The Jade Tones Ritual Music 玉音法事

Originally anonymous.

Since it contains ci poems and tunes composed by Emperor Zhenzong and Emperor Huizong of Song, this work was presumably compiled in the late Northern Song Dynasty or the Southern Song Dynasty.

Originally consisting of three scrolls, it is included in The Daozang (Taoist Canon), under the Hymn Category of the Dongxuan Section.

This book serves as a model of ci poems and tunes sung during Taoist fasting and sacrificial rituals. It includes various types of texts such as Buxu hymns, Precept Observance Odes, White Crane Ci Poems, Flower Scattering Ci Poems, Three Pure Ones Melodies, and Huaxia Hymns. The Taoist poems in the first and second scrolls are all annotated with musical notations—not the traditional gongche notation, but with the four tones or harmonics marked beside the characters, and curved and winding symbols drawn below the characters to indicate the ups and downs and turns of the melody.

It is a precious classic for the study of ancient Taoist music.