Music Beyond Sound CD

This CD and the accompanying book of transcriptions document the music of 13 melodies in the guqin handbook Zheyin Shizi Qinpu (<1491). They were made with the assistance of a grant from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (1996). Recording Details includes specific information about the process of making the recordings.

The cover design (see at right) is by Lilian Tang Design, with calligraphy by Mr. Jat See-Yiu. The character is an ancient form of yao, meaning "silk", which in turn was based on an ancient oracle bone depiction of twisted silk filament.

The completed CDs were delivered to me in Hong Kong in January 1997. Until there is international distribution they are only available directly from me. (Occasionally they have also been available from the shops listed at the bottom of this page.

For this recording Mr. Shum Hing-Shum kindly loaned me a Song dynasty qin named Xiao Xiang Ye Yu.

From the 1950s until 1996 virtually no recordings had been made of qins using silk strings. Now two other recent CDs have been made using silk strings: Water Immortal by Lau Choh-Wah (ROI RA961008C; HK, October 1996); and Qin Music on Antique Instruments, performed by Shum Hing-shum, Sou Si-Tai, Lau Chor-wah, Bell Yung, Tse Chun-yan (HKU001, Hong Kong 1998). These two CDs feature mostly traditional repertoire as evolved to the present.

As of 2000 my CD Music Beyond Sound has had reviews in four publications,

Xu Jian, Beijing Qin Report (Beijing Qin Xun, Vol. 27, April 1997 (see my translation);
Cheng Yu, Julian Joseph and Frank Kouwenhoven (3 reviews), CHIME (Vol. 10/11),
Yi-Ping Huang, Vol.12 of ACMR Reports (1999);
Mercedes Dujunco in the 1999 ICTM Yearbook (it was actually of the book; there was supposed to be one of the CD in the same issue, but it apparently wasn't completed.

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