographical research triumphantly extends the longevity of the musi-
cal genre and at the same time seems to alleviate any remaining doubts
about the authenticity of the manuscript. With these new claims about
the historically obscure Gu Jian, the question of which version better
represents Wei’s teaching seems to find a definitive answer.
However, asserting a hierarchy among texts is a remarkably per-
sistent error in traditional philology that obscures the reasons for tex-
tual variation.28 Here, I read the variation anew against the backdrop of
the demimonde of professional singers, analyzing the material through
a contextualized, sociological lens. In this light, some so-called unim-
portant editions reveal previously neglected information, suggest-
ing that part of the treatise’s narrative function was to communicate
with peers about strategies to teach singing as a way to make a living.
Whereas the manuscript version of the treatise presents a clear sense
of a continuous literati tradition that can be traced back to the mid-
fourteenth century (during the previous dynasty), close readings of
some woodblock-printed versions reveal traces of Wei’s social identity
as a professional singing teacher. It may be erroneous to assume that
either the woodblock imprints or the manuscript was more authen-
tic than the other. But the vision we see in the woodblock-printed ver-
sions is not that of a great man who sits down solemnly to lay out rules
and guidance designed to charm or convince the elite. Rather, it is that
良輔之生平和昆腔的發展 , in Zhongguo xiqu shi gouchen 中國戲曲史鈎沉 (Zhengzhou:

Zhongzhou shuhuashe, 1982), pp. 47–50. For counterarguments, see Xu Shuofang 徐朔
方 , Wan Ming qujia nianpu 晚明曲家年譜 , 3 vols. (Hangzhou: Zhejiang guji chubanshe,
1993), v. 1, pp. 137–38.
27
Zheng Run 鄭閏 , “Jiemi Gu Jian shenshi zhimi” 解密顧堅身世之迷 , in Zhongguo
kunqu luntan 中國昆曲論壇 (Suzhou: Suzhou daxue chubanshe, 2009), cited in Wu Xin-
lei, “Kunshanqiang xingchengqi de Gu Jian yu Gu Ying” 昆山腔形成期的顾坚与顾瑛 ,
Wenhua yishu yanjiu 文化艺术研究 , no. 2 (2012): 137–44; Wu Xinlei, “Lun Yushan yaji zai
kunshanqiang xingcheng zhong de sheng yi ronghe zuoyong” 论玉山雅集在昆山腔形成
中的声艺融合作用 , Wenxue yichan 文学遗产 , no. 1 (2012): 113–20. Wu Xinlei suspects
that Zheng concocted the main evidence, the original of which, Zheng claims, is stored in
Japan’s National Archives.
28
Stephen West, “Text and Ideology: Ming Editors and Northern Drama,” in The Song-
Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History, ed. Paul Jakov Smith and Richard von Glahn
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003), pp. 329–73.
270 Peng Xu
of a singing teacher who aspires to climb the ladder to success, who

presents practical concerns about student qualities, and who suggests
tactical approaches to avoid losing one’s job.29
In the 1616 and 1637 texts, entitled “Rules of Singing” (Qulü) and
“Wei Liangfu’s Rules of Singing” (Wei Liangfu qulü) respectively, the
author—putatively Wei Liangfu for both texts—consistently adopts
the subject position of a vocal teacher, speaking not only to self-taught
singers but, even more often, to his fellow professional teachers.30
Given the natural approximation between singing theories and peda-
gogical theories, it is difficult to unequivocally demarcate the two types
of target readership. But lines such as the following—missing from all
other versions—suggest an overarching theme of training professional
teachers to better themselves: “One must understand thoroughly the
principles of singing in order to become the best professional in the
country.”31 The “best professional” (guogong 國工 ) is a generic term
referring to a category of people who exhibit the most advanced skill
in a particular occupation, such as playing music, cooking, binding
books, carving jade, and so on.32 To qualify as a guogong in singing,
one had to be able to sing the forty-four-scene play The Lute (Pipa ji
琵琶記 ) “from start to finish,” memorizing “every single word.”33 This
long play was one way to gauge an individual’s understanding of the
principles of singing, and it constituted a formidable task that must
have been daunting for ordinary singers. What looms before us is the
subjectivity of the singing profession, with its specific professional
aspirations to compete with peers to become guogong, though to what
extent this expectation of mastering the forty-four scenes was followed
by professionals is unknown.
The opening line of the “Rules of Singing” offers more telling evi-
29
For a typical reading of the treatise’s target readership as the elite circles of society,
see Lu Eting, Kunju yanchu shigao, p. 37.
30
The 1616 and 1637 texts are so similar that, for the purposes of this article, they can be
considered the same text.
31
須要透徹唱理 , 方為國工 . “Qulü” (1616), v. 12, p. 27; “Wei Liangfu qulü” (1637), v.
49, p. 16.
32
For Ming–Qing usage of guogong referring to “the best professionals in the coun-
try,” see dictionary definitions such as that in Hanyu dacidian 漢語大詞典 , 2nd edition,
ed. Luo Zhufeng 罗竹风 et al., 12 vols. (2001; rpt., Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe,
2008), v. 3, p. 631. s.v. guogong.
33
從頭至尾 , 字字句句 . “Qulü” (1616), v. 12, p. 27; “Wei Liangfu qulü” (1637), v. 49,
p. 16.
dence of its target readership. This line in the 1616 and 1637 texts states
that adequately judging a student’s talent for singing is “the most dif-
ficult task” for a teacher.34 If a reader—presumably a teacher—dis-
covers at the outset that a student is indeed not singer material, these
versions of the treatise warn, the reader-teacher should not take pains
to correct all imperfections and weaknesses but should give up as
soon as possible (see the first row in Table 1). By implication, attrac-
tive students in their patron’s household or in the pleasure quarters
did not necessarily have good singing voices—indeed, “how can one
demand beautiful sound and good looks in a single person?”35 It is
possible that private troupes, not to mention the entrepreneurs of the
pleasure quarters, regarded voice as less important than other qualities
in a young student of the vocal arts. Voice seems to have been consid-
ered something that could be acquired through training. The 1616 and
1637 texts depict the vocal teacher’s foremost task in teaching begin-
ners as trying to “bring out their best voice” (see the second row in
Table 1).
By contrast, the 1623 text, entitled “Explaining the Origin of
Kunqu” (Kunqiang yuanshi), whose editor must have felt the need to
address a broader audience, noticeably and consistently changes the
subject of its sentences from a professional teacher to a student or a
general reader of the songbook. Table 1 shows how the textual altera-
tions in the 1623 text silently complete its transition from addressing
singing tutors in the 1616 and 1637 texts to addressing a student of sing-
ing. For example, the teacher’s endeavor to transform a dull student
in the 1616 and 1637 texts becomes the singer’s endeavor to transform
himself (or more rarely herself) in the 1623 text.
Expressed in various details throughout the 1616 and 1637 texts are
the complementary principles of “choosing talented singers” 擇具 and
“not wasting efforts [on an untalented singer] ”勿枉費力 . For exam-
ple, in terms of singing posture and mannerisms, the treatise points out
that some people exhibit certain physical characteristics when singing
(such as a reddened face or blue veins on the neck), which a teacher
can do little to correct 此自關人器品 .36 Another example advises how
“Qulü” (1616), v. 12, p. 23; “Wei Liangfu qulü” (1637), v. 49, p. 15.
34
聲色豈能兼備 . “Qulü” (1616), v. 12, p. 23; “Wei Liangfu qulü” (1637), v. 49, p. 15.
35
36
“Qulü” (1616), v. 12, p. 23; “Wei Liangfu qulü” (1637), v. 49, p. 15; “Kunqiang yuanshi”
(1623), v. 17, p. 13.
272 Peng Xu
Table 1. Textual Comparison of the 1616 and 1637 Versions of Wei Liangfu’s
Treatise with the 1623 Version.
(Wei Liangfu’s) “Rules of Explaining the Origin of
Singing” (1616, 1637) Kunqu (1623)
Choosing talented singers is the Singing demands a good voice. . . .
most difficult task. How can one If born with a miserable voice—
demand beautiful sound and looks squeaky, coarse, or drab—you are
in a single person? . . . If one is born definitely not singing material.
with a miserable voice—squeaky, Why bother to endeavor [to become
coarse, or drab—then s/he is not a singer]?
singer material. Don’t waste your
曲必擇聲…若起口拗劣, 尖
efforts.
粗沉鬱，非其質料矣，費力
擇具最難，聲色豈能兼備?… 奚為? b
若發口拗劣，尖粗沉鬱，自
非質料，勿枉費力。a
For beginners, first, bring out their To learn to sing, first bring out the
best voice. best voice.
初學，先從引發其聲響 c 學曲，先引發其聲響 d
a “Qulü” (1616), v. 12, p. 23; “Wei Liangfu qulü” (1637), v. 49, p. 15.

b “Kunqiang yuanshi” (1623), v. 17, p. 13.

c “Qulü” (1616), v. 12, p. 23; “Wei Liangfu qulü” (1637), v. 49, p. 15.

