In Qinshi Chubian, Chapter 6a3, Xu Jian writes that during the Yuan dynasty a scholar named Yu Yan closed his doors and, among other things, created qin songs based on such classical texts as the Book of Songs. He adds that this is the source of the Ming dynasty qin song tradition. This may be true, but it is difficult to verify, as the earliest surviving collection of such songs was not published until the Taigu Yiyin of 1511, which had 38 songs.

What can be said is the people who created the surviving qin melodies came from the same class of people who created what survives of China's traditional painting and wrote the surviving poetry. Thus, it is not surprising that, just as the qin is the music instrument most often seen in Chinese painting, it is also the instrument most often mentioned in Chinese poetry, or that the texts of qin songs are similar to Chinese poetic texts.¹

Performances including poetry and song take material from the section Qin Poetry and Song. I can sing a some of melodies as I play; others would require a separate singer. I generally provide listeners with a translation of the lyrics. In addition, when listening to such songs it is particularly interesting to see related images such as calligraphic renditions of the lyrics (again see Qin Poetry and Song).

From my experience, qin songs today are often sung by a professional using a heroic quality (since the qin is "great music") that I find quite inappropriate. From my imagination of the traditional aesthetic, it is much more appropriate when the singer sounds like a scholar with a skilled and expressive voice, but one apparently untrained; like a refined singer in the style of the traditional opera form kunqu; or somewhere in between.²

 
Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a separate page)

1. Many such poems have been translated into English, but this is somewhat obscured by the fact that there has been no consistency about whether to translate qin as zither (which is the most correct, though there are also other Chinese zithers), harp, lyre, lute or something else.
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2. On several occasions I have been accompanied (informally) by a singer trained in early Western music vocal technique. The result sounded to me very appropriate.
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