This You Lan is by far the earliest substantial melody from any culture to have been notated with detail sufficient to give expectation of reasonably accurate reconstruction. (Interpretations vary in length from about eight minutes to over 12 minutes.) Its preface suggests that near the end of his life Qiu Ming³ (493-590) transmitted it to Wang Shuming.⁴ Modern research says that the manuscript copy of the tablature, written in the ancient longhand tablature⁵ and preserved in Japan,⁶ can be dated from the middle of the 7th century. It is not known when or how the manuscript left China and arrived in Japan, or when the melody left the active repertoire.

The title You Lan conveys the image of a flower of such beauty that it makes its surroundings seem plain by comparison. It thus tends to be lonely, perhaps content in its solitude. Mention of this orchid in poetry might suggest the image the author would like to convey of himself, or of the subject of his poem.

The theme is often considered to be the same as that of the Shen Qi Mi Pu melody Yi Lan, which is connected to the story of Confucius comparing himself, an upright minister not achieving proper recognition, to a solitary orchid in a field of common plants. However, the two pieces are melodically unrelated, and early references to You Lan do not mention the Confucius story, instead referring to the orchid's natural beauty and its use as a body ornament.⁷

For many years I did not do a detailed reconstruction of You Lan. The main problem was that a number of the finger techniques are not clearly explained, the biggest hurdle perhaps being the very first two notes.⁸ My usual methods for interpreting these problems had not worked to my satisfaction.

Then in January of 2004 Yuan Jung-Ping, president of the New York Qin Society, told me that for some months he had been working on You Lan from the original manuscript.⁹ He gave me his interpretation of a number of the difficult terms, and this both inspired and enabled me finally to do my own version. While doing it I tried not to pay attention to the rhythms worked out by other people.

In fact, many other people have worked on this melody, making both transcriptions and recordings. There is a lot of information online as well.¹⁰ On the other hand, many of these versions are based on people modifying earlier reconstructions, rather than on doing their own directly from the tablature.

One major issue is the modality of You Lan. As written, it is certainly different from that of modern melodies, and it also seems to be rather different from the melodies I have studied in early Ming dynasty handbooks, the music of You Lan being even less pentatonic. On the other hand the melody seems to move through structures similar to those in melodies preserved from the Ming dynasty: there are parallel phrases, repeated motifs, and variations on themes and motifs. Also, as with the later compositions, I find the best results come from putting the melodic lines into duple meter rhythms, then interpreting these rhythms freely.¹¹

The You Lan tablature was first given modern publication in China in a collection called the Guyi Congshu (1884).¹² From the beginning of the 1880s a Chinese scholar named Yang Shoujing spent several years in Japan looking for old Chinese books.¹³ In Kyoto he found what was apparently an early 18th century Japanese reproduction of You Lan by the famous Japanese Confucianist Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728).¹⁴ This was immediately published in Japan and, based on this, in the Guyi Congshu. From there it has found modern publication in the first volume of the old series of Qinqu Jicheng (1963), as well as in Tong Kin-Woon's Qin Fu (1971).¹⁵

Later another copy of You Lan was found, also in Kyoto. Now in the permanent collection of the Japan National Museum, Ueno (a district of Tokyo), it apparently has been authenticated as a Tang dynasty original.¹⁶ In 1981 this version was printed in Qinqu Jicheng, New Series, Vol. 1.¹⁷

In November 1999 I took part in a You Lan seminar in Tokyo.¹⁸ In honor of this seminar the Japan National Museum had on display the original Tang dynasty document. The total scroll is over four meters long, so they were able to display only a part. There was a lecture by a museum curator in which he said they have examined the ink, paper and writing style, and have concluded that it was copied by hand in the 7th century (with perhaps a few corrections made a century or so later).¹⁹

The earliest reconstructions of You Lan followed the edition published by Yang Biaozheng in Qinxue Congshu (1910).²⁰ This edition put modern tablature alongside a copy of the longhand tablature. Since then, explanations have been found for more of the ancient finger techniques. New renditions may simply copy or slightly modify earlier versions. Others focus on strongly differing interpretations of a few of the finger techniques. Often a special effect comes from people taking advantage of the special sonorities allowed by playing the melody on metal strings.²¹

