加拿大多伦多大学“中世纪古谱学研讨会”参会有感

赵维平

2007年9月21-23日在加拿大多伦多大学中世纪研究中心（Centre of Medieval Studies）举行了一场关于中世纪古谱学研讨会（The Calligraphy of Medieval Music），参会者共15位，均为来自剑桥、耶鲁、哈佛、圣约翰、美国加州大学、马里兰大以及法国、德国、奥地利、西班牙、加拿大等欧美、著名大学的专家（发言代表及演讲题目可参见如下网页：http://www.notaquadrata.ca/poster.html）。会议主要围绕着欧洲中世纪记谱体系、记谱法的形成过程以及各时期的抄谱法等展开了为期三天的学术研讨。该会的第二天下午专设了一场非欧洲乐谱的专门讨论会，笔者有幸作为一个亚洲古谱学问题的学者受邀参会，就中国及东亚古谱的形态及研究现状（全文列述如下）作了大会发言。

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

赵维平在多大中世纪古谱研讨会上发言

 

这次会议主要可分以下几大内容：首先，西方古谱及早期至中世纪教会纽姆谱在不同时期、地域的形态与形成过程。英国剑桥大学的Susan Rankin教授的“Procedures and Stylization in 11 Century Neume Forms”、奥地利格拉茨大学的Franz-Karl Prassl教授的“Music Scribes in Tenth-Century St. Gall”、德国Regensburg大学David Hiley的“Music Notation in Norman Sicily”等论文都从不同层面、地域、时期涉及古谱的具体形态及与音乐的关系问题。第二部分的内容是对手抄乐谱的解读以及不同时期乐谱形态的解译。威斯康星墨迪逊大学Lawrence Earp教授题为“Interpreting the Deluxe Manuscript”的发言则对精抄谱本作了详细解读。加州大学戴维斯分校的Anna-Maria Busse Berger先生的演讲则从法国十四世纪新音乐时期定量与非定量性乐谱时值的形成对后来音乐产生的结果与影响进行了分析（“The Consequences of Ars Nova Notation”）。而马里兰大的Barbara教授则以十六世纪威尔士出现的两种角形谱为例来阐释这一时期的音乐现象（“Two 16^th Century Examples of Late Square Notation at Cambrai”）。法国鲍伊迪厄大学的Olivier教授则以法国卡尔特教会的乐书抄谱解释了这一时期法国中部的一种音乐现象（“The Calligraphy of Carthusian Music Books”）。会议的第二天下午安排了一场非西方古谱的内容，也许是西方音乐学会的一次新尝试。我的（上海音乐学院赵维平）文章（“On the History of Chinese Tablature and Its Study”）陈述了中国历史上的古谱形态（主要涉及古琴谱与琵琶谱以及东亚的一些谱式问题）及二十世纪以来东亚古谱学研究状况。美国圣约翰大学的Getatchew教授主要论及非洲埃塞俄比亚手抄本乐谱的制作及与当地的文化环境（Manuscript Production in Ethiopia: An Ongoing Practice）。Catherine Martin女士则论述了加拿大沿海居住的密克麻（Mi’kmaq）少数民族部落的乐谱写作与文化间的关系（On Mi’kmaq Writing and Its Context）问题。会议连续展开了三天，代表们的发言时间充分，讨论热烈。还有些发言文章就不在此一一例述了，详细请参阅以上网站。作为一个参会者，该会给我留下以下几点深刻的感受：

1，会议的主题鲜明、集中，主办单位（多伦多大学中世纪音乐研究中心）目的明确地聚焦于早期及中世纪乐谱这一点，十分具体、深入、专业性地探讨这一时期乐谱所反映的音乐现象。这一点与我国许多学术点松散的大型学会有着较大的不同，令人感到务实、求深，企盼解决学术问题。

2，以早期乐谱为焦点，融东西方为一体的探讨，力图在一个宽泛的学术领域内求得深入的共同点。这次学会融入东方、非洲等乐谱的讨论显示出西方学者的视角开始注视非西方音乐现象。针对我发言，就中国的乐谱传到日本后的变迁及认识问题展开了激励的讨论。大家似乎在关心着一个共同的问题：如何客观地认识乐谱在历史变迁中的作用。

3，几乎所有的学者都十分具体地论述各不同时期、地域的乐谱形态，并由此涉及其文化的上下文关系（Cultural context），具有十分雄厚的说服力。一些学者看着无线角形钮姆谱立刻就试唱出具有明确音高的旋律线，分辨其节奏的长短等，这种对早期音乐的读谱能力无疑是理解这一时期音乐的重要基础。

