Yuefu

Yuefu (Chinese乐府/乐府, Music Office, Music Official song or archaic song ') are song - poems of Chinese literature, which originated in the Han period. Your name goes back to the Music Office, which was established in 114 BC under the Han Wudi back.

History

The mission of the music ministry was to collect songs for sacred and courtly purposes, while the songs and ballads of ordinary people were collected. First, the anonymous Yuefu were collected, enter 190-266 but on well-known poet, give the Yuefu an individual touch.

As the texts Yuefu were independently until the end of the Han period.

The melodies of the Yuefu are nowadays no longer be reconstructed and only texts have been preserved. The collected poems Song contain both songs for sacrificial ceremonies and ancestral temple, as well as songs for imperial banquets.

Style

Western sinologist distinguish between Yuefu sacred hymns and secular songs that talk about the needs and problems of the time.

The traditional as Yuefu poems include diverse and unorthodox under Confucian point of local traditions and witness the opposite later times, more open atmosphere of the early Chinese Middle Ages. In contrast to the Han - Fu is the subject of many Yuefu not the glorification of the power of the emperor, but the concerns and needs of the individual. Even the religious Daoism exerted an influence, as the Yuefu often ask the question of mortality and eternity of man.

The metric of Yuefu different from the Han Fu. They are mixed from three to seven characters per verse and many Yuefu exhibit characteristics of ballads. The ballads are a hybrid of epic, lyric and dramatic elements and use many formulaic phrases. The most well-known in the West ballad is the Mulan Shi (木兰诗). During the Eastern Han period then Yuefu were written with verses of five characters.

Cultural Significance

The Yuefu had to build a great importance for the development of the later poetry in China since formal, thematic and the Topics concerning the Shi- poems on them. The Yuefu permeated the culture of the educated classes and the Yuefu the poet, in which they own thoughts, moods and feelings expressed, were distinguished from the anonymous Yuefu the Music Office later.

The largest collection of Yuefu is compiled in the 12th century Yuefu Shiji ( "Collection of Music Official Songs" ) by Guo Maoqian.