Tang Poems as Songs: Then and Now  

 

“The relationship between music and Tang poetry is a topic of ongoing interest,” write scholars Qian Zhixi and Casey Schoenberger.1 I doubt that these academics had in mind a project like this one! But I, too, am interested in exploring the relationship between Tang poetry and music, both in ancient times and today. I set forth here some initial thoughts, and welcome corrections or observations from readers.

                                                                                                                     

The Tang Poets’ Musical World 

 

Music in the literati culture. Music was entwined with the Tang literati culture both in formal ritual settings and informal entertainment settings.  For literati, poetry and music “were aspects of one, indivisible art.”2 The most refined poets played the ancient qin, the instrument of the traditional Confucian scholar.3 Young scholars ‘studying’ for exams were certainly immersed in the popular music of Chang’an’s entertainment district.4 Bill Porter comments that most Chinese poets were musicians until modern times.5

 

How good were the poets as musicians? Some were quite skilled. Wang Wei was a talented musician, who may have played both the pipa (an instrument used at court and in popular performance)6 and the more traditional qin.7 An early appointment gave him responsibility for court musicians.8 In a late poem Wang Wei describes himself sitting in his bamboo grove playing the qin.9

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Others were just dabblers, perhaps. Or poseurs. Some who styled themselves the most refined sat at the qin with impeccable posture and aesthetic attitude, but played nothing! Because the “ultimate sound was the one that could not be played.”10 (I should have used that excuse when I struggled to play cello!) But a poet needn’t be a virtuoso to have a fine ear for matching verse to music: In the Western world, I think of Robert Burns (reputed to be a rough if enthusiastic singer), or Bob Dylan. 

                                                           

I do concede that books about Tang culture treat music as the ‘poor sister’ of literati arts, since calligraphy, painting, and poetry receive so much more attention. Why is this? Perhaps music did have less prestige. But I note, too, that music was ephemeral whereas written art could last. One could leave a legacy in poetry, painting, or calligraphy. Not so in music. And one could entrust travelers to take written expressions across distances to one’s friends. Needless to say, no one in Tang China was sharing an MP3, or linking an audio file to a website. 

 

Singing poetry. Literary poetry and folk song have a long relationship throughout Chinese history. Ancient folk ballads formed the core of one Confucian classic, the Book of Songs (the Shijing).11 Some poets drew on local folk songs as an inspiration for more elegant verse.12 Conversely, an imaginative poet such as Li Bai earned special respect for the ability to write new verse in the style of folk song.13

 

To what extent were the Tang poems themselves performed as songs? One can of course recite poetry with an emotional engagement or a dramatic delivery. And presenting poems while playing evocative music can be very moving. But I am persuaded that Tang poets and others often sang the poems. Perhaps a scholar would sigh, “well of course.” 

 

Indeed, some believe that the poems were always sung. In a wonderful lecture at Smith College, translator Bill Porter (Red Pine) sang Chinese poems, improvising a simple melody for each one. Questioned about this style of presentation, he asserted: “Until modern times, all Chinese poetry was sung. There was no exception.”14               

 

Poets composed one class of poems with traditional melodies in mind. But Porter believes they sang their other poems, too. There was no specific notation, but people would improvise melodies to suit their mood. “You sing them the way you feel them.”15                 

 

Poems using song forms. Whole genres of poetry are patterned on meter and structure of old folk songs. The ci form based poems “on traditional structures, originally meant as lyrics to go along with music.”16 Yueh-fu poetry adopted the form of folk ballads. Tang poet Li He patterned more than half his compositions in this style. These poems were “meant to be sung, not chanted.”17

 

Tang poets also used the shih form, in which verses have equal length lines and alternating-line rhymes. That form, too, suits melody well: When an early poet wrote a shih poem, “he would have sung it, as poets writing in this style still do today."18

 

These forms underscore how entwined Chinese poetical traditions could be with Chinese musical traditions. Without music, we miss part of the poems’ artistry.                                            

 

Stories of poems as songs. I read accounts of poets singing their compositions. Or others singing those poems. One biography of Li Bai depicts the poet Gao Shi composing a poem that became “quite popular as a song.” Of Li Bai’s poems, the biographer comments: “there were so many of his songs loved by the folks along the Yangtze.” Li Bai’s older friend Meng Haoren particularly encouraged Bai to focus on writing poems in the style of folk songs.19  

