The Analects – Chapter 162 (7.14). Shao Music – The Sound of Utopia

7.14

When he was in Qi the Master heard the Succession, and for three months did not know the taste of meat. He said, “I did not picture to myself that any music existed which could reach such perfection as this.”

子在齊聞韶，三月不知肉味。曰：「不圖為樂之至於斯也！」

Notes

In the culturally flourishing state of Qi, where ancient ritual music was preserved, Confucius once visited and experienced the Shao music. He was profoundly fascinated — never had he imagined music could achieve such a state of perfect harmony and moral excellence.

The Shao was a musical dance from the era of Emperor Shun, an ancient sage ruler. Its melody, choreography, and rhythm were exquisitely harmonious, offering supreme aesthetic pleasure.

To Confucius, the Shao was not merely art; it was the sound of an ideal society. Celebrating Shun’s benevolence and virtue of abdicating the throne to the most worthy, it conveyed values of harmony, humaneness, and justice — perfectly aligning with Confucius’ vision of a “world governed by moral principle”. This spiritual resonance far transcended mere sensory enjoyment.

“The Shao [music] is perfectly beautiful and perfectly good; the Wu [music] is perfectly beautiful, but not perfectly good.”(Analects 3.25)

Confucius commented that the Shao music was flawless in both form and content, with its content conforming to benevolence and virtue. It was precisely the “perfect beauty combined with perfect goodness” of the Shao music that made Confucius utterly absorbed in it, embodying the Confucian criterion for evaluating music – the unity of musical artistry and moral virtue.