The most obvious characteristic of HIP on the qin is the use of silk strings. The qin was strung only with silk strings for at least 2,000 years, and the rich color only these strings can provide is an essential part of the traditional qin aesthetic. Nevertheless, since the Cultural Revolution players in China have almost exclusively used nylon-metal or composite strings, many believing that silk strings simply cannot be used in public performance. However, my performances, when presented in an appropriate venue, have convinced many of the unique beauty of silk strings, leading some again to use silk themselves. Thus, although use of silk strings is the aspect of a HIP that should need the least commentary, it often requires the most.³

The other most outstanding characteristic of HIP on the qin is the variety of music that it makes available to modern ears.⁴ The qin repertoire handed down to today through oral tradition is rather small, with the result that in most performances the same melodies turn up again and again. However, by application of HIP techniques I have been able to recreate a very large repertoire of beautiful early music, most of it played by no one else. As people become more familiar with this music it will certainly increase the audience for it.⁵

Compared to the instrumental melodies, applying HIP techniques to qin songs is much more problematic as, although there are quite a few old qin songs, there is very little information about how these songs would have been sung. Today in China there is a tendency to sing them in bel canto style, presumably based on the prejudice that this is the way the "great" Western music is sung so this should be the way the great Chinese music should be sung. However, this style seems to me the least appropriate for qin songs. A plain vocal style goes much better with the rich but subtle sound of the qin, and a number of experiences (but as of 2011 not yet performances) have convinced me that, at least for my taste, the "artlessness" one can find in early Western music singing would make it a natural complement to early qin songs.

Since 2007, when I put over 60 MP3s of my reconstructions online, my website has received on average about 8,000 hits a day, mostly people in China accessing the MP3s. Live performances should not only make people curious about this music, but also have the effect of encouraging more of them to play these melodies themselves. Thus HIP not only provides entertainment, it encourages others to look more deeply into the qin tradition.

When my HIP events focus on specific aspects of the uniqueness of the early music, they usually include some of the explanations found in my article Some Issues in Historically Informed Qin Performance.⁶ The performance may also includes melodies which specifically demonstrate issues discussed in that paper, such as the following.

1. Yin De
   This melody first surviving from 1425 reappears in 1614 with the title Qiujiang Yebo. A comparison of the changed modal characteristics gives clues important to the treatment of mode in early qin music.

2. Dongting Qiu Si (1549)
   Versions of this melody played today were usually reconstructed by selecting from the versions in several different handbooks. In this way some of the distinctive early modal characteristics are obscured. At present the need is to play the different versions separately and faithfully, thereby revealing aspects of changing tastes over the years. Understanding these differences is an essential part of historically informed performance.

3. Zhongqiu Yue (1614)
   This can be played first as a simple melody in rather strict duple rhythm, then in a freer interpretation. Although the latter better evokes the atmosphere suggested by the title, it may also make the melody seem unstructured or complex. Playing the two versions in sequence allows the listener to become more aware of the underlying rhythmic structure, which even while hidden serves to give the melody form.

4. Yi Lan (1425)
   Yi Lan begins with two different harmonics on mi. Since the melody uses standard tuning, the first mi is a Pythagorean third (81/64 in relation to the tonic do), the other is a just intonation third (80/64=5/4). Such slight dissonances do not appear in the traditional repertoire has handed down to the present, but they were an essential part of early qin music. Pointing this out helps listeners open themselves to the unusual colors of early qin music.

5. Zui Weng Yin (1539 and 1571)
   Both of these versions of Zui Weng Yin apply lyrics to a melody following the common pattern within qin songs of attaching one character to each right hand stroke. However, while the contours of the former closely follow that of the melody as it would normally be sung, the contours of the latter leap around considerably. Playing the two back to back shows something of the varied approaches within the song repertoire.

Western performances of early music usually do not include explanations of how the music was reconstructed or technical details of music of that time. Instead they usually include information on historical, literary and artistic associations, such as I have given for qin melodies on the various pages of my website. Thus, although as written at top my performances specifically called HIP usually include some explanation of this, I think the technical information is less important than the broadly contextual. In fact, even for a general audience, more than the bare minimum of this latter information is often unnecessary. The music, when properly performed in an appropriate venue, can stand by itself.

 
Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a separate page)

1. Image
Qin players today often wear clothing with what in English is called a "Manchu collar". This style of dress was apparently introduced into China during the Manchu (Qing) dynasty. Since the music I play comes almost exclusively from pre-Qing sources, I feel that Qing dynasty costume is not appropriate to my performances. The image above shows me wearing a modern jacket that has Chinese embroidery on its lower lapels.
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2. Early Music / Historically Informed Performance as a program title
Two of the earliest programs I did using this title came in September 2003, when I performed and lectured at the Tartu Early Music Festival; and that November, when I also took part in a program called "Music of the Middle Ages, East and West" with the Trefoil Ensemble. The main program I have done tying HIP from East and West has been the ones called Music from the Time of Marco Polo. I have also prepared a program called Music from the Time of Matteo Ricci, but as of 2011 this had not yet been presented.
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3. Silk strings
Since the beauty of the silk string sound is clearly self-evident, problems of their availability form something of a scandal.
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4. Enlarging the repertoire
This is not a suggestion that rebuilding the old repertoire is more important than creating a new one. In fact, the nore I listen to the original versions of melodies published during the Ming dynasty, the more I think that today creating new melodies is much more interesting than refining and/or reinterpreting the ones in the current repertoire.
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5. The role of familiarity
As with most traditional Chinese music, the qin repertoire does not have familiar overall structures that make it easy for an audience to place it within a preconceived framework. However, there are structures in the music, and my HIP events may include my playing a melody twice, pointing out some of the structures during the first playing. People who have my publications can also quickly intuit these structures by looking at the transcriptions while listening to the CDs.
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6. Some Issues in Historically Informed Qin Performance
The online version of that paper has been modified somewhat since it was originally presented at the meeting of the ACMR (Association of Chinese Music Research) in Detroit, October 2001.
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