A Textual Research Into The Source And Change Of Tunes And Their Names Of Jiaofang Quzi

In Tang Dynasty, enormous popular music, recomposed with some tonal patterns and rhyme schemes, was developed into quzi (a kind of art song), which was so large in quantity that it was hardly countable. As one important component of Tang music, quzi is not only the source of other forms of music, but also their remained variety. Therefore, the study on Tang quzi is fundamental for the research on Tang music. However, due to the inadequacy of musical literature and limitation of research technique, the previous studies on Tang quzi mostly has been done from a literary perspective, which is not comprehensive enough to investigate its overall picture.Jiaofangji as one important piece of work about Tang music, not only records such things as the instruction office system at the time of Emperor Xuanzong and some anecdotes about music, but also collects more than 300 Tang turns, among which 278 pieces are explicitly referred to Tang quzi. With the largest collection of Tang quzi, the book inevitably becomes one of the most reliable resources for the present study. To shed light on the textual criticism on tunes of Tang quzi, this paper, based on Huang Xiangpeng's textual research of tune, focuses on the first and the fourth part of a six-step investigation.The paper is composed of five parts. The first part is a general review of Tang quzi and a brief summary of the previous literature. The second part traces the historic source of Tang quzi in jiaofangji, mainly about the tunes and their names. In the third part, a statistic is made to show the changes in tunes and their names, concerning the same tunes and their names in Five Dynasties (907-960), the Song ,Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties. The paper, in its fourth part, also explores the preservation and translation of music which has the same tune and name in jiaofangji. Through the textual research, the last part proves the possibility of the recovery of the Tang quzi, which broadens the scope of the relevant work on Tangquzi and fills up an academic blank in the study of China's ancient music.