A reassessment of the relationship between text, speech tone, melody, and aria structure in Beijing Opera

Many scholarly evaluations of traditional Chinese operatic aria structure assume that musical structure matches speech-tone structure. Accordingly, song structure has often been explained in terms of binary units, even though most operatic songs are extended, multi-couplet structures in performance. When multiple couplets are examined, they tend to be compared rather than assessed as a whole. In this essay, I suggest that the subordination of musical elements to the sounds of the spoken language in Chinese opera is neither automatic nor complete. Even in a genre where language is of unquestioned importance, music-structural considerations may, sometimes, challenge the dictates of speech-tone and lyric structure in the production of a finished musical text. A singer's melodic style may take precedence over his or her setting of speech tone, and that singer may consistently create in performance musical structures of greater stature than the ongoing variation of two-line units. Performances by the Beijing opera (jingju) singer Zhou Xinfang (1895-1975) and members of his troupe, as preserved in sound recordings and a substantial body of published transcriptions, are analyzed. Through such analysis we can uncover aspects of the "practical consciousnesses" of former generations of traditional musicians and compare the resulting picture with the "theoretical consciousnesses" of present-day academics. Through the critical assessment and comparison of both musical practices and musical evaluations, ethnomusicologists may be able to gain a deeper understanding of processes of change impinging upon traditional Chinese opera.