Three Teachings Studies: Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism (TTS) welcomes original scholarship examining the roles of sound, music, and voice in the intellectual, religious, and cultural traditions of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. This research area investigates how sonic practices contribute to the expression, interpretation, transmission, and transformation of religious and philosophical knowledge. Particular attention is given to ritual music, liturgical chanting, scriptural recitation, vocal performance, musical aesthetics, auditory environments, and the relationships among sound, embodied experience, and cultural meaning.

Sound occupies diverse positions within the historical development of the Three Teachings. Confucian discussions of ritual and music have addressed ethical cultivation, social order, emotional regulation, and the relationship between musical expression and political governance. Daoist liturgical traditions have incorporated scripture recitation, vocal formulas, instrumental performance, and organized sonic sequences within complex ritual systems. Buddhist communities have developed distinctive practices of chanting, recitation, musical expression, and auditory cultivation shaped by doctrinal, institutional, linguistic, and regional contexts.

The significance of sound cannot be reduced to musical structure or aesthetic appreciation alone. Vocal techniques, rhythmic patterns, silence, acoustic environments, musical instruments, and collective listening may shape the organization of ritual activity, the communication of religious ideas, the formation of communal identities, and the cultivation of bodily and sensory experience. Their meanings and functions must be interpreted in relation to the historical sources, practitioners, institutions, and social settings through which they are produced and experienced.

This research area encourages historically grounded and interdisciplinary investigations of sonic phenomena, including forms of sound that do not correspond neatly to modern definitions of music. It welcomes studies focused on individual traditions as well as comparative research on cross-cultural circulation, musical adaptation, vocal practices, and the changing relationships among sound, religious authority, philosophical understanding, and lived experience.

Areas of Interest

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Chanting and Liturgical Recitation: Studies of Buddhist scriptural chanting and liturgical recitation, Daoist scripture recitation and ritual vocal practices, Confucian ceremonial recitation, and related traditions of collective or individual vocal performance. Research may examine melodic organization, textual articulation, rhythmic structure, performance conventions, and the relationship between recitation and religious or ethical cultivation.
• Ritual Soundscapes and Sacred Spaces: Investigations of the auditory environments associated with temples, monasteries, ritual halls, academies, sacred mountains, pilgrimage sites, and communal ceremonies. Particular attention may be given to acoustic arrangements, spatial organization, bells, drums, vocal exchanges, environmental sounds, silence, and the ways in which sonic experience contributes to the interpretation of religious space.
• Musical Texts, Notation, and Transmission: Research on musical treatises, ritual music manuals, notational systems, liturgical scores, historical descriptions of performance, and the preservation or reconstruction of musical knowledge. Studies may examine relationships among written notation, oral instruction, embodied learning, institutional education, and changing performance traditions.
• Comparative Musical Aesthetics and Sonic Philosophy: Analyses of philosophical and religious interpretations of music, sound, harmony, resonance, rhythm, silence, and auditory experience. Relevant subjects include Confucian ritual-music thought, Daoist reflections on sound and cosmology, Buddhist approaches to listening and auditory perception, and historically grounded comparisons of their aesthetic and philosophical frameworks.
• Voice, Breath, Rhythm, and Embodied Practice: Studies of vocal production, breath control, chanting techniques, bodily coordination, rhythmic discipline, collective participation, and the sensory dimensions of religious and philosophical practice. Research may investigate how vocal and auditory activities contribute to learning, memory, attention, ethical cultivation, and religious experience.
• Sound, Religious Knowledge, and Ritual Efficacy: Investigations of the roles attributed to sound in the communication of sacred or philosophical knowledge, ritual authority, devotional participation, cosmological interpretation, and conceptions of ritual efficacy. Studies should distinguish historical or practitioner claims concerning sonic efficacy from independently demonstrated effects, attending to the textual, ritual, and social conditions of such claims.
• Musical Instruments and Material Sonic Culture: Research on bells, drums, chimes, string instruments, percussion ensembles, ritual implements, and other sound-producing objects associated with the Three Teachings. Contributions may examine instrument construction, classification, symbolism, performance techniques, institutional ownership, material circulation, and the relationships between musical objects and religious practice.
• Transregional Exchange and Contemporary Transformation: Studies of musical and sonic exchange across China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and other historically interconnected regions, including the movement of ritual specialists, instruments, scores, vocal traditions, and performance techniques. Research may also address heritage preservation, contemporary reinterpretation, recording technologies, digital media, and the transformation of sonic practices in changing religious and cultural environments.

Research Approaches

This research area welcomes interdisciplinary scholarship drawing on ethnomusicology, musicology, religious studies, philosophy, history, anthropology, philology, sound studies, performance studies, art history, and related fields. Contributions may employ historical source criticism, musical analysis, textual interpretation, archival investigation, ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, performance documentation, acoustic analysis, comparative studies, and other appropriate research methods.

Authors are encouraged to distinguish among normative descriptions of sound, historical accounts of musical activity, surviving notational materials, and documented or observed performances. Reconstructions of historical musical practices should acknowledge the limitations of available sources, including the uncertainties involved in interpreting notation, terminology, instruments, and performance conventions. Contemporary recordings or performances should not automatically be treated as unchanged representations of earlier historical traditions.

TTS particularly welcomes research that connects detailed musical, textual, or ethnographic evidence with broader questions of religious knowledge, philosophical aesthetics, institutional transmission, embodied experience, and cultural transformation. By treating sound as an historically situated dimension of religious and intellectual life, this research area seeks to advance critical understanding of how Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist traditions are articulated, experienced, and transmitted through sonic practices.