d “Kunqiang yuanshi” (1623), v. 17, p. 13.

to behave when listening to a singer and what to look for in evaluating

the musical performance. The general idea, shared by all six versions of
the treatise, is to listen quietly 不可喧嘩 , to focus on the three dimen-
sions of singing—articulation 吐字 , rhythm 板眼 , and ornamentation
過腔 —and also to suppress the impulse to value timbre over other
technical criteria.37 Whereas the sixteenth-century manuscript ends
abruptly here—with a perfect sense of how to listen to a singer at a
concert—the 1616 and 1637 texts continue with a statement that once
again spotlights the subject of the singing teacher in a typical scenario
37
“Qutiao,” in Wu Xinlei, “Ming keben zhong de Wei Liangfu qulun,” p. 133; “Fanli
ershitiao” (1602), v. 10, p. 13; “Qulü” (1616), v. 12, p. 30; “Kunqiang yuanshi” (1623), v. 17, p.
16; “Wei Liangfu qulü” (1637), v. 49, p. 16; “Nanci yinzheng jiaozhu,” in Qian Nanyang, Han
shang huan wencun, p. 92.
of tutorial practice: “Once given the right norms and standards, [tal-
ented students] can reach a refined stage by just practicing diligently.
[Talent for music] is something not imposed by teachers but bestowed
by heaven.”38 The setting thus changes from concert to classroom. In
the same pattern that we have seen above, the 1623 version rewrites
this ending, intentionally effacing the teacher as subject and instead
addressing the diligent student singer as the subject: “Talent for music,
[complemented by] hard work—this is the double advantage one can
achieve.”39 Thus, intertextuality suggests a long-ignored phenomenon:
the existence of the professional teacher as a social identity.
With this reading in mind, we find two pedagogical principles
recurring throughout the rest of the treatise (on which all the edi-
tions largely agree), both promoting “rote” memorization and simul-
taneously discouraging reading the musical “note.” First, all versions
of Wei’s text repeatedly emphasize that the correct correspondence
between syllables and time-marking beats is the sine qua non of good
singing, a principle I call “correcting time-beating errors in singing
lessons.” Second, all extant versions also stress the principle of inces-
sant practice. In particular, they focus on incessantly practicing tune
patterns associated with tune titles in order to master the skill of pro-
ducing the appropriate composite-tune pattern when the songwriter
created a new tune title—a skill that was essential to improvisation. As
I show in the following analysis, both principles promote an aural-imi-
tative approach to singing.
Correcting Time-Beating Errors

Most sixteenth- and seventeenth-century songbooks, including the
five printed songbooks to which Wei Liangfu’s treatise was attached,
aid the singer by inserting time-marking beats beside their correspond-
ing Chinese characters, a practice publishing houses called dianban 點
板 (metrical) notation.40 However, reading such notated songbooks
38
大抵矩度既正 , 巧由熟生 ; 非假師傳 , 實關天授 . “Qulü” (1616), v. 12, p. 30; “Wei
Liangfu qulü” (1637), v. 49, p. 16.
39
天資功力 , 斯為兩到 . “Kunqiang yuanshi” (1623), v. 17, p. 19.
40
Judith T. Zeitlin, “Between Performance, Manuscript, and Print: Imagining the
Musical Text in Seventeenth-Century Plays and Songbooks,” in Text, Performance, and
Gender in Chinese Literature and Music: Essays in Honor of Wilt Idema, ed. Maghiel van
Crevel, Tian Yuan Tan, and Michel Hockx (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 263–92.
274 Peng Xu
demanded a musical literacy that not everyone possessed. In fact,

instruction in musical literacy is missing from the three teaching strat-
egies quoted in all versions of Wei’s treatise—bringing out singers’
best voice 引發其聲響 ; making clear to them the pronunciations of
different characters 辨別其字面 ; and, finally, correcting the melodies
in their singing 理正其腔調 .41 Thus students who lacked full knowl-
edge of how to read songbooks remained dependent on teachers to
teach them how to keep time as they sang. This “rote”—as opposed to
“note”—pedagogy led to a prolonged process of learning, relying as it
did on memorization of each song and thus ensuring the singing mas-
ter’s continued involvement.42
In courtesan-to-be Li Xiangjun’s 李香君 singing class described
in the historical drama Peach Blossom Fan (Taohua shan 桃花扇 ), we
see a typical example of pretending to read musical notation, which
arises from the student’s musical illiteracy. At the beginning of the
scene entitled “Teaching Singing” (Chuange 傳歌 ), we are informed
that Xiangjun has just begun to study an extracted scene from a long
play under the tutelage of a famous kunqu singing teacher. He enters
the stage and begins the class by asking her: “Have you learned by heart
the song I taught you yesterday?”43 This routine question indicates a
pedagogical tradition in which the student is expected to reach “famil-
iarity” or “maturity” (shu 熟 ) with the musical material by memo-
rizing what the teacher has taught. It turns out that Xiangjun is not
“familiar” enough with the song that she learned the day before to
merit her teacher’s approval. Her teacher interrupts her singing twice
to correct her errors, one of which is about the time-marking beats.
Full of his own authority, he shouts out: “Wrong! Wrong! The charac-
ter mei 美 should be at a strong beat, and the character nai 奈 should
be at a strong beat. Don’t slur them with adjacent characters.”44 Inter-
estingly, both the stage directions and an early twentieth-century
41
“Qulü” (1616), v. 12, p. 23; “Wei Liangfu qulü” (1637), v. 49, p. 15; “Kunqiang yuanshi”
(1623), v. 17, p. 13.
42
Michael L. Mark and Charles L. Gary, A History of American Music Education, 3rd ed.
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2007), p. 68.
43
昨日學的曲子 , 可曾記熟了 (italics added). Kong Shangren 孔尚任 (1648–1718),
Taohua shan, ed. Wang Jisi 王季思 et al. (1959; rpt., Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe,
1997), Scene 2, p. 18.
44
錯了錯了 , 美字一板 , 奈字一板 , 不可連下去 . Kong Shangren, Taohua shan, Scene
2, p. 18.
Fig. 1 Early Twentieth-Century Illustration of the Scene “Teaching Singing”

from the 1699 Play The Peach Blossom Fan. The image is most likely based on a late
Ming rendition. Note that the courtesan student, Xiangjun, is reading a songbook.
Source: Liu Shiheng 劉世珩 (1875–1926), Taohua shan, vol. 1 in Nuanhongshi huike chuanju,
wushi zhong 暖紅室彙刻傳劇 , 五十種 (Shanghai: Guichi Liu shi, 1919), p. 12a. Image
courtesy of the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, University of Tokyo 東京大学
東洋文化研究所 .
illustration of that scene (Fig. 1) clearly demonstrate that Xiangjun is

holding a songbook (quben 曲本 ), most likely a woodblock-printed,
purchased music text. The song that Xiangjun is studying during the
scene appears in the Cilin yixiang songbook,45 and following the con-
ventions of their seventeenth-century publishing houses, both song-
books offer dianban notation for this song, which clearly marks the
two Chinese characters mei and nai with the “、 ” sign on the right
edge as the strong beats (Fig. 2).
The mistake Xiangjun makes would doubtless be unlikely if the
songbook in her hands had been marked with dianban notation and if
she had actually learned to read it. For a literate Ming audience, there
“To the tune Black Silk Robe,” Cilin yixiang, v. 18, pp. 725–26.
45
276 Peng Xu
Fig. 2 Master Ye Tang’s Gongche

Notation for the Lyrics of the Song
Learned by Li Xiangjun in Scene 2
of Peach Blossom Fan, from the Com-
plete Score of “The Peony Pavilion,” pub-
lished in 1792. Ye’s music imprint offers
more beat signs than was typical of
seventeenth-century music imprints.

