Eighteen Beats of a Nomad Flute

Originally a piece of lyre music, Eighteen Beats of a Nomad Flute evolved into two different instrumental music species after the Wei and Jin Dynasties - Major Nomad Flute Chanting and Minor Nomad Flute Chanting, the former being directly derived from Eighteen Beats of a Nomad Flute. According to legend, it had been composed by Cai Wenji. In the Turkic language, "piece" is called "beat", and so eighteen beats means eighteen pieces. As the poem was written with inspiration from the plaintive sound of nomad flute, the music is called Eighteen Beats of a Nomad Flute or Nomad Flute Chanting. Currently lyre musical score for Eighteen Beats of a Nomad Flute is the most popular.

 In the lyre music, Cai Wenji blended into her lyre music the nomad flute's advantage in reproducing plaintive sound, and expressed her extremely conflicting and painful feelings - her nostalgic yearning for her hometown and her reluctance to tear herself away from her endeared ones. Consisting of eighteen segments, the piece of music employs three musical notes - Gong, Zhi and Yu. The music is composed of two parts in content - the first part depicting her plaintive mood of homesickness in an exotic land far away from her hometown, while the second part expressing her hidden bitterness and sorrow for parting with her small children.

 There are two versions of musical scores handed down to present generation. One is the lyre song with matching lyrics collected in Lyre Collection (Qin Shi) compiled in the Ming Dynasty. The lyrics are identical with the namesake narrative poem composed by Cai Wenji. The other is the solo music recorded in "Music Scores of the Chengjian Hall" compiled in the early Qing Dynasty and other later music scores. The latter version is more widely circulated.