Music Creating Literature and Literature Creating Music: Luo Yusheng’s Beijing Drum Song Versions of the Story of Yu Boya and Zhong Ziqi

MUSIC CREATING LITERATURE AND LITERATURE CREATING MUSIC: LUO YUSHENG’S BEIJING DRUM SONG VERSIONS OF THE STORY OF YU BOYA AND ZHONG ZIQI FRANCESCA R. SBORGI LAWSON Brigham Young University1 One can write nothing interesting, true or useful about what music is and does without simultaneously subscribing to two contradictory beliefs: that music embodies something absolutely and endlessly beyond words; and that music expresses something that can be translated into words.2 In Peter Dayan’s seminal book, Music Writing Literature: From Sand via Debussy to Derrida, he claims that music and literature both define and reject themselves through the other,3 arguing that it is the very distance between the musical and literary arts that allows us to perceive each art form in terms of what it is not.4 Though Dayan makes his argument with regard to discourses on music and literature in France during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, his observations also shed light on a rather different cultural system. The various genres of Chinese oral performing literature (quyi 曲藝; a.k.a., shuochang wenyi 說唱文藝 [lit.: speak and sing literature]), most of which wed text and tune equally within a single art form, also embody a similar kind of complementary dependency between the literary and the musical. Further complicating the relationship between word and music in these Chinese genres, the linguistic tones of the Chinese language both restrict, at the peril of incomprehensibility, how words and music can be matched, and challenge the artists to make these matches more than just functional.5 Hearing how a brilliantly written text has been given the most appropriate musical contours is the apex of the Chinese listening experience because it 1 I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the editor, David Rolston, and the two anonymous reviewers for their substantive help in revising this article. 2 Peter Dayan, Music Writing Literature: From Sand via Debussy to Derrida (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2006), p. 31. 3 Ibid., p. x. 4 Ibid., pp. 53–54. 5 Introductory information about the relationship between word tone and melody in representative genres of Chinese oral performing literature can be found in Francesca Lawson, The Narrative Arts of Tianjin: Between Music and Language (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2011), pp. 47–56. In this paper I focus on the broader issues of literary–musical relationships rather than the specifics of rendering word tone to melody. CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 34. 2 (December 2015): 115–138© The Permanent Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. 2015 DOI 10.1080/01937774.2015.1096549 demonstrates the successful arbitration of all the various artistic contradictions between the demands of linguistic tone and the aesthetic beauty of the musical line. Additionally, the symbiosis between text and tune in these Chinese vocal arts reflects not only Dayan’s idea about the interdependent relationship between literature and music, but also the pervasively held notion that music has the capacity to be commutable, interchangeable, and translatable into other elements in the Chinese cultural imagination.6 In particular, according to traditional Chinese lore, music can initiate relationships with other humans, control operations within the cosmos, and allow physically separate entities to interact—even between mortals and ghosts.7 Perhaps the most famous story of such musical communication is that of the relationship between a musician, Yu Boya 俞伯牙,8 who plays the revered instrument known as the qin 琴 (seven-stringed zither), and his most perfect listener and friend, Zhong Ziqi 鍾子期. In this paper I examine a pair of pieces about Boya and Ziqi in the northern Chinese oral narrative tradition known as Beijing drum song (Jingyun dagu 京韵 大鼓). These pieces illustrate the way a fictive musical performance can create a literary piece, demonstrate how literature can arouse emotions that are ultimately best expressed through music, and suggest that a relationship based on a profound musical connection creates a bond that transcends mortality. As one of the greatest singers of Beijing drum song in the twentieth century,9 Luo Yusheng 駱玉笙 (1914– 2002), frequently referred to as the Queen of Drum Singing (Gujie nüwang 鼓界女 王), is the featured artist in this essay.10 Of the fifteen pieces included in one of the 6 See...