The Music in Tang Dynasty and The Imperial Music in Qing Dynasty
1 min readThe Tang Dynasty Emperor Xuanzong，Li Longil，himselif an expert in music，re-organized imperial musicians into two departments of“standing performers”and“siting performers”.
The standing performers consisted of eight parts，while the siting ones had six.During a presentation，all the standing performers beat drums and played Qiuci music in accompani-ment，while the sitting performers played solely Qiuci music.Of the 15 in-struments used in Playing Qiuci music，eight were Indian and the rest were Iranian or Chinese traditional ones.The Tang Dynasty’s Qiuci music band was a typical East-West combined orchestra.
Imperial Music in Qing Dynasty
In the earlier period of the Qing Dynasty a palaial department called the Training Department was in charge of the affairs of songs and dances.Then this department was revoked and its charges were taken over by other departments.
Music was administered by the Harmony Department outside the palace，and the operas were administered by the Southern Depart-ment，which was a division of the Internal Affairs Department.As Cao Xingquan recounted in his book“Memoirs of Opera Performances in the former Qing Palaces”，the three biggest stages were situated in three pal-aces，the largest being situated at Rehe Temporary Palace which is the big-gest.The two next stages were situated at Tranquility-Longevity Palace and Summer Palace.
