Cooing and Wooing

This is the first poem in The Book of Songs, China's first collection of poetry that compiled 311 poetic songs from the 11th to the 6th century BC, and is considered a love song. In the first verse, birds sing toward each other, which evokes the loving sentiment between a pair of young lovers. The Book of Songs records the songs of the ancestors; about social and daily life, marriage and love, banquets, and war. It is a window to trace the origin of Chinese ritual and music civilization. At one time in the past, Chinese poems were set to music. The score used for today’s concert is preserved in The Wei’s Music Score, which was collected in the 1600s and published in 1768. Scholars believe that the collection includes music composed before the Chinese Song dynasty (960-1279) and had been handed down from generation to generation.
This performance was on April 20, 2024, for the Chinese Embassy.

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"Guan Ju" (Shuang Diao)《关雎（双调）》("Cry of the Ospreys" in Shuang mode), with text from the "Shi Jing"《诗经》(whose title is translated variously as the Book of Songs, Classic of Poetry, or Book of Odes)
This piece is found in the "Weishi Yuepu"《魏氏乐谱》, an important collection of Chinese palace entertainment pieces compiled by Wei Hao (魏浩, courtesy name Wei Ziming, 魏子明), a music scholar of Chinese heritage, in Nagasaki, Japan in 1768, during the Edo (Tokugawa) period, which was also the 33rd year of the reign of the Qing Dynasty emperor Qianlong. This music is believed to have been in use in the imperial court in Beijing in the late Ming Dynasty (early 17th century).
The "Weishi Yuepu" collection comprises 50 tunes that include vocal pieces with texts from the "Shi Jing" (Confucian "Classic of Poetry") and Han Dynasty _yuefu_ (汉乐府), as well as poems from the Tang and Song dynasties. These tunes were originally in the possession of Wei Shuanghou (魏双侯, courtesy name Wei Zhiyan, 魏之琰; c. 1617-1689), a palace music master of the late Ming Dynasty from Fuqing, Fuzhou, Fujian province, southeast China who fled to Nagasaki, Japan upon that dynasty's fall in 1644. Wei Shuanghou's fourth-generation descendant Wei Hao, who prepared the "Weishi Yuepu," was a Chinese music specialist employed by the Tokugawa court. At that time in Japan this style of music was called Mingaku (明樂 / みんがく, literally "music from the Ming [Dynasty]"). Wei Hao selected the most important tunes out of a collection of more than 200 pieces and had them printed in 1768. The collection includes a broad array of scores for various wind, string, and percussion instruments, which are grouped into eight distinct modes.
Your performance should be one of the first-ever performances of music from the "Weishi Yuepu" in North America.