Methodology
The Five-Level System × Rhetorical Figure Mapping: how the sound-structure of a Tang poem is translated into music.
Every Chinese character carries a tone, and a tone is already a contour of pitch. Every Tang poem is built on rhetoric, and rhetoric is already musical structure. RhetoScore maps the four classical tones — level, rising, departing, entering — onto a pentatonic melodic skeleton, and maps rhetorical figures such as antithetical couplets, refrains and anadiplosis onto musical organisation: answering phrases, returning themes, interlocking motifs. The poem is not set to music — the poem already is music.
Going deeper
Two core mechanisms, and the research behind them
① The Five-Level system: tones → pitch
Each of the four classical Chinese tones — level (píng), rising (shǎng), departing (qù), entering (rù) — has its own pitch contour. The Five-Level system maps these contours onto the five pentatonic degrees gōng, shāng, jué, zhǐ and yǔ. Take the line “chuáng qián míng yuè guāng”: with and without this mapping, the difference is immediately audible.
Comparison recordings are in preparation — once ready, this section will present the same line generated with and without the mapping, side by side.
② Rhetorical Figure Mapping: rhetoric → structure
Drawing on the purpose-built Dictionary of Chinese Musical Rhetorical Devices, the rhetorical devices of a poem are translated into ways of organising music:
| Poetic figure | Musical response | What it sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| Antithetical couplet (duìzhàng) | Answering phrases | two melodic lines in question and answer |
| Refrain (fùtà) | Returning structure | a theme that keeps coming back |
| Anadiplosis (dǐngzhēn) | Chained motifs | the last note of one line becomes the first of the next |
| Reduplication (diézì) | Motivic repetition | the same motif in immediate succession |
| Rhetorical question (shèwèn) | Question-and-answer cadence | suspension, then resolution |
Research foundations
Historical sources of tonal prosody (from the "four tones and eight defects" to tonal phonology), a review of the language-and-music literature, and the falsifiable design of the methodology.
(Research materials are being prepared and will appear here.)
The Dictionary of Chinese Musical Rhetorical Devices
A rhetoric-to-music mapping dictionary distilled from the annotation of several hundred Tang poems, with supporting and counter-examples for every mapping.
(Research materials are being prepared and will appear here.)
Experiments and evaluation
Listening-experiment design, blind expert evaluation, and the system's automatic checks (range, melodic motion, voice-leading).
(Research materials are being prepared and will appear here.)
Publications and workshops
Published papers, manuscripts under review, workshop materials and recorded talks.
(Research materials are being prepared and will appear here.)
Case study: “Quiet Night Thoughts” in five steps
Follow one poem through the whole pipeline