For example, the small “ ° ” sign marks
a middle-weak beat (zhongyan 中眼 )
as well as pitch notes such as the “五仩 ”
next to the character nai 奈 (equivalent
to the pitches, la [6] and do [1̇], respec-
tively, in modern cipher notation). The
“、 ” sign on the right edge of the note
五 or la marks a strong beat (ban 板 ).
Source: Ye Tang, “Jingmeng” 驚夢 , in

Mudan ting quanpu 牡丹亭全譜 , 8
juan, in Nashuying simeng quanpu
納書楹四夢全譜, in vols. 15 and 16 of
Nashuying qupu 納書楹曲譜 (n.p.:
Nashuying, 1792), v. 15 (juan shang
卷上 ), pp. 1b–2a. Image courtesy of
the Harvard-Yenching Library, Har-
vard University.
must have been little doubt that the onstage heroine was a fledgling
singer with only a hazy musical literacy. Nor would it have been sur-
prising to see that this beginner’s lesson involved little instruction in
reading songbooks, which, according to the treatise, lay outside the
scope of a teacher’s function. A responsive teacher, such as the one
hired in Xiangjun’s house, nevertheless corrected the errors of a stu-
dent. With the kind of meekness and passivity that the rote method
encouraged, Xiangjun obeys her teacher and performs pseudo-sight-
singing once again.
An observer of this training session, a friend and patron of Xiang
jun’s foster mother, politely foresees Xiangjun’s bright future as a
famous courtesan—based on her talent and beauty rather than her vir-
tuosity in singing, however. About two years later, Xiangjun does stand
out from her courtesan peers in an audition for the emperor’s troupe.
By that time, as she tells the emperor, the only play in her repertoire is
The Peony Pavilion (Mudan ting 牡丹亭 , 1598)—the play she was learn-
ing in the training scene discussed above. What matters to us here is
not her achievement as a singer but rather the duration of time needed
to complete the training to sing a single play using the rote method.
The central dramatic action in this historical drama is premised on a
temporal sequence, that is, “the order of historical events as lived and
experienced, which moves forward in time.”46 Xiangjun auditions dur-
ing the first month of 1645—not long after a scene during the e leventh
month of 1644, in which the singing teacher leaves the Nanjing plea-
sure quarters, and quite some time after the training scene, which
took place during the second month of 1643. This timing means that
Xiangjun’s aria-by-aria training sessions of The Peony Pavilion required
roughly twenty-one months to complete. This fictional story offers
valuable clues about the normal training process for singers in the plea-
sure quarters, especially since historical evidence about courtesans’
curricula is scant.
How far into a courtesan’s typical training course she began to
read music—an empowering tool liberating her from dependence
on her teacher—is still unclear. Evidence I have seen to date suggests
a low rate of musical literacy among courtesans and, when there is
46
Wai-yee Li, “The Representation of History in the Peach Blossom Fan,” Journal of the
American Oriental Society 115.3 (1995): 421–33.
278 Peng Xu
literacy, a serious lag in acquiring it. The choice of the rote pedagogi-
cal method made perfect economic sense to the singing masters of the
day: a prolonged learning process meant longer employment. Some
courtesans never attained musical literacy and may have retained a
lifetime reliance on music tutors and their own memory. Consider, for
example, a Nanjing courtesan who traveled to the Wu area in 1623 and
sang for her patron Shen Defu 沈德符 (1578–1642) in an evening con-
cert. Shen’s poetic account of her performance describes her training
as “mimicry” (xiao 效 ), implying the lack of textual aid. “Regretfully,”
Shen further comments, “never in her life has she learned how to read
notations.”47
Reliance on memorization also caused trouble for female singing
teachers, or courtesan masters (nüban zhi shi 女班之師 )—older but
better-qualified courtesans working as singing teachers for actresses
in private troupes. Literati remarked on the decline of their singing
expertise compared to their earlier years and attributed the lapse to
their fading memory. For instance, Pan Zhiheng 潘之恆 (1556–1622)
wrote as follows about a courtesan master hired by Wang Xijue 王錫爵
(1534–1614; jinshi 1562) to train Wang’s female troupe: “Having been
separated from her own teachers for too long, she forgot eight out
of ten skills [that she had learned from them.]”48 Courtesan masters
themselves probably learned to sing through the rote method, which
they would then apply in their own teaching. Thus literacy rates among
female professional vocal teachers were probably very low.
Courtesan singers wrestled with their mistakes, and their t eachers
may have been reluctant to correct them each time they erred. Li
Xiangjun seems to be lucky, or perhaps the dramatization of her sing-
ing lesson is glossed by idealism. One of the sixteen poems that Shen
Defu composed in 1627 about life in the Nanjing pleasure quarters not
only derides the prevalence of time-beating “mistakes” among courte-
sans but vividly captures the subtleties of the teacher-student relation-
ship in courtesan singing:
47
生平恨未諳歌譜 . Shen Defu, “Zeng Fan Su’e jiaoshu bajue, shi xinzi Jinling you
Wu, yue tong rushan kanmei” 贈范素娥校書八絕 , 時新自金陵游吳 , 約同入山看梅 , in
Qingquantang ji 清權堂集 , 22 juan in vol. 1377 of XXSKQS, j. 1, poem no. 7, p. 3a.
48
久離教師 , 十忘其八 . In Pan Zhiheng’s hierarchical order of the singing arts, female
teachers are evaluated as second to last. Pan Zhiheng, Pan Zhiheng quhua 潘之恆曲話 , ed.
Wang Xiaoyi 汪效漪 (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe, 1988), pp. 8–9.
翠袖紅牙趁拍遲 Emerald sleeves, scarlet-lacquered clappers,

come down on the wrong beats,
珠喉兼教玉參差 Pearl throat, jade voice, no matter how well
trained, can hardly gloss over the errors.
強名弟子難頻顧, Grudgingly accepted disciples as they are, the
teachers won’t bother to correct them every
time.
死守吳歈誤按時. Their adherence to the Wu style of singing ends
up beating times all wrong.49
Literati audiences may have preferred a high standard of musical
literacy in courtesan singing. Female singing agreeable to Shen’s ears,
as he indicates in his other poems, seems always to come from a singer
able to read musical notations. A 1625 poem describes his pleasant
experience at a Tiger Hill concert, where one of the guests at the feast
had asked his female singers to perform. Shen links the presence of
songbooks to musical quality: “Melodies lingered over songbooks and
became pure.”50 Another example is presented in Shen’s 1637 visit to
the Wei household in the pleasure quarters. What was most distinctive
about this courtesan house was its tradition of singing with the assis-
tance of texts, ostensibly with strong beats written by the courtesans
themselves in red ink: “[Girls from] the Wei family memorized many a
song; look at their calligraphy in red!”51 Courtesans who were able to
aid their memory by punctuating songs in dianban notation may well
have been deemed extraordinary. In contrast to the courtesan masters
with little musical literacy discussed above, women who read music
may have demonstrated a better understanding and longer memory
of songs, hence given an honorary title such as “Lady with the Best
Memory for Songs” 記歌娘子 , as in the case of the courtesan-heroine
in Yuan Yuling’s 袁于令 (1592–1674) The Western Bower (Xilou ji 西樓
Shen Defu, “Qinhuai ye’er qu” 秦淮冶兒曲 , in Qingquantang ji, j. 5, poem no. 3, p. 8a.
49
腔向譜前清 . Shen Defu, “Zhongqiu ye Kou Airu jiaoshu zhao fan Huqiu, shizhi
50
dayu, zuoke Wang Shuji sheng chu jiaji zuojiu” 中秋夜寇皚如校書招泛虎丘 , 時值大雨 ,
坐客汪叔吉盛出家姬佐酒 , in Qingquantang ji, j. 3, p. 8a.
51
韋家多計 [記 ]曲 , 若個字紅紅 ! Shen Defu, “Zhongqiu ye tingji” 中秋夜聼伎 , in
Qingquantang ji, j. 14, pp. 14a–14b. The convention of marking initial beats in red ink is
called hongban 紅板 . See Zhongguo quxue dacidian 中国曲学大辞典 , ed. Qi Senhua 齊
森華 . Chen Duo 陈多 , and Ye Changhai 叶长海 (Hangzhou: Zhejiang jiaoyu chubanshe,
1997), s.v. hongmoban 红墨板 (p. 687).
280 Peng Xu
記 , completed ca. 1624).52 Paradoxically, despite evidence that literati

patrons privileged note learning and adored courtesans with reading
skills, literary sources suggest that actual lessons more often used the
less effective and less esteemed rote method, especially in the pleasure
quarters, as we saw in the example of Li Xiangjun in Peach Blossom Fan.
Practicing Tune Patterns by Tune Title

The second principle of Wei Liangfu’s rote pedagogy—that students
should repeatedly practice all the various tune patterns that fall under
a single tune title—requires a rigid teaching plan with repeated efforts
in order to enable students to grasp the basic melodic contours of tune
patterns. The most common seventeenth-century musical aides—dian-
ban notation songbooks—were not helpful for beginners, offering no
more than time-beating markers. Tune titles were the only cues read-
ers would get to the melody. Pitch notes did not appear in woodblock
songbooks until 1792, when the singing master Ye Tang 葉堂 (1736–
1795) published his musical scores in the form of gongche 工尺 nota-
tion. Ye marked pitch relationships with notes in the form of simple
Chinese graphs, such as gong 工 and che 尺 , printed in smaller font
to the right of their corresponding Chinese characters (see Fig. 2).53
Dianban notation, marking metrical patterns, uses symbols such as
“、 ” that appear on the right edge of some pitch symbols. In fact, by
Western musicological standards, as Joseph Lam points out, even Ye’s
notation system is considered “prescriptive and elusive” because it only
presents pitches and rhythm, leaving many additional features such as
dynamics and tempo up to the performer; even rhythmic details were
flexible lest unnecessary specificity “lead to rigid understanding of
[Ye’s] music.”54
Seventeenth-century readers faced the problem of complex tune
patterns because more than one tune pattern existed under a single
52
Yuan Yuling, Xilou ji, in Liushi zhong qu 六十種曲 , ed. Mao Jin 毛晉 , 12 vols. (1935;
rpt., Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1958), v. 8, p. 22; this source reprints a late Ming edition.
53
In modern cipher notation, gong becomes the musical note Mi (or E) and che
becomes the note Re (or D).
54
Joseph S. C. Lam, “Notational Representation and Contextual Constraints,” in
Themes and Variations: Writings on Music in Honor of Rulan Chao Pian, ed. Bell Yung and
Joseph S. C. Lam (Cambridge, MA: Dept. of Music, Harvard University, 1994), pp. 37, 36,
respectively.
tune title and songbooks of the time offered no good resolution.

