yuefu

yuefu, form of Chinese poetry derived from the folk-ballad tradition. The yuefu takes its name from the Yuefu (“Music Bureau”) created in 120 bc by Wudi of Han for the purpose of collecting songs and their musical scores for ceremonial occasions at court. The music for these songs was later lost, but the words remained, forming a collection of Han dynasty (206 bc–ad 220) folk poetry that served as the basis of the yuefu form.

These poems were significant because they consisted of lines of varying lengths, some having a regular form of five syllables per line rather than the then-standard four-syllable line. The yuefu thus broke ground for the later classic gushi (“ancient-style poetry”), with its broader use of rhyme and fewer metrical restrictions. Many later writers, including the great Li Bai (701–762) and Bai Juyi (772–846), continued to create poems derived from the yuefu tradition.