Lady Tangshan

Also known as Tangshan Furen

Lady Tangshan was a consort of Liu Bang, Emperor Gaozu of Han, of whom nothing else is known. The Treatise on Rites and Music in the Book of Han states that the chamber ritual music was composed by her, and that because Gaozu loved the music of Chu it was set in the Chu style. In 193 BCE Emperor Hui had the music-bureau director Xiahou Kuan furnish it with pipes and renamed it Anshi Music. Its seventeen songs, the Anshi fangzhong ge, are preserved in full in the treatise as an early model of Han ritual song. Whether she wrote the words as well as the music, and whether it served the ancestral temple or the tomb chamber, is still debated.