![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Notes
2 “Technical” discussion of the relationship between music and words in Kunqu can be found in unpublished work such as Marjory Bong-Ray Liu’s 1976 UCLA doctoral thesis, “Tradition and Change in Kunqu Opera” or Catherine Crutchfield Swatek’s 1990 Columbia University doctoral thesis, “Feng Menglong’s Romantic Dream: Strategies of Containment in His Revision of The Peony Pavilion.”
3 Quoted in Koo Siu-sun (Gu Zhaoshen 古兆申) and Diana Yue (Yu Dan 余丹), trs. and eds., Wei Liang-fu: Rules of Singing Qu (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2006), “The Supremacy of The Singing Voice—Aesthetic Judgement in Kun Qu Singing,” p. xiii. This is a volume in the series Kunqu yanchang lilun congshu 崑曲演唱理論叢書 (Writings on the Theory of Kun Qu Singing), from the same press.
4 Duan Anjie 段安節, Yuefu zalu 樂府雜錄 (Miscellaneous notes on song), in Zhongguo gudian xiqu lunzhu jicheng 中國古典戲曲輪著集成 (Collected writings on classical Chinese drama), 10 vols. (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju, 1959), 1: 46.
5 Yannan Zhi’an 燕南芝庵, Changlun 唱論 (On singing), Zhongguo gudian xiqu lunzhu jicheng, 1: 159.
6 Xu Dachun 徐大椿, Yuefu chuansheng 樂府傳聲 (On the transmission of sound in song), Zhongguo gudian xiqu lunzhu jicheng, 7: 168–69.
7 Terry Teachout, “Fictional Musicians Rarely Ring True,” Wall Street Journal, May 11, 2012, p. D10. In the first paragraph of this piece, Teachout writes: “I doubt there have been more than a dozen English-language novels of indisputable significance in which one or more of the central characters was a professional musician, and fewer still in which those characters were portrayed in a way that other musicians would find convincing.”
8 See Bell Yung, “Music of Qin: From the Scholar’s Study to the Concert Stage,” in Joys H.Y. Cheung and King Chung Wong, eds., Reading Chinese Music and Beyond (Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong, 2010), p. 13.
9 See Joseph S. C. Lam, “Pipa Stories as Cultural History of Chinese Music,” in Cheung and Wong, eds., Reading Chinese Music and Beyond, p. 33.
10 There are actually more than nine modes in this work. Nine here is a figure of speech and means “all.”
11 There is no direct evidence that Wei worked on dramatic texts.
12 Nanxi is generally used now to distinguish an earlier and cruder form of Southern drama that dates from the Song dynasty from the later, more refined form developed under literati input known as chuanqi 傳奇, but the use of the former term to include the latter in early writings was quite common and is presumably the case in this example as well.
13 Quoted in Hu Ji 胡忌 and Liu Zhizhong 劉至中, Kunju fazhan shi 崑劇發展史 (The development of Kun opera; Beijing: Zhongguo xiju, 1989), p. 47.
14 Quoted in Zhou Yibai 周貽白, “Qulü zhushi” 曲律注釋 (Qulü annotated and explicated), Xiqu yanchang lunzhu jishi 戲曲演唱論著辑釋 (Collected writings on the performance of musical drama explicated; Beijing: Zhongguo xiju, 1962), p. 67.
15 Yu Huai actually uses the equivalent term beiyin 北音 (northern sound).
16 Quoted from Yu’s “Jichang yuan wen ge ji” 寄畅園聞歌記 (A record of hearing singing in Jichang garden) in Hu Ji and Liu Zhizhong, Kunju fazhan shi, p. 62.
17 See Koo and Yue, trs. and eds., Wei Liang-fu: Rules of Singing Qu.
18 Zhou Yibai, “Qulü zhushi,” p. 68, quoting Song Zhifang’s 宋直方 Suowen lu 瑣聞錄 (Record of the hearing of trivial matters), a Qing dynasty work.
19 Hu Ji and Liu Zhizhong, Kunju fazhan shi, pp. 62–68, quotes various sources for the development of Kunqu instrumental accompaniment. On Zhang Yetang’s changes to the sanxian and the invention of the tiqin, see pp. 66–67.
20 For a detailed study of qingchang see Zhu Kunhuai 朱昆槐 (Chu Kun-huai), Kunqu qingchang yanjiu 崑曲清唱研究 (Studies in the pure singing of Kunqu; Taipei: Da’an chuban she, 1991). See also Ch’ung-ho Chang Frankel, “The Practice of K’un-ch’ü Singing from the 1920’s to the 1960’s,” CHINOPERL Papers 6 (1976): 82–91 and Lindy Li Mark, “The Role of Avocational Performers in the Preservation of Kunqu,” CHINOPERL Papers 15 (1990): 95–113.
21 Quoted in Zhou Yibai, “Qulü zhushi,” p. 69.
22 A new version of the play in eight scenes was produced by the Suzhou Kun Opera Theatre of Jiangsu in 2008 under the name of the beauty who is the heroine of the story, Xi Shi 西施 (a.k.a., Xishi) Both the script and music was heavily revised and the result is a far cry from traditional Kunqu.
23 It is true that in recent decades there has been a movement to revive the singing of non-dramatic songs in the Kunqu style, which are referred to as Kunge 崑歌. I personally first heard Kunge sung at the Autumn Kunqu festival in Suzhou in 2004.
