Performative Readings of Printed Southern Arias in Late-Ming China

Abstract: Printed collections of southern arias in late-Ming China often feature not only tune titles and lyrics of the arias but also seemingly unfathomable marks on or next to the lyrical words. The marks take various shapes, including circles, squares, teardrops, and dots, and, as a few scholars have pointed out, gesture toward the musicality of the arias (see, e.g., Carlitz 2005 and Lam 2005). However, none of the marks notates the exact melodies of the arias. For that reason, we as modern readers can no longer decipher from those collections the complete contours of the music despite the presence of "musical" indicators. Why did the late-Ming people who produced those collections choose not to notate the melodies, despite the availability of music notation systems? What can we understand about the late-Ming soundscape of southern arias through those marks? In this paper, I categorize the marks into two types of notations and propose "performative reading" s an analytical method. In excavating a singing culture of southern arias embedded in the notations, my performative readings illuminate how listening and singing experiences of southern arias in the late Ming transformed experiences of writing and reading them.