Du Fu on War and Music: A reflection on Tang poetry.  By Kevin Patrick Fitzgerald.  First published on substack and medium, 3 December 2025.  Republished by Mnoty Press, 9 October 2026.

Du Fu, among the most celebrated and prolific of Tang poets, wrote a poem called 'A night at the pavilion'. This is one of his lamentations about war. It contains three references to music: (1) a description of drums and bugles preparing for nightfall as emotionally charged, (2) cries coming from the families of farmers in their fields, and (3) a mention of barbarian songs being sung among the people.

All of these are references to the relationship between music and war and attend to the emotional substance of music among people stressed by ongoing war; including, importantly, those not directly engaged in the violence.

—

The description of the drums and horns being sounded at night as 'solemn and stirring' speaks to the emotional energy experienced by the people on or surrounding the pavilion.

It is another night of worry, another night of hardship for the soldiers who are elsewhere. It is another night of uncertainty among the people surrounding the pavilion, and the people playing the horn and drum have a moment during which they can connect with the people of the camp.

The shared musical experience enhances the recognition of shared suffering, and the feeling of hopelessness associated with a drawn out war with no end in sight. In some ways, it feels like just another night, and in some ways that makes the anguish worse.

The stirring solemnity of the routine sounds brings together also the people with the rituals of government. Those rituals remain even as the government has been unable to provide peace for the people.

—

And so, the second mention: the cries from the families of farmers in the fields. This carries the weight of resistance to the regime. They call up as though they are fed up with the hollow rituals.

The government, after all, fled their responsibility, and in many ways brought about the war with the greed of its officials, and the incompetence of the emperor. This war should not have been, and the people in the fields know it. And the people in the fields suffer along with the soldiers, while the government continues its hollow rituals.

—

And so, the third mention: that of the people singing barbarian songs. These are songs affiliated with the people of the kingdoms surrounding the Chinese heartland. The songs of people on horses who do not farm, and who often came through and took from the empire.

The songs of barbarian songs coming from the people suggests that there was an appeal that had been going on beyond the eyes and ears of the imperial court. The people, in darkness, were discussing the barbarian position with more fondness, and so they were singing barbarian songs as a kind of secret code to remind each other that there are alternatives in how they can deal with the empire.

Singing barbarian songs also comes as a warning from a disgruntled population toward a hollow regime that is not owing up to its part of the bargain. Singing these songs are a quiet threat.

Du Fu could hear them, and understood what they were, but that doesn't mean the imperial officials were aware. He then mentions the death of two military heroes of a previous age. All this time will be over before long, and the people will be in the earth.

—

The lament concludes with what Du Fu thinks is really lost at war: the connections. War tears communities apart, and that separation is worse than death. Such a separation is echoed through the solemnity of the horns and drums, the cries from the families of farmers, and the singing of barbarian songs.

Thank you so much for reading. I hope you are surrounded by peace and love. Please take good care.

—

The poem and the translation I used is from: Chang, Edward C. trans., How to read a Chinese poem: A bilingual anthology of Tang Poetry. Booksurge, 2007.