[CAUT] Music in Ancient China

[Laurence Libin]

Look at the Grove Dictionary entry 'Zhu Zaiyu' for bibliography.
Laurence

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fred Sturm" <fssturm at unm.edu>
To: <caut at ptg.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2010 2:33 PM
Subject: Re: [CAUT] Music in Ancient China


> 
> Thanks, Patrick. As it happens, I have a certain amount of familiarity  
> with ancient China myself, having cobbled together a major in college  
> I called Comparative Greek and Chinese Classical Studies. So I am well  
> aware of Needham's massive work, and I believe it is the original  
> source of the claim that the Chinese "invented equal temperament."  
> Murray Barbour wrote one sentence noting this:
> "The first known appearance in print of the correct
> figures for equal temperament was in China, where Prince Tsai-
> yu's brilliant solution remains an enigma^ since the music of China
> had no need for any sort of temperament."
> I believe many people writing subsequently simply relied on Barbour,  
> and repeated this in a less precise way. From what I have gathered, it  
> was more a matter of mathematics than anything else, and it had to do  
> with ritualistic matters, something to do with creating a set of  
> temple bells (whether real or simply designed), tuned correctly so  
> that they mirrored "heaven." But that is about as far as the sources I  
> have read have got me. Perhaps it is far enough, as I haven't troubled  
> to dig deeper.
> Regards,
> Fred Sturm
> fssturm at unm.edu
> http://www.createculture.org/profile/FredSturm
>