The Dunhuang music manuscripts (Dunhuang yuepu 敦煌樂譜), also known as Dunhuang pipa notations (Dunhuang pipa pu 敦煌琵琶譜), Dunhuang scroll notations (Dunhuang juanzi pu 敦煌卷子譜), Dunhuang melody scores (Dunhuang qupu 敦煌曲譜) or ancient scores from Dunhuang (Dunhuang gupu 敦煌古譜) survive today in three items. The original manuscripts were discovered in the early 20th century at the Mogao Caves 莫高窟 close to Dunhuang, Gansu Province. They were later acquired by the French sinologist Paul Pelliot (1878-1945) and are now preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris.

The three music manuscripts are catalogued as Pelliot numbers 3539, 3719, and 3808. The identities of the composer and the transmitters of the music are unknown. Manuscript P3808 originally consisted of three separate scrolls, yet because monks used the reverse sides to copy Buddhist scriptures, the scrolls were later pasted together into one long roll. Since the scripture copying occurred before 933, the music can be attributed to a tradition transmitted during the Tang 唐 (618-907) and Five Dynasties 五代 (907-960) periods.

Manuscript P3539 records twenty notation symbols in the gongchepu 工尺譜 (a special reading) notation. These are arranged in five groups of four symbols each. Beside the five groups are smaller annotations reading: "open-string plucking, four sounds" (san da si sheng散打四聲); "second (some read this as 'head') finger, four sounds (ci zhi si sheng 次[=頭?]指四聲); "middle finger, four sounds" (zhongzhi si sheng 中指四聲); "ring finger, four sounds" (mingzhi si sheng 名指四聲); and "little finger, four sounds" (xiaozhi si sheng 小指四聲). From this, it can be understood that these twenty notation symbols represent the twenty pitch positions on a four-string, four-fret pipa (a type of lute) of the Tang and Five Dynasties periods. They are commonly referred to as the "twenty Dunhuang pipa notation symbols" (Dunhuang pipa ershi puzi 敦煌琵琶二十譜字). Because the method for reading the notation in the Dunhuang music manuscripts had already been lost in China long ago, the existence of these notation symbols provides a reliable foundation for interpreting and deciphering this system of notation.

Manuscript Pelliot no. 3719 preserves only eleven notation symbols along with several other technical signs. The title of the piece recorded is Huanxisha 浣溪沙 "Washing the stream sands", but because the notation is incomplete, it is therefore referred to as the "fragmentary score of Huanxisha" (Huanxisha canpu 《浣溪沙》殘譜). The notation symbols used in this manuscript are the same as the pipa notation symbols in the first sheet, though two of them appear in variant forms. In addition, beneath the title are beat and tempo terms such as "slow two" (man er 慢二), "fast three" (ji san 急三), and "slow three" (man san 慢三). Together with the performance instruction "repeat" (fu 復) found within the score, these terms are not seen in the other manuscripts of the Dunhuang music manuscripts.

Figures 1-2. Two brief melodies from among the Dunhuang manuscripts

Left: P3539. The brief melody is on the left hand of the sheet. It is accompanied by notes in smaller characters. International Duhuang Programme. Right: P3719. From International Duhuang Programme.

The much longer manuscript Pelliot no. 3808 records twenty-five pieces for a four-string, four-fret pipa, each with relatively complete treatment of single-note passages. Its notational system, in addition to employing the twenty pipa notation symbols, also includes written Chinese instructional terms such as "from the repeated opening to the character zhu" (chong tou zhi zhu zi sha 重頭至〈住〉字煞), "second repetition up to the end at the character wang" (di er pian zhi wang zi mo 第二遍至〈王〉字末), and "under (after) the character jin, proceed to the character he" (tong jin zi xia zuo zhi he zi 同〈今〉字下作至〈合〉字), as well as ten other symbols related to meter, rhythm, and performance techniques.

Among these musical pieces, Qingbei yue 傾盃樂 "Tilting the cup" already appears in Sui- 隋 (581-618) and Tang-period sources with both its title and lyrics preserved; Yizhou 伊州 is the name of a large-scale musical suite (daqu 大曲) from the Tang period; Xijiang yue 西江月 "Moon over the West River" is the name of a ci-style 詞 poetic tune pattern; and the lyrics of Shuiguzi 水鼓子 "Water drum song" are recorded in the anthology Yuefu shiji 樂府詩集. The remaining titled pieces, as well as those generically named Quzi 曲子 "Song tune", are mostly melodies associated with ci lyrics current at the time.

