A Study Of The Historical Value Of Song Music Notes

The Song literary men wrote a large number of notes, in which scattered a wealth of music records. This writer has searched through nearly 500 kinds of Song notes and organized music literature in 200,000 words that are scattered among the notes. From the aspects of their descriptive characteristics and narrative contents, this paper examines the historical value of these documents.The three chapters of the first section examine the historical value from the aspects of descriptive characteristics.1. By conducting a longitudinal comparison of the Song music notes with the music notes in Han, Wei, Six Dynasties, Tang and Five Dynasties, and examining the percentage of each type of music notes in the total amount of notes of the specific period, it finds out that compared with the earlier periods, the music notes in the Song Dynasty have higher academic value and improved authenticity and richness.2. As a descriptive form of the Song music notes, the music academic study reflects the characteristics of Song scholars' music academic research. Their well-documented and dialectic writing style enables them to have the dual nature of recording and investigation, and some of the results can still provide a frame of reference for today's research.3. Music narration is the major descriptive form of the Song music notes. The authors record the music events they saw and heard, covering a broad range. The careful music notes reflect the descriptive characteristics of such literature. This chapter makes a case study of "the careful notes", analyzing the narrative features and historical value of music narrative literature.The three chapters of the second section examine the historical value from the aspects of narrative contents.The main element of the Song music notes is the description of music events. From the aspects of making up the deficiency in history books, highlighting new materials and mutual testimony of literature, this paper tries to examine the historical value of the literature, in order to improve the understanding of historical facts through close reading. It divides the literature into four main categories:1. Different genres of literature, such as the Song drama, singing art, dance music and instrumental music2. Activity literature, such as the Song collection of musical instruments and folk music activities3. Song music literature about music compositions and musicians4. Music literature from abroad in the Song notesThrough this comprehensive study, we can see that the contents of the Song music notes are complex and fragmented, and their focus is different from the concern and narrative focus of historical music records and music study documents. Historical music records concern the nature of court music and its activities, but music notes record various music events the Song scholars saw and heard. The two complementing each other can constitute a complete study of the Song Dynasty music. Certain literature in the notes is directly copied into history books, which shows that Song scholars already recognized the authenticity and historical value of music notes. As direct historical literature, music notes are more vivid and extensive than history books.