聲音、音樂與宗教實踐

《三教研究：儒、道、釋》歡迎探討儒家、道教與佛教思想、宗教及文化傳統中聲音、音樂與發聲實踐的原創性學術研究。本專欄著重考察聲音活動如何參與宗教與哲學知識的表達、詮釋、傳播及轉化，特別關注禮樂制度、宗教音樂、科儀唱誦、經典誦讀、聲音表演、音樂美學、聽覺環境，以及聲音與身體經驗、文化意義之間的關係。

聲音在儒、道、佛三教的歷史發展中具有不同的思想與實踐地位。儒家禮樂思想涉及道德修養、社會秩序、情感調節，以及音樂表現與政治治理之間的關係。道教科儀傳統則將誦經、唱誦、儀式性發聲、法器演奏及有組織的聲音程序融入複雜的宗教儀式體系。佛教社群在不同教義、制度、語言及地域條件下，也逐漸形成具有自身特色的梵唄、誦經、音樂表現與聽覺修習方式。

聲音的意義並不限於音樂結構或審美欣賞。發聲技術、節奏形式、靜默、聲學環境、樂器及集體聆聽，都可能影響儀式活動的組織、宗教觀念的傳遞、社群認同的形成，以及身體與感官經驗的培養。對於這些現象的研究，必須結合其歷史文獻、參與者、宗教制度及社會環境，才能理解不同聲音活動所具有的具體功能與文化意義。

本專欄鼓勵具有歷史基礎與跨學科視野的聲音研究，並重視那些難以直接歸入現代「音樂」概念的聲音現象。研究可聚焦單一傳統，也可探討不同地區及宗教文化之間的聲音交流、音樂調適、發聲方式與聽覺經驗，以及聲音與宗教權威、哲學理解和日常實踐之間不斷變化的關係。

研究主題

本專欄徵稿範圍包括但不限於以下研究方向：

• 唱誦與經典誦讀傳統：研究佛教梵唄、經典唱誦與儀式誦讀，道教誦經、科儀唱誦與宗教發聲實踐，以及儒家禮儀誦讀等相關傳統。研究可涉及旋律組織、語音表達、節奏結構、表演慣例，以及誦讀與宗教修持、倫理修養之間的關係。
• 儀式聲景與宗教空間：考察寺院、宮觀、儀式殿堂、書院、聖山、朝聖場所及社群祭儀中的聽覺環境，研究聲學配置、空間組織、鐘鼓聲響、人聲應答、環境聲音及靜默如何參與宗教空間的形成與詮釋。
• 音樂文獻、記譜與傳承：研究樂論、科儀音樂文書、記譜系統、儀式樂譜及歷史表演記載，分析書面記譜、口傳教學、身體學習、制度化教育與音樂知識保存或重建之間的關係。
• 比較音樂美學與聲音哲學：探討音樂、聲音、和諧、共鳴、節奏、靜默及聽覺經驗在宗教與哲學思想中的意義。相關研究可包括儒家禮樂思想、道教聲音與宇宙觀、佛教聽聞與聲音感知，以及不同傳統美學與哲學觀念的歷史比較。
• 聲音、呼吸、節奏與具身實踐：考察發聲技術、呼吸控制、唱誦方式、身體協調、節奏規訓、集體參與及宗教活動中的感官經驗，分析聲音實踐如何與學習、記憶、注意力、倫理修養及宗教經驗相互聯繫。
• 聲音、宗教知識與儀式效力：研究聲音在神聖或哲學知識傳遞、宗教權威、信仰參與、宇宙觀念及儀式效力論述中的地位。研究應區分歷史文獻或實踐者對聲音效力的理解與獨立獲得驗證的效果，並重視相關主張形成的文本、儀式與社會條件。
• 樂器與聲音物質文化：研究鐘、鼓、磬、弦樂器、打擊樂合奏、儀式法器及其他與三教相關的發聲器物，考察其製作技術、分類方式、象徵意義、演奏方法、制度性使用、物質流通及與宗教實踐的關係。
• 跨區域交流與當代轉型：研究中國、日本、韓國、越南及其他歷史文化聯繫地區之間的音樂與聲音交流，包括儀式專業者、樂器、樂譜、唱誦傳統及表演技術的跨地域傳播。亦歡迎考察文化遺產保存、當代重新詮釋、錄音技術、數位媒介及宗教聲音實踐的現代轉型。

研究方法與學術取向

本專欄歡迎運用民族音樂學、音樂學、宗教學、哲學、歷史學、人類學、文獻學、聲音研究、表演研究、藝術史及相關領域方法的跨學科成果。研究方法可包括歷史史料批判、音樂分析、文本詮釋、檔案調查、民族誌田野研究、訪談、表演記錄、聲學分析、比較研究及其他適切的研究方法。

研究者應注意區分規範性聲音論述、歷史音樂活動記載、留存的記譜材料，以及具有文獻、錄音或田野依據的實際表演。對歷史音樂實踐的重建，應說明現存材料的限制，包括記譜方式、術語、樂器及演奏慣例在解讀上的不確定性。當代錄音或表演亦不應直接被視為早期歷史傳統未經改變的再現。

本專欄尤其歡迎能夠將細緻的音樂、文獻或田野證據，與宗教知識、哲學美學、制度傳承、具身經驗及文化轉化等問題相結合的研究。透過將聲音視為宗教與思想生活中具有具體歷史條件的研究對象，本專欄期望深化學界對儒、道、佛傳統如何藉由聲音活動獲得表達、感知及傳承的批判性理解。