Tablature for this title can be found in only two surviving handbooks, Faming Qinpu (1530) and Longhu Qinpu (1571).⁵ The version in Faming Qinpu has eight untitled sections, while the Longhu Qinpu version has ten titled sections, having divided Faming Qinpu's Section 8 into three. The lyrics are basically the same in both, but the music is very different, perhaps unrelated. The Longhu Qinpu version also includes a brief preface.⁶

The melody and lyrics of this Sheng De Song are unrelated to the melody and lyrics of the Sheng De Song meaning Hymn of Holy Moral Virtue.⁷ This other Sheng De Song title is also in at least one early list, but tablature can be found only in Chongxiu Zhenchuan Qinpu (1585).

Although I have written out a complete transcription of the 1530 song into staff notation, translated almost all of it, and selected note values that work quite well, I do not yet consider this reconstruction finalized. The main problems are some passages where I do not understand the lyrics well enough to be confident that my musical phrases fit the apparent phrasing of the lyrics. This problem is compounded by the fact that, as in the sample image at right, the original tablature is mostly lacking punctuation for either the lyrics or music.⁸ Another problem is dealing with mistakes and/or inconsistencies in the tablature.⁹

On the other hand, there are structures within the music that help solve some of these problems. Thus, after their opening phrases Section 5 largely repeats Section 1, but one octave higher; then the opening of Section 6 repeats the opening of Section 2, after which most of the rest of Section 6 repeats Section 4, in both cases again one octave higher.¹⁰

As for pairing the phrasing of the music with the phrasing of the lyrics, my initial impression is that perhaps the 1530 editor paid insufficient attention to making clear how the music and text should fit together. For example, perhaps the lyrics and music originally did fit in performance, but the lyrics were copied down separately from the tablature. The editor (who perhaps could not sing or even play the music) might then have tried to pair the lyrics and music in the usual manner, but in some places couldn't quite figure out how to do it. As a result there are places where there is tablature but no words, others where there are words but no appropriate tablature. Other attempts to explain the problems are equally speculative.¹¹

As for mistakes and/or inconsistencies in the tablature, this seems to be a common problem in certain Ming dynasty handbooks, thus contrasting notably from handbooks such as Shen Qi Mi Pu (1425) and Xilutang Qinpu (1549): although 1425 and 1549 also indicate numerous non-pentatonic notes, they do so in a consistent manner that suggests they were intentional.

 
Preface
None (but the Longhu Qinpu version has one¹²)

 
Music and Lyrics¹³
Eight Sections, untitled (but the Longhu Qinpu version has section titles¹⁴)

 
Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a separate page)

1. Hymn of Grand Moral Virtue (盛德頌 Sheng De Song) (compare 聖德頌)
23537.167 has only 盛德 but its quote from the Great Preface (大序 Da Xu) to the 詩經 Shi Jing also mentions "頌 Song", saying that such a hymn is a description of the beauty of grand moral virtue: 「盛德，謂天德之盛行者也。（詩、大序）頌者美盛德之形容。」 5960.366 大序 writes out the Da Xu; it says it comes before the first poem, 關雎 Guan Ju, but doesn't say when or by whom it was written. In my Chinese edition of the Shi Jing it comes before the hymns (頌 song), which are Shi Jing Mao numbers 266-305. I haven't found a textual relationship between any of those hymns and the lyrics here.

23537.167-.173 all concern 盛德 sheng de, but none mentions the qin and the reference just quoted is the only one to mention 頌 song. .171 盛德舞 concerns a Han dynasty shengde dance. 7/1430 adds nothing.

Online I have found a few direct references to 盛德頌 Sheng De Song:

1. In a biography of 劉聰 Liu Cong (Wiki) in 崔鴻《十六國春秋別傳》 Cui Hong's Annals of the 16 Kingdoms:「朕時與武子俱為《盛德頌》，卿稱善久之。」
2. As an essay attributed to 晉陸雲 Lu Yun (士龍 Shilong) of Jin. It begins, 「余行經泗水，高帝昔為亭長於此。瞻望山川，意有慨然，遂奏章以通情焉，並為之頌雲爾。」

My opinion from reconstructing the melody is that it is more coherent than the patched-together lyrics, and so probably came before it.
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2. Mode
Faming Qinpu does not mention the mode, but Longhu Qinpu includes it among its zhi mode pieces. Tonal centers are on zhi (5, so) and shang (2, re). as would be expected from zhi mode melodies.
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3. Image: Tablatures issues (at end of the Sheng De Song tablature from Faming Qinpu)
For much of the tablature there is little problem working out the pitches; at the end, though, there are serious interpretation problems. In the sample above there are two main issues:

1. The first red mark in the tablature (which is written from top to bottom and right to left) indicates an obvious mistake: the left finger is already in the 10th position but the instructions are then to slide down to the tenth position. My solution is take the cluster by the second red mark, here paired to the character 居, move it to the position of the first mark, and pair it with the character 無. This also makes the text correspond with the relevant quote from Lun Yu (論語，學而 14; see below)
2. The third red mark comes at the beginning of a lengthy passage ending the main body of the melody (i.e., until the closing harmonic passage); it is written with what seem to be only vague instructions as to how to play it.

