This page is a digitization of one of the oldest and most comprehensive collections of Chinese vocal melodies in existence, the imperially commissioned Jiugong dacheng nanbei ci gongpu 九宮大成南北詞宮譜 (Nine Modes Comprehensive Northern and Southern Lyric Melody Manual), commonly abbreviated to Jiugong dacheng (JGDC hereafter), completed in the ninth year of the Qianlong Emperor’s reign (1744).
“Nine Modes” here indicates the comprehensive nature of the collection, as well as its organizational principle: like most Ming and early-Qing Dynasty aria manuals, it organizes pieces not by their authorship or provenance, but by region (“North” and “South”) and by traditional mode-key categories, like Xianlü diao 仙呂調 (Bb's la mode). Half a century later, Ye Tang’s 葉堂 Nashuying qupu 納書楹曲譜 (Book Storage Hall Aria Manual) would establish the precedent of arranging pieces as they would appear in a dramatic performance, reflecting the fact that, by that time, arias written as parts of dramas were much more popular for even stand-alone singing than the sanqu 散曲 (free arias) popular for much of the Ming Dynasty.
“North” and “South” is the single biggest and most significant division within the collection and refers to two large groups of pieces popular as part of Kunqu 崑曲 performance (the most popular elite singing style in the late-Ming and early-Qing periods) and included in most chuanqi 傳奇 (marvelous tales) dramas—the most popular genre of literary drama at the time. The Southern pieces are drawn especially from Song Dynasty ci 詞 (lyric) poetry and “Southern plays” (nanxi 南戲) of the late-Song, Yuan, and early-Ming periods and are typified by a pentatonic scale (“do, re, mi, sol, la”), a division between free rhythm preludes (yinzi 引子) and metered arias (zhengqu 正曲), use of slow tempi and expansive rhythmic structures like zengban 贈板 (“extra beat” or 8/4 time), and more melisma (many notes per syllable). The Northern repertory comes especially from Jin, Yuan and early-Ming Dynasty sanqu, zhu gongdiao 諸宮調 (“all keys and modes”—a prosimetric storytelling art), and zaju 雜劇 (variety dramas) and is characterized by a heptatonic scale (includes “fa” and “ti”), a stricter “suite” (taoqu 套曲) arrangement of individual melodies, less melisma (fewer notes per syllable), and faster or less strictly defined tempi and rhythmic structures.
The collection includes a combination of information about prosody (rules governing poetry/lyric writing) and music. The primary prosodic features the collection highlights are metrical versus extrametrical “padding” characters (襯字), rhyme, and the related division of poetic lines, which corresponds to an imperfect degree to the rhythmic and melodic structures. This contrasts with earlier manuals aimed more at lyricists and emphasizing the linguistic tones and pronunciation of characters over their associated melodies. Transitional works between prosodic manuals of the mid-Ming and Jiugong dacheng include late-Ming manuals like Feng Menglong’s 馮夢龍 Taixia xinzou 太霞新奏 (Celestial Airs Played Anew), which includes rhythmic notation (dianban 點板—literally, “marking the downbeats”) but no melody, and the early-Qing Nanci dinglü 南詞定律 (Fixed Pitches for Southern Lyrics), which includes downbeat and melodic gongche 工尺 (“do-re”—that is solmization) notation, but no finer rhythmic details and less of the prosodic information included in the late-Ming manuals. This trend continues in later manuals which typically do not even note the ends of poetic lines, indicating a shift in priorities (perhaps due in part to innovations in notation, music grew comparatively independent of the poetry it was written to accompany). One may view an overview comparison of prosodic features of pieces sharing the same title by clicking “prosody” in the Query Engine.
JGDC’s musical notations are unprecedented in the Chinese tradition in the level of detail they provide, though they still lack detail compared to what one would expect to find today (finer rhythmic details like the position of the “2” and the “4” (xiaoyan 小眼) in 4/4 time are not included). They consist of a combination of rhythmic (dianban) and melodic (gongche) notations, as well as numerous comments about the provenance of many pieces. Though a few works, like Taohua shan 桃花扇 (Peach Blossom Fan), may have been omitted for political reasons, JGDC nonetheless provides an unparalleled snapshot of the sound of late imperial elite musical theater and Qing Dynasty court music (Kunqu was used at the Qing court for ceremonial pieces like the Quanshan jinke 勸善金科 (Golden Statutes for Encouraging Goodness) performed on many state occasions). One may view a staff notation of the rhythm and melody of a piece, along with pronunciation according to a Kunqu dictionary, by clicking “sheet” in the Query Engine.
As stated above, the collection does not indicate finer rhythmic details, so the digitally generated staff notation defaults to e.g., “quarter note, eighth note” where there is ambiguity as to whether that or “eighth note, quarter note” would be used. Such details were thought at the time to belong to the discretion of the singer and the realm of oral transmission. Despite the mode-key categorizations, which were actually quasi-vestigial or conventional by that point, the melodic notations indicate only relative pitch movement, not absolute pitch levels. The sheet music function of the database allows one to set the key in terms of Western music major scales, with “D” as the default because it is closest to the most commonly used Kunqu scale, called xiaogong diao 小工調. One should note, however, that while this provides a reasonable approximation for how such pieces are performed today, Kunqu, along with most traditional Chinese music forms, underwent a major shift during the latter half of the twentieth century toward using Western, “equal tempered” scales (though late-Ming Prince Zhu Zaiyu 朱載堉 famously discovered formulae for equal temperament a few years ahead of the West, his ideas did not gain mainstream acceptance among the Chinese performance community).