4，所有的发言者都无不例外地引用原始乐谱资料展开讨论。这一点在国内西方音乐史研究中我们明显的感到资料不足的缺憾（当然我们应当充分注重原始史料的积累），实际上对中国音乐史的研究也是一个良好的经验积累。一个正确的观点无疑是建立在牢靠的史料基础之上。

 
               古谱制作的部分工具

5，一个有效而又宽松的学会。笔者在国内也承办过几次国际学术研讨会，但是这次会议令人感到更具有实效。会议没有繁琐的开幕式、拍照仪式、参观游览等。每天上午的开会时间在9点或10点。每个代表有30分钟或更长的发言时间，而每个发言后都留有15分钟左右的讨论，以能充分展开问题的论述。每次讨论都非常激烈，给人以充分、着实之感。

 

会议期间我们还参观了多伦多大学中世纪研究中心的作品展。这里除中世纪音乐外，还有美术、建筑、文学等一个欧洲中世纪文化艺术的综合性反映体。令人感兴趣的是音乐部分，为复原中世纪乐谱，研究中心特制当时使用的纸、墨及抄写、制作乐谱的工具。严格地按照当时制谱时所使用的材料和工具，以求得复制的真实感。                  

    多伦多大学的三天古谱学研讨会匆匆地结束了，留下了许多值得思考和回味的东西，此次参会的经验让我深感中国的音乐学研究尚需大大的努力。

                               

 

 

Presentation for the Conference of The Calligraphy of Medieval Music

Shanghai Conservatory of Music                             September 22, 2007

  Weiping  Zhao                                                          University of Toronto

                                                                               Trinity College

 

On the History of Chinese Tablature and its Study

 

Music notation is an important method of recording, preserving, and transmitting music. China has a long history throughout which the formation and development of her notation system has represented and influenced many regions in Asia, especially in East Asia.  When did music notation appear in ancient China? What forms of notations were there in China? Within China, what is the current state of research on music notation?  Considering the above questions, I would like to discuss two main points:

1.      The main types of notation in Chinese history.

2.      The state of research on Chinese ancient notation.

 

Ⅰ. types of notation in Chinese history

The formation of Chinese tablature has a long history that dates back to the third century BC. The earliest record of Chinese drum notation is found in the Liji·Touhu （《礼记·投壶》a part of the Confucian canon that was edited in the Eastern Han (200 BC).  The record describes the two groups of Xue and Lu as they gamble and record which group wins at throwing a sword on a pot.  If the Xue group would win, the drum would be hit and one square mark（□） would be written down, and if the Lu group would win, one circle mark（○） would be written down.

The earliest qin notation appeared in the sixth century of the Liang Jin in Jieshi Diao·Youlan.（碣石调·幽兰）  This notation is a narrative form of qin notation that relates through characters how to play the qin (see the photo of Youlan), exp.  The notation relates the finger and position for the left hand and the string and manner of play for the right hand.  From these two instructional sentences, a pitch can be played.  It is very complex that the two sentences express one pitch.  In the Tang Dynasty, the literary form of notation was reformed by Chen zhuo and Cao rou.  This revised notation is called Jianzi (减字) notation.  Jian means omit and zi means Chinese character.  Thus, Jianzi (减字) notation means leave out part of a character and use the left side of a Chinese character to form a new word to represent one pitch.  Four parts of a single character constitute one Jianzi character with upper and lower sections.

Before explaining qin notation, let’s look at qin as an instrument.  The qin is a seven-stringed instrument with thirteen positions (hui 徽).  The qin has a range of more than four octaves, and is particularly effective at playing harmonics.  The qin’s sound is very quiet because it has no bridge under the strings. It is predominantly prevalent in the class of intellectuals.

Jianzi notation consists of upper and lower parts that together relate pitch notation.  The upper section denotes the finger and position for the left hand, and the lower section denotes the strings and method of play for the right hand.  For example, this notation expresses the following instructions: For the left hand, use the third finger (夕) on the ninth (九) position, and for the right hand, pluck-in the second string. This usage of tablature is still used today.

