Chinese Music in Print: From the Great Sage to the Lady Literata

Abstract

<p>Grounded in a desire to bring back to life rare items from the University of Hong Kong’s Fung Ping Shan Library that are entwined within the world of music and to place them in a context of books and images in American, British, and other Asian collections, <em>Chinese Music in Print </em>views the library as a repository not of information but of artifact, and then uses these artifacts as a means for generating scholarly narrative. It begins by assessing seminal texts in the Confucian canon set against the delicacy of the concubine and amanuensis Shen Cai’s calligraphy and poetry. Confucianism was itself a crucial aspect of courtly life, and an exploration of its ritual is the book’s second theme. Vernacular genres of opera and song are represented in the third chapter, while the Great Sage returns in the fourth for an exploration of the repertoire and richness of his favourite instrument, the <em>qin</em>. The final chapter ends the journey with discussion of the legacy of generations of Europeans who have visited China and their contribution to the understanding of a more vernacular instrument, the <em>erhu</em>.</p>