Li Ch'ing-Chao's Summation
In an age of cultural florescence like the late Northern Sung, important new developments could easily take shape within a few years. Thus, in addition to being a fuller treatment of the generic identity of tz'u , "A Critique of the Song Lyric" also presented in its conception of genre new developments not yet discussed by such scholars as Ch'en Shih-tao and Li Chih-i. While Su Shih was moving in the direction of "heroic abandon," other poets of the late Northern Sung—notably Yen Chi-tao (1141–1119?), Huang T'ing-chien, Ch'in Kuan, Ho Chu (1052–1125), and Chou Pang-yen—were trying to perfect the finer points of the art of the song lyric within the orthodox tradition of "delicate restraint." Of particular relevance was the meticulous attention Su Shih's younger contemporaries paid to the coordination of the sounds of words and the tunes of banquet music. In 1105 the Bureau of Grand Music (ta-sheng fu ) was instituted by Emperor Hui-tsung (r. 1101–25), imperial patron of the arts, to encourage the study and cultivation of music. Such contemporary developments were paralleled by the interest of many scholars active during the last decades of the Northern Sung in refining the intrinsic music of the song lyric, a trend that is clearly reflected in "A Critique of the Song Lyric."
In discussing the aesthetics of the song lyric, Li Ch'ing-chao places foremost importance on music, arguing that it is the intrinsic music of the tz'u that constitutes the very identity of the genre:
In shih poetry and in prose one has to observe the distinction between level and oblique tones only. In the song lyric, however, one has to distinguish the five sounds [labial, dental, glottal, apical, and nasal], the five notes [kung (do), shang (re), chüeh (mi), chih (sol), yü (la)], the six upper pitch-pipes, and the clear and the turbid as well as the light and the heavy [allotones induced by voiceless or voiced initials, respectively]. Moreover, in recent days, in the so-called "Sheng-sheng man," "Yü-chung hua," and "Hsi ch'ien ying," one can use rhymes not only in the level tone but also in the oblique tones. The rhyme in "Yü-lou ch'un" is originally in the level tone, but it can also be in the rising, departing, or entering tone. If one uses a rhyme in the rising tone when [a metrical pattern] originally uses a rhyme in the oblique tone, the song lyric will have harmony; but if one uses a rhyme in the entering tone, the song lyric will not bear singing.[87]
No discussion of the song lyric prior to Li Ch'ing-chao's "Critique" had paid such attention to the details of initials, rhymes, tones, and
[87] Huang Mo-ku, Ch'ung-chi Li Ch'ing-chao chi , p. 57.
notes in music as illustrated in the passage above. Li Ch'ing-chao's terse comments on these fine points of tz'u prosody and music might have made immediate sense to her contemporaries, but they are opaque to the modern reader. Today, before any definite conclusions could be drawn concerning the precise relationship between words and music in the song lyric, a vast amount of research would be required both into the nature of the sounds and four tones of Late Middle Chinese as well as into the tonal patterns of tz'u by poets who had equal competence in music and poetry.[88] Given that little banquet music has survived, I doubt that the real situation will ever be known. In any case, for our purposes here it is important to realize that the attempt to work out a precise correspondence between words and music was a new development in the late Northern Sung and that Li Ch'ing-chao had already made use of it as a criterion in differentiating tz'u from shih .
Some of Li Ch'ing-chao's statements in the passage quoted above can still be tested in her own tz'u poetry. For instance, in her song lyric set to the tune "Sheng-sheng man" (which begins with the line Hsün-hsün mi-mi , or "Seek, seek, search, search," and is discussed by Stephen Owen at length elsewhere in this volume), she uses fifteen apical and forty-two dental sounds as well as a number of words sharing initials or finals. The result of her effort is a song lyric remarkably rich in sound effects. Although we can tell that the sound aspect of this lyric is a precise echo of its sense, we have no way of knowing exactly how the sound and rhythm of the text harmonize with the tune to which it is set, since we no longer have the music.
Li Ch'ing-chao also appears to be an extremely tough critic in her essay on the song lyric, and no poet mentioned emerges completely unscathed from her evaluations. In her view, total compliance with the structure of banquet music was an essential requirement in writing tz'u that would "constitute its own household" distinct from shih . Thus, she observes that well-known writers such as Chang Hsien and Sung Ch'i often produce marvelous expressions but that their song lyrics usually suffer from fragmentation. She further notes that the song lyrics by Yen Shu, Ou-yang Hsiu, and Su Shih (in which the intrinsic music often does not correspond to the extrinsic music) are in reality all shih poems with uneven lines. Similarly, the song lyrics of Wang An-shih and Tseng Kung resemble their prose works. Of the well-known Sung poets who also wrote in the song lyric form, only Liu Yung, Yen Chi-tao, Ho Chu, Ch'in Kuan, and Huang T'ing-chien are regarded as understand-
[88] For a preliminary attempt, please see my "Intrinsic Music in the Medieval Chinese Lyric," esp. pp. 43–53.
