A Sinification of Western Music: the Chapters on Clefs in the Lülü zuanyao (c.1680) and the Lülü zhengyi (1713)

In the late seventeenth century, two treatises on Western music were written at the Qing court that conveyed the basics of the Western practice of harmony and musical notation to a Chinese audience. These were the Lülü zuanyao (Essentials of the pitch-pipes) by Tomás Pereira SJ and the far better-known Lülü zhengyi xubian (Supplement to the true principles of the pitch-pipes) by Teodorico Pedrini SJ . The former has often been mistaken for an extract from the latter. This article uses the example of the three clefs to show that the two texts describe their application in very different ways and in their own words. It will be seen that the Lülü zhengyi , which was written later, is far more adapted to the Chinese world of thought.