Figure 3. A full melody to a song, from the Dunhuang music manuscripts

Tune to the song Shuiguzi 水鼓子, noted in the gongchepu 工尺譜 system. P3808. From International Duhuang Programme.

This corpus of music manuscripts not only preserves concrete musical examples from the Tang and Five Dynasties periods, providing invaluable historical materials for the study of ancient Chinese music, but also contributes to research in ci-type poetry, since it offers early melodic models. For these reasons, the study of these scores has long been regarded as highly important by scholars in musicology, literary studies, and Dunhuang studies.

Since 1938, when the Japanese scholars Hayashi Kenzō 林謙三 (1899-1976) and Hirade Hisao 平出久雄 (1904-1984) published their article Pipa gupu hi yanjiu 琵琶古譜之研究 "Studies on ancient lute notation" and began scholarly research on the Dunhuang music manuscript P3808, a number of scholars transcribed the twenty-five pieces contained in the document into modern musical notation.

Study on Explication of Ancient Musical Score of P'i-p'a discovered at Tun‒huang, China”. 奈良学芸大学紀要 5 (1). (1955).（後に改訂の上『雅楽』に収録、敦煌琵琶譜についてはほかにも未発表原稿あり[3]）

The meanings of the Chinese-character instructional terms included in P3808 are relatively easy to interpret, but the significance of the other notational symbols has already been lost. At present, although scholars' transcriptions have reached a broad consensus regarding the type of notation, the pitch values of the notation symbols, pipa tuning, and the interpretation of the Chinese textual instructions, there remain divergent views on the translation and interpretation of the metric and rhythmic symbols and other performance-technique symbols found in the score. Disagreement is particularly pronounced with regard to the metric and rhythmic symbols.

Widely circulated editions based on facsimiles of the original Pelliot no. 3808 include: the 1957 敦煌琵琶譜的解讀研究 Studies on the Interpretation of the Dunhuang Pipa Notation published by Shanghai Music Publishing House 上海音樂出版社; the 1986 敦煌琵琶曲譜Dunhuang Pipa Music Scores published by Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House 上海文藝出版社; and the 1992 敦煌古樂 Dunhuang Ancient Musicpublished by Dunhuang Literature and Art Publishing House and Gansu Audio-Visual Publishing House 敦煌文藝出版社、甘肅音像出版社. In addition, the 1990 Dunhuang Pipa Notation 敦煌琵琶譜 published by Taiwan Xinwenfeng Publishing Company 臺灣新文豐出版公司includes facsimile reproductions of all three manuscripts—Pelliot nos. 3539, 3719, and 3808.

Notable research works on the Dunhuang Music Manuscripts include: • Hayashi Kenzo, Studies on the Interpretation of Dunhuang Pipa Notation 敦煌琵琶譜的解讀研究(Shanghai Music Publishing House 上海音樂出版社, 1957) • Hayashi Kenzo 林謙三, Gagaku… Interpretation of Ancient Music Score 雅樂…古樂譜的解讀s ([Japan] Ongaku no Tomo Sha 音樂之友社, 1969) • Ye Dong 葉棟, translation and interpretation, Dunhuang Pipa Music Scores 敦煌琵琶曲譜 (Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House 上海文藝出版社, 1986) • Dunhuang Cultural Relics Research Institute 敦煌文物研究所編, ed., Proceedings of the 1983 National Dunhuang Academic Conference: Caves and Art, Part II 一九八三年全國敦煌學術討論會文集·石窟·藝術編下 (Gansu People’s Publishing House 甘肅人民出版社, 1987) • Rao Zongyi 饒宗頤, ed., Dunhuang Pipa Notation 敦煌琵琶譜 (Taiwan Xinwenfeng Publishing Company 臺灣新文豐出版公司, 1990) • Rao Zongyi 饒宗頤, ed., Collected Essays on Dunhuang Pipa Notation 敦煌琵琶譜論文集 (Taiwan Xinwenfeng Publishing Company 臺灣新文豐出版公司, 1991) Xi Zhenguan 席臻貫, Dunhuang Ancient Music 敦煌古樂 (Dunhuang Literature and Art Publishing House; Gansu Audio-Visual Publishing House 敦煌文藝出版社、甘肅音像出版社, 1992)