Sung Dynasty Music Preserved in Korea and China

The music of the Sung Dynasty (960-1279) presents scholars with many intriguing problems because of the scarcity and incompleteness of extant materials. In China the poetic text and melody of several examples of one type of music, tz'ŭ music, have been preserved, but all performance instructions relating to rhythmic setting have been lost. Contemporaneous pieces, however, have been preserved in Korea, where they have survived complete with a mensural notation and performance history which enables them still to be played today. By analyzing the structure of tz'ŭ music as preserved in Korea, it is possible to suggest solutions to some of the more puzzling questions concerning the basic structure of this type of Sung Dynasty music.