Interpretation of song cycle Songs and Poems from Shijing by Yangfan Xu—five tones of the Huangdi Neijing for soothing emotion in singing

The five-tone system articulated in the Huangdi Neijing, a foundational text of traditional Chinese medicine, have often been invoked as a tonal–cosmological system. Yet they have rarely been examined in relation to musical structure, vocal embodiment, and emotional experience in contemporary art song. Consequently, the relationship between five-tone philosophy, compositional organization, and the experience of singing remains insufficiently explored. This study investigates Yangfan Xu’s song cycle Songs and Poems from Shijing (2026) through an integrated structural-embodied perspective. It proposes that five-tone orientation functions not merely as a symbolic modal reference but as a relational framework shaping tonal motion, registral gravity, rhythmic pacing, and resonance space. Through score-based analysis, the study identifies and models a bidirectional tonal circulation structured through fifth relationships across the ten-song cycle. The first half unfolds through a descending tonal progression, while the second half reverses this trajectory through a corresponding ascending return. This rotational architecture provides the first structural mapping of the work and demonstrates coherence independent of Western functional tonal hierarchy. The tonalcirculation diagram developed in this study offers a transferable analytical model for examining relational pitch organization in five-tone–centered contemporary repertoire. Within this framework, tonal organization, linguistic articulation, and vocal performance interact to shaping the embodied experience of singing. Building on these findings, this research proposes a model of emotional modulation in which soothing emotion in singing emerges not as an imposed expressive effect but as a patterned outcome of vocal engagement. When tonal architecture and embodied vocal practice align, emotional regulation arises through musical circulation itself. By bringing five-tone philosophy into dialogue with compositional analysis and singing experience, this study establishes a structural-embodied framework for understanding how tonal philosophy, musical design, and the singing body converge in Chinese art song.