Pitches: the bare essentials
The first thing that Westerners tend to notice about the music of the Hàn (漢) Chinese is the pentatonic scale upon which it is structured. The pentatonic scale has been in China for a very long time: biānzhōng (編鐘, ‘organized bells’) dating back to the Zhōu (周) dynasty are based around the same wǔshēng (五聲, *goshō, ‘five tones’) as the instruments of today [1]: gōng (宮, kyū, ‘do’), shāng (商, shō, ‘re’), jué (角, kaku, ‘mi’), zhī (徵, chi, ‘so’), and yǔ (羽, ū, ‘la’). These are relative, rather than absolute, pitch names, and are equivalent to degrees 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 of the Western major scale, respectively. These names were likely codified following their appearance in the Ěryǎ (爾雅, ‘Approaching Elegance’, as per Mair), a 3rd century BCE dictionary enshrined early on in the Confucian canon [Thrasher 84][3]. Both the Chinese [Thrasher 85] and Japanese [Garfias 60] traditions recognize two more additional accidental tones, referred to in much of the Japanese literature as “exchange tones”: biàngōng (變宮, henkyū, ‘si’, lit. altered gōng’) and biànzhī (變徵, henchi, ‘fi, lit. altered zhī’)—our Western degrees ♯4 and 7. The Japanese tradition furthermore has relative names for all twelve tones relative to a tonic—more on that later. I’ll refer to these using movable-do solfége.
These relative pitches exist in reference to a theoretical absolute pitch system: the Chinese tradition, much like that of the West, divides the octave into twelve tones. These shí’èrlǜ (十二律, jūniritsu, ‘twelve laws, twelve pitches’) also date back to the Zhōu period—the biānzhōng of Marquis Yǐ of Zēng (曾侯乙, Zēng hóu Yǐ) are capable of producing the whole gamut [1]. Legend tells that the generating pitch of the shí’èrlǜ, huángzhōng (黃鐘, “yellow bell’), was a length of bamboo changing with every dynasty [2], upon which Pythagorean fifths were stacked and then tempered. Scholars refuse to agree on historical pitch values for huángzhōng, or the precise equivalence between the Japanese jūniritsu and the Chinese shí’èrlǜ. Garfias equates huángzhōng with the Japanese pitch ōshiki, written with the same characters [Garfias 59], while Steven G. Nelson [Tokita 21] concurs with Intō citing Tominaga [5] in equating huángzhōng with the Japanese pitch ichikotsu (壱越), citing evidence of Táng (唐) era modal practice. In any case, modern (and likely Edo-period) Japanese practice tunes ōshiki to 440 Hz and ichikotsu to D (referencing A=440 Hz). Competing claims as to the pitch of huángzhōng in the Táng dynasty range between C [Tokita 21] and G [Thrasher 95]. I wash my hands of this debate, and will refer to any concrete pitches using Western letter names.
On our next episode, modes.
References
1. http://www.neuroscience-of-music.se/Zengbells.htm —Seems reputable enough, considering that I don’t have access to von Falkenhausen’s book.
2. Thrasher, Alan. Sīzhú instrumental music of south China: Ethos, theory and practice.
3. Ěryǎ 7:1, reading 「宮謂之重,商謂之敏,角謂之經,徴謂之迭,羽謂之柳。」I have precious little Classical Chinese, or Chinese of any sort, for that matter, and the definitions of each note are unclear to me.
4. Garfias, Robert. Music of a thousand autumns: the Tōgaku style of Japanese court music.
5. Intō, Kazuhiro. “Tominaga Nakamoto (1715-46) and gagaku (court music)”, in The Tokugawa World, edited by Leupp and Tao.
6. Tokita, Alison McQueen and Hughes, David. The Ashgate research companion to Japanese music.