 

Poems could enter a public musical repertoire. In the Tang, “many poems . . . written by the literati were directly used by singers in their performance.”20 Those singers might adapt the poem to fit a tune in an appealing way, perhaps breaking up the lines or repeating some lines in a chorus. For example, a performer might take a poem by Wang Wei, repeat some lines, and re-package it as a song. Listeners would regard this altered version as “the same” as the poem.21

                                                                                           

Writing poems that could be performed as songs increased the likelihood that people would learn them and share them. So one translator posits that Tang poets sometimes wrote in ballad form “to ensure the widest popular circulation for their work,” particularly when they sought to draw attention to social problems. “These ballads, which enjoyed as much vogue as the popular songs of our own time, were songs with a message.”22

 

One Tang story explicitly describes a process of packaging poems as songs. When poet/courtesan Yan Lingbin was on her deathbed, she asked her coterie of scholar/admirers to commemorate her with poems instead of donating cash to finance her funeral. After she died, her household trashed the ‘worthless’ poems, but 

  

[A] hunchback musician romantically linked to Lingbin collected the discarded poems, set them to music, and arranged for their performance in her funeral procession. The songs spread throughout Chang’an and were performed by many professional mourners for years to come.23

 

Then there is a wonderful story of three poets drinking in a tavern when “four lovely singing girls” (who do not know the guests’ identities) begin to entertain them with the poets’ own compositions. The poets laugh and keep score of whose poetry is most popular.24

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Conclusion. China’s Tang dynasty held a world of music: Birdsong in gardens, bells in temples, city drums beating a curfew, instruments in ritual, folk ballads in country inns, popular songs in city taverns. The poets grew from this culture. And their poems were part of its song.

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Merging Tang Poems with Songs in Modern Media

 

Tang poems are classics of world literature. So it is no surprise that some modern musicians have adapted the poems to a musical setting.

 

We have highbrow art: Gustav Mahler integrated four of Li Bai's works into his symphonic song cycle Das Lied von der Erde.25

 

And we have rock music: China’s first heavy metal band named itself Tang Dynasty. The band’s founder, Kaiser Kuo, explained that he drew inspiration from the 8th century poet Li Bai. “He was quite a drunkard... and writing some of his best poetry apparently, while completely inebriated. You know, he's wild and associated with a kind of unbridled revelry, and yeah that's part of why I love him.”26                 

In British rock, Pink Floyd adapted Tang poems for the song Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. The songwriter read A.C. Graham's Poems of the Late T'ang, and borrowed lines from Li He, Li Shang-yin, and Du Mu.  

 

Chinese diva Teresa Teng (1953-1995) sang poems from the Tang and Song dynasties, combining traditional instruments with modern pop orchestration. Her recording of this portion of her repertoire is titled Dandan Youqing (known in English as “Light Exquisite Emotion”).  Polygram/Kolin records, 1983. I have the re-release, an ultra high fidelity CD, which I ordered as an import from Amazon.27

 

Ms. Teng’s voice entices the listener with a sweet romantic syrup. She had a huge international fan club. The orchestration reminds me of Elvis in Vegas. Wikipedia asserts that Teng was the first Asian singer to perform at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas, so maybe that association is not just my imagination.28

 

Tang poetry is still sung to music today. Here are recordings of children performing such songs, along with music notation to help English language music teachers integrate the material into their own classes. And China Central Television hosts Everlasting Classics, a variety show that presents classical poems as slick pop-music productions.   Elaborate staging, lights, costumes, and orchestration. 29

 

And I offer Twang Dynasty.

 

In a Harvard edX course on Tang China, Professor Peter K. Bol observes that most Westerners no longer express their feelings by reciting a poem, but rather by singing or playing a favorite pop song.

 

I think here [in America], we think of songs. And we use songs to find the emotion we think we're feeling at the moment. And they speak for us, and they speak to us, and we speak with them.

 

So Professor Bol urges his students, as they read Tang poetry, to think of a song that for them embodies a similar emotion: to try “when we read a couplet, to think of the appropriate song.”30                            

I have taken that encouragement one step further. Reading a Tang poem, I thought of what song I could write that might present the same mood and emotion. To honor the poems, I adapted some of their beautiful images and worked lyrical “hooks” out of some distinctive lines.

