Song Ci Music

Song ci was sung to fixed tune patterns; most melodies are lost, and Jiang Kui's notation is the rare surviving evidence.

Related

QupaiSuzipuGongdiaoDizi

Time and place

Between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, in Kaifeng and Lin'an. Ci grew with yanyue in the Tang and Five Dynasties, and in the Song it became a sung genre shared by literati, courtesans and townspeople. Teahouses, wine shops and household banquets were its venues.

What happened

Ci is usually written to a tune: melody first, then lines of uneven length, with the cipai naming the tune. One cipai can carry different texts; line count, syllable count and tone patterns are fixed, while singers may add ornament. Flute, pipa, sheng, zheng and clappers usually accompanied, and the singer shaped the words into melody.

Musical features

Ci music uses five- or seven-note scales, with mode set by the cipai and gongdiao. Jiang Kui's Baishi Daoren Gequ preserves seventeen songs with suzipu notation, the most important Song evidence; Yangzhou Man and Xinghua Tianying can be transcribed. Most cipai survive only as verbal patterns.

What to listen for

Begin with Yangguan Sandie, a qin song that shows how a poem is repeated in song. Then hear Yue'er Wanwan Zhao Jiuzhou, whose textual tradition reaches the Song but whose tune is later. Finally hear Tianjin Shensheng Man, a folk song named after the cipai, not Li Qingzhao's original tune.

Common misunderstandings

A common mistake is to assume all Song ci melodies survived, or that a cipai is only a syllable count. Very little ci music was notated; the cipai is first a musical unit, and one tune can be sung differently by era and singer.

Sources

• 《中国音乐词典》编辑部编，中国音乐词典（人民音乐出版社）— 条目与年代核对，未引用
• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry "China" — framework and dates checked, not quoted

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