Many of the terms used in the original tablature, though out of use by the Ming dynasty, are explained in handbooks of that period, with the result that there is today explanation for almost all of the techniques.²² One of these handbooks is Qinshu Daquan, which includes finger technique explanations written during the Tang dynasty by Zhao Yeli and Chen Zhuo, and during the Song dynasty by Cheng Yujian and Yang Zuyun.²³ In addition an ancient text, apparently named Wusilan Zhifa, was found in the Beijing Library during World War II. Formerly part of the Imperial household collection, it explains even older techniques. In 1955 Wang Mengshu published a mimeographed volume called Explanation of the Wusilan Finger Techniques.²⁴

In the You Lan manuscript the tablature is followed by a melody list with 59 titles.²⁵ These begin with the names of four modes, Chu, Qianjin, Hujia and Ganshen. After this the melodies seem to be arranged according to these modes. Thus, the first five melodies after the names of the modes (i.e., #5 to #9) are all in the Chu mode. The fifth of these is You Lan, and this is why in the manuscript You Lan is called "You Lan, Number Five." Numbers 10 to 18 are in the Qianjin mode, 19 to 28 are in the Hujia mode, and from 29 to the end are melodies in Ganshen and some miscellaneous modes which might be sub-categories of Ganshen.

 
Original Preface²⁶
Preface to You Lan (Secluded Orchid), also called Yi Lan (Relying on the Orchid), (a melody in the) Jieshi (Stone Tablet) Mode

Qiu Gong, style name (Qiu) Ming, was a native of Kuai Ji.²⁷ At the end of the Liang Dynasty (502-557) he became a recluse in the Jiuyi Mountains (at the southern edge of the old state of Chu²⁸), and was very good at (melodies in the) Chu mode. As for the melody You Lan, he was exceptionally skilled. He used its subtle sounds for his own lofty goals, but was unwilling to transmit them to others. In the third year of Chenming period (589) of the Chen Dynasty²⁹ he did transmit it to Wang Shuming of Yidu.³⁰ Then in the 10th year of the Sui dynasty's Kaixing period (590) he died in Danyang³¹ prefecture. At that time he was 97 years old. He had no disciples to carry on his tradition, but his sounds were consequently transmitted.

 
Music (Listen to my recording 聽我的錄音)
Four Sections, untitled (the tablature calls for a break between each section³²)

00.00   1.
01.49   2.
04.23   3.
06.32   4.
08.00   End

 
Afterword³³

This melody is relaxed; there is ebb and flow in playing it.

 
Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a separate page)

1. 9411.431 幽蘭 says you lan is "an orchid growing in a secluded valley", "the name of a flower", and "the name of a qin melody". It gives the following references:

2. 24896 and 7/1081 碣 have nothing about a musical mode. 7/1081 Jieshi means tombstone, as well as being a mountain in Hebei province overlooking the Gulf of Bohai. 24896.2 briefly discusses the Jieshi Diao You Lan published in the 古逸叢書 Guyi Congshu (see footnote below). 24896.4 Jieshi Guan 館 concerns a palace near Beijing, mentioned in Shi Ji 74 (see Nienhauser, VII, p.181). 24896.3 碣石篇 Jieshi Pian (Stone Tablet Essay) was the name of lyrics accompanying four music bureau (yuefu) dances from the Jin dynasty; the preface in Yuefu Shiji 55 (p. 790) says Jieshi was a poem written by the 魏武帝 Wu Emperor (unofficial title of 曹操 Cao Cao, 155-220) of the Wei Dynasty (north China, with its capital at Loyang). It has four parts, each one having 14 four-character lines arranged into seven couplets. The names are 觀滄海 Looking at the Ocean (from Jieshi Mountain), 冬十月 The Cold Tenth Month, 土不同 The Ground is Different, and 龜雖壽. Although Turtles Have a Long Life. Jieshi Diao You Lan also has four sections, and as a result some people think that You Lan developed from settings of these old poems in the Jieshi mode. However, I have not been able to match the lyrics to any reconstructed version of the melody, and if there is in fact a connection here it is quite likely a very loose one. None of the Jieshi mode melodies makes any mention of orchids; perhaps there are some modal similarities, perhaps some musical materials were maintained, perhaps one of the characteristics of the Jieshi mode was that pieces in that mode were in four parts.
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3. 丘明 Qiu Ming 40.59 refers only to someone else, 左丘明 a minister of Lu during the Spring and Autumn period. Bio.xxx.
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4. 王叔明 (Bio/xxx) I have found no further information on any Wang Shuming from this time period. 3223.82 叔明 Shuming is a nickname for many people, but none until the Ming dynasty was surnamed 王 Wang.
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5. Longhand tablature (文字譜，看細節; wenzipu, see details)
Longhand tablature writes out in full characters all the details of performance. Shorthand qin tablature (減字譜 jianzipu) conveys the same information by combining abbreviated forms of several characters to make "clusters". One cluster usually defines one note, but there are also a number of multi-note clusters. This shorthand form is thought to have developed during the Tang dynasty. See, for example, Cao Rou.

