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Guqin and its Music

Ⅱ-34Traditional MusicNantong, 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. The Mei'an school guqin art originated in Shandong: in the Jiaqing reign of the Qing the Jinan man Mao Boyu summed up the experience of the guqin art and compiled the Longyin Guan Qinpu, and this artistic achievement was inherited at the end of the Qing and the beginning of the Republic by the “two Wangs of Zhucheng” and taught to Wang Yanqing. In 1929 the Mei'an Qin Society was founded and had a wide influence on the qin world. The Mei'an school has relatively great influence in qin circles: the Mei'an Qinpu published in 1931 is the most widely current, most often reprinted and most influential qin manual of the last ten years, and is also the only qin manual so far translated into a foreign language, enjoying international repute. After 1949 the Mei'an school continued to develop, though for a time its activity was suspended for lack of funds and premises.

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. The Mei'an school changed the aesthetic ideas of traditional qin music, emphasised the artistic quality of guqin music, attached importance to performing technique and brought out the beauty of melody, embodying a positive spirit of innovation. The Mei'an qin manual marks the rhythm and opened the way for the marking of beats; its qin pieces absorb the style of folk music and have very strong appeal, and many of them are not to be found in the qin manuals of earlier ages; its representative pieces include Lament of the Long Gate, Wild Geese Alighting on the Sandy Shore, Beating the Silk, Scratching the Head and Questioning Heaven and Autumn Thoughts by Lake Dongting.

Lament of the Long Gate

A representative piece of the Mei'an school, among the distinctive qin pieces of the school's repertory.

Wild Geese Alighting on the Sandy Shore

A representative piece of the Mei'an school of guqin art.

Beating the Silk

A representative piece of the Mei'an school, not found in the qin manuals of earlier ages.

Scratching the Head and Questioning Heaven

A representative piece of the Mei'an school of guqin art.

Autumn Thoughts by Lake Dongting

A representative piece of the Mei'an school of guqin art.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The Mei'an school is one of the representative schools of the art of the Chinese guqin; it now circulates in Nanjing, Nantong and Zhenjiang in Jiangsu and in Shanghai, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, Beijing, Jiangxi, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Taiwan, and such bodies as the Nantong Mei'an Qin Society, the Zhenjiang Mengxi Qin Society and the Hefei Mei'an Qin Society all belong to this school.

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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Later, on Kang Youwei's recommendation, Wang Yanqing went to the Nanjing National Higher Normal School (the predecessor of the present Southeast University) to teach the guqin, training such successors as Xu Lisun and Shao Dasu and leaving behind the Mei'an Qinpu. The Mengxi Qin Society in Zhenjiang and the Mei'an Qin Society in Hefei were founded respectively by Xu Lisun's students Liu Jingshao and Liu Chicheng. At present some of the deeply accomplished artists of the Mei'an school are advanced in years and are gradually withdrawing from qin circles, and there are not many successors able to inherit its qin art well; qin players with a command of the techniques of repairing and making guqin are likewise rare, and the performing technique, performing style and related artistic materials of the Mei'an school face the danger of being lost, so that powerful measures must urgently be taken to protect them. (Associated bearer recorded in the official archive:) Wang Yongchang, male, Han, born June 1940, a native of Nantong city, Jiangsu. In 1963 he took Xu Lisun as his master to learn the guqin and mastered four kinds of notation—the guqin reduced-character notation, the gongche notation, the numbered notation and the staff. His performing style is described on the CD Jing Han Tai Gu, produced under the supervision of the Chinese National Academy of Arts, as “combining hardness and softness, yin and yang complementing each other; the vigorous and bold and the warm and quietly distant organically blending”. He is a representative bearer of the fourth batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage items, the art of the guqin (Mei'an school). He has been invited more than ten times to national and international guqin academic activities, has published about five hundred thousand characters of papers and has trained more than a hundred students.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

  1. Guqin and its Music (Nantong, Jiangsu) · China ICH Official Project Archive
  2. Wang Yongchang · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

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