There is further related comment below.

My general practice is to avoid changing notes: even if non-pentatonic notes originally seem odd, they may eventually prove interesting. However, throughout this piece the tablature has too many such passages, often unplayable, and intermediate positions on stopped sounds are rarely indicated, except on slides. To me this suggests careless editing in the original.
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4. A Song dynasty melody?
For the qin melody list of 僧居月 Seng Ju Yue see Tong Kin-Woon, Qin Fu, pp.1695-6. Being in the Less Ancient section of this lists suggests that either this melody or an unrelated one or distantly related one with the same title dates to the Song dynasty. Reference in the lyrics to a specific event at the end of the Song dynasty have led me to the following speculation.

The lyrics at the end of Section 3 of the 1530 tablature have several references to events at 崖山 Yashan/Yaishan, the scene in March 1279 of the last battle of Song resistance to the Yuan conquest. However, just here in the tablature there is a gap in the lyrics, so that tablature that would normally have 17-19 characters paired to it according to a rather strict pairing method instead has none; such a gap in the middle of a melody is very unusual. Some of this can be fixed by taking 10 characters from a repeated melodic passage (beginning "安南..."; at the time repeated tablature often did not have words paired to it) and moving them plus the ensuing Section 3 phrases down. However, this still leaves 7 to 9 notes unpaired. To my ears the most likely place to add this text would be in the middle of the passage connected to Yashan. So is it possible that the present melody did originate in the Song dynasty, then at the beginning of the Yuan someone added lyrics (perhaps re-writing the melody)? At that time it would not have been politically feasible to lament the Yuan conquest openly, so certain lyrics mentioning this might have had to be omitted. If the 1530 version was based on a Yuan dynasty copy of the tablature, perhaps by then the missing lyrics had been lost and so it had this gap. (The 1571 version has no such gap, the melody being shorter here.) This may just be fantasy, but what better explanation is there for the gap? If it is true, what would the most likely subject of these missing lyrics have been?

In 1279 the remnants of the Song court were living on 崖山 Yashan (sometimes written as 厓山, called 厓門山 Yamenshan or 崖門 Yamen, or Romanized as Yaishan), then an island in the Pearl River estuary of what is today Guangdong Province (the Lingnan Qin School claims that old qin tablature called Gugang Yipu includes tablature the family brought here and left behind). My historical atlas shows it as a small island above a bay called the Yellow Reeds Sea (黃茅海 Huangmao Hai): presumably the battle took place in that bay. The Wikipedia article on the 崖門戰役 Battle of Yamen, dated March 1279. includes a picture of a park in nearby 新會 Xinhui commemorating the battle. However, much of the area here in the delta has silted up since the battle, there is no longer a Yashan island, and the bay is further down what modern maps call the 崖門水道 Yamen Water Route, which runs down through the area to Huangmao Hai.

On the Song dynasty side four major figures should be mentioned:

1. 陳宜中 Chen Yizhong (Wiki); he had been a Prime Minister before the Song court fled Hangzhou, but by the time of the battle at Yashan was living in 占城 Champa (often referred to as Annan); in fact there is no record of him actually trying to go to Yashan.
2. 陸秀夫 Lu Xiufu (Wiki); he was one of the admirals of the Song fleet at Yashan; when the battle was lost he jumped into the sea with the infant Song emperor in his arms.
3. 張世傑 Zhang Shijie (Wiki); he was the other fleet admiral; when the battle was lost he and about 10 ships were able to flee, but it is said that shortly thereafter they sank in a great storm (the lyrics say 颶風 jufeng, often translated as "typhoon", but this would have been in March or April, long before the normal typhoon season).
4. Wen Tianxiang; he had earlier written the famous Zheng Qi Ge to protest the conciliatory attitude of the Song government towards the Mongols. Captured by the Mongols, he was forced by them to watch the battle. He wrote a poem about this, Crossing the Lingding Sea (過零丁洋 Guo Lingding Yang; Lingding Yang is presumably either the same as or part of Huangmao Hai).

Perhaps the most likely subject for the missing line (mostly like 4+4 characters or 7 characters) would be a reference alluding to Lu Xiufu, the only one of the above leading figures not so mentioned in these lyrics. (My thanks to 楊劭允 Yang Shao-Yun for clarifying the Yashan references for me and making this suggestion about Liu Xiufu).

