Music, Words, and Moral Cultivation: A Ming–Qing Debate on Qin Songs versus Instrumental Solos

Abstract: This paper investigates how the relationship between music and words as communicative tools was understood and deployed by the practitioners of the qin (the seven-string zither) in late-imperial China. Qin song, a combination of qin playing and song singing, saw its heyday from the mid-Ming (1368–1644) to the early Qing (1644–1911). However, a debate about whether qin music should be accompanied with lyrics and/or singing also rose during this time, which eventually led to the decline of qin song from the eighteenth century onward. While previous scholars have considered this debate to be mainly about aesthetic preferences, I argue that what was more relevant was the broader Confucian discourse on the roles that music and words play in learning and communicating moral knowledge. By comparing these qin practitioners' arguments and musical works, especially different versions of "Guanju" in the qin repertoire, this paper depicts the chronological and theoretical development of four types of views that shaped the debate. My analysis of these four views suggests that both the rise and fall of qin song were results of the same intellectual trend, which may help us reconsider the late-imperial "philological turn" from a different perspective.