 

Left (upper) ——夕九—— right (upper)

             Left (lower) ——氵勻—— right (lower)

 

At the beginning of the 20^th century, pipa notations that were transcribed before the year of 933 AD were discovered in western China in the Dunhuang Caves. The Dunhuang pipa scores together recorded 25 pieces that are divided into three groups according to different transcription handwriting: pieces 10:10:5.  The original scores are preserved at the French National Library in Paris (BnF).  The earliest pipa notation is preserved in the Nara Syosoin museum in Japan. Because the pipa notation was transcribed in the year of 747 AD during the Japanese emperor’s reign of Tanbiao 19, it was also called Tanbiao Biwa (pipa) notation. It is a 37 set long document with six lines of tablature notes on the back of the document.

 

There were 20 tablature notations for the four-stringed biwa and 27 tablature notations for the five-stringed biwa.

 

four-stringed biwa 20 notes：一エ几フㄐ　ㄥス十乙コク七ヒて之 丄ハㄧムヤ

five-stringed biwa 27 notes：一エ几フㄐ　ㄥス十こレ ク七ヒて之　丄ハㄧムヤ 子九中口四五 小

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because there was frequent cultural exchange between China and Japan in the 7^th to 9^th centuries, the Japanese envoys took many Chinese notations back to Japan.   Japanese envoys gradually studied and imitated Chinese notation, which developed into notations still used today.  There are several other similar pipa notations:; Five Strings Biwa fu written in 773 AD (preserved in Kyoto Yomei Bunko); as well as the 8^th century notations for the straight-neck five-stringed pipa and the slanted-neck four-stringed pipa that are stored in the Syosoin museum. Miyamoto Nangu Biwa fu written in 838 AD (preserved in Japanese Kunaicho). and Sango yoroku（三五要録）was written 12^th century.

 

There are many other musical instrument notations besides the pipa/biwa.

·Hakuga no Fue fu  (the notation of bamboo flute of Hakuga, edited by Minamoto Hakuga in 966)

·Jinji Yoroku (So fu/ Zheng pu, the notation of 13 stringed long zither, edited by Fujiwara no moronaga in 1192 )

·Hosyou Fu (the notation of mouth organ, edited in 1201)

·Sinsen syoteki Fu (the notation of mouth organ and flute edited in 1303)

 

Ⅱ. On the Study of Chinese Ancient Notation

Considering function and effect, notation greatly differs in Western and Chinese musical activities.  Due to the Eastern system of oral teaching, notation does not hold an important status in musical activities.  Compared with the use of Western scores in the performance domain, Chinese musical performance was not strictly dependent on notation.  Although musical notation appeared very early, beginning in the Song Dynasty（960-1279） people began to have difficulty reading the scores of a former dynasty.  People from later dynasties thus began to solve the notation problems of a former dynasty.  Because of the time, I want to focus my discussion on the study of notation especially in the 20th century. 

  

1, On the Study of Qin Tablature

A multitude of qin notations were published beginning in the Ming Dynasty (15^th century).  The remaining Ming Dynasty qin notations are recorded in more than 100 kinds of anthologies preserved through the present.  The qin notations are preserved in more than 3000 records of qin pieces in total and 600 pieces excluding duplicates.  The records of qin notation constitute an extraordinarily complete and valuable heritage on the art of the qin.  Since the 20^th century, there are many new trends in reading and studying qin notation.

   In the 20^th century after China entered the modern era, many qin societies were established under the basis of different ancient schools of qin players.  The qin societies not only created channels of exchange within qin arts and promoted the development of qin study, but also allowed for the organization and publishing of many qin scores as well as academic studies on related artistic fields.

·Suzhou Yiyuan Qin Society

·Shanghai Jinyu Qin Society

·Nanjing Yueqingxi Qin Society

·Yangzhou Guanglin Qin Society

·Chongqing Tianfeng Qin Society,etc.

 

Shanghai Jinyu Qin Society published a journal of Jinyu in 1937, and Beijing Qin research group was established in 1954.  Under the leadership of the president of the group, Zha fuxi, many qin collections were edited and published including the following:

· On the Study of Youlan

· Compilation of Qin pieces Preserved in Chinese History

· The Collection of Qin Pieces

· Collected Works on the Study of Qin of Zha Fuxi’s

· Biographies of Qin Players in Chinese History

 

Furthermore, the scholar Robert Hans van Gulik(1910-1967) from Holland has also written several books on the qin.

