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Guqin and its Music

Ⅱ-34Traditional MusicChinese National Academy of ArtsBatch 1 (2006)Newly Added ItemFeatured

01 · Historical Records

The guqin is traditionally said to have been created in the prehistoric legendary age of Fuxi and Shennong. As the materials so far recovered by archaeology confirm, the form of the guqin as an instrument was already complete by the Han dynasty at the latest, and its performing art and styles were perfected through the creations of qin players and men of letters of successive ages and have continued to this day. The introduction of the Western system of professional musical education changed the guqin's function of raising a person's cultural attainments and of self-enjoyment and self-awakening and impelled it to turn rapidly towards professionalisation and vocationalisation, thus forming a new trend of development towards art and performance; this in turn changed the tradition by which the guqin had been transmitted from generation to generation between the reading of notation and the reconstructing of notation according to the oral instruction of qin players, and changed the natural ecological space of the guqin formed by qin societies and schools.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The guqin is also called the “qin” or the “seven-stringed zither” and otherwise known as the “green damask” or the “silk paulownia”. It appears chiefly as a form of solo art for a flat-lying plucked string instrument, and also includes the qin song, in which singing and playing go together, and the ensemble of qin and xiao. Guqin playing is the oldest and most artistically accomplished instrumental performance form in Chinese history and the one most marked by national spirit, aesthetic taste and traditional artistic character. Compared with China's other traditional solo instrumental arts, such as the zheng, pipa, flute, xiao, guan and huqin, the guqin is not only of longer history but is outstandingly humanistic and incomparably rich in its related literature, its accumulation of pieces, its performing technique, its musical and temperamental theory, its modes of transmission, its craft of making qin and its influence in the fields of social life, history, philosophy and literature. Qin, chess, calligraphy and painting have since antiquity been the concrete manifestation of the overall qualities of the Chinese man of letters. The qin stands first among the four arts because it has to a great extent raised and influenced the level of such other art categories as Chinese calligraphy and painting. The titled character of qin pieces, the portamento-bearing character of their tonal structure, the non-even division of their rhythm and their tendency towards a clear, subtle, light and distant tone quality concentrate and embody the basic features of the Chinese musical system and constitute the core of Han Chinese musical aesthetics. In the great mass of qin music, feelings of many kinds arising from man's place amid nature, society and historical change are reflected in many aspects. Common pieces include Three Variations on the Plum Blossom, Flowing Water, Mist and Clouds over the Xiao and Xiang, Three Refrains on Yangguan and Remembering an Old Friend. Inheriting the Confucian traditional spirit contained in the art of the guqin and its aspiration to the Daoist realm of reverence for nature will bring many new revelations to people living in a modernised environment, helping them adjust their relation with nature and society and continually come to know and experience the profundity and reasonableness of the philosophical view of “the unity of heaven and man”. The violent changes of modern and contemporary society, and especially political and economic change, have dealt a great blow to the guqin and to the ideal of cultivating the self by the traditional Chinese man of letters which it represents. For a considerable historical period the guqin was regarded as a representative of “old culture” and much neglected. Its original realm, in which poetry, calligraphy, ritual and music were one and the way of the qin was the way of man, was narrowed, and it could only be confined within the category of stage technique. As an important means of humanistic cultivation the guqin was originally an art of the intellectual's life, but the result of vocationalisation and professionalisation has threatened its original natural ecology and, more importantly, has to a certain extent led to the loss of certain profound connotations in the Chinese humanistic spirit. This problem must draw the high attention of the relevant levels of society.

Three Variations on the Plum Blossom

One of the common pieces of the guqin, sung to the theme of the plum blossom.

Flowing Water

A famous guqin piece among the common repertory listed in the official record.

Mist and Clouds over the Xiao and Xiang

A well-known guqin piece of the common repertory, by Guo Chuwang of the Zhe school.

Three Refrains on Yangguan

A common guqin piece setting the parting theme of Yangguan.

Remembering an Old Friend

A common guqin piece of the modern repertory.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The reconstructing of notation is an activity of great innovative spirit in the transmission of guqin music and fully embodies the experience and wisdom of qin players in handling the relations between oral transmission and “seeking the sound according to the notation”, between school tradition and the player's individuality, and between the whole of the music and its technical details.

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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

(Associated bearer recorded in the official archive:) Zheng Minzhong, male, Han, born 1923, a native of Beijing. In the autumn of 1946 he went to work at the Beijing Palace Museum and has remained there since, having served as head of the display section, the section of calligraphic inscriptions, the painting section, the bronze section, the epigraphy section and the crafts section. He is now a research fellow of the Palace Museum, a member of its academic committee, a member of the National Committee for the Authentication of Cultural Relics and vice-chairman of the Beijing Guqin Research Society. He has published more than thirty research papers on the guqin, collected as Occasional Records of Humble Conjecture, and compiled The Palace Museum Guqin (two volumes, Forbidden City Publishing House). He is a representative bearer of the second batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage items, the art of the guqin, and an important transmitter of the Guan school. Chen Changlin, male, Han, born 1932, a native of Fuzhou, Fujian. In 1951 and 1956 he joined the Shanghai Jinyu Qin Society and the Beijing Guqin Research Society, learning at the same time from such famous qin players as Zha Fuxi, Wu Jinglüe and Zhang Ziqian. He is now a research fellow of the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a standing member of the Chinese Qin Association, a member of the Beijing Guqin Research Society and an adviser to the North American Qin Society. Since 1958 he has explored and reconstructed more than fifty qin pieces, including the Eighteen Refrains on the Barbarian Reed Pipe, published nearly twenty academic articles on the guqin and released the solo album Qin Melodies of the Min River. He is a representative bearer of the second batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage items, the art of the guqin.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

  1. Guqin and its Music (Chinese National Academy of Arts) · China ICH Official Project Archive
  2. Zheng Minzhong · National Representative Bearer Archive
  3. Chenzhanglin · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

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