Thus, though “D major” is basically equivalent to xiaogong diao today, it would not have been in the time JGDC was recorded. For a closer approximation of that sound one may imagine playing these scales with a bamboo flute tuned to a perfect fifth interval of either G-C or A-D (to this day most Kunqu flautists keep at least two flutes, traditionally called cidi 雌笛 and xiongdi 雄笛, for these two important intervals, thereby allowing easy playing of the most common scales) and the rest of the notes in the scale close to evenly spaced relative to those notes, albeit slightly lower than A=440. So, for example, a traditional xiaogong diao scale, instead of D, E, F#, G, A, B, C# would be more like D, E, F#-, G+, A, B, C#-, with the “mi” and the “ti” particularly low compared to what one hears today and the “fa” (here G) relatively high (using “fa sharp” instead of “fa” is still common in Kunqu flute playing today). This type of tuning is still used in a few Chinese regional arts and is similar to that used today in some Persian and Turkish music, perhaps reflecting Central Asian influence in the medieval period.
The “Query Engine” page consists of two separate search bars which may be used in combination, along with a set of tools for analyzing various aspects of the pieces and/or lines selected using the two search bars. Near the top of the page is a search bar for narrowing the selection of pieces (the “Select Songs” search bar). Below the list of pieces is a search bar used to look for parts of pieces fitting certain parameters, such as the appearance of a particular pattern of tones or melody (the “Filter Lines” search bar). Below that are tools for analyzing the selected pieces/segments.
The “Select Songs” search bar understands the following queries, which may be combined:
id: the songs in the collection are numbered based on the page they appear in within the Shanben xiqu congkan edition (when more than one song appears on the same page they are numbered like 300.1, 300.2). To find the first piece on page 3300 type id:3300.1
title: the title of the song (qupai 曲牌). To find all pieces with qupai name 山桃紅 type title:山桃紅
region: narrows the collection to one of the two regional styles. To narrow to only Northern pieces (北曲) type region:n; for only Southern pieces (南曲) type region:s
mode: narrows by traditional mode-key category. To find only pieces categorized as 仙呂宮 type mode:仙呂宮. One may further narrow Southern pieces here by adding 引 for preludes, 正曲 for metered arias, or 集曲 for pastiche arias and Northern pieces by adding 隻曲 for stand-alone arias or 套曲 for Northern suites. Thus one may search for e.g., mode:仙呂宮集曲 or mode:仙呂調套曲 (several mode-key names have a “Northern” and a “Southern” variant, the Southern generally ending in 宮 and the Northern in 調).
source: narrows by the source of piece. May include the name of an author of ci 詞 poetry, a chuanqi drama like 牡丹亭, 散曲 for stand-alone art songs, 元人百種 for Yuan zaju dramas. To find any ci poems composed by 周邦彥 type source:周邦彥詞. To find all pieces from 牡丹亭 type source:牡丹亭.
lyrics: Find any piece with a particular phrase as part of the lyrics. To find all pieces with the lyrics 春夢 type lyrics:春夢
melody: Find any piece with a particular sequence of gongche characters as part of the melody. To find all pieces containing 伬仜伬 type melody:伬仜伬
padding: Filter pieces by the total number of padding characters. To find pieces with no padding characters type padding:0. To find pieces with exactly 10 padding characters type padding:10. To find pieces with 30 or more padding characters type padding:30+
One may combine queries within the top search bar. For example, to look for all Northern pieces from the play 長生殿 type region:n source:長生殿
The “Filter Lines” search bar filters lines and parts of pieces by the following parameters:
melody: search for a melodic pattern. 1=do (上 in gongche notation), 2=re (尺 in gongche notation), etc. To find all lines with melodic pattern do-re-mi-re-mi type melody:12323; one may also click the “find motifs” button to find repeating melodic patterns ordered from longest to shortest within all the selected pieces/lines.
fuzzy: search for melodic strings with some margin for variability. Between any pair of the specified notes, there may be at most 3 intervening notes. For example: fuzzy:65323 would match against 6x53xx2xx3, but not 6xxxx5323.
tone: search for strings of characters belonging to a particular tone. Tones may defined with less or greater specificity. For example, 平仄平 or 平去平. 陰 and 陽 tones may also be specified optionally. For example, to find all strings of tone 陽平陽平陰平上去 type tone:陽平陽平陰平上去
tonemelody: search for patterns of tone and melody appearing together. To find all cases where tonal pattern 平平去 corresponds to melodic pattern mi, mi, la-sol, type tonemelody:平3平3去65
padding: search for lines with a particular number of padding characters. To find all lines with 6 padding characters type padding:6
length: find all lines of a certain length (in terms of number of Chinese characters). To find all lines of length 8 type length:8
Count Padding Characters Box: the default is not to count padding characters for purposes of analysis of e.g. where a particular rhythmic marker appears. Check this box to count the padding characters. For example, if a given poetic line begins with three padding characters and is followed by five metrical characters the first metrical character will count as character “1” while the box is unchecked but count as character “4” when the box is checked.
Motifs: Find repeating melodic patterns within selected pieces, ordered from longest to shortest
Tone: Produces a bar graph analyzing the interaction of tone with melodic contour. One may enter a specific tone, such as 平, 上, 去, or 入 to see the melodic contour associated with that tone. Melodic contours are described in terms of + and -. Therefore, if a particular character with 平 tone begins on do and ends on re that will be counted as a melodic contour of +1 associated with 平tone.
Rhythm: Analyzes appearance of rhythmic markers 。, 、, _, ▯, L, ﹆, and ╚.
Entering 。into the bar here, for example, will show the frequency with which that rhythmic marker appears at certain positions in a poetic line. Click “show as percent” to control for the fact that e.g. there are fewer “character 9s” in the collection than “character 3s.”
Line Lengths: This tool simply shows the frequency of appearance of lines of various length within the selected pieces or line. Within the full collection the most common line length is 7 characters, followed by 4.