The Chinese ritual and music system () is a social system that originated in the Zhou dynasty to maintain the social order. Together with the patriarchal system, it constituted the social system of the entire ancient China and had a great influence on the politics, culture, art and thought of later generations. The feudal system and the Well-field system were two other institutions that developed at that time. According to legend it was founded by the Duke of Zhou and King Wu of Zhou.
The Ritual Music System is divided into two parts: ritual and music. The part of ritual mainly divides people's identity and social norms, and finally forms a hierarchy. The music part is mainly based on the hierarchical system of etiquette, using music to alleviate social conflicts.
The system developed from older shamanic traditions and was seen as having cosmological significance, it was seen as representing the balance between Yin and Yang and the Five Elements.
The regulations on ritual and music strengthened people's concept of hierarchy, played a symbolic role in establishing authority, alongside standardizing rule across the civilization.
Predecessors
Archaeological evidence indicates that music culture developed in China from a very early period. Excavations in Jiahu Village in Wuyang County, Henan found bone flutes dated to 9,000 years ago, and clay music instruments called Xun thought to be 7,000 years old have been found in the Hemudu sites in Zhejiang and Banpo in Xi'an.
Pictorial representations of dance have been found in Chinese pottery as early as the Neolithic period (before 2000 BCE), showing people dancing in a line holding hands. The earliest Chinese character for "dance", , appears in the oracle bones and represents a dancer holding oxtails in each hand. According to the Lüshi Chunqiu (compiled around 239 BCE): "In former times, the people of the Getian clan (葛天氏) would dance in pairs [or threes] with oxtails in hand, stamping their feet and singing eight stanzas."
Primitive dance in ancient China was also associated with sorcery and shamanic ritual. An early shape of the Chinese character for sorcerer, wu (巫), represented dancing shamans or their sleeves; wu therefore described someone who danced as a mean of communication between gods and men. There are many ancient records of shamans and sorcerers who danced, for example performing the rain dance at time of drought. The rain dance (舞雩, wǔyú) platform is mentioned in many ancient texts including the Analects of Confucius.
Zhou Institution
According to tradition, yayue was created by the Duke of Zhou under commission from King Wu of Zhou, shortly after the latter's conquest of Shang. Incorporated within yayue were elements of shamanistic or religious traditions, as well as early Chinese folk music, which formed the backbone of the Ritual Music System. Dance was also closely associated with yayue music, each yayue pieces may have a ceremonial or ritual dance associated with it. The most important yayue piece of the Zhou dynasty were the Six Great Dances, each associated with a legendary or historical figure.
Yunmen Dajuan (雲門大卷), from the Yellow Emperor era, performed for the veneration of the sky. Daxian (大咸, or Dazhang 大章), from the Emperor Yao era, for the veneration of the earth. Daqing (大磬, or Dashao 大韶), from the Emperor Shun era, for the veneration of Gods of the Four Directions, or the sun, moon, stars and seas, the dancers may have dressed up as birds and beasts. One of the earliest documents, Shujing, mentioned the ritual of "beating on the stones as all the wild animals dance". The performance of the dance was highly regarded by Confucius. Daxia (大夏), was a dance performed in praise of Yu the Great of the Xia dynasty, famous for his work on flood control. In this dance, 64 performers danced bare-chested wearing fur caps and white skirts. The movements of the dance may imitate the manual labour performed during flood control. Dahu (大濩), from Tang of Shang dating to the end of the Xia dynasty, for the veneration of female ancestors. Dawu (大武), in praise of King Wu of Zhou, used for ancestral worship. It was military focused in addition Music in the Zhou dynasty was conceived as a cosmological manifestation of the sound of nature integrated into the binary universal order of yin and yang, and this concept has enduring influence later Chinese thinking on music. "Correct" music according to Zhou concept would involve instruments correlating to the five elements of nature and would bring harmony to nature. Around or before the 7th century BC, a system of pitch generation and pentatonic scale was derived from a cycle-of-fifths theory.