 

I’ve been immersed for years in the genre of country music, listening to albums, performing in bands. I’ve heard (and played) Bill Monroe’s Blue Moon of Kentucky a hundred times.  

 

Blue Moon of Kentucky, keep on shining

Shine on the one that’s gone and left me blue

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Li Bai writes:

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Looking up, I find the moon bright

Then bowing my head, I drown in homesickness

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Were Bill Monroe to meet Li Bai, I think the two would share a drink. They can at least share some imaginative space in this project. 

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The Tang is remembered as a cosmopolitan dynasty, quite open to foreign influences and ideas. Music from western regions (beyond the Great Wall) became something of a fad.  

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There was hardly a tavern in the capital of Chang’an (now Xi’an, Shaanxi province) that could compete without the aid of a female singer or dancer from the western regions with an accompanying set of foreign musicians.31

 

So mixing my country western music with Tang culture is not, perhaps, such a heresy!

 

 

ENDNOTES 

                                                                        

 

1. Qian Zhixi and Casey Schoenberger, Music, Morality, and Genre in Tang Poetry, The Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture · 5:1 · April 2018: 66-94.

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2. Id. at 67.  

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3. The qin is also called the guqin (ancient qin). Sometimes translated as “zither.” The instrument is a long, narrow box with seven silk strings.  The player plucks the qin, which sits on the player’s lap or on a low table. The instrument uses many expressive, sliding tones. These tones remind me of a country musician playing the early lap steel guitars or later pedal steel guitars.   

Ann L. Silverberg, The Qin: China’s Most Revered Musical Instrument, Association for Asian Studies, Education About Asia Volume 18:1 (Spring 2013): Asian Visual and Performing Arts, Part II.   

Here is a modern quqin player interpreting the theme from a romantic tv series, Ashes of Love (this is not traditional quqin music).        

               

4. Charles Benn, China’s Golden Age: Everyday Life in the Tang Dynasty (New York: Oxford U. Press, 2002) 64-66; Mark Edward Lewis, China’s Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2009) 101. 

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5.  Bill Porter (Red Pine), Finding Them Gone: Visiting China’s Poets of the Past (Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2016) 41. 

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6. The pipa is a stringed instrument with a pear-shaped body, frets, and (generally) four strings. In the Tang era, it was played with a plectrum.   It relates to the lute/oud family of instruments, and probably entered Chinese culture from central Asia. When a pipa instrumentalist uses a rapid tremolo on a string, I am reminded of the mandolin.   

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7. “[I]t is said that Wang Wei played and composed for the pipa, the Chinese lute.” Frank Hudson, The Parlando Project – Where Music and Words Meet, Wordpress website.  

                            

“[M]any literati are also highly skilled pipa players, such as Wang Wei in the early Tang Dynasty, who also composed his own music, which also reflects the affirmation of the literati class to the art of pipa performance.” “Thousands of calls began to come out, still holding the pipa half‑hidden“‑the evolution of the pipa culture in the Tang Dynasty | DayDayNews, published 2019-11-29. 

 

8. Stephen Owen, The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High Tang (Melbourne: Quirin Press rev. ed. 2018) 33, 35.

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9. Bill Porter (Red Pine), supra note 5, at 94.  

       

10. See Anne Henochowicz, “Evolving Antiquity: ‘Guqin’ Ideology and National Sentiment.” College Music Symposium, 49/50, 2009: 375–384.  

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11. Arthur Waley, trans., The Book of Songs: The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry (New York: Grove Press, 1996). 

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12. See my notes on the song and poem, Roadside Flowers in this project. 

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13.  Ha Jin, The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai (New York: Vintage Books, 2019) 85-86.

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14. Bill Porter (Red Pine), Poetry Readings (Feb 26, 2018) (Lecture at 59' - 1:02:30).    

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Tastes for combining poetry with music may have changed over time. I have read that before the Tang, “poetry had largely become separated from music.” Mark Edward Lewis, China Between Empires: The Northern and Southern Dynasties (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press 2011) 230-31. So scholar Zhong Rong (ca. 468-518) wrote: “Now that we no longer set our poems to music, how do we benefit from tonal prosody?” Id. 213. Apparently Zhong overstated a trend, or the link between poetry and music strengthened again in later eras.

