The Song Dynasty Gagaku Research

As a genre of poetry in the Song Dynasty, Gagaku is a product of the combination of poetryand music. This article attempts to interpret it from the viewpoint of poetry, which will take intoaccount the two dimensions of ceremony and music.The first chapter is the textual research about the authors and the years that the Gagaku werewritten. And in accordance with the author’s identity and position, these authors can be dividedinto three groups including the authorities, the literatis and the musicians. The authorities groupare mainly the Hanlin academies including occasionally the emperors and slaughters. Until ZongChongning emblem fourth year when DaSheng house was built, music songs creation is Dashenghouse duty. And after2nd year of XuHe, when DaSheng house was canceled, Gagaku writingwere transferred to the Secretary department; After the Southern Song Dynasty, the SecretaryDepartment and the Hanlin academy were mainly responsible for the gagaku, as well as parts ofprovincial officials involved in the creation. The Taichang Temple which was the mainmanagement institution of Gagaku, played a crucial role either in the northern or the SouthernSong Dynasty.The second chapter is about the study of song ceremonial procedures and songs singingwhich were used to sacrifice the heaven and earth, the progenitor, the several representativeceremonies. And this chapter also outlines historical changes of these procedures and ceremonies.Most of these ceremonies in Song Dynasty began and ended as the Gagaku did so that canpromote the ritual process and control the whole ceremony rhythm. Chapter fifth studies thecombination modes between the poetry and music. Gagaku music are the combination of poetryand music, which has a unique modulation system and rhythm characteristics, and these aredirectly influenced the combination mode of the poetry and the music. The séance music ofGagaku accords the old system of " Rites of Zhou ", and the sacrifice music attempts to adoptthe method of Yi-Yue-Yong-Lv used in Tang Dynasty, but in practice it is difficult to achieve. wecan see segment of a whole area features gagaku music of Southern Song Dynasty through theremains of gagaku music in the book of ZhongXingLiShu. The rhythm of gagaku features a wordfor a sound, a sound for a rhythm, but also the existence of polyphonic. Before the Song Dynastymusic songs were seldom created by music firstly and words afterwards.“Poetry expressing ideals, song expressing long words " is still the traditional music songs creation. After the SongDynasty,“music determining word” began to appear frequently. From the years of HuiZongChong-ning to fourth year in SongGaoZong Shao-xing, first making spectrum and then writingwords even becomes the main way of music songs creation. They have deeply realized that it wasnot only the simple creation order on the issue that poem being before music and music beingbefore poem, it involved the understanding of poem generation and poetic function. At the sametime, this change of creation order also affected directly the creative mentality, which determinesthe content of the works and style characteristics. It is based on this understanding, the SongDynasty gagaku creation eventually returned to the tradition of " poetry expressing ideals, songexpressing long words ".The third chapter studies the Gagaku stylistic features. Gagaku’s song names often implypolitical meanings. At the same time, they also have a more practical function: by name, todistinguish ritual objects, worship levels, sacrifice hosts and the different occasions. In the samegroup of songs, the transformation of music names marked the process of worship ceremonies andcombined the same parts. The genre of Gagaku features mainly four words, but also five or sevenwords, even a few adopted the form of Saoti. The rhymes of these Gagaku were formed under themetrical poetry and Ci-rhyme. The Gagaku genre characters have particular poetic origin, whichrelated to the identity of Ya-Song tradition. These characters also are connected to the developingmorphologically poetry and Ci in Song Dynasty. Ceremony program features would also affectthe choice of music genres. The ritual steps, showing the idea of classes, creating the specificritual atmosphere were all important factors which were needed to be considered when Gagakuwere created by authors.Fourth chapter studies the different Gagaku ceremony scenes. Gagaku writers tended todepict the ceremony scene, thereby enhancing the field of work. We can find easily that manyimageries were related to the ceremony scenes in Gagakus. Ceremony scene characteristicsdirectly affect the music image generation. From the ceremony scene, the Song Dynasty ritual canbe divided into two types, which were "the altar sacrifice" and " house sacrifice". In “the altaroffering” songs, the altar often was in the center of the images, which related to the altar shapechanges. The Song Dynasty JingLing Palace occupying an important position is one of the mainplaces of worship. And it’s structural layout and officials set had very close relationship withTaoism. JingLing Palace ritual songs tended to look humanity as heaven, to regard the reality as wonderland, praised the virtues of the ancestors, thus got to sacrifice the ancestors function.Because of the offering auspicious omens in the emperor parties, songs singing took a form ofseries of auspicious songs, in which auspicious images appeared frequently implying the profoundpolitical meanings and suiting ritual atmosphere. Lustrous and dazzling auspicious images werehighly decorative, as well as a beauty feast of the emperor party songs.