Another possibility for the missing line might be one from Wen Tianxiang's Crossing the Lingding Sea; the complete poem is as follows, together with an online translation by 陈耀国 YK Chan, copied here with his kind permission:

One of these lines might serve well for the gap in the present lyrics. However, there is no real evidence to support a connection between this poem and the lyrics of the present melody other than the subject matter and the fact that so much of the Song De Song lyrics consists of quotes from earlier sources.
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5. Tracing this 盛德頌 Sheng De Song
Zha Fuxi's Guide 15/--/339 does not include Longhu Qinpu so it only lists the Faming Qinpu version; the tablature is in QQJC I/366-369. The Longhu Qinpu version begins in Qin Fu, p. 260.
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6. Difference in lyrics between 1530 and 1571 versions
The textual differences amount mainly to words missing from Longhu Qinpu (1571), though there are also changed words here and there, plus a few additions. The extra phrases added (one each) in Faming Qinpu at the end of sections 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7, all applied to the multiple fingering technique 搯撮三聲 taocuo sansheng, are all missing from 1571. Although the sections in 1571 are titled, they are not numbered.
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7. Hymn of Holy Moral Virtue (聖德頌 Sheng De Song) (compare 盛德頌)
29727.289 has only 聖德 (高德、天子之德). This title is #48 in the Table of Contents for Chongxiu Zhenchuan Qinpu (1585). There is a fu poem of this title by Yan Shigu; it begins, 「緬尋遐代，詳觀往冊。五勝質文，三正沿革....」, and seems to have no connection to the lyrics of 1585, which begin, 「仁天開景運，際昇平....」
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8. Punctuation
The tablature, in Folio 3 of the 1530 edition of Faming Qinpu, is on folio pages 45-51. Punctuation seems largely confined to pages 48 and 49. The 1530 edition may be a reprint (it is "新刊 xin kan"); perhaps other editions had either more punctuation or no punctuation.
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9. Mistakes and/or inconsistencies
The main problem is due to the fact that many indicated finger positions suggest non-pentatonic notes, but these are most commonly 4 (fa) and 7 ti); and whereas the non-pentatonic notes seem to be clearly intended in some places, in others they would lead to strange and unlikely dissonances (e.g., diads on f and g together). This then brings into question the notes which seem to sound good either as pentatonic or non-pentatonic notes.

The problems center around a tendency to write only 五, 六 or 八 for intermediate positions such as 5.6, 6.4 or 7.6. This is particularly noticeable if one compares Section 1 (after the opening phrase) with Section 5 (after the opening passage with runs [滾 gun]). The latter has basically the same melody an octave higher but, in a number of places, the indicated slides of one lead to a pentatonic note (e.g., position 6 on the 6th string: E) while the corresponding indicated slides of the other indicate the non-pentatonic equivalent (e.g., position 10 on the 6th string: F).

See also the comment regarding the above image.
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10. Repeating sections in a different register
This is also found it quite a few other qin melodies. In some cases the phrasing of the lyrics have changed but the musical phrasing seems unchanged. To my knowledge there have been no studies of the significance of this.
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11. Pairing lyrics and music
The pairing of lyrics and music in qin melodies is discussed further elsewhere. The problems outlined here bring into question whether these songs were ever in fact sung - or even intended to be sung.

Specific examples of pairing problems include:

1. A passage at the end of Section 3 that would normally have 17-19 characters paired to it has no lyrics at all (further comment).
2. The pairing at the beginning of Section 5, with its repeats and glissandos followed by slides, is awkward.
3. In the last phrases before the closing harmonics of Section 8 ("往來無白丁...無譽"), the editor seems to surrender any attempt to direct the player how to play the music, much less pair it with the lyrics.

The latter two examples, in particular, suggests that perhaps this was an instrumental melody to which someone who didn't understand it very well simply added lyrics. This seems to have been quite common in some handbooks, such as Zheyin Shizi Qinpu,
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12. Chinese preface
The original preface in Longhu Qinpu says:

13. Chinese lyrics
These seem largely to consist of quotes or paraphrases from earlier literature on good behavior. In Section One I have bracketed with 「 」 ones I have found. However, for those found through internet searches the sources are often not identified (some may in fact be maxims of unknown origin).

The original lyrics in Faming Qinpu are as follows (arranged to follow the flow of the melody, but the translation is still in a rough stage):

14 Chinese section titles
The original section titles in Longhu Qinpu are as follows (the music and lyrics of Sections 8 to 10 are equivalent to those of Faming Qinpu Section 8)

1. 盛德頌
2. 出入尊高
3. 立治正中
4. 敬思劬勞
5. 三握三吐 (10.1369:梁元帝﹕三握再吐...)
6. 存仁施德
7. 名清千載
8. （泛起）樂守從吾
9. （泛止）清虛物外
10. （泛起）坦然安居
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