Longhand tablature required a whole phrase to convey the same information as one of the shorthand clusters (see example). At least one source claims that longhand tablature was invented in the 3rd C. BCE by Yongmeng Zhou. The first surviving mention of written music may be in Ya Qin Zhao Shi (1st C. BCE). The only authentically ancient example of longhand tablature is that for the present melody You Lan. It can also be found in the 1552 publication of an introductory exercise called Caoman Yin, but this may have been a contemporary work written in this form to suggest antiquity.
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6. At the Ueno Museum in Tokyo, which has put the whole manuscript online in its Emuseum website.
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7. This is particularly true of the melody Pei Lan. See also footnote 1 above.
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8. See online closeup: the melody begins with the instructions 耶臥 (yewo or xiewo, put down sideways) the middle finger at ｜卞半寸許 (about half an inch, or position, above or below ｜) on 商 the second string. Most people assume the ｜ to be 十 with the cross stroke missing, and 卞 to be 上 (Yuan Jung-Ping suggests 下). A normal reading of 十上半寸 yields so sharp, 十下半寸 so flat. This is then played together with the open first string, do. Some people argue that the resulting dissonance is intentional and beautiful. Others try to resolve the dissonance by retuning the instrument, suggesting that the modality was different at the time, and/or arguing that the positioning of the fingers was based on observation rather than theory (e.g., a stopped note indicated as being at position 7 must be played a little below 7 to give the same pitch as a harmonic played at 7). However, all of these solutions bring problems elsewhere which I cannot resolve. Personally I find that the dissonance can be appealing appealing. In addition, if I am to change something here my inclination, since the Chinese number 8 (8 (八) consists of two strokes rather similar to the vertical stroke of 10 (十), is to interpret the ｜ not as 10 but as 8. The position 八上半寸 on the second string yields do (this occurs later in the manuscript), and the opening two notes thus form an octave. This solution requires the least amount of change (if there is an error) or theoretical speculation (if the modality is to be considered to have some logic). It should be pointed out that the paper of the original manuscript was obviously damaged right in this area. Available copies (see again the online closeup) suggest that this theory still seems to require there to have been a copying error, but perhaps a close examination of the Ueno Museum original would yield further justification for the twisted paper theory.
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9. 袁中平 Yuan Jung-Ping has produced quite a few materials in connection with his reconstruction. However, this does not include a transcription into staff notation: he prefers to work from the simplified notation he made from the original longhand notation
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10. This includes a paper 吳文光 Wu Wenguang presented at the Japanese You Lan conference mentioned below; this paper was quite useful in writing the present introduction.
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11. Fundamental to my interpretation is the belief that the variations in indication of finger position (e.g. "down one inch" vs. down half inch") are not attempts to indicated special concepts of mode, but inconsistencies resulting from my belief that the manuscript was copied by more than one person, quite possibly during different generations. My experience with Ming tablature is that when an actively played melody is re-copied for a new handbook, much of the new tablature is a direct copy of the old. However, in parts where the melody has changed somewhat a different system may be used to indicated finger position (e.g., "above 8" instead of "between 7 and 8".
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12. 3308.331 古逸叢書 Guyi Congshu (A Collection of Lost Ancient Writings), published 1882-4
Guyi Congshu consists of books that had been found in Japan by two bibliophiles, 黎庶昌 Li Shuchang (1837 - 97), who was then the Chinese ambassador to Japan, and Yang Shoujing (1839 - 1915). Li and Yang had searched extensively for such works. What they found they then reproduced for publication. GYCS is a source for the biographies of Pei Ni and Qiu Ming, and the GYCS publication of You Lan is discussed in QSCM, #29.
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13. See Lore of the Chinese Lute, page 29n. R. H. van Gulik wrote that when "the Chinese scholar and bibliophile" 楊守敬 Yang Shoujing (1835-1915) was in Japan from 1880 to 1884 he bought a copy of the manuscript.
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14. Ogyu Sorai 荻生徂徠 ("Disheng Culai"; 1666-1728)
Ogyu Sorai, also known as 物部茂卿 Mononobe Noke ("Wubu Maoqing") was a Japanese Confucianist. Of his You Lan manuscript Van Gulik, op.cit., wrote as follows,

