Foreword
Preface
Note on Transliteration from Chinese
Introduction
Medieval Travellers
The Sixteenth Century： Fidalgo and Friar
The Establishment of the Jesuit Mission to China
The Seventeenth Century： Travellers and Scholars
The Later Seventeenth Century： A Dutch Account
The Court of the Kangxi Emperor
The Sinologists of the Eighteenth Century
Jean—Joseph—Marie Amiot： Qian De Ming
The Eight Sources of Sound
Amiot' s Explanation of the Lt～
The Third Part of the M6moire
Addenda et Corrigenda
The Englishman Abroad： the Embassy of Lord Macartney
The Musical Elements of Chinoiserie
Conclusion
Musical Examples
Bibliography
Appendix
Index
Glossary
Sample Pages Preview
One scholar added that Chinese music went through the ear to the heart, and from the heart to the soul; it was felt and understood: ancient Chinese music was something more, and it was enough to hear it to been raptured. The traditional comparison of earlier and contemporary Chinese music follows, as recorded by earlier visitors to China.
Such remarks as these, added to the encouragement of the astronomer Father Gaubil, induced Amiot to undertake a study of Chinese music, but he found difficulty in the ignorance of his learned Chinese friends when it came to this particular subject. He persevered, however, in the study of the Chinese classics, and was able to understand the great importance of music, while still searching for some source that would clarify the theory on which the whole science was based.
It was again Father Gaubil who suggested that Amiot should translate the Guyue fingzhuan of Li Guangdi. We have already seen the fate of this translation, and the misunderstandings to which it had led.
Matters remained at a standstill until Amiot received, in 1774, a copy of Roussier's book. He was impressed by it, but thought that a knowledge of Chinese music would have helped the writer considerably. Roussier might then have understood that the Chinese division of the octave into twelve semitones, by the triple progression to twelve terms, had been an invention of the Chinese,even before the time of Mercury. He would have seen the Egyptian correspondences of the calendar and music were derive from an earlier Chinese source, just as Pythagoras applied Chinese theory of an earlier age to the measurement of proportion in sound.
Such an understanding of Chinese music theory would have led Roussier to see music as an all-embracing principle in the universe. Amiot, therefore, enters the dispute about the relative antiquity of the civilizations of Greece, Egypt and China, by firmly allowing priority to the last.
He is anxious to provide material from which European scholars can investigate these Chinese claims, but is appalled by the misuse of his earlier translation, with its mistaken dating, both by Rameau and Roussier. Clearly,whatever its original imperfections, his work has been tampered with.