24 For the text of the anecdote, and a brief discussion of it, see Hu Ji and Liu Zhizhong, Kunju fazhan shi, p. 21.
25 Reprinted in Jicheng qupu 集成曲譜 (Grand compendium of qupu), 8 vols. (Taibei: Jinxue shuju, 1969), 5: 11.
26 See also Isabel Wong, “The Printed Collections of K’un-ch’ü Arias and Their Sources,” CHINOPERL Papers 8 (1978): 100–29.
27 From this point of view they are similar to the shi 詩 form in classical Chinese poetry.
28 Poets, for instance, can write qu poems which focus only on these two elements.
29 An exception, perhaps, is Wang Shoutai 王守泰, Kunqu gelü 崑曲格律 (Prosodic rules of Kunqu; Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin, 1982). Few Kunqu scholars deal as extensively with music as Wang does in this book.
30 Since huamei 畫眉, besides referring to painting eyebrows, is also the name of a kind of bird kept as a pet, the title of this qupai could also be transcribed as “Lan huamei,” and it would then be the bird rather than the eyebrow painter who is lazy. The latter, however, seems a more likely topic for a song.
31 Some translators go to the trouble to translate the qupai names, while most, such as Jean Mulligan in her translation of the Pipa ji 琵琶記 (The Lute: Kao Ming’s P’i-p’a chi; New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), just romanize them. Some translators seem to feel that it is distracting to include even the romanized titles in the translation, and either just cut them out, as is the case, for instance, with H. C. Chang’s translations in his Chinese Literature: Popular Fiction and Drama (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1973), or include them in an appendix keyed to roman numerals inserted in the text where the qupai names would normally appear, as Cyril Birch does in his translation of Peony Pavilion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, revised edition, 2002).
32 Extrametical syllables/characters (chenzi 襯字) are not stipulated for qupai, and they are used less in nanqu than in beiqu.
33 Here the other three tones are yinping and yangping (counted as one here), shangsheng, and qusheng.
34 This is scene 16 of Yuzan ji 玉簪記 (The jade hairpin), by Gao Lian 高濓 (1573–1620). The scene was originally named “Jinong” 寄弄 (Entrusting emotions to zither playing).
35 This is the scansion for the single instance of the qupai in scene 10, “Jingmeng” 驚夢 (The interrupted dream), in Tang Xianzu’s 湯顯祖 (1550–1616) Mudan ting 牡丹亭 (Peony pavilion).
36 Richard Strassberg has translated the terms for and explained the application of the most common decorative motifs used in the Yu Sulu 俞粟廬 (1847–1930) school and also provided examples in staff notation in his “The Singing Techniques of K’un-ch’ü and Their Musical Notation,” CHINOPERL Papers 6 (1976): 45–81.
37 An example of a qupai with repetition is an instance of the qupai “Chaoyuan ge” 朝元歌 (Morning song) in “Qintiao.” In it the first two phrases of eight measures (4/4) are repeated, and then repeated again in variation form. This is the only instance of the scores of Kunqu melodies that I have sung in many years that has a recognizably repeated theme.
38 I have argued for the human ability to remember melodic motifs or “melodic motif memory,” 3M for short, in another article: Li Linde 李林德, “Qupai ti yinyue zhong ‘xuanlü muti jiyi’ zhi shenmei zuoyong—Yi ‘Xuge’ ‘Zuihua yin’ wei li” 曲牌體音樂中 ‘旋律母题記憶’ 之審美作用—以 《絮閣》【醉花陰】為例 (The aesthetic deployment of ‘melodic motif memory’ in qupai music: The case of the aria “Zuihua yin” in the scene “Xuge”), Zhongguo wen zhe yanjiu suo tongxun 中國文哲研究通訊 (Newsletter of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy) 11·1 (2001): 31–38.
39 Heterophony refers to a style of playing where two or more instruments play the same melody in synchrony but with added embellishments without disrupting the rhythm and tempo. Dixieland jazz uses heterophony.
40 I personally often have difficulty following such singing even when the text is given in the program notes.
41 The metaphor of the olive is used because olives are narrow at either end and full in the middle.
42 Here it should be mentioned that historically there is a complex theory of modes and pitches, but it is not utilized today. I believe that the adoption of the bamboo flute as the chief accompanying instrument, limitations of the spread of human fingers, and the range of the human voice (traditionally mostly male), precluded the use of microtonal distinctions.
43 Slightly modified from the translation that I did for the subtitles for Peony Pavilion: Young Lovers’ Edition.
44 Available on the DVD Peony Pavilion: Young Lovers’ Edition (Hong Kong: Digital Heritage Publishing Ltd., 2008) or online. A bilingual version of the twenty-seven scenes of this production of the play, translated by Lindy Li Mark, is available in eBook format from www.chinabooks.com.
45 His previous employment was as first flutist of the Jiangsu Kunju Troupe, a position he held for thirty years. He is an accomplished concert artist of the bamboo flute and interpreter of the Kunqu flute style.
46 For details on the way that Yu Sulu annotated decorative motifs in his gongche transcriptions, see Strassberg, “The Singing Techniques of K’un-ch’ü and Their Musical Notation.”
47 The actual flute pitch may vary as bamboo is extremely sensitive to ambient temperature and humidity. The precise pitch of the mode/key may also vary from singer to singer.