This problem became more complicated with the literary practice—
increasingly fashionable during the seventeenth century—of linking
different tune patterns to create a new tune pattern; the new composite
tune was then given a new name that often combined the original tune
titles in a playful way.55 It is in this context that Wei’s treatise promotes
the vocal teacher’s role in private lessons to firmly fix one tune pattern
with one particular tune title, at least for beginning students. Consider
Wei’s following remark from his treatise (shared by all six versions):
When just starting to learn . . . do not force [yourself or your students]
to remember a jumble of tune patterns in case they get mixed up in their
minds. For example, sing [the melody with the tune title of] “Gathering
of Noble Guests” only when learning [the lyrics to the song] “Gathering
of Noble Guests,” and sing [the melody with the tune title of] “Fragrance
of Cassia Twigs” only when learning [the lyrics to the song] “Fragrance of
Cassia Twigs.” After a long time [of training in this way], the tune patterns
will become familiar. Even if the tune patterns mix, they will appear to be
naturally strung together.
初學…不可混雜強記，以亂規格。如學 [集賢賓 ]，只唱 [集賢

賓 ]；學 [桂枝香 ]，只唱 [桂枝香 ]。久久成熟，移宮換呂，自
然貫串。56
In much the same fashion as discussed earlier, this passage also encour-
aged pupils’ rote memorization—this time of the basic melodies
themselves—and reliance on cumulative experience to develop the
ability to improvise blended melodies. Repeated oral demonstrations
undoubtedly served as models for duplication. The end stage of this
55
In our own time, most kunqu composers and performers have lost the ability to
improvise that their seventeenth-century counterparts once had. Wang Shoutai 王守泰
thus led a group of master singers and scholars to compile a collection of tune patterns in
order to supply musical stock for composing new songs in the traditional way. For each
tune title, a variety of melodies (tune patterns) are translated into cipher notation. The
idea is that a melodic skeleton (zhuqiang 主腔 ), or primary motif, can be defined through
comparison. See Wang Shoutai 王守泰 , et al. eds., Kunqu qupai ji taoshu fanliji: Nantao 崑
曲曲牌及套數範例集 : 南套 , 2 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 1994), v. 1,
pp. 7–8, 32–33.
56
“Qutiao” in Wu Xinlei, “Ming keben zhong de Wei Liangfu qulun,” p. 133; “Fanli
ershitiao” (1602), v. 10, p. 13; “Qulü” (1616), v. 12, p. 23; “Kunqiang yuanshi” (1623), v. 17, p.
14; “Wei Liangfu qulü” (1637), v. 49, p. 15; “Nanci yinzheng jiaozhu,” in Qian Nanyang, Han
shang huan wencun, p. 92.
282 Peng Xu
learning process was familiarity (熟 ), achieved by rote memorization

and extensive practice (久久成熟 ).
A little more research into the intellectual context of libretti written
during the late Ming reveals that this rote principle was also g ermane
to the professional teacher’s function as a “composer” of new melodies.
It was a convention in songwriting that librettists, even high-caliber
ones, simply took popular tunes (such as “Fragrance of Cassia Twigs”)
familiar to the audience and set original lyrics to them.57 Music-related
publications—songbooks, formularies, full-drama editions, and even
excerpts of plays quoted in fiction—subtitled their songs with refer-
ences to tune titles. Presumably, readers acquainted with the melodic
skeleton were prepared to realize a song (duqu 度曲 ) based on its pre-
existing tune. The new song needed to be at once faithful to the musical
identity of its tune title (tied to a preexisting tune) and individualized
based on the linguistic tones of the new lyrics. These challenges of
improvisation determined the demand for expertise in music. For elite
librettists, their residential artist or one of the teachers of their private
troupes was the best candidate to fulfill the task.
Presumably, any aspiring professional singer who wished to estab-
lish a career in an elite patron’s household needed to be able to sing
the patron’s own songs. Literati accounts clearly evoke the interactive
process of song composition during this period. Dramatist Qi Biao-
jia 祁彪佳 (1602–1645; jinshi 1622), for example, worked closely with
a male singer named Jiang Anran 蔣安然 who was present whenever
Qi composed songs. Qi describes this collaboration in his diary.58 For
example, in the tenth month of 1631, Qi and Jiang together read Cheng
Mingshan’s 程明善 Singing Manual (Xiaoyu pu 嘯餘譜 , ca. 1619) and
Feng Menglong’s 馮夢龍 (1574–1646) compilation of songs Celestial
Airs Played Anew (Taixia xinzou 太霞新奏 , ca. 1627); afterward, Jiang
sang a song, potentially from these books. In the eleventh month of
the same year, while reading a female poet’s biography, Qi found a
song composed by the poet. He asked Jiang to punctuate it with musi-
57
For European counterpart practices of using an already known tune to indicate how
a text is to be sung, see H. Rodney Nevitt, Jr., Art and the Culture of Love in Seventeenth-
Century Holland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 53, and Tessa Watt,
Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
58
Qi Biaojia, Qi Zhongmingong riji 祁忠敏公日記 , 10 vols. (册 ) (1937; rpt., Hangzhou:
Hangzhou gujiu shudian fuzhi, 1982), v. 1, pp. 9a, 15b, and v. 5, p. 7a.
cal symbols (pu zhi 譜之 ) and then sing it. In the second month of
1638, Qi and Jiang together composed a song to the tune of “Wind-
ing Brocade Road” ( Jinchan dao 錦纏道 ). In a similar fashion, singing
aficionado Zou Diguang 鄒迪光 (1550–1626; jinshi 1574) would also
request his singing companion Chen Xingfu 陳性甫 to sing his newly
composed songs.59
Another contemporaneous source of evidence, although highly
anecdotal, is late Ming dramatic criticism.60 These sources show the
importance of professional singers’ proof-singing (identifying words
hard to sing or inharmonious to the proper tune pattern) to enhance
the musical quality of the new libretti before their release to the public.
For example, Wang Shizhen’s 王世貞 (1526–1590; jinshi 1547) famous
critique of The Precious Sword (Baojian ji 寶劍記 ), a chuanqi play by Li
Kaixian, carries a sardonic tone: “But it needs to be proofed by ten pro-
fessional singing teachers from the Wu area!”61 Such exclamations hint
at late Ming playwrights’ consensus on the need for collaboration with
professional singing masters.
In addition, dramatic endeavors began to demand greater sophis-
tication in music composition during the late sixteenth century. In
a break from conventional practice, some playwrights chose not to
recycle popular tunes to fit their new lyrics but rather to assemble vari-
ous tune patterns—often line by line—and then name the collage song
anew, a practice known in the eighteenth century as jiqu 集曲 , “com-
posite tunes.”62 According to historian Zeng Yongyi, this trend started
with free-standing arias, perhaps initiated by the literatus-singer Liang
Chenyu, but was soon extended to full-length plays in both south-
ern and northern dramas.63 Yuming He’s case study of Xu Wei’s 徐渭
Zou Diguang, Yuyi lou ji 鬱儀樓集 , 54 juan, in vol. 158 of Siku quanshu cunmu cong
59
shu 四庫全書存目叢書 ( Jinan: Qi Lu shushe chubanshe, 1997), j. 36, pp. 18a–b.

60
Xu Shuofang, Wan Ming qujia nianpu, v. 1, pp. 99, 227.
61
第令吳中曲師十人唱過 ! Wang Shizhen, “Quzao” 曲藻 , in Zhongguo gudian xiqu
lunzhu jicheng, v. 4, p. 36.
62
Among Qing printed songbooks that still exist today, the earliest use of the term jiqu
to refer to composite songs appears in Jiugong dacheng nanbeici gongpu 九宮大成南北詞
宮譜 , which was originally completed in 1746; see the facsimile reprint in Xinding jiugong
dacheng nanbeici gongpu 新定九宮大成南北詞宮譜 , ed. Zhou Xiangyu 周祥鈺 and Zou
Jinsheng 鄒金生 , 81 juan in vols. 1753–56 of XXSKQS. On composite tunes in general, see
Marjory Bong-Ray Liu, “Tradition and Change in Kunqu Opera,” pp. 64–65, 67.
63
Zeng Yongyi, Cong qiangdiao shuodao kunqu 從腔調說到崑劇 (Taipei: Guojia
284 Peng Xu
(1521–1593) dramatic exercises shows how playful artists, such as Xu,

