Musical Scholarship of the “Golden Age” of Qing Dynasty Based on 17th and 18th Centuries Books and Treatises

Abstract

In 1772, by the order of the Emperor Qiánlóng, work began on the compilation and copying of the collection of classical Chinese works known as the Sìkù Quánshū, which included books on musical philosophy, aesthetics, drama, palace ceremonies, as well as treatises on European music theory written at that period of time in China. The detailed review of some of these works presented in the article is aimed at introducing new information about the content of music theory sources from the times of the reign of Kāngxī and Qiánlóng into the corpus of Russian musical scholarship. The authentic documents of the era demonstrate that the “Golden Age” of the musical culture of the Qīng court possessed its own stylistic characteristic features, as reflected in the diverse scholarly interests of Chinese scholars in the 17th and the 18th centuries. As part of the new cultural and political reality, classical Chinese musicology was inculcated with a number of transformative aspects, from the revolutionary theoretical expositions of Emperor Kāngxī to his active implementation of Western European musical knowledge. On the other hand, the strict fixation in the treatises of the musical aspect of the ceremonial events of the palace confirms the intention of the Qīng emperors to preserve traditional rituals as the foundation of their own political stability, explicitly demonstrating a continuity of the art of music of previous dynasties.

Keywords: Sìkù Quánshū, Kāngxī, Qiánlóng, music theory treatise, musical culture of the court