A Study Of Chen Yang And His Yue Shu

A native of Minqing County in Fujian Province, Chen Yang was a jinshi (a palace graduate) in China's North Song Dynasty, who later served in the Ministry of Rites. His 200-volume Yue Shu (Book of Music) is a scholarly work of historical and cultural value.The first part of this study attempts to reconstruct the past to the utmost extent by penetrating mainly from the perspective of ethnomusicology into the life of Chen Yang and his work, while drawing on other sciences such as historiography, sociology and hermeneutics, making it a multi-level, multi-perspective, and interdisciplinary research. Based on genealogical information and historical accounts obtained from the author's two visits to Chen Yang's native place, and drawing on A History of the Song Dynasty: Chen Yang, this study explores, against the political, economic and cultural background of Song Dynasty, some relevant events of obvious political and ideological significance, along with their related social context, and the shaping of individual identity. Then it brings out the track of Chen Yang's journey through life: First he was trained as a "Confucian scholar," which served to lay the foundation for his official career and scholarly life. Then the good scholar became an official. Finally, his official career did bear fruit梙is Yue Shu, with which he attempted to realize his life goal?put the family in order, run the local government well, and bring peace to the entire country."The second part starts with punctuating the text of Yue Shu. Then, the research moves on further to make an intensive study of Yue Shu'smain structure, contents, and methods of writing, tracing the source and development of the academic thinking, and probing into Chen Yang's orientation of values in restoring the liyue system and reinforcing yueyong, in an attempt to interpret Yue Shu against a historical background. by looking into two related writings Yue Shu Xu and Jin Yue Shu Biao, it explores the motivation of Chen Yang's efforts to restore the ancient liyue culture by his masterpiece. Chen Yang lived in the Song Dynasty, when China's feudal society was on the decline. Nevertheless, he still cherished a feeling of great reverence for the liyue culture of China's three earliest dynasties, thus displaying the political and cultural thinking of China's intellectuals under the feudal system. Without such a common ideal that the Song intellectuals hoped to achieve, there would not have been the editing of Yue Shu. Viewed objectively, Yue Shu should have its proper historical status in the study of China's tone system, musical bibliography, musical history, and ancient liyue culture.