experimented by blending different tune patterns to create new ones,
“to present difficulties to [their] would-be performers.”64
This zeitgeist probably made improvising music for a new song
more and more challenging. Wei’s singing treatise, quoted above, pro-
poses a resolution to the problems faced by the professional singer.
Through repetition in practice, one can internalize the melodies of
each tune pattern to the extent that it never becomes mixed up with
any other tune patterns. Experts in Wei’s cult were expected to identify
tune patterns and render them in a proper way.
A growing number of lyricists, an increasing number of published
single-author collections (bieji 別集 ) and multiple-author compila-
tions of songs, and a near-universal lack of musical literacy among pro-
fessional singers led to skyrocking demands for singing masters’ special
skills. A professional teacher with good improvisational skills played
the role of mediator between librettist and singer, as well as between a
literatus patron and his singing courtesan. Not surprisingly, only a few
select courtesans advanced successfully to the “mature” (shu) stage of
becoming qualified at improvisation themselves.
A detail in the play The Western Bower illuminates such a moment
of improvisation. In the pleasure quarters, the hero, a young scholar
versed in song composition, discovers his song transcribed by a cour-
tesan singer, who turns out to be none other than the heroine, a
woman obsessed with the young scholar’s songs and longing to see
him in person (Scene 6).65 Though not physically present, the audi-
ence strongly feels her presence because of the hero’s close attention
to the accurate metrical notion she has marked on his song. Thanks
to this courtesan, the hero now holds in his hands a piece of ready-
for-use notated song text. Another courtesan who, a moment before,
disgraced herself with her unrefined singing speaks up to express her
admiration for the hero’s artistry, thus presenting herself as a potential
rival to the absent heroine. “Why don’t you sing?” a friend of the hero-
ine teases her. The play’s stage direction calls for the disgraced courte-
chubanshe, 2002), p. 135. Also see Liu Yufeng 刘于锋 , “Lun jiqu zai kunqu zhong de shi-
yong” 论集曲在昆曲中的使用 , Wenjiao ziliao 文教资料 , no. 18 (2010): 101–3.
64
Yuming He, “Difficulties of Performance: The Musical Career of Xu Wei’s The Mad
Drummer,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 68.2 (2008): 105.
65
Yuan Yuling, Xilou ji, v. 8, p. 22.
san to respond by “trying but failing to sing” 唱不出 and “impromptu

joking” 諢介 .66
This dramatic confrontation takes us to the core of the profes-
sional singing teacher’s function. In the absence of rote instruction—
that is, without being taught word by word—the “disgraced” courtesan
is unable to realize a song even though its beats are laid out on paper.
In contrast, the heroine possesses a complete collection of the hero’s
songs and is transmitting them—like a teacher—to some professional
singers who are incapable of improvisation on their own (Scene 9).67
The song that exposes the vulgar courtesan singer as musically illiter-
ate, which has the tune title of “Feelings on a Southern River” (Chu
jiang qing 楚江情 ), is finally correctly performed by the heroine when
the two lovers meet at last (Scene 8).68 This song’s compositional attri-
bute—that it is a composite tune consisting of two subtunes entitled
“Fragrant Silk Belt” (Xiang luodai 香羅帶 ) and “Wind over the River”
(Yijiangfeng 一江風 )—indicates that it presents technical difficulties
far beyond the grasp of ordinary singers. We have good reason to imag-
ine that many pieces included in the hero’s collection are of the same
type, and thus performance of these difficult songs required a skilled
singing teacher—in the fictional world of the play, this teacher is the
heroine—to offer professional help to uninitiated singers.
My reading of Wei’s treatise suggests that singing masters tackled
the two basic concerns of late Ming singers, time beating and tune pat-
terns, with a popular vocal pedagogy: the rote method. In contrast,
early seventeenth-century songbooks typically offered readers a dif-
ferent pedagogical strategy: the note method. Zhou Zhibiao (fl. 1610–
1647), the compiler of the songbook Wuyu cuiya, for example, lists
these two problems in his “Selected Guidelines for This Book” (Xuanli
選例 ) and promises resolutions by turning to either the authoritative
song formulary or to learned scholars.69
For musically literate singers, the challenge of time beating was
66
Yuan Yuling, Xilou ji, v. 8, p. 23. There are textual variants among the extant editions
of the play. A printed authorial edition entitled Jianxiaoge ziding Xiloumeng chuanqi erjuan
劍嘯閣自訂西樓夢傳奇二卷 , for example, does not have the dialogue between the two
courtesans that I quote here. See its facsimile reprint, no. 89 of Guben xiqu congkan 古本
戲曲叢刊 , 2nd ser., 二集 (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1955).
67
68
69
Zhou Zhibiao, “Xuanli,” the compiler’s preface, in Wuyu cuiya, v. 12, pp. 19–20.
286 Peng Xu
not that they might forget what a singing master had taught them but
rather that they had to reconcile the variations in tune titles and beats
passed down with mistakes across printings by different bookshops.
Based on the methodologically oriented textual criticism known as
kaojuxue 考據學 (which began during the Ming but is more often asso-
ciated with the Qing era), Zhou identifies the songbook Nan jiugong
pu 南九宮譜 (Southern songs in nine modes) by Jiang Xiao 蔣孝 (fl.
1522–1566; jinshi 1520s) as “a reliable text” (shanben 善本 ).70 The result
was an authoritative text to which the reader could refer without nec-
essarily consulting a professional teacher. Songbooks of the period can
be seen as manifestations of a scholarly tradition of singing and offered
a new channel (other than getting a private tutor) for those who pre-
ferred the “note” over “rote” method and for those who wanted precise
answers.
Zhou’s work presents a decisive juncture in the development of
singing pedagogy. His approach privileged scholars over the musically
illiterate. This songbook generated a trend in the publishing industry,
as Zhou himself put it: “Immediately, everyone in the country was
addicted to [using] it.”71 The publisher of a songbook that followed this
trend, Shanshan ji (Sounds of jade pendants), commissioned Zhou not
only to write a foreword but also to touch up the entire volume and
put his name at the front of each chapter.72 A series of songbooks came
out after it.73 Despite the hyperbolic nature of Zhou’s editorial notes,
there is no doubt about the existence of a new nationwide market for
such songbooks and the learning method they promoted. It may have
been Zhou’s editorial strategy to contrast the 1616 version of Wei’s trea-
tise “Rules of Singing”—which maintains rather than hides Wei’s low
70
Zhou Zhibiao, “Xuanli,” in Wuyu cuiya, v. 12, p. 19. According to Wang Jide 王驥德
(?–1623), Jiang Xiao earned the highest degree (jinshi) in the imperial examination dur-
ing the Jiajing reign period (1522–1566). See Wang Jide, “Qulü” 曲律 , 4 juan, in Zhongguo
gudian xiqu lunzhu jicheng, v. 4, j. 3, p. 57.
71
海內輒為嗜痂 . Zhou Zhibiao, “Zengding Shanshan ji xiaoyin” 增訂珊珊集小引 ,
foreword to Shanshan ji 珊珊集 , 4 juan in vol. 14 of SXC, p. 4.
72
Zhou Zhibiao, “Zengding Shanshan ji xiaoyin,” p. 4. Zhou mentions that Shanshan ji
was published at a later date than Wuyu cuiya.
73
Cheng Mingshan, Xiaoyu pu (ca. 1619), 11 juan in vol. 1736 of XXSKQS; Xu Yu, Cilin
yixiang (1623); Feng Menglong, Taixia xinzou (ca. 1627), 14 juan in vol. 1744 of XXSKQS;
and Ling Mengchu 凌濛初 (1580–1644), Nanyin sanlai 南音三籟 , 4 juan, vols. 52–53 of
SXC, to name a few.
social status as a professional singing teacher—with his own “Selected

Guidelines for This Book” in order to highlight his own identity as a
lofty scholar.
The Western Bower—a play that was completed about the same
time that publication of songbooks mushroomed—explicitly expresses
singers’ desire to improve on the learning experience offered by profes-
sional singing teachers. When a courtesan asks the hero what kind of
effort good singing requires, he bursts forth in a statement that sounds
like the opinion of an editor of songbooks: “Essential to the matter of
singing and songwriting, generally speaking, is musical literacy.”74 He
then begins to elaborate on the drawbacks of not using songbooks,
including obscurity of tune patterns and time beating. Although other
plays also embed musical criticism in the musically oriented scenes,
such overt celebration of the significance of songbooks in the train-
ing of singers and songwriters is unusual. This idiosyncratic outburst
reveals the narrative voice of a true connoisseur, presumably the play-
wright himself, beneath the dramatic presentation of these pedagogi-
cal ideas. The declaration may also be linked to the contemporaneous
rise of songbooks edited by literati singers and their shifting market
strategies.
The Rise of Courtesan Singers

Musical eroticism was essential to professional singing during the late
Ming. Yet as we have seen, musical literacy was rare and singing teach-
ers, who were necessary to courtesan-singers, were also proficient at
musical improvisation. Given this context, I suggest that professional
music teachers were crucial to the invention and popularization of the
erotic vocal style for which late Ming chuanqi is so well known.
During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, small-
scale concerts featuring singers of the opposite sex—in particular, a
literatus singer and a courtesan—were a popular form of urban enter-
tainment in the Jiangnan region. Catalogues of courtesans exhibit a
distinctive narrative mode that recounts a literatus lover’s first meet-
ing with a courtesan in a boat, in which he listens to her singing or
歌之所重 , 大要在識譜 . Yuan Yuling, Xilou ji, v. 8, p. 22.