ing the form's generic identity. Nevertheless, they all fall short in one respect or another as ideal practitioners of the genre. Liu Yung's language she considers "vulgar"; Yen Chi-tao suffers from a lack of p'u-hsü , the technique of "extensive description and narration"; Ho Chu falls short in not having a "classic weightiness" (tien-chung ); Ch'in Kuan focuses on "emotional import" (ch'ing-chih ) but lacks "allusive substance" (ku-shih ); and although Huang T'ing-chien has "allusive substance," he displays many other flaws. It is obvious that Li Ch'ing-chao applies a certain sense of decorum to her evaluation of the language of these writers of the song lyric. But although the p'u-hsü technique was first developed by Liu Yung in the song lyric, it had been extensively used in rhymeprose for some time.[89] And the other qualities or failings she cites can be found in earlier criticism of shih poetry or prose.[90] It seems, therefore, that Li Ch'ing-chao might permit a certain "mixing of genres" in some areas of tz'u poetics as well.
Modern scholars have generally been baffled by Li Ch'ing-chao's glaring omission in her essay of any reference to Chou Pang-yen, the major Northern Sung poet and musician who synthesized virtually all previous styles of the song lyric into his own. She does mention Ch'ao Tz'u-ying, an evidently well-known songwriter and an official at the Bureau of Grand Music, of which Chou Pang-yen was once superintendent. Why does she discuss the works of a less accomplished writer or even of little-known figures such as Sung Hsiang (Sung Ch'i's brother), Shen T'ang, and Yüan Chiang, but not the truly major poet of the time? Perhaps Li Ch'ing-chao was not aware of Chou Pang-yen's achievements when she wrote her "Critique of the Song Lyric."[91] Or perhaps the omission of Chou Pang-yen indicates that Li Ch'ing-chao found it difficult to criticize him.[92] Indeed, Chou Pang-yen's song lyrics do not
[89] I am grateful to David Knechtges for pointing this out at the conference.
[90] For instance, the term ku-shih is used by Liu Hsieh in the "T'ung-pien" chapter of Wen-hsin tiao-lung in a discussion of wen ; see Chou Chen-fu, ed., Wen-hsin tiao-lung chu-shih (Peking: Jen-min wen-hsüeh ch'u-pan-she, 1981), p. 330. Yin Fan also uses this term in a discussion of Meng Hao-jan's poetry; see Yin Fan, Ho-yüeh ying-ling-chi , in Yüan Chieh et al., T'ang-jen hsüan T'ang-shih (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1958), p. 91. Terms such as tien (usually in the compound tien-ya ), li , and i are frequently encountered in Chinese literary and art criticism.
[91] Yang Hai-ming, "Li Ch'ing-chao 'Tz'u lun' pu-t'i Chou Pang-yen ti liang-chung t'an-ts'e" in his T'ang Sung tz'u lun-kao (Chekiang: Ku-chi ch'u-pan-she, 1988), pp. 304–10.
[92] Yeh Chia-ying has expressed this opinion in a letter to Miao Yüeh. She has also suggested that Li Ch'ing-chao might not have completely agreed with Chou Pang-yen's approach to the song lyric and therefore did not praise him in her critique. See the re-mark as quoted in Miao's essay "Lun Li Ch'ing-chao tz'u" in Miao Yüeh and Yeh Chia-ying, Ling-hsi tz'u-shuo (Shanghai: Shang-hai ku-chi ch'u-pan-she, 1987), p. 339.
suffer from the faults Li finds in the works of Chang Hsien, Liu Yung, Yen Shu, Ho Chu, Ch'in Kuan, and Huang T'ing-chien. He further developed the technique of p'u-hsü innovated by Liu Yung in a refined and elegant language with "classic weightiness" and "allusive substance," although his main subjects remained "lovesickness" and "separation." Above all, his song lyrics illustrate a perfect harmony between intrinsic and extrinsic music; as a poet, he paid closer attention to all four tones than had any previous songwriter.[93]
But however sophisticated and refined, Chou Pang-yen's works represent a synthesis of the orthodox aesthetics of the genre of the song lyric as it had developed during the Northern Sung. Although Li Ch'ing-chao's omission of him from "A Critique of the Song Lyric" is a curious one, her articulation of the characteristics of the genre marks a crucial moment in its critical history, a comprehensive awareness of its identity as a distinct literary form. Only as a result of the cumulative contributions of a number of poets could she assert, therefore, that the tz'u now claimed a domain of its own.
[93] Hsia Ch'eng-t'ao, "T'ang Sung tz'u tzu-sheng chih yen-pien."