The Record of Music: sound arises from the heart

Reading: All sound arises from the human heart. The movement of the heart is caused by things. Moved by things, the heart stirs, and so takes form in sound. Sounds answer one another and so produce change; change that takes on order is called music. … So when a sorrowful heart is moved, its sound is hurried and fading; when a joyful heart is moved, its sound is ample and slow; when a delighted heart is moved, its sound is open and spreading; when an angry heart is moved, its sound is coarse and harsh; when a reverent heart is moved, its sound is straight and restrained; when a loving heart is moved, its sound is harmonious and gentle. These six are not innate; they arise when the heart is moved by things.

The passage is about music, but its description of the sound of six emotions echoes the modern research of Chapters 1 and 5 to a notable degree: the sound of an angry heart is “coarse and harsh”, matching the roughening and tightening of the voice in anger and fear discussed in Chapter 5; the sound of a joyful heart is “ample and slow” and that of a loving heart “harmonious and gentle”, corresponding to a slower rate and lower roughness. The Record of Music also stresses that “these six are not innate”: the emotional colour of a voice is not a fixed nature but changes with the state of the heart. This fits the modern view that vocal features reflect changing states as well as stable traits.

Note that the Record of Music runs from heart to sound: it holds that ritual and music cultivate the heart, and that changes in the voice follow changes in the heart. That is the opposite direction from “using vocal technique to change listeners’ judgements”, which the Record of Music might well regard as putting the branch before the root.

The Guiguzi: probing and sounding out

The Guiguzi is a book of the persuasive arts of the Warring States strategists; its date and authorship have long been disputed. It is sometimes said that its chapters “Chuai” (Probing) and “Mo” (Sounding Out) were about “reading words and faces and the art of the rise and fall of the voice”. On checking the text, it is more accurate to say that these two chapters are mainly about gauging the other party’s true intentions, not about the speaker’s own vocal technique.

Reading: Those in antiquity who were good at ordering the world always weighed the balance of power in it and probed the true intentions of the feudal lords. Sounding out is the method of probing; the match between inner feeling and outer sign is the key to probing. The mouth is the gateway of the heart; the heart is the master of the spirit. The other’s speaking is movement; one’s own silence is stillness. Follow his words and listen to his phrases.

What is most suggestive in these passages for this book is not “how to give one’s own voice more presence” but the role of listening and silence: “Fan Ying” treats one’s own silence as an active strategy, letting the other speak first and learning about him from his words. This can be read beside Chapter 2’s discussion of pauses: silence is not merely a gap in information but time made for the other, and for oneself, to process and respond.

The gentleman’s three aspects

Reading: Zixia said: “The gentleman presents three aspects: seen from afar he is stern; approached, he is warm; heard speaking, he is exact.” The Master said: “In speech, it is enough to convey the meaning.”

“The gentleman has three aspects” is Zixia’s saying, not Confucius’. Li here is usually understood as stern and exact, not as a harsh voice; Zhu Xi’s commentary glosses it as “firmness of speech”. The passage describes one consistent character making different impressions at different distances, not three performances to switch between at will. It can be read beside the hypothesis of Chapter 3 about consistency between content and intonation: what truly convinces may be not any particular vocal form but the consistency of voice, content and conduct. Confucius’ “it is enough to convey the meaning” is a reminder that the purpose of speech is to make the meaning clear, not to ornament it.

The limits of this reading

First, the Record of Music is about music and moral cultivation through ritual and music, the Guiguzi about the persuasive arts of the Warring States, the Analects about the virtues of the gentleman; none of them is a text on acoustics or the psychology of persuasion. Second, the acoustic features of modern research (fundamental frequency, formants, roughness) are measurable physical quantities, while “coarse and harsh” or “harmonious and gentle” in the classics are descriptive language; the correspondence between them is only rough and suggestive. Third, the date of the Guiguzi is disputed; this chapter follows the received text and common commentaries, and readers may consult collated editions to form their own view.