Title: Ordering the Disorderly: Tuning Theories, Science, and Western Learning in Qing China

Time: 4:30 – 6:00 pm
Venue: LG01, Hui Yeung Shing Building

Delivered in English, all are welcome

Synopsis:
The Correct Principles of Music (Lülü Zhengyi 律呂正義), commissioned by the Kangxi Emperor in 1713, is arguably one of the most notorious music treatises in Chinese music history; it proposes a pipe tuning system that divides the octave into fourteen pitches. In contrast to Zhu Zaiyu’s 朱載堉 (1536–1611) equal temperament, which is broadly acclaimed as a great scientific achievement, the fourteen-tone temperament is often dismissed by scholars as disorderly, erroneous, and unscientific. This contrast reflects a trend in the modern historiography of Chinese music: evaluating music theories based on their scientific merits and according to the developmental trajectory of Western music. This paper offers a more decolonial view on the Correct Principles of Music, whose authors did not see contrapuntal music as progressive and equal temperament as the teleological goal of the development of tuning. They rejected equal temperament based on the traditional correlation between tuning and calendrical astronomy, employed European theory to explain the disorderly acoustics of pipes, and devised the fourteen-tone temperament to tune the disorderly pipes based on their unique conceptualization of pitch.