This melody, about 10 minutes long, is the world's oldest surviving substantial written melody²: its preface suggests that it dates from at least the 6th century CE. The manuscript copy as preserved in Japan is a scroll over 4 meters long with the tablature written out in longhand; it has been authenticated as dating from at least the 7th century CE.

The title You Lan suggests a flower of such beauty that it stands alone.³ The melody is the earliest of a number of qin melodies on the theme of orchids. Some of these also have the name You Lan.⁴ Because the most famous orchid story is connected to Confucius, sometimes the same connection is made to any melody with orchids in the title, but most properly the connection to Confucius is with the version called Yi Lan (Flourishing Orchid).⁵

Also of value is a list of melodies, also apparently made during the Sui or Tang dynasty, appended at the end of the tablature.

At present the You Lan section here consists of:

1. Secluded Orchid, in Stone Tablet Mode, a General Introduction,
   - includes a translation of the original preface
2. Modality in Jieshi Diao You Lan
   - some preliminary comments based on direct observation
3. Xu Jian's study of You Lan
   - translated from his Introductory History of the Qin
4. A typed and punctuated copy of the original You Lan longhand tablature
   - compare with the original manuscript, now in the Japanese National Museum, Ueno.
5. The Qin Melody List appended at the end of the original You Lan longhand tablature
   - with transliterations
6. My You Lan transcription: the first two (of ten) pages are now online (they follow my .mp3 recording):   pp. 1 /   2 / (.pdf)
   - Small numbers in the transcription correspond with Chinese numbers in my computer copy of the original manuscript

 
Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a separate page)

1. At one time the Japanese guqin website http://www.guqin.jp/ had 14 conference items online in .pdf format, linked via an index at http://www.guqin.jp/symposium/yuuran/yuuran.htm, with Numbers 3, 7 and 9 in Chinese, the rest in Japanese. However, as of January 2008 this link had been inactive for some time. (Return)

2. The closest competitor for antiquity is some of the music from China being reconstructed from documents connected to the gagaku repertoire. (Return)

3. Though "lan" is almost always translated simply as "orchid", it is not certain how strictly one can define what this character meant in ancient literature. For more on this see Guqin and Orchids (Return)

4. For a list of the later versions of You Lan see Zha Fuxi's index 19/181/--. At present only some preliminary comments are available for the first of these, the version in Xilutang Qintong (1549). (Return)

5. Another melody connected to orchids is Xiuxi Yin in Xilutang Qintong (1549) (Return)

Return to the annotated handbook list or to the Guqin ToC.