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Guqin and its Music

Ⅱ-34Traditional MusicYangzhou, JiangsuBatch 2 (2008)Extension ItemFeatured

01 · Historical Records

It is confirmed by the materials so far recovered by archaeology that the form of the guqin was already complete by the Han dynasty at the latest. In 1932 the Guangling qin players Sun Shaotao, Zhang Ziqian, Liu Shaochun and Hu Zifu formally founded the Guangling Qin Society, bringing the Guangling school before the world as a body. In 1984 the Guangling Qin Society revived its long-interrupted guqin activity, and besides organizing yearly gatherings of qin players it has exchanged qin art with brother qin societies and performed for Chinese and foreign guests, winning a good social response.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The guqin, also called the “qin” or the “seven-stringed zither” and otherwise known as the “green damask” or the “silk paulownia”, is a flat-lying plucked string instrument. The art of the guqin is the oldest and most artistically accomplished of instrumental performance forms in Chinese history and the one most marked by national spirit, aesthetic taste and traditional artistic character; besides the solo it also includes the qin song, in which singing and playing go together, and the ensemble of qin and xiao. Through the creative development of qin players and men of letters of successive generations the art of the guqin grew steadily more mature and complete; it entered into a close relationship with social life, history, philosophy and literature, and made great achievements in the accumulation of pieces, performing technique, the study of temperament, modes of transmission and the craft of making qin, displaying a rich humanistic content. At the end of the Ming and the beginning of the Qing the compilation of the Chengjian Tang Qinpu by the grand master of the guqin Xu Changyu marked the maturity of the Guangling school: “its fingering searches out the subtle and divulges the hidden, exhausting what the ancients had not done; students take it as the Guangling school, and it is named alongside the Shu school”. The qin pieces of the Guangling school have both the vigour of the northern school and the tenderness of the southern school, and the fusion of the two forms an artistic style of “the tone following the intention, the intention blending with the wondrous”. The Fisherman's Song, The Woodcutter's Song, Zhaojun, The Soaring Dragon and Three Variations on the Plum Blossom are all its distinctive representative pieces. The Guangling school guqin art has been transmitted as a torch from hand to hand for several hundred years, bringing forth men of talent in every generation.

The Fisherman's Song

One of the distinctive representative pieces of the Guangling school, attributed to Mao Minzhong of the Zhe school tradition.

The Woodcutter's Song

A distinctive representative piece of the Guangling school of guqin art.

Zhaojun

A distinctive representative piece of the Guangling school, on the theme of Wang Zhaojun.

The Soaring Dragon

A distinctive representative piece of the Guangling school.

Three Variations on the Plum Blossom

A distinctive representative piece of the Guangling school of the Guangling repertory.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The Guangling school is one of the important schools of the art of the Chinese guqin and circulates mainly in the Yangzhou area of Jiangsu. The origin of this qin school may be traced back to the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, while its regional style and school characteristics began to emerge gradually only in the Tang and Song. The Guangling qin players have consistently maintained the school's own inherent artistic features, taking “relaxed, crisp, smooth and slippery, lofty and pure, clear and empty, profound and wonderfully ancient and plain, central, harmonious and quick or slow” as their artistic standard, revering “clear, subtle, light and distant” while also pursuing the interest of “free and easy, flowing and expansive”; in performance they insist that “heavy yet not empty, light yet not base, quick yet not hurried, slow yet not slack, as if intoning and as if kneading, round without hindrance, with portamento and with annotation, settled yet sometimes extended, winding and turning, sparse yet truly dense, rising and falling, broken yet rejoined”.

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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

However, restricted by the impact of present-day foreign culture and by factors in the artistic form of qin music itself, the Guangling school guqin art finds it hard to adapt to the professionally orientated and specialised trend of modern music teaching, and hard to seek a means of survival through the market economy and similar means; the quarters concerned should draw up feasible protection measures as soon as possible to save and revive this ancient national art. (Associated bearer recorded in the official archive:) Ma Weiheng, male, Han, born July 1963, a native of Yangzhou city, Jiangsu. On the basis of inheriting the free-flowing and colourful, gorgeous and lingering style of the Guangling school, he reasonably applies the mildness, fineness and pauses of Kunqu singing to his fingering and to his qin pieces. His performing style is weighty and steady, full of spirit and rhythm. His chief representative pieces include Wild Geese Alighting on the Sandy Shore and Singing While Dwelling in the Hills. He is also good at making qin: the instruments he produces, with their dignified and ancient modelling and their loose, penetrable, round and mellow tone, are highly recognised by qin circles at home and abroad and are known as “Ma qin”. From 2008 he successively founded the Nanfeng Qin Society and the Hanfeng Guqin Museum and has many disciples. He has several times been invited to Taiwan and to the United States, Russia and Singapore to lecture and perform. He is a representative bearer of the fifth batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage items, the art of the guqin (Guangling school). Six design patents have been granted for the qin he has developed.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

  1. Guqin and its Music (Yangzhou, Jiangsu) · China ICH Official Project Archive
  2. Ma Weiheng · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

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