Sanqu is a new poetic style of singing with music.

Sanqu is one of the ancient literary genres in China, which flourished in the Yuan Dynasty, and was the literature of the same era as Tang poetry and Song poetry. Also known as "Yuefu" or "Modern Yuefu". From the vulgarization of Song Ci, he composed music with the popular music tunes in the north at that time. It is a kind of China music literature that originated from the folk new voice, and it was a new poetic style that appealed to both refined and popular tastes at that time.

The system of Sanqu mainly includes poetry, collection number and cross-qu. Later, with the normalization of Sanqu and the decrease of population, it lost the fresh blood of street culture with distinctive personality, became almost the same as Song Ci, and then declined, failing to prosper and continue like Tang Poetry and Song Ci.

The name of Sanqu was first found in literature, and it was Chengzhai Yuefu written by Zhu Youdun in the early Ming Dynasty. But the Sanqu mentioned in this book only refers to the poem, not including the number of sets. After the middle of Ming Dynasty, the scope of Sanqu gradually expanded, including the number of collections. At the beginning of the 20th century, after a series of works by composers such as Wu Mei and Ren Ne came out, Sanqu as a complete stylistic concept was finally determined. The appearance of Sanqu is very similar to that of Ci, both of which originated from China folk songs.

It can be said that the rise of Sanqu and the decline of Ci are almost simultaneous. Sanqu is a poem in a broad sense. Sanqu has no movement and is unremarkable. It is only used in oratorios, including divertimento and poetry. The divertimento is composed of several tunes, such as Guan Hanqing's "A Flower Can't Live Old", which contains four tunes. Poetry takes a piece of music as an independent unit, such as Guan Hanqing's Four Jade Feelings. This poem is limited to one piece of music. If two or three pieces are combined into a unit, it is called a piece of music.

Qu is a genre of China literature that rises after poetry and ci. Qu can be roughly divided into two types: one is the word that enters the play, which is a drama or drama; The other is Sanqu, or "Qingqu" and "Today's Yuefu". It belongs to China's poems in a broad sense, and there are three basic types: Xiao Ling and Tao Shu, and a melody between them. Sanqu has no movement and is unremarkable. It is only used for cantata and chanting. The divertimento consists of several songs, such as "A Flower Can't Live Old", which contains four songs.