74
288 Peng Xu
sings with her.75 The concerts were open to everyone, admission free.
Audiences drawn by a courtesan’s singing voice seem to have been
an indispensable element of such concerts; typically, people gathered
around the courtesan and expressed their admiration for her singing.
Such concerts must have stimulated the audiences’ erotic imagina-
tion, especially when the singers performed love songs in the liter-
ary form of chuanqi, in which erotic force constitutes the motor of the
plot.
Beginning in 1570, another new form of entertainment—elite-
sponsored music festivals featuring courtesans—may also have
spurred the arrival of courtesans in the culture of singing, as I have
argued elsewhere.76 This rise of courtesan singers led to a change in
publication content. For instance, Feng Menglong, a literatus pub-
lisher, promoted pornographic folk songs that originated in the plea-
sure quarters as a rising literary genre.77 A more illuminating example
is the published songbook Chantou bailian 纏頭百練 (A hundred bro-
cades to courtesan singers) in which romantic scenes were extracted
from various chuanqi plays and grouped into five sections. The first sec-
tion, “Portrayals of Lovers’ Secret Rendezvous” (Youqi xiezhao 幽期
寫照 ), selects scenes that dramatize elopement, wedding nights, and
other occasions of sexual intercourse. Ling Mengchu, author of the
foreword, points out that the collection could easily incur criticism
for being “excessive and obscene” 淫而蕩 , but the main purpose of the
audacious compiler, at least in Ling’s rhetoric, was to cater to courte-
san singers—to “buy one smile from them with one thousand taels
of gold” 千金買一笑 and to promote the compiler as someone who
75
See, for example, Zhou Zhibiao’s first encounter with courtesan Jin Jingluo 金驚洛
in Wanyuzi’s 宛瑜子 Wuji baimei 吳姬百媚 , 2 vols. (Beijing: Beijing tushuguan chuban-
she, 2002), v. 1, p. 57a; and Li Yunxiang’s 李雲翔 first meetings with courtesans Gu Mei 顧
媚 and Gu Junxian 顧筠仙 in Weilinzi 為霖子 [Feng Menglong], Jinling baimei 金陵百媚 ,
2 vols. (n.p.: Changmen qian yiwu, ca. 1573–1644), v. 1, p. 64b and v. 2, p. 5b, respectively.
An original imprint of Jinling baimei is preserved in the Naikaku Bunko, Tokyo, which
released a microfilm version in 1966: I am grateful to the University of Chicago library
for use of a printout. For more information about the Naikaku Bunko imprint, see Gao
Hongjun 高洪钧 , “Jinling baimei yu Feng Menglong ba” 金陵百媚与冯梦龙跋 in Wenjiao
ziliao 文教资料 , no. 6 (1994): 110–13. For Gu Mei’s biography, see Yu Huai, Banqiao zaji:
Wai yizhong 板桥杂记 : 外一种 , ed. Li Jintang 李金堂 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chuban-
she, 2000).
76
See Peng Xu, “Courtesan vs. Literatus: Gendered Soundscapes and Aesthetics in
Late-Ming Singing Culture,” T’oung Pao 100.4–5 (2014): 399–450.
77
Ōki and Santangelo, Shan’ge, the “Mountain Songs.”
uncompromisingly supported and understood their singing art (zhi

yinren 知音人 ).78
When courtesans were cast as female leads in these erotic scenes,
surely the demand for a high degree of eroticism in their voices derived
not only from the romantic content of chuanqi plays but also from the
social conditions of prostitution. In many accounts of romantic Tiger
Hill experiences, lyrical content is not mentioned at all; the roman-
tic sentiments seem to derive directly from the music itself.79 It is in
these accounts that we find historical imaginings of what constituted
an erotic singing style at the time.
These narratives agree upon a few striking characteristics of the
new-style singing delivered at the yearly mid-autumn singing festi-
vals at Suzhou: its slow tempo, excessive coloratura (in one apparently
exaggerated account, one syllable lasts about half an hour), and senti-
mental intensity.80 The singing mood was in general melancholy and
hypnotic, the effect often bringing the audience to tears. For example,
commenting on a concert held at Tiger Hill during the eighth month
of 1613 that featured a courtesan and a gentleman from the Ye clan
renowned for producing avocational kunqu singers, Ye Shaoyuan 葉紹
袁 (1589–1648) says: “Singing in the Suzhou style [reminiscent of the
lascivious music of the Zheng Kingdom] was originally decadent, and
now the singers [deliberately] make it even more cadenced and deli-
cate” 鄭聲本淫 , 而歌者又復抑揚宛轉 .81 By using a term from Con-
fucian social criticism, “the lascivious music of the Zheng Kingdom”
(Zhengsheng yin 鄭聲淫 ), to refer to the vocal style, Ye invokes Confu-
cian norms, in which obscenity derives from excessiveness. Musically,
this reference could mean excessive ornamentation and measures.
What makes this quote unusual is Ye’s emphasis on how two singers’
musical rendition made the sound particularly “cadenced and delicate”
78
Ling Mengchu, “Chantou bailian xu” 纏頭百練序 , in Chonghe jushi 冲和居士 ,
Yichun jin 怡春錦 , 6 ji 集 , in vols. 19–20 of SXC, v. 19, p. 6 and p. 1, respectively. Yichun jin
was another name for Chantou bailian.
79
For a discussion of how Tiger Hill’s yearly mid-autumn singing festivals proceeded,
see my “Lost Sound: Singing, Theater, and Aesthetics in Late Ming China, 1547–1644”
(PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2014).
80
Lu Eting, Kunju yanchu shigao, pp. 77–81.
81
See Ye Shaoyuan, Ye Tianliao nianpu bieji 葉天寥年譜別記 , in Ye Tianliao sizhong 葉
天寥四種 (Shanghai: Beiye shanfang, 1936), p. 64. On the singer’s genealogy, see Deng
Changfeng 鄧長風 , Ming Qing xiqu jia kaolüe 明清戲曲家考略 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji
chubanshe, 1994), pp. 317–18.
290 Peng Xu
(yiyang wanzhuan 抑揚宛轉 ), beyond the normal level of eroticism

brought about by excessive music. It seems that, on this occasion at
least, the eroticism of the music itself weighed more than the typi-
cally amorous content of the lyrics and the hint of a sexual relationship
between the two singers.
We get a better sense of what constituted such musical excessive-
ness in Ling Mengchu’s luxury songbook, Nanyin sanlai (Three kinds
of southern sounds), which was published during the late 1620s. Ling’s
editorial comments offer a technical assessment, in a manner close
to modern music criticism, about professional singing and its contri-
bution to the formation of musical traits associated specifically with
the late Ming period. Ling condemns professional singers and objects
vehemently to their excessive music—that is, music performed with
additional words or overly long syllables (which add beats). The tech-
nical details that Ling reveals about the role of professional teachers
in the development of musical excessiveness are profound and worth
quoting in full:
Yet in recent years, professional music teachers from the Wu area, good at
nothing but showing off their voices with great pretensions to elegance,
add numerous syllables to the original phrase or repeat the same syllable
a few times so as to draw the listener into the charm of their singing skills.
What they are ignorant of is that [by so doing] they are breaching the rules
of music. Moreover, the inserted words naturally demand additional beats;
once the additional beats are gradually accepted as the norm, the original
form is distorted. The younger generation learns the distorted version and
thoughtlessly models it when creating new lyrics. Cumulatively, there are
mistakes so grave that nothing can be done to remedy them. Occasionally
I correct such mistakes, to which singers respond that these [notes] are the
heritage passed down from Huang Wenqin [黃問琴, the great descendant
of Wei Liangfu]. They don’t understand that Huang himself was the initia-
tor of errors. This is why Shen Jing [沈璟, 1553–1610; jinshi] claimed that he
would plug his ears and flee whenever he heard the current fashion of “pure
singing” in the Wu area.
而近來吳中教師，止欲弄喉取態，便于本句添出多字，或重
疊其音，以見簸弄之妙，搶墊 [?] 之捷。而不知已戾本腔矣。
況增添既多，便須增板，增板既久，便亂正板，後學因之，
率爾填詞，其病有不可救藥者。偶一正之，即云本王問琴所
傳。而不知作俑之為罪人。沈伯英所謂聞今日吳中清唱，即
欲掩耳而避者也。82
Here, Ling Mengchu attacks an emerging and thriving tradition

