A Study On Chronicles Of Musical Culture In Northern Song Dynasty

The Northern Song is a significant stage in Chinese music history. It not only carried on the tradition of songs and dances from Han and Tang dynasty, but also opened a new era of narrative and opera music, which blossomed in Ming and Qing China. However, academics pay less attention to the dynastic history of Northern Song music. Chronicle is the oldest and classical tool of constructing narratives in Chinese history. Taking time as longitude and historical events as latitude, chronicle constructs a dynamic image of past realities. In this dissertation the author tries to study the dynastic history of Northern Song music in the manner of narrative and perspective of chronicle, looking for a new narrative and study pattern of musical history, in order to sort and expound the development of Northern Song music as a whole.This dissertation is divided into three sections:introduction, chronicle of Northern Song music and afterword. In the introduction the author expounds the theoretical deliberation of employing chronicle in study on Northern Song music, and introduces the compiling style of chronicle of Northern Song music. In the author’s opinion, the significance of employing chronicle to study Chinese historical music of21st century is not the listing of historical events and sources, but the construction of a dynamic view of the historical and musical past. The second section, chronicle of Northern Song music, is the principal part of this dissertation, consisting of nine volumes corresponding to the nine emperors in Northern Song. Taking biographical history and event-based history for reference, the author combines historical events, textual research and commentary into chronicle, and chronicles major musical events by special topic, so as to keep integrality and diversity of narrating musical events. In the afterword the author discusses some consideration of Northern Song music and its study according to the chronicle.