A Research On The Palace Music Activities And Its Moralization In The Han Dynasty

In ancient China, the palace music is one of a content rich, diverse forms. It is the comprehensive activities that including politics, music and enlightenment. Since the Western Zhou Dynasty Formulating of "rites and music", palace music activities have become the special kind of historical landscape of ancient Chinese society, and also has its unique educational value. The book rites records:"presentation of the sacrifice, preparation of meats which placing in pots, displaying Harps, aerophone, bells and drums, then blessing. To invite God and ancestors for help, wishing the solidarity of the monarch and his subjects, father and his sons as well someone’s brothers. In a series of the special activities including music, blessing and other rites, the purpose of political rules getting publishing and educating, The eventual object is to develop their sense of social identity, and finally construct a stable social order.The research object of this thesis is the "activities" of court music in the Han Dynasty.It discuss the "palace music", "ceremony" and "Enlightenment" as well its related problems. This paper consists of three parts. The first part, through combing and researching the history of Zhou Dynasty’s palace music activities, discussing the historical origins of the palace music activities in Han Dynasty, including to investigate the influences as to the properties of court music through analyzing the process that the constituting of ritual and music by the monarch in the beginning of Zhou Dynasty, and also analyzing the palace music system of Zhou Dynasty and its components, as well analyzing the regularity of palace music activities. The goal is to known the connection between political rules and social management and ritual activities as well enlightenment.In the second part, the comprehensive characteristics of the activities of palace music in Han Dynasty were studied from multiple perspectives. First of all. It looks at the kinds and structure of Han Dynasty palace music for getting the categories and characteristics court music; secondly, further study of the various ritual activities of court music in Han Dynasty has done, in order to explore the relationship between political etiquette and palace music and its related characteristics; In addition, from the contrast on sacrificial activities of Han Dynasty (suburban ancestral temple) and non-sacrificial activities (treat, ceremonies and traveling),It showed the implications of enlightening of palace music activities and summed up the three characteristics of the Han Dynasty palace music activities:the first point, the palace music is made up by music, rituals and enlightenment. The three aspects formed a whole and they are indispensable; The second point, court music activities are the one of the most important parts as to ritual activities in palace, and the latter determines the former. The third point, the court music activities have a strong political meaning and direct functionality of enlightenment. On these basis, the paper summed up the implication about the activities of enlightenment of court music in Han Dynasty, they are:"loyalty" and "respect", "stateliness", "kindheartedness", "filial piety" and " harmony’The third part is the conclusion. Through comprehensive survey to The whole evolution of the Han Dynasty palace music activities, it can clearly depict the overall features, namely:the great social transformation and the political enlightening under the background of grand unification of the Han Dynasty are combined tightly. In this part, through the further discussion the special aspects of the connotation about the Han Dynasty palace music enlightenment and the feature of unique era, mainly through analyzing the different forms of ritual music from Han Dynasty palace music activities, furthermore, through the comparison and discussion of the enlightenment of palace music. It found that the inner core meaning of Han Dynasty palace music enlightening activities performs "loyalty". And then, it presents the phenomenon that the palace music activities of Han Dynasty related the social political activities directly by contacting the social transition between the Qin and Han Dynasties.Generally speaking, through the research, this paper draws the following three basic understanding:first of all. the Han Dynasty court music activities, in essence, is a kind of social and political activities, has the strong connotation of culture; second, the Han Dynasty’s rulers required appropriate political ethics norm in order to strengthen and consolidate the unification of social political structure so that the concept of enlightenment of the Western Zhou Dynasty was remolded, the most important implication of enlightenment had changed into "Loyalty" from the "filial piety" of Western Zhou Dynasty’s, and this change shows strong political purpose obviously. Last but not the least, the Han Dynasty’s palace music activities as the one the most important means of implementation of political ethics norm for the Han Empire’s rulers plays an important role, the rulers can adjust the musical dances, songs, rites and lyric in palace music to make people identify with the "grand unification" of society. To make a long story short, the Han Dynasty palace music activities in the "unification" of the political construction of the role is irreplaceable.