WANG Fu (also known as WANG Xuan), a literati-musician of the Qing dynasty proficient in ritual and music studies, authored such works as A Comprehensive Exegesis of the Yuejing and Musical Temperament (Yuejing Lülu Tongjie) and Disquisitions on the Yuejing (Yuejing Huowen), and compiled treatises on music and guqin studies, including The Lixue Studio Qin Tablature (Lixue Zhai Qinpu). In the preface to his Tablature, he proposed the significant aesthetic proposition: “Only through quiescent plainness comes harmony.” A follower of ZHU Xi, WANG Fu offered a renewed interpretation of this concept based on ZHU Xi's theory of mind and human nature. Inheriting ZHOU Dunyi's notion of “serenity and harmony” while integrating his own emphasis on tranquility, he conceptualized it as a form of inner self-cultivation, thereby highlighting the moral function of music. WANG Fu reconceptualized the relationship between “serenity” and “harmony”, positing “serenity” as the prerequisite for “harmony”. He argued that music characterized by serenity and harmony serves not only to cultivate the individual's mind and nature but also to civilize the people and shape proper customs. His thought is closely aligned with the Neo-Confucian ideas of valuing quiescence, as well as ZHU Xi's theories of “the latent and the manifest states” and “the mind as the master of [human] nature and the emotions”.