The Song Dynasty

Kaifeng, Northern Song Capital

A massive revolt against the Tang Dynasty was launched under rebel leader named Huang Chao in 874 AD. The rebels sacked both the eastern and western capital cities of Chang'an and Luoyang and took ten years to be defeated.

Instrumental to Huang Chao's defeat was a smuggler named Zhu Wen, who had been captured by the Tang army earlier but was conscripted to help put down the rebellion. Over the next twenty years, he was promoted rapidly, becoming an extremely powerful general. In 907, Zhu Wen assassinated Emperor Zhaozong, executed his ten sons, wife, and officials, and took the throne himself.

This usurpation prompted rebellions throughout China, launching the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, a seventy-year time of instability.

China was once again united under a single monarchy in 979 under the Song Dynasty. The Song ruled for nearly two hundred years, beginning another period of stability and cultural achievement. During this time, China became the world's most socially and technologically advanced society. The Song printed and used paper money, maintained a permanent standing navy featuring ships with watertight bulkheads, made advances in medicine including public health clinics, developed magnetic compasses, hydraulic clocks, movable type printing, and most famously, gunpowder. Scholars once again revived Confucianism, infusing it with Buddhist ideas. China's population swelled and many of its towns grew into the world's largest cities. The country maintained diplomatic relations with Korea and its other neighbors, India, the Fatimid Caliphate, and even the Byzantine Empire.

Art, poetry, and theater flourished during the Song Dynasty. Musical theater became extremely popular, with a lyrical style called nanxi, featuring a pentatonic tonality with flutes and percussion, popular in the south, and a bolder style called zaju, featuring a diatonic tonality and strings, popular in the north.

The next significant musical development, however, would not come from the heartland of China, but from a barbarian tribe to the north.