Before the Qin, what was said about music lay scattered through the writings of many schools. What the Confucians valued in them was one thread: music is connected with the government of the state and with the nature of the human heart, and so ritual and music together should be used to teach people.
In the Western Han, Liu De, Prince Xian of Hejian, and Mao Sheng and others gathered these pre-Qin writings on music and compiled them into the Record of Music, and Confucian music theory thereby took the form of a full text for the first time.
Dai Sheng compiled the Book of Rites and took the Record of Music into it, so that the Record of Music became a chapter of the Confucian canon.
In the Tang the Correct Meaning of the Book of Rites, produced under Kong Yingda, was promulgated, and its commentary on the Record of Music became the standard reading for the examination classics.
Record of Music is the class in the chapter on Performance on Confucian writing about music, at the centre of which is the Record of Music: Liu De, Prince Xian of Hejian, and Mao Sheng compiled it in the Western Han from pre-Qin writings on music, Dai Sheng later included it in the Book of Rites, and in the Tang it became standard reading for the examination classics through the Correct Meaning of the Book of Rites. It links music with government and with the human heart, and holds that people should be taught through ritual and music.