 ·HSI K’ANG and his Poetic Essay on the Lute

·The Lore of the Chinese Lute

 

  2.  On the Study of Pipa Notation              

            As a result of the 20^th discovery of the Dunhuang pipa scores, there has been an increased interest during the second half of the 20^th century within China in ancient score studies.  This rise in interest began when the Tang Dynasty music scores（8th -9th century）, which date back to the year 933 AD in the fourth year of Changxing, were discovered in the Dunhuang cave that preserved Buddhist scriptures.  In actuality, research on pipa notation began in Japan when the Japanese scholar Hayashi Kenzo (Nara Educational University) started researching the Tianbiao Biwa fu written in the year of 747 AD.  Hayashi Kenzo published his paper On the Study of Ancient Biwa Notation in 1938 and later on published the article The Explication of the Ancient Pi-p’a Musical Score Discovered at Tun-huang, China in 1955（《中国敦煌古代琵琶谱的解读研究》） ( journal of Nara Gakugei University No.1, Vol. 5). This research was translated into Chinese in 1957.  In later years, Hayashi Kenzo published many papers on the explication of pipa notation and has had a far-reaching, significant influence in academic circles.

In 1957, Zhao Rulan’s Ph.D. dissertation Song Dynasty Musical Sources and their Interpretation from Harvard University, collected and studied more than 80 music pieces from the Song Dynasty.  After revisions, Zhao's work was published by Oxford University Press in 1967.

In 1962 Indiana University Press published W. Kaufmann's work, Musical Notations of  the Orient, which studied the notations of China, Korea, India, Japan, and especially ancient Chinese notations including lülü notation, gongshang notation, gongchi notation, suzi notation, narrative guqin notation, and simplified guqin notation.   

       Concerning ancient Chinese score studies, it is also important to mention the British scholar Laurence Picken (1909-) from Cambridge University.  In the 1940's, Picken, who was once a biologist, had come to China dispatched by Parliament as a scientific envoy.  After meeting qin players in China, Picken has since forged an indissoluble bond with ancient Chinese music.  In his contributions to New Oxford Music History, Picken translated the Jian Baishi songs, qin music of Gu Yuan and other ancient music of Shilin Guangji.  Following these works, Picken dedicated himself to the study of Chinese ancient notations.

       In 1972 at the Mang Japanese libraries, Picken collected and copied a large number of scores that had been transmitted from China to Japan.  After Picken returned to England, he formed a research group in Cambridge that focused on Tang Dynasty music.  The members of the research group were R. Wolpert, E. Markham, A. Marett, J. Condit and others.  In later years other members joined the research group including the Japanese scholar Mitani Yoko, and N. Nickson from Australia.  The research group also trained a generation of new scholars including S. Nelson and C. Rockwell.  Besides studying Chinese ancient pipa notation, Picken's research group also studied the flute notation (Hakuga no fue fu, 966), long zither notation (Jinji yoroku,1171 ), notation of mouth organ (Hosyo fu,1201), and notation of mouth organ and bamboo flute (Sinsen syoteki fu, 1303), and other works.  The research group has provided a comprehensive, synthetic study on the above notations.  Their studies were published in Asian Music (vol. 1 - vol. 6) by Picken's chief editor.  From the 1980's onward, on the basis of the research group's achievements, Picken compiled 20 volumes of The Music from Tang Court of which seven volumes have been published.

        In the early 1980's, research on pipa notation began in Mainland China.  In 1982 The Shanghai Conservatory Professor Ye Dong published an article, The Study of Dunhuang Pipa notation and translated the entire score into modern notation as well as performed the music.  Because of attention from the media, there was an increased amount of interest in China toward Dunhuang notation.  Ye Dong objected to Hayashi Kenzo's explanation that the Dunhuang notation has no rhythm or beats.  Ye Dong holds that the dots and blocks on the right side of the Dunhuang notation are rhythmic notations.  Ye Dong interpreted the block symbol as markers of an emphasized beat or the beginning of a measure.  Based on this interpretation of rhythmic notation, Ye Dong translated 25 pieces of Dunhuang music.  Ye Dong's interpretation shocked many Chinese scholars, and as a result, many scholars entered the debate surrounding the problem of rhythmic notation.  Amongst these scholars, the Shanghai Conservatory of Music professor Chen Yingshi more objectively interpreted the Dunhuang pipa scores on the basis of notation research indicative of rhythmic elements from  the Song Dynasty.

    There is still a long road toward the understanding of Chinese ancient notation.  People eagerly want to understand and hear the 1200 year old Tang Dynasty music in its original form.  However, in China, much of the traditional music was not passed down.  Because ancient music was not passed down from generation to generation, the reconstruction of ancient music presents many obstacles.  An authentic and precise reconstruction of ancient music remains a difficult work.

    Thank you for your great attention.