too strong for him to alter. To take the music teacher he mentions in
the passage as an example, Huang Wenqin’s career path connected him
to both high and low strata of society—literati and courtesans. As a
result, these two social groups of singers shared the same aesthetics
and skills. A first-generation follower of Wei Liangfu, Huang taught the
courtesan Wang Qingchi 王卿持 ,83 worked in the household of Wang
Ruqian 汪汝謙 (1577–1655), and served as a traveling companion and
singer for Feng Mengzhen 馮夢禎 (1548–1595; jinshi 1577).84 Accord-
ing to Pan Zhiheng, Huang also taught a circle of elite singers in Pan’s
hometown.85 Apparently, Huang, along with other music teachers of
his time, contributed to the popularity of literatus-courtesan concerts
in the Wu-speaking area of the Jiangnan region.
The erotic sentiments evoked by the “excessive” singing style
were intense. In one chuanqi play, entitled Tiger Hill in the Autumn
(Qiu Huqiu 秋虎丘 ), the vocal music of some “retainers singing pop-
ular songs” 唱時曲的清客 on the day of the singing festival wakes up
a famous courtesan who had died of lovesickness and was buried in
the Tiger Hill area several centuries earlier (Scene 13).86 Her ghost
82
Ling Mengchu, “Fanli” 凡例 , editor’s preface in Nanyin sanlai, v. 52, p. 14. Note
that Ling uses an incorrect surname for Huang Weiqin. The pronunciations of the two
surnames, Wang 王 and Huang 黃 , are the same in Ling’s southern dialect. Perhaps Mr.
Huang had such low social status that his employers did not respect him enough to get his
surname straight, or perhaps the mistake occurred because the author was a generation
younger than Mr. Huang. Note that Shen Jing, famous for his manual of southern songs,
was also known as Shen Boying.
83
Pan Zhiheng, Pan Zhiheng quhua, p. 118.
84
For Huang’s teaching in Wang Ruqian’s household, see Pan Zhiheng, Pan Zhiheng
quhua, p. 17. For his accompanying Feng Mengzhen on trips between 1599 and 1605, see
Ding Xiaoming 丁小明 , ed., Kuaixuetang riji 快雪堂日記 (Nanjing: Fenghuang chuban-
she, 2010), p. 149.
85
Pan indicates that a growing circle of singers consisting of elite scholars surrounded
teachers such as Huang; Pan Zhiheng, Pan Zhiheng quhua, p. 17. Another Anhui literatus,
Pan’s close friend Wang Daohui 汪道會 (1544–1613), may also have known Huang well;
Wang Daohui, “Yantiao guanwen ge” 煙條舘聞歌 , poem no. 1, in Zhao Shanlin 赵山林 ,
“Ming Qing yongju shige duiyu xiqu jieshoushi yanjiu de teshu jiazhi” 明清咏剧诗歌对
于戏曲接受史研究的特殊价值 , Wenxue yichan 文学遗产 , no. 5 (2012): 109.
86
Wang Long 王鑨 , Qiu Huqiu, 2 juan; no. 92 of Guben xiqu congkan, 3rd series 古
本戲曲叢刊 , 三集 (Beijing: Wenxue guji kanxingshe, 1957), scene 13, pp. 59b–60a. For
292 Peng Xu
joins the festival by singing alone in a pleasure boat. Her own singing,
which laments her untimely demise and expresses her longing for love,
turns out to be distinctively emotional and melancholic, outperform-
ing the background human singing voices. The hero and his cohorts
hear her voice and immediately sense the distinctiveness of her tone:
“melancholy, sweet, soft and ethereal” 悽婉幽逸 .87 Two lines later in
her song, everyone in the group concludes that the singer can only be
a ghost. Notably, it is her vocal style that carries the dramatic inten-
sity over to the moment when her true identity—a ghost in search of
love—is disclosed. Shortly thereafter, the men leave the ghost singer
and encounter a courtesan named Qiao, a historically famous cour-
tesan singer of kunqu and the main character of this scene, entitled
“Encountering the Courtesan Qiao” (Yu Qiao 遇翹 ). Qiao begins a
sentimental song about her lover (from whom she has long been sepa-
rated), apparently rendered in the same “melancholy, sweet, soft, and
ethereal” style as the ghost, thus leading the men to misidentify her as
yet another female ghost. In a later scene, we are told that Qiao is the
best courtesan singer in Suzhou. This chuanqi is, of course, no more
than an apocryphal story told by a Qing playwright with great nostal-
gia for the Ming golden age of singing, and yet it captures the signature
vocal style of the late Ming—its amatory connotations, its popularity,
and its necessity for courtesans.
Professional singing teachers were indispensable to the late Ming
literati culture of love, not only for creating the erotic vocal style and
teaching it to courtesans but also for facilitating courtship at a more
respectable level. In Water Lily Marsh (Hehua dang 荷花蕩 ), the play-
wright—Ma Zheren 馬佶人 (fl. 1636), of whom we know little—shows
great fidelity to dramatic conventions in which professional singers are
cast in minor comic roles, or what modern scholars identify as “the
low.”88 As the embodiment of the ordinary, vulgar, and common, these
a discussion of the courtesan Wang Cuiqiao 王翠翹 , the historical counterpart of the
courtesan-ghost in the play, see Hua Wei 華瑋 , “Nüxing, lishi yu xiqu: Qing chuanqi
zhong Wang Cuiqiao gushi dui shizhuan yu xiaoshuo de gaixie jiqi yihan” 女性、歷史與
戲曲 : 清傳奇中王翠翹故事對史傳與小說的改寫及其意涵 , in Ming Qing xiqu zhong de
nüxing shengyin yu lishi jiyi 明清戲曲中的女性聲音與歷史記憶 (Taipei: Guojia chuban
she, 2013), pp. 254–303.
87
Wang Long, Qiu Huqiu, scene 13, p. 60a.
88
Hehua dang, 2 juan, in no. 72 of Guben xiqu congkan, 2nd series. This is a reprint of a
Chongzhen 崇禎 (1628–1644) edition; the original is in the National Library of China in
Beijing. For the “high versus low” dichotomy as a literary convention of chuanqi plays, see
singing masters function to balance the extraordinary and aestheti-

cized scholar-beauty romance of the main plot. The play carries rich
hints about the singing profession’s association with love affairs. In par-
ticular, the scene that shares the same title as the play discloses a social
space in which professional singing serves to intensify amorous expe-
riences and erotic desire. The scene also reveals, at a deeper level, the
reception of professional singing masters’ vocal art at a major moment
in the development of the history of singing and musical taste.
As in Aina’s Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor, this scene begins with
a social critique. Yu Man 郁滿 , the successful singing teacher, acting
as all the singers in comic roles do, enters the stage and begins a state-
ment of his petty nature and intentions: “Nowadays, atop the rocks of
Tiger Hill, it seems that those in the [singing] profession have become
rather famous. [Therefore] I have been fully occupied with business
during the past year.”89 Yu Man is commissioned by a rich family to
perform for its private boat concert at a public space in the Suzhou sub-
urbs named Water Lily Marsh. To this end, he hires two lesser-known
musicians who, despite their literati-like elegant names, are too poor
to remain in the music profession and have begun to think of becom-
ing gamblers or thieves. When the villain, the rich house’s intended
son-in-law (who is known to be a foolish coward), enters the stage, the
three switch quickly into their social disguise as decent gentlemen. At
the scenic Water Lily Marsh, historically famous for hosting singing
festivals like those of Tiger Hill, the villain is destined to lose the heart
of his future bride (the heroine) to a handsome, talented scholar (the
hero).
The musical eroticism of kunqu and its role in the literati culture of
love are in full evidence in this scene. In a mode similar to the literatus-
courtesan boat concerts, love takes place in open-air entertainment, in
public, with spectacular display, except that here the heroine is a rich
Sophie Volpp, Worldly Stage: Theatricality in Seventeenth-Century China (Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Asia Center, 2011).
89
如今虎丘石上 , 看看得數那些在行的人 , 頗頗聞名 . 年來生意竟不得空 . Hehua
dang, j. 1, p. 18b. This passage refers to the historically documented fame—and resultant
better business prospects—that professional singing teachers won by making it to the
final round of the annual mid-autumn singing festival in Suzhou, often at Tiger Hill or
Water Lily Marsh. I translate the word zaihang 在行 , commonly meaning “knowing a job
well,” as “in the profession.” A slightly different interpretation of the same line appears in
Lu Eting, Kunju yanchu shigao, p. 82.
294 Peng Xu
young lady who does not sing. Rather, the dramatic actions of the hero
and heroine in a romantic encounter take place against background
music provided by the three professional singers.
The dramaturgical design moves us step by step to experience the
erotic power of the professionals’ virtuoso solo in its special technical
feat—a composite tune. The tune consists of four lines, with each of
the three professionals singing one line in solo, and each line using a
different tune pattern.90 The first line sung by Yu Man is: “I’m singing
a song that starts with ‘After I saw him, I forgot sleep and meals’” 我
唱一曲見郎後忘餐廢寢 . His voice attracts the hero, who then moors
his boat right beside the heroine’s. The hero acts: “noticing the hero-
ine and ogling her” 生見旦作顧盼介 . Before long, the hero and hero-
ine begin to look at each other amorously 旦與生作相顧盼介 . Their
actions are then depicted in the second line sung by another musician
(Gu Aishi 顧愛石 ): “I’m singing a song that starts with ‘First encoun-
ter in front of flowers is saturated with feelings’” 我唱一曲向花前邂逅
多情 . Upon hearing this line, the two protagonists “look at each other
and nod along to the words of the song” 旦與生俱相顧點頭介 . As if
giving us a montage shot, the third line soloed by another professional
musician (Pu Meizhi 蒲美之 ) accurately foretells the lovers’ situation
in the future scenes: “I’m singing a song that starts with ‘Separated, our
longing for each other is as deep as the ocean’” 我唱一曲相思兩地海
洋深 .
At this moment, a characteristic instance that demonstrates the
connection between the solos and the young couple’s falling in love
takes place. The heroine’s father is confused by the solos and asks for a
switch to the choral form:
heroine’s father (speaking):
These “pure songs” are just beyond me. Why don’t you sing some
songs of the stage?
future son-in-law (speaking to the professional musicians):
You three sing in ensemble!
Yu Man, Gu Aishi, and Pu Meizhi (speaking):
Certainly, sir.
Hehua dang, j. 1, p. 21a.

