The Guqin in Korea

References to the "qin" in Korea are quite common as literary or artistic motifs.⁴ However, the instrument itself was rather rare, qin players themselves even rarer,⁵ and qin handbooks virtually non-existent.⁶ Thus, since the character "qin" has also been applied to a number of other stringed instruments both inside and outside of China, when one sees mention of a qin in Korean writing, it is not always clear what instrument the writer had in mind. In addition, the role of the qin in Korean society was most closely approximated in Korea by that of their own "black qin", the komungo.⁷

Regarding this komungo, according to Korean tradition, around the year 550 a qin was brought to Korea. The king offered a prize to anyone who could play it, but no one succeeded. The problem was solved by the musician Wang San-ak, who modified the qin's structure.⁸ When he played it black cranes appeared, hence its name. Wang San-ak is said to have developed a repertoire for this instrument, and it became the instrument played by Korean scholar-officials (yangban⁹). However no one developed a method for writing the music and so the early repertoire was lost. Eventually the yangban are said mostly to have played solo komungo music extracted from the Korean court music repertoire. However, as the painting here suggests, the instrument must have had a much wider repertoire, and today it plays mostly the same melodies, or improvises within the same styles, as those of other Korean zithers.¹⁰

Korean landscape paintings sometimes include a qin in the manner of Chinese paintings (see Korean paintings depicting qins).¹¹ However, because of the rarity of the qin itself, the Koreans often substituted their own qin, in particular the komungo.¹² In other cases the instrument is a hybrid, combining aspects of both the qin and zithers commonly seen in Korea.¹³

In addition, many Korean paintings have themes that in China are common to both painting and to qin melodies.¹⁴ These include:

Peach Blossom Spring (the Korean image is with Huaxu Yin¹⁵)
Autumn Moon over Dongting (anonymous Korean, from the series 8 Views of the Xiao Xiang)
Wild Geese Settling on a Sandbank (anonymous Korean, also from the series 8 Views of the Xiao Xiang)
Dialogue between a Fisherman and Woodcutter (see painting by Yi Myeong-uk [info, 17th c.], in the Gansong Art Museum [in Seoul])
Moon atop a Plum Tree (see painting by O Mong-yong [info, 16/17th c.] in the National Museum of Korea)
Wine Mad (see painting by Yi Kyeong-yun [info, late 16th c.] in the Hoam Art Museum)

Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a separate page)

1. The Guqin in Korea, main references
Mitchell Clark, Two Histories, The Qin in Korea and Vietnam
Mitchell Clark, see below
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2. In addition to the article referenced above, Mitchell Clark presented a paper on the qin in Japan and Korea, entitled "Iconography of the Chinese seven-string zither in Japan and Korea", at Music in Art: Iconography as a Source for Music History, The Ninth Conference of the Research Center for Music Iconography, CUNY, "commemorating the 20th anniversary of death of the Austrian/American musicologist Emanuel Winternitz (1898-1983), co-sponsored by the Department of Musical Instruments of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 5–8 November 2003". His summary of this paper (see link above) was as follows,

The qin (also called guqin) is the classical Chinese seven-string zither, and has a long and profound history in its native country. Created, according to one traditional origin story, early in the third millennium B.C.E., it is perhaps the central musical instrument of China, found first in the hands of sage kings and philosophers, and later in those of literati artists. As a common subject in literati painting, the qin has a rich tradition of iconography within China.

The qin’s primary history is, of course, that of its use in China, yet the instrument was historically introduced to surrounding countries in East Asia, principally Japan and Korea. Due to the difficulty of the qin’s playing technique as well as its involved relationship to Chinese culture, the use of the instrument remained largely marginal in these countries. However, in Korea and, especially, Japan, the qin played an important role among those who emulated the literati arts of China. We therefore find images of qin and qin-players figuring into Japanese and Korean two-dimensional art in a variety of genres. As actual qin were rare in these countries, representations of the instrument often had a hybrid appearance, combining features of the qin with those of native zithers such as the koto (in Japan) and the komun’go (in Korea). In the present paper such visual representations (or, indeed, misrepresentations), and their sources, are examined for what they reveal about how the qin was perceived in these countries. Also explored will be the related topic of how Japanese and Korean literati artists musically viewed and interpreted the Chinese music for the qin, as well as how they created their own genres of qin music: new genres which were themselves blendings of Chinese and native materials.
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3. Image from Wikipedia; original painting by Sin Yunbok (ca. 1758 - after 1813) is in the Seoul Gansong Museum (aka Gansong Art Gallery). The instrument being played is a komungo, said to have been the Korean equivalent of the Chinese qin. Chinese literati painting rarely showed the qin played in mixed company; more typical was an elegant gathering.
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4. Qin as a literary or artistic motif: Clark has some discussion of this; further examples pending.
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5. Clark's article mentions that the earliest reference of a Korean qin player dates from 1542, and that there were Koreans going to China to study qin in the 19th century. Today there are good Korean qin players, but to my knowledge no indigenous characteristics are developing.
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6. The qin was included in the Korean court ritual orchestra, but there apparently was nothing distinctive about what the qin played. Clark's article mentions that copies of the Shilin Guangji, which had a few modal preludes, were brought to Korea. There is no evidence that the modal preludes were ever played in Korea, but the philosophical attitudes that the Chinese book applied to the qin did in Korea get applied to music for other instruments.
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7. Komungo / Geomungo 玄琴 (Korean/Chinese: "hyeongeum", short for 玄黑琴 "hyeonhakgeum", black crane qin)
The referenced Wikipedia article ⁴ uses the official Korean romanization "Geomungo" rather than the much more common "Komungo". The association with black cranes, mentioned above, is reminiscent of Chinese stories such as those of Shi Kuang and Chu Shang Liang.
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8. Wang San-ak 王山岳
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9. Yangban (兩班)
This term described Korean scholar-officials (and their families) as including "both classes", the literary class (munban 文班), and the martial class (muban 武班). See the Wikipedia article for details.
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10. Korean Zithers
Korea has three main zithers.

玄琴 Komungo, a seven-string zither plucked with a stick
伽倻琴 Kayagum plucked with fingers (compare the Chinese 古箏 guzheng)
牙箏 Ajaeng played with a bow (compare the Chinese 軋箏 yazheng).

Within the above there are a variety of styles, both ancient and modern.
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11. Korean paintings depicting qins
The examples linked do not show the instrument very clearly (further examples pending). The painting above is not representative of this style, as mentioned above. It is interesting to compare the thought processes involved in this "translation" of qin into local imagery with the decision of R. H. van Gulik to translate qin into English as lute.
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12. Korean paintings depicting komungos instead of qins
Examples pending; the painting above is not in this category because in literati painting one would not normally find a qin played in such an environment.
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13. Korean paintings depicting hybrid qins
Clark's article discusses two such examples, a painting of immortals by 金弘道 Kim Hong-Do (1745 - ca. 1806) in the Seoul National University Museum; and one from an album of landscapes by 李慶胤 Yi Kyong-Yun (1545 - 1611) in the Korea University Museum. In both cases the instrument depicted seems to be a hybrid.
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14. Korean paintings with themes found in qin melodies
Some of the relevant paintings have been found through net searches that found such websites as Cultural Assets of Korea.
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15. Dreamland depiction
Although the original painting title concerns the Peach Blossom Spring, it is identified on a Korean website as Huaxu Dream (see Huaxu Yin).
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