Yuefu Poetry Collection divides Yuefu poetry into 12 categories, such as Jiaomiao Ci, Ci, Advocacy Ci, Transverse Blowing Ci, Harmony Ci, Dance Ci, Qin Ci, Miscellaneous Ci, Modern Ci, Miscellaneous Ci and New Yuefu Ci. It is divided into several subclasses. For example, poems with horizontal blows can be divided into two parts: Korean horizontal blows and beam-drum blows. Xianghe songs are divided into six quotations: Xianghe songs, Yintan songs, Pingdiao songs, Qingdiao songs, Hudiao songs, Chudiao songs and Daqu songs. The lyrics of Qing merchants are divided into wusheng songs and western songs. Among these different musical works, Symphony and Sheyan belong to the movements used by the court, and their ideological content and artistic skills are not satisfactory. There are also some works with poor artistic value in advocacy songs and dance songs. But on the whole, most of the poems it collects are excellent folk songs and poems written by literati with Yuefu as the old theme. Among the existing collections of poems, Yuefu Poetry is an important collection that was created earlier and brought together all kinds of Yuefu poems in past dynasties.
The important contribution of Yuefu Poetry Collection is to collect and classify the songs of past dynasties according to their tunes, so that many works can be written into books. This provides great convenience for the collation and research of Yuefu poems. For example, Shang Mo Sang, Dongmenxing and other outstanding folk songs in Han Dynasty can be found in Song Le Shu Zhi, Peacock Flying Southeast can be found in Yu Tai Xin Yong, and some are scattered in books and other classics, which are collected and recorded by editors. In particular, some ancient folk songs and proverbs are generally scattered in various historical books and some academic works, and most of them are ignored by the former. As for Du Fu's later works, such as Old Proverbs, they are much later than this book, and are obviously compiled on this basis.
Its arrangement is to put the "archaic poems" of each tune (the earlier poems written by anonymous) or the earlier poems in front, and list the later works later, so that readers can understand that some literati poems are influenced by folk songs or previous generations of literati. For example, two poems, Hehe Qu, Qiulu and Haoli, only contain Cao Cao's sketches in Song Le Shu Zhi, but all the ancient poems in Han Dynasty are recorded. Although Cao Cao's proposed work is higher than "Ancient Ci" in ideological content and artistic skills, it is far from obvious to explain the origin and original intention of this piece. Another example is a song sung by Shang Mo. According to the records of ancient and modern music, it was originally the "tune" in the Song of Harmony in the Han Dynasty, but only the sketches of Cao Cao and Cao Pi and a poem written by Jin Yue adapted Qu Yuan's Nine Songs Shan Gui were recorded in the Book of Songs. As for Sang's ancient ci, it belongs to the category of "Daqu". In Yuefu Poems, ancient words are recorded first, which makes readers understand that Cao Cao and others' works are just new words based on the tunes of ancient words. This book is also accompanied by various poems written by later generations to Shang Mosang, such as Picking Mulberry Seeds, Beautiful Songs, Journey to Luofu, Journey to the Southeast at Sunrise, Journey in the Day, etc. This shows the influence of Sang on later literati. Another example is that Lu Ji's poem Ode to the East and Bao Zhao's Ode to the East are arranged together, which shows that the same tune can form all kinds of poems with completely different contents.
Poems in Yuefu poems are classified by musical tunes, and some tunes have influenced the music of later generations. For example, Plum Blossom Fall in Han Kua Chui Ge and Difficult to Go in Miscellaneous Songs are only the earliest songs put forward by Bao Zhao, but the editor still classifies Plum Blossom Fall as Han Kua Chui Ge, and quotes Chen Wu Biezhuan in the explanation of Difficult to Go, pointing out that this song was popular among northern herders before Wei and Jin Dynasties, indicating that it was early. It reflects the influence of folk songs on literati poetry and the relationship between music and poetry. For the same topic of all kinds of music, it points out the inheritance relationship between the previous generation of music and the next generation of music. For example, Huang Dansi in "Blowing Across the Drum and Beam", the editor quoted Chen Shizhi's "Ancient and Modern Music Record" as "blowing across the Yellow River".
Yuefu Poetry Collection gives a detailed introduction and explanation of the origin, nature and musical instruments used in singing. These explanations in the book quoted many lost articles, such as Liu Song and Zhang Yong's Yuan Jia Zheng Sheng Lu, Wang Sengqian's Nanqi Ci Lu and Chen Shizhi's Ancient and Modern Music Lu. Many precious historical materials have been preserved. This is of great value to the study of the history of literature and music. But some of them may be hearsay and unreliable.
There are also some shortcomings in Yuefu Poetry Collection. In the Qing Dynasty, Ji Yun pointed out in the Catalogue of Sikuquanshu that it was not appropriate to include some literati poems in Yuefu. In addition, because it focuses on the melody, the recorded lyrics are often inconsistent with the narrative about the melody. For example, the editor of Shuiduige in Modern Lyrics thinks that it is the time when Emperor Yang Di visited Jiangdu, but the author is not indicated in Tangqu. In fact, I'm afraid these lyrics are all mixed from the works of the Tang Dynasty. For example, the second poem "Rupo" is obviously a poem by Du Fu.
Modern scholars have also argued about the classification of this book. For example, in The Beauty of China and Its History, Liang Qichao thought that Shang Qing was the three songs of Shang Qing in the Han and Wei Dynasties, Guo Maoqian called Wusheng Pavilion and Xi Quge as Shang Qing Quci, and classified Shang Qing's three songs as Xianghe Ci, which was the inheritance of Zheng Qiao in the Southern Song Dynasty. He disagrees with Liang's view that Qu in Han Dynasty has been lost, and there are eleven "harmony songs" in San Diao in Wei and Jin Dynasties. As for the tune of Shang Qing Qu in Wei and Jin Dynasties after Sui and Tang Dynasties, it has never been handed down, so Zheng Qiao's Shang Qing only records the southern folk songs after Jin Dynasty (the three-stringed poems of Song Zhihe are Tong Zhi Le lue and Answer to Mr. Zhu Peixian's On Qu Shu).
Yuefu poems include chicken bone pavilion edition in the late Ming Dynasty, Qing Dynasty edition and four photocopies. The Literature and Ancient Books Publishing Office photocopied the residual copies of Song periodicals, and the missing volumes supplemented the old manuscripts of Yuan periodicals. Today's General Punctuation Collation by Zhonghua Book Company (1980).