                                                       

15. Id. Porter found that a shot of good whiskey helped him feel a way to sing them.

                                     

16. Wikipedia, Classical Chinese Poetry. See also Wikipedia, Ci (Poetry). Poems in the ci form were typically titled after the old melody on which they were based. They could differ greatly in theme from the original lyrics, so the title would signal the melody rather than define the content. My song Stony Hills (track #16) is based in part on a poem titled “Congratulating the Groom.” But that poem has nothing to do with congratulating a groom. The title simply denotes the folk melody which would guide singing the poem.              

                                                                            

17. J.D. Frodsham trans., The Collected Poems of Li He (New York, New York Review Books, 2016) 72.  I continue to ponder whether any clear line distinguishes a musically intoned "chant" from a "song."  To me, song suggests a more definite sense of melody. 

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18. Bill Porter, supra note 5, at 41. Porter references Ts’ao Chih (Cao Zhi), a poet in the Three Kingdoms period who expanded this genre from four-syllable lines to five-syllable lines.           

 

19. Ha Jin, The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai (New York: Vintage Books, 2019) 85-86, 192.

 

20. Luo Youming, A Concise History of Chinese Literature, vol 1, Chapter Twelve: Song Lyrics of the Tang, the Five Dynasties, and the Northern Song (Ye Yang, trans.) (Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishing, 2011) 42.  

 

21. Stephen Owen, Just a Song: Chinese Lyrics from the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries (Harvard University East Asia Center, 2019) 9.   Owen describes how singers might adapt poems by Wang Wei and others. Id. at 52-59.                                          

 

22. J.D. Frodsham, trans. The Collected Poems of Li He (New York: New York Review Books and Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2016) introduction at p. 43. 

 

23. Mark Lewis, China’s Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty (Cambridge: Harvard U. Belknap Press, 2009) 105.

 

24. Id. at 109. These “singing girls” were female entertainers who entered the room with their instrumental accompanists.              

 

25. Wikipedia, Li Bai. See also Chinosity, Western Classical Music with Chinese Influences.  British composers arranged translations of Li Bai poems for voice and piano.  Chinghsuan Lily Hsieh, Chinese Poetry of Li Bi Set by Four Twentieth Century  British Composers:  Bantock, Warlock, Bliss and Lambert (Doctor of Musical Arts dissertation presented to the Ohio State University  2004). 

 

26. Carrie Gracie, Li Bai and Du Fu: China's drunken superstar poets, BBC News, 11 October 2012. 

 

27. Label: Umg. ASIN: B005YCZL62. Release date: 2011.      

 

28. Wikipedia, Teresa Teng.  Ms. Teng remains so popular that producers have 'resurrected' her as a performing hologram. 

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29.  Li Xue, The Style Features of Songs Filled with Ancient Chinese Poetry in the New Era,  Proceedings of the 2021 Conference on Art and Design: Inheritance and Innovation (ADII 2021), in Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 643 (Atlantis Press 2022) 155-59.   China Central TV posts some performances on YouTube, for example here (singer Zhan Hanyun), here (quartet of male singers), and  here (Christine Welch singing her fine song, A Million Possibilities).   Imagine Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran performing pop takes on Shakespearean sonnets in an engaged, non-ironic way.  

 

30. The ChinaX courses are wonderful. I highly recommend them. I have quoted Professor Bol’s comments in the introductory lecture to section 13 of the Tang dynasty unit of the course. See that page for course information, and to enroll if you wish.

 

31. Britannica, Chinese Music. See also Lewis, supra note 23, at 170-71 (Tang fascination with foreign musical styles).

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The urban culture of the Tang was quite cosmopolitan, influenced by trade and traders from along the Silk routes. Chang’an, the foundational capital, was the world’s largest city at the time, with city walls stretching for miles and a population of approximately one million. 

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Though overwhelmingly Han Chinese, Chang’an was multi-cultural, with thousands of foreign traders, emissaries, visiting scholars, and entertainers. Along with Daoist shrines and Buddhist temples, there were scattered Nestorian Christian churches and Zoroastrian temples. These foreign elements influenced music, fashion, and perhaps even food. There were, alas, no country western bars.