Playing a traditional zither
Confucius not only said interesting things, he sang them and accompanied himself on a kind of zither. The Smithsonian Institution’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery has frequent shows of musical instruments from Confucius’ time, 2,500 years ago. A collection of his lyrics (there are no melodies preserved) is one of the first pieces of Chinese literature handed down through the centuries.
“It is said that Confucius accompanied himself on a ‘qin’ while singing the odes of the Shi Jing, or the ‘Classic of Poetry,’” says cellist Yo-Yo Ma in a guide to the exhibit. “We don’t know what Confucius’ qin may have looked like, but in popular accounts of his life, the image of the philosopher-musician became firmly established.” The qin is a kind of zither. Today’s Chinese musicians still use one kind. Ma is an American of Chinese ancestry, one of today’s leading cellists playing classical western music.
Jenny F. So, the Sackler’s curator of ancient Chinese art, said in an interview that some of the “odes” were just folk songs. Confucius reportedly made a practice of dancing with his disciples every day. In his time, music was considered of great social significance, linking rulers to subjects, parents to children. “It is by poetry that one’s mind is aroused; it is by ceremony that one’s character is regulated; it is by music that one becomes accomplished,” he said.
Most of the instruments on display come from a tomb of the Marquis Yi, found by Chinese soldiers in 1977 when they were leveling a hill as a site for a factory. The instruments are borrowed from a museum in Hubei, China. So said this is the first time they have been displayed in a musical context.
Confucius had definite ideas about what music ought to be. “Get rid of the tunes of Zheng,” he is quoted as saying. “The tunes of Zheng are lascivious.” The Zheng area lies just to the south of Lu, Confucius’ home state. A later chronicler, who So says may have been using his imagination some, told of a Chinese king who was fond of licentious music. “He assembled a large company of musicians and actors at the Shaqiu garden,” says the account, “filling a pond with wine and hanging up meats to make a forest. He caused men and women to disrobe and pursue each other through this scenery, as part of a drinking feast lasting long into the night.”
A costumed musician, Mei Min Su of the local Chinese Music Society, played more recent Chinese music for visitors before the official opening, on a zither like one from Confucius’ time. The marquis apparently had two sets of musicians: one for public ceremonials, which emphasized percussion instruments, and a smaller, more intimate one with strings. Chinese authorities considered his ceremonial set of 65 huge bronze bells too precious to leave the country. Inscriptions on them identify the notes they produce on the Chinese five-tone scale. So far as scholars can find, it took nearly another thousand years before actual tunes were written out, Su said. In one chamber of the tomb archaeologists found an elaborately lacquered double coffin with the body of a middle-aged man, presumably the marquis. Eight smaller coffins contained the skeletons of eight young women.
