Qingyue

Qingyue is the qingshang legacy kept at the Sui-Tang court, built on three modes rather than a qingjiao scale

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Qingyue (Qing Music)Xianghe SongGongdiaoSheng

Time and place

Qingyue descends from Han-Wei qingshang music, current in Luoyang and Jiankang. After the Jin court moved south, old qingshang pieces merged with Wu songs from the lower Yangzi and Xi songs from the Jing-Chu region. The Sui court set up a qingshang office, and the Qing Shang Ji appeared in the nine and ten-part court programmes. The name survived into the Song, but the original sound did not.

What happened

Xianghe song had three modes, ping, qing and se, known as the qingshang three modes. They classified pitch level, mode and repertory at once and became the core of qingshang music after the Wei and Jin. Sui-Tang courts set southern qingshang lyrics to silk-and-bamboo accompaniment for banquets. Guo Maoqian's Yuefu Shiji divides qingshang lyrics into Wu songs, shenxian songs, Xi songs and jiangnan nong. Song writers used qingyue for an older ritual survival.

Musical features

Qingyue uses silk-and-bamboo accompaniment, with voices answering instruments, a mainly pentatonic frame and a sense of sections called qu and jie. The three qingshang modes are three mode classes, not three notes. The qingyue scale is a different idea, a seven-note scale with a raised fourth degree, qingjiao. One names a modal system, the other a scale, and they are often confused.

What to listen for

Hear Jiangsu Moli Hua for a clear pentatonic frame and phrase endings, the sound of a Jiangnan shidiao. Then hear Suzhou Gusu Fengguang, several shidiao strung into a suite, close to the way qingshang lyrics were grouped. Finally hear Meng Jiangnu Xun Fu, a Wu narrative song carrying one tune through a long story. None is qingyue; they preserve habits of the old qingshang region.

Common misunderstandings

A term sometimes met online, qingshang jiao zhi yu, conflates the three qingshang modes with the qingjiao degree of the qingyue scale; no classical source uses it. Others take qingyue to mean a scale with qingjiao, or assume the Sui-Tang Qing Shang Ji preserved Han-Wei sound. Qingyue was a court arrangement of an older tradition, separated from its origin by centuries of oral transmission.

Sources

• 《宋书·乐志》— 清商三调与相和歌记载核对，未引用
• 郭茂倩《乐府诗集》— 清商曲辞分类核对，未引用

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.