Van Gulik's skepticism, along with the problem of the first two notes, are the main reasons I did not work on this melody for a long time. As it turns out, though, it seems that in fact Ogyu Sorai's copy was remarkably identical to the original.
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15. See the bibliography. In Tong Kin-Woon's 琴府 Qin Fu it is on pp. 1-9. Its main difference with the original seems to be the addition of marks separating the notes. Otherwise it was copied line for line: even the characters added between lines and trailing around towards the end are left in that position.
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16. It is not clear to me whether the whole document has been authenticated, or only the upper right corner. There seems to be some indication that the rest of the document may have been added on later.
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17. Beijing, 1981; p.1. I have not yet translated the introduction written by Zha Fuxi in Qinqu Jicheng, but it does not seem to make it clear that this is not the 18th century reproduction as well.
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18. See another footnote.
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19. It was preserved at a monastery in Kyoto until the 20th century, when it was brought to the museum in Ueno.
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20. 楊表正，琴學叢書 See Tong Kin-Woon's 琴府 Qin Fu, p. 838ff.
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21. Other interpreters make much of their attempts to play the melody according to certain concepts of mode. I have never seen any of these concepts explained very clearly, and so have not found them very convincing. For more on this see You Lan Mode.
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22. For some techniques there is more than one explanation. These explanations are not all consistent, so differing interpretations can be legitimately debated.
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23. The relevant section of Qinshu Daquan is in Qinqu Jicheng Vol.IV, pp.149-194. Within this it is not always clear to me the attributions of the explanations. Some say Zhao Yeli (565-639) was the person most responsible for adapting the long hand tablature into simplified tablature, so perhaps the others are based on his explanations. The following shows where names are actually mentioned.

24. I don't know the present location of the original Wusilan Zhifa (Liang Mingyue calls it Wusilan Guqin Zhipu, but guqin is a rather recent name for the qin). 汪孟舒，烏絲闌指法釋 Wang Mengshu's Wusilan Zhifa Shi, mimeographed in Beijing, 1955, apparently has the original text in large print. If this is true, then a number of the early techniques included in Wusilan Zhifa have no explanation. Some years ago I began translating Wang Mengshu's book, but then set it aside. In 2004, with assistance from Yuan Jung-Ping, I looked at it again and worked out some more of the meanings. A study of this book is essential to anyone wishing to do an independent reconstruction of You Lan.
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25. The information in this paragraph was given me by Yuan Jung-Ping. The modes discussed are 楚調 Chu Diao (Mode of the Chu region, 千金調 Qianjin Diao (Mode of Wealth), 胡笳調 Hujia Diao (Mode of the Hu nomads) and 感神調 Ganshen Diao (Mode of Spirits Thanking).
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26. 碣石調幽蘭序一名倚蘭

27. The Shaoxing area, east of Hangzhou.
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28. 九疑山 Jiuyi Shan is connected to the melody Fan Canglang
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29. The 陳 Chen dynasty (557-589) had its capital in Nanjing. In 589 Nanjing was captured by Yang Jian, founder of the Sui dynasty.
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30. 7263.76 Yidu says it refers to the region also called 宜昌 Yichang, on the Yangzi river in Hubei province. A commentary in Qinshu Daquan, Folio 10 (see QQJC, V. p.208) mentions Yidu as follows:

31. 101.179 Danyang mentions a number of places, including a Chu city in Hubei.
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32. The sections are not numbered. The endings of Sections 1 and 2 are each indicated by the statement 拍之，大息 (Melody finalizes, Long rest); Sections 3 and 4 each end with 拍之 (Melody finalizes). As yet I have not seen instructions like this in any other qin tablature. The melody begins and ends with the statement 幽蘭第五 You Lan, the Fifth. This could mean either The Fifth Section of You Lan, or that You Lan was the fifth in a series of melodies.
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33. 此弄宜緩；消息彈之。
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Return to the annotated handbook list or to the Guqin ToC.