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The qin in the novel Hong Lou Meng
(Dream of the Red Chamber) 1 |
紅樓夢
Chapter 87: Dai Yu plays qin2 |
Hong Lou Meng was written in the mid 18th century by Cao Xueqin,3 then completed by Gao E.4 It concerns the decline of the Jia family.
In Chapter 54 Grandmother Jia recalls that when she was young her grandfather had an opera troupe that included an actress who was a very good qin player. She does not mention whether the actress actually played the qin as part of the opera. The small sound of the qin would make its inclusion there quite problematic, and I have not yet read a description of this ever happening. Today an actor will only pretend to play a qin; the prop used is usually an imitation.5
On the other hand, it is certainly possible that a small, private opera performance at a wealthy man's home could include someone playing a qin as a special event. In the above passage from Chapter 54,6 Grandmother Jia says that the actress once arranged with actual qin accompaniment a sequence of qin-playing scenes from the operas Xi Xiang Ji (Story of the Western Chamber), Yuzan Ji (Story of the Jade Hairpin), and a sequel to Pipa Ji (Story of the Lute).7
Further, in Chapter 86 of Hong Lou Meng Lin Daiyu explains qin tablature to Jia Baoyu. There is then mention of the melodies Wen Wang Cao, Gao Shan and Liu Shui. And in Chapter 87 Dai Yu plays a suite combining Si Xian (also called Yasheng Cao) with Yi Lan.8
There is Ming dynasty qin tablature for all of the melodies mentioned above. I have reconstructed and can play at least one version of each of them.
Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a
separate page)
1.
紅樓夢 Hong Lou Meng
(Wiki)
An alternate title is 石頭記 Shitou Ji (Story of the Stone). There are several abridged translations. Two complete versions are:
A Dream of Red Mansions, the translation by Yang Xianyi (1915-2009;
Wiki) and Gladys Yang (1919-1999; Wiki), is now available in a four volume edition (ISBN 978-7-119-00643-7; Beijing, Foreign Languages Press, 2001), a
notice for which says it is "the version most complete". I have not compared it with the Hawkes/Mitford translation, said also to be complete, and it should be noted that two earlier translations by Yang and his wife published under the same title (one volume and three volume editions) are both abridged versions.
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2.
Image
This illustration is from 紅樓夢詩畫，天然如意寶藏本， 1882.
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3.
曹雪芹 Cao Xueqin
The Wiki biography, which gives his dates as 1724 or 1715 — 1763 or 1764, says he may be responsible only for the first 80 of the 120 chapters usually included. He was from a wealthy Nanjing family, but wrote it while living in poverty in Beijing
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4.
高鶚 Gao E
His completion (done with 程偉元 Cheng Weiyuan?) was apparently first published in 1791. It is the first edition to have 120 chapters.
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5.
Qin used as prop
I have seen the same phenomenon in films.
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6.
See The Story of the Stone, Vol. 3, Penguin edition, p.37.
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7.
Imagining the performance heard by Grandmother Jia of qin melodies from operas
Qin melodies from the three operas mentioned in Chapter 54 are:
Not all these melodies are mentioned in the text. Of course, an imaginative reconstruction of the performance described by Grandmother Jia would want to use versions current when she was younger. In this regard, note that the earliest versions of the novel were circulated ca. 1759, that Cao Xueqin came from the Nanjing area, and that his grandfather was probably born in the 1650s. Thus his own grandmother would presumably have lived in Nanjing during the latter 17th century.
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8.
See Cao Xueqin, op. cit., Vol. 4, pp.151ff and 166ff.
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