90
Yu Man, Gu Aishi, and Pu Meizhi (singing):

In chorus we sing a song that starts with “Departing is filled with
infinite sorrow.”
The heroine’s father borrows two terms from Wei’s singing treatise:
“pure songs” (qingchang 清唱 ) are what Wei calls songs in his own
style, which he contrasts in a derogatory tone with “songs of the stage”
(xiqu 戲曲 ).91 Is it possible that the playwright, by putting these two
terms in the father’s mouth, meant that songs rendered in Wei’s erotic
style were not for a dull, pedantic mind like the father’s? This exchange
shows that the content of the lyrics does not matter to the demarca-
tion between old and young, between antiromantic and romantic,
since both the third solo line and the last choral line have similar liter-
ary expressions about the longing of separated lovers. Rather, it is the
erotic singing style—conducted only in the solo form—that matters.
The distinction is important for understanding what Wei’s erotic
vocals meant to the culture of love during the late Ming. The erotic
lure of the songs by these three professional singers (at least one of
whom is a teacher) is such that it triggers the heroine’s sexual awaken-
ing. The hero, recognizing the arousal effects of the music, says: “Just
now I saw, upon hearing those songs, that she looked enamored. Ah, it
seems she understands it” 見他聽了那曲子甚是動情 , 咳 , 看來這姐姐
是個解人 .92 If in Western Bower the accurately punctuated song text is
the matchmaker, here the professional musicians’ voice quality—so full
of amorous passion—makes the match. Ironically, the dramatic role of
the professional teacher is limited to offering background music that
saturates the main romance with eroticism.
The imaginative literature of the time never tells stories about
love affairs developing between students (of either gender) and sing-
ing teachers. When singing masters do appear, they are most often old,
bearded, consumed with the base need of earning a living, and cast in
minor comic roles. They generally do not express sexual desire and are
neutrally gendered. If they do have sexual relations with their students,
such relations are of a criminal genre, as in the case of Aina’s fiction
quoted at the outset of this article.
“Qulü” (1616), v. 12, p. 26.

91
Hehua dang, j. 1, p. 21a–b.

92
296 Peng Xu
In the romantic imagination of the late Ming, singing teachers

were effaced in the literati discourse of love (qing). One unusual
account is notable because it carries the seed of romance, which, fol-
lowing the late Ming literati discourse of singing, never blossoms. This
poem, written by Shen Defu in 1627, portrays a successful, handsome,
young professional master from Suzhou who “holds onto his own taste
for women and only works for beauties.”93 He might not have been the
only man in his profession with a strong inclination for teaching beau-
tiful women, but accounts of liaisons between people of his kind and
their female students are not to be found.
From a broader perspective, accounts in other poems by Shen offer
some basis for assuming the versatility of professional teachers in the
performing arts. In addition to providing one-on-one tutorial sessions
for courtesan singers in the pleasure quarters (as in Xiangjun’s fictive les-
son discussed earlier), singing masters served as accompanists for their
advanced courtesan students—primarily playing the fiddle or flute for
southern songs (nanqu 南曲 ) or plucking stringed musical instruments
for northern songs (beiqu 北曲 ). Sometimes they played supporting
roles on stage, or even one of the leading roles if needed. With this kind
of artistic versatility, the status of the music teacher in the pleasure quar-
ters—the dreamland of scholar-beauty romances—was that of a musi-
cal servant, forever earning his living, whereas his courtesan student
was forever the heroine. The erotic singing style that he invented and
imparted to his courtesan student prepared her to be an ideal lover to a
literati patron and kept him employed, if also unremarked.
Conclusion
The last century or so of the Ming dynasty witnessed a flowering of
the culture of singing. It started with a musical “reform,” allegedly ini-
tiated by Wei Liangfu during the early sixteenth century, that brought
about some significant changes in vocal style. Modern imagination of
this reform has made it difficult to associate Wei with the underworld
of Suzhou culture. But I suggest that this low-status social background
was the very condition for his success in bringing kunqu to the heights
of literati aesthetics in late Ming society. Professional music teachers,
93
郎君自具看花眼 , 不是傾城我不陪 . Shen Defu, “Qinhuai ye’er qu,” in Qingquan-
tang ji, j. 5, poem no. 3, p. 9b.
who worked both in the pleasure quarters and in the homes of wealthy
families as entertainers and vocal tutors, thus carried and dissemi-
nated new artistic and aesthetic ideas across such different social strata.
Beyond delving into the little-known professional careers and peda-
gogies of the singing teachers who embraced Wei’s style, I argue they
played an important role in creating the musically erotic style that
became an essential part of late Ming kunqu aesthetics.
Rethinking Ming musical performance through the notion of
“professionalization” explains why singing masters were both “great
singers” and lowly figures in literature and suggests that the musi-
cal eroticism these masters created was tied to their business within
brothels. This more complex music history shows that the creation of
a distinctive late Ming singing culture involved a mixture of moral cri-
tiques, sensual pleasure, and technical criticism; it was not the linear
evolution or single breakthrough commonly posited in kunqu scholar-
ship today.

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The Music Teacher: The Professionalization of Singing and

the Development of Erotic Vocal Style During Late Ming China

Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Volume 75, Number 2, December 2015,

Published by Harvard-Yenching Institute

For additional information about this article

O ver the past decades,scholars of early modern China and

Published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute HJAS 75.2 (2015): 259–297 259

on elite literary expression. Few, if any, scholars have focused on the

singing boys was the employment of a singing tutor capable of teaching

of the artistic ideas and singing pedagogies included in these versions

ugly side of society—prostitution, carnality, and illegal deal-making.

other terms for professional singers: “bamboo strips” (miepian 篾片 )

ent history—the vibrant, erotic, emerging world of professional sing-

Wei Liangfu’s Vocal Pedagogies and the

張鳳翼 (1527–1613), and an important inspiration for these two lite-

a second round of antiquarian research revived during the twenty-first

良輔之生平和昆腔的發展 , in Zhongguo xiqu shi gouchen 中國戲曲史鈎沉 (Zhengzhou:

of a singing teacher who aspires to climb the ladder to success, who

to behave when listening to a singer and what to look for in evaluating

Correcting Time-Beating Errors

demanded a musical literacy that not everyone possessed. In fact,

Fig. 1 Early Twentieth-Century Illustration of the Scene “Teaching Singing”

illustration of that scene (Fig. 1) clearly demonstrate that Xiangjun is

Fig. 2 Master Ye Tang’s Gongche

Source: Ye Tang, “Jingmeng” 驚夢 , in

翠袖紅牙趁拍遲 Emerald sleeves, scarlet-lacquered clappers,

記 , completed ca. 1624).52 Paradoxically, despite evidence that literati

Practicing Tune Patterns by Tune Title

tune title and songbooks of the time offered no good resolution.

初學…不可混雜強記，以亂規格。如學 [集賢賓 ]，只唱 [集賢

learning process was familiarity (熟 ), achieved by rote memorization

shu 四庫全書存目叢書 ( Jinan: Qi Lu shushe chubanshe, 1997), j. 36, pp. 18a–b.

(1521–1593) dramatic exercises shows how playful artists, such as Xu,

san to respond by “trying but failing to sing” 唱不出 and “impromptu

social status as a professional singing teacher—with his own “Selected

The Rise of Courtesan Singers

歌之所重 , 大要在識譜 . Yuan Yuling, Xilou ji, v. 8, p. 22.

uncompromisingly supported and understood their singing art (zhi­

(yiyang wanzhuan 抑揚宛轉 ), beyond the normal level of eroticism

Here, Ling Mengchu attacks an emerging and thriving tradition

singing masters function to balance the extraordinary and aestheti-

Sophie Volpp, Worldly Stage: Theatricality in Seventeenth-Century China (Cambridge, MA:

Hehua dang, j. 1, p. 21a.

Yu Man, Gu Aishi, and Pu Meizhi (singing):

“Qulü” (1616), v. 12, p. 26.

Hehua dang, j. 1, p. 21a–b.

In the romantic imagination of the late Ming, singing ­teachers

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uncompromisingly supported and understood their singing art (zhi

In the romantic imagination of the late Ming, singing teachers