
Harmony and Counterpoint
Ritual Music in Chinese Context
Stanford University Press
Published on 1. August 1996
Book
Hardback
340 pages
978-0-8047-2658-0 (ISBN)
Description
This volume of nine essays draws together leading scholars in anthropology, social history, musicology, and ethnomusicology to address the roles and functions of music in the Chinese ritual context. How does music, one of a constellation of essential performative elements in almost all rituals, empower an officiant, legitimate an officeholder, create a heightened state of awareness, convey a message, or produce a magical outcome, a transition, a transformation? After an introduction by the volume editors, Bell Yung proposes a theoretical framework for dealing with Chinese ritual sound. A group of three essays focuses on the music for rituals that create political and social legitimacy followed by a second group of essays considering the music associated with rites of passage. Two essays then deal with the music accompanying rituals of propitiation. In all these cases, music is seen to play a critical role, if not the core of the ritual.
More details
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Palo Alto
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
New edition
Product notice
Cloth
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
680 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8047-2658-0 (9780804726580)
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Schweitzer Classification
Content
Introduction Bell Yung, Evelyn S. Rawski, Rubie S. Watson 1. The nature of Chinese ritual sound Bell Yung Part I. Behind the Scenes: Creating Legitimacy: 2. Ritual and musical politics in the court of Ming Shizong Joseph S. C. Lam 3. State sacrificial music and Korean identity Robert C. Provine 4. Musical assertion of status among the Naxi of Lijiang County, Yunnan Helen Rees Part II. Musical Transformations: Rites of Passage: 5. Chinese bridal laments: the claims of a dutiful daughter Rubie S. Watson 6. Processional music in traditional Taiwanese funerals Ping-Hui Li 7. The creation of an Emperor in eighteenth-century China Evelyn S. Rawski 8. Sing to the spirits of the dead: a Daoist ritual of salvation Judith Magee Boltz 9. Ritual opera and the bonds of authority: transformation and transcendence Ellen R. Judd Notes Index.