Pipa Solo: “Ambush from Ten Sides” (十面埋伏) – Liu Fang, China (Traditional)
A sonic battlefield of agency, where virtuosity, narrative tension, and historical memory converge through instrumental action and indexical causality
Thinking Through Alfred Gell (1945-1997)’s Art and Agency
Introduction
The pipa, a pear-shaped Chinese lute with four strings, is among the most expressive and technically versatile instruments in Chinese classical music. “Ambush from Ten Sides” is one of its most famous solo pieces, composed in the tradition of programmatic instrumental storytelling. It dramatizes the legendary Battle of Gaixia (202 BCE), where Xiang Yu, warlord of the Chu state, was ambushed and defeated by Liu Bang, the founder of the Han Dynasty.
In the hands of master performer Liu Fang, the piece becomes a sonic enactment of war, honor, chaos, and fate. From Alfred Gell’s Art and Agency perspective, this performance is not simply instrumental “music”—it is an artificial agent: a crafted, performative index of political history, moral tension, and martial intentionality. It acts upon the listener with causal, emotional, and mnemonic force.
The Artwork as Agent of Narrative Reenactment
Gell’s theory asserts that artworks are not static signs but active agents—they do things. Ambush from Ten Sides:
Doesn’t tell the story—it re-enacts it,
Uses rapid tremolos, percussive plucks, glissandi, and harmonics to depict horses, armies, cries, arrows, and duels,
Invokes not symbolic meaning but emotional immersion and perceptual activation.
The narrative content becomes sonic causality. The listener does not interpret war—they feel it unfolding, sonically and viscerally. The pipa is not descriptive—it is indexical.
Virtuosity as Technology of Enchantment
Gell’s concept of the “technology of enchantment” explains how technical mastery serves as a mechanism of aesthetic agency. In Liu Fang’s performance:
The dazzling rapidity of fingerwork, changing meter, and aggressive articulation overwhelms rational analysis,
Techniques like “sao” (sweeping), “lun” (continuous tremolo), and “tiao” (snap plucking) create an atmosphere of unpredictability and urgency,
The performer's control borders on supernatural—the appearance of effortless domination is the key to enchanting the audience.
Gell would argue that such technical complexity does not serve artistic display—it serves to act upon the observer, binding their attention and belief in the agency of the instrument.
The Pipa as War Machine and Index of Heroism
Gell’s notion of index—a trace of intentional action—is materialized in the pipa itself:
The instrument becomes the battlefield: its wooden surface the terrain, its strings the tensions of history,
The player is not merely a musician but a re-performer of martial fate,
The tones emitted are not neutral—they stand in for cries of soldiers, hoofbeats, ambushes, laments.
Thus, the pipa in this context is a semiotic and affective weapon—one that does not narrate, but inflicts memory. The audience feels ambushed, exhausted, mournful—transformed.
Distributed Agency: Performer, Instrument, History, Listener
In Gell’s model of distributed intentionality:
The composer (anonymous or multiple over centuries) is a ghost-agent,
The performer becomes an executor of latent martial agency,
The instrument is animated—no longer object but animate battlefield surrogate,
The audience, through their focused attention, co-participates in the resurrection of historical trauma.
The artwork thus performs a ritual of reenactment, in which all agents—past and present—are drawn into the act of remembering, suffering, and honoring.
Time as Dramatic Arc and Emotional Compression
Gell suggests artworks operate upon time—either compressing it, expanding it, or freezing it. Ambush from Ten Sides:
Compresses an entire battle into minutes—from cavalry gallop to retreat, encirclement, despair, and final fall,
Creates temporal contrast: frantic tremolos against melancholic rests,
Dramatically stages rhythmic deceleration to signify defeat, tragedy, and reflection.
Time becomes emotionally sculpted—not clock time, but moral time, where listeners dwell in glory and fall in the space of seconds.
The Moral Aura of Heroic Agency
Gell notes that agency in art is often tied to moral or social consequence. Here, Ambush from Ten Sides operates as:
A memorial to the nobility and tragedy of Xiang Yu—a fallen hero whose demise marks the end of an era,
A moral cautionary tale, showing how pride, miscalculation, or fate lead to downfall,
A symbol of national continuity, where the Han victory leads to centuries of dynastic legacy.
The music therefore acts not just on perception, but on cultural memory and ethical positioning. It calls listeners not only to feel, but to reconsider history through affect.
Conclusion
Through the lens of Alfred Gell’s Art and Agency, Ambush from Ten Sides is not a composition—it is a sonic ritual of memory and transformation, where instrument, performer, and history converge in dramatic causality.
The pipa does not sing a story—it re-enacts war, stages downfall, and resurrects martial spirit. It is an agentive device that enchants through martial virtuosity, acts through historical empathy, and endures as a battlefield inscribed on wood and wire.