Confucianism
Students of Chinese music and culture shouldn't miss the impact of an important figure, Kong zi (551-478 BCE), known in English as Confucius (Lau 2008: 118) who, together with his followers Mengzi (Mencius) (372-289 BC or 385-303 or 302 BC) and Xunzi (c. 310 - c. 235 BC, alt. c. 314 - c. 217 BC), established the ideology of Confucianism. Confucianism plays a strong educational role in a hierarchical society by emphasizing the virtues of harmonious relationships between people in relatively fixed social ranks, and thus supported the ruling class world-view over the two-thousand-year feudal period.
The book Yue ji gives us some insight into the musical preferences of Confucianism. First, Confucianists believed that music originated from the emotions people wanted to express: 'Song comes from the prolonging of speech.
When people want to express something, they speak. If speaking isn't enough to accommodate their emotion, they prolong the sounds, then they sing, then they dance'. Second, they made a strong connection between music and politics. The function of music is to 'teach people to forget their desires and keep them in a calm and harmonious state'. Third, Confucianists argued that the best music aroused the listener's virtue. And fourth, they claimed that only morally good people could understand proper music; the morally low only knew sound, not music (Chen 1995: 87-91).
The music that Confucianists considered 'proper' was called yayue . A rich yayue system that served as a vital part of court rituals-including ceremonies marking sacrifices to the universe, gods, and ancestors-had been established by the court since the Zhou dynasty. Yayue was also heard in court, at military events, and in temples. So far as we can tell from surviving music scores and descriptions, these yayue pieces were usually slow in speed with a simple melody, neat rhythms, and played by a full ensemble.
Early feudal period (475 BCE - 589 AD)
As several kingdoms vied for control over the whole Chinese territory, the Warring States period marked the rise of feudal societies-a new layout of social classes based on interconnecting regional relationships of responsibility and patronage with a less emphatically centralized government. Music-based rites were a means through which these relationships were enacted by citizens. This political shift inspired new developments in culture, philosophy, technology, and the sciences. Confucianism and Taoism (sometimes written as Daoism) were two of the influential philosophies of this age which impacted the Chinese cultural and music spheres. Meanwhile, changing social and class systems pushed the development of new kinds of folk music. Following The Book of Songs, another folk-song collection, The Songs of Chu, was edited. In it, a new genre named xianghe ge-songs with instrumental accompaniment-first appears. Gradually, xianghe songs absorbed the music style from Southern China, mainly the southern part of Yangtze river, and transformed into qingshang music (Xu 1985: 34-35). Folk ballads also appeared; examples include the sad love story 'Peacock Flying towards Southeast' and 'Mulan ci', about a girl Mulan who disguises herself as a man to replace her father in the army.
Meanwhile, solo instrumental performance achieved a high level of development, exemplified by a famous piece for the qin (seven-stringed zither) called 'Guangling verse'. The notation of this music has survived from a collection entitled Miraculous Notation, published in 1425, although it is thought to represent a much older composition. The piece tells the story of a young man, Nie Zheng, who trained as a qin player in order to be recruited to the court, where he took the opportunity to assassinate the king to take the revenge for his father's death. Many players and listeners have subsequently taken the piece as a symbol of how the ordinary citizen can fight back against an unkind ruler (Xia 1989: 52-55).
Modern Chinese songs were promoted by those advocating different religious and political stances in the age of national revival and modernization.
