Research On Historical Changes Of Chinese Fife’s Shape And Making

This thesis is intended to give a general study on the development of fife, ortransverse bamboo flute, from the Neolithic Period all the way to the Ming and Qingdynasties. In each period, data are categorized into literature, physical materials, anddrawing materials, among which the most representative fifes are selected andanalyzed, in order to demonstrate the main developing trends of fifes’ shapes andmaking in each period.Ever since the1980s, a large amount of important fifes have been discoveredfrom all places, ranging from bone flutes and bone whistles from ancient times toexquisite fifes with complete temperaments in later ages. The combination of thesearchaeological entities with literature and documents can exhibit the development ofancient Chinese fifes more accurately.Materials from Neolithic period are mainly archaeological relics, such as boneflutes of Jiahu and bone flutes of Hemudu. The large array of unearthed bone flutes isalso strong evidence for scholars to prove that China has had its transverse musicalinstruments from ancient times. Musical instruments unearthed from Xia dynasty tothe Warring States period are mainly in the north. After Zhou dynasty, a developmentpeak for rites and music, no matter seen from the historical documents or materialobjects, it is easy to conclude that the making and performance occasion and methodsof fifes have become regular and stable. In Han dynasty, because of the extensiveexchanges between all the peoples, various kinds of fifes from pagan peoples has beenintroduced into the central plain region, with the prevalence of Qiang flute. Historicaldocuments in this period were especially abundant, although contained somecontradicts. For instance, in the ode of flute by Ma Rong, it was said that all the flutesin Han dynasty originated from the Qiang people. However, later historical recordsshowed that Zhang Qian only brought the performance methods of foreign flutes intoXijing (the capital city of Chang An in the Western Han dynasty西汉的首都长安).These contradictory historical records have confused scholars of later ages. Theauthor combines physical entities, historical documents, and drawings with previousstudies. The analysis has showed that there are three main types of fifes in the Handynasty: Qiang flute, Ancient flute, and Improved flute. Another development summitfor fife is Tang and Song dynasties. In Tang dynasty, four pagan peoples surrenderedto the central government. Not only from the ethnic minorities of the north, there werealso frequent exchanges from Japan and North Korea in the south. Foreign musicalflutes such as Double-end flute were introduced in that time and provided vitality intotransverse musical instruments. In Song dynasty, scholars organized the thrivingmusical instruments and music in former times. Historical books in Song dynastyprovided more accurate records of ancient flutes for later studies. Finally, in Ming andQing dynasties, transverse flute took the prominent form of Mirliton. Its shape,making, and performance methods were the same with contemporary and modernbamboo flutes, without many changes.Great efforts have been put into the collection and analysis of the shape andmaking of fifes; however, due to the great time range of the studied period and difficulty in collecting relevant historical materials, there must still be some missingin the historical data collection, which will be added when opportunity rises.