Gu Yuan was published the middle years of the Southern Song dynasty (1127 - 1280) together with several other songs not for qin. It is thus the earliest publication of a qin melody to survive in China. There is one qin melody preserved in an earlier manuscript, You Lan, but You Lan was preserved in Japan, not China.³

The full title of Gu Yuan is usually given as Baishi Daoren Gequ Gu Yuan (Ancient Lament, from Songs of the Whitestone Daoist, 1202 CE).⁴ The Whitestone Daoist was the important southern Song dynasty poet, critic and musician Jiang Kui (c. 1155-1221 CE).⁵ His Gu Yuan was not included in a qin handbook, but in his Baishi Daoren Gequ (Songs of the Whitestone Daoist, 1202 CE), which also has 17 ci poems and 10 ritual songs by him.⁶

A native of Boyang, in modern Jiangsu province, Jiang Kui lived in or near Hanyang in Hubei province from about age 10 to 30, after which he lived in Huzhou, now Zhejiang province's Wuxing. Jiang Kui never achieved important office, making a living by selling his calligraphy and getting patronage from wealthy friends.⁷

Gu Yuan is written in a form of qin tablature quite similar to that still used today. The other poems, though, were written in gongche notation (Chinese solfeggio), while the ritual songs were written with liulü notation, which specifies actual pitch.

Gu Yuan has also been transcribed by Rulan Chao Pian and Lawrence Picken (see ref). Professor Pian's transcription yields some strange notes because she did not realize that the method of indicating finger positions prior to the Qing dynasty was different from that used today (more under Tuning a Qin); as a result some of her comments on the modality of the melody are incorrect.⁸ Picken's original review of Pian's book does not mention thess errors, but his own later transcription is correct on this point.

In Jiang's tablature the first string is not indicated, as at present, by the number "1", but by the character for "big". These two characters are quite similar in appearance. Several notes in my transcription are different from those in Pian and Picken because in several places I have changed "6" to "1". I also have a different interpretation of the final cluster in section 1. In the third section the copyist omitted the first cluster, with the result all the remaining notes are misaligned with the lyrics. All transcriptions have corrected this.

The Jin Gu ("Golden Valley") mentioned in the poem is a valley on the northwest side of Luoyang. The wealthy Jin dynasty writer Shi Chong (249-300) had a villa there. Prominent people would gather here for elegant feasts involving music, art and poetry. In 300 a certain Sun Xiu accused Shi Chong of political intrigue and he was executed. Supposedly Sun Xiu had demanded Shi Chong's wife but Shi Chong refused; after his death the wife committed suicide there.⁹

The Fen River runs southward through much of Shanxi province, entering the Yellow River about 100 miles northeast of Xi'an at a place once called Fen Yin (South Bank of the Fen). It was an early cradle of Chinese civilization and famous ancient emperors were buried here; here also the Han emperor Wudi (r.141-87) carried out sacrifices to the earth. Later, though, the place became desolate and remote. This inspired the Tang poet Li Jiao (644-713) to write a poem Fen Yin Xing. The last four lines of the poem tell of Fen Yin's change from glory to desolation, the only inhabitants being wild geese awaiting migration; these lines are paraphrased at the end of Jiang Kui's poem.¹⁰

 
Original preface
None

 
Music and Lyrics: Four sections (untitled)
Jiang Kui's lyrics can be translated as follows.¹¹

 
Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a separate page)

1. 古怨 Gu Yuan 3308.xx
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2. 側商調 Ceshang Diao: Lower 3rd, 4th and 6th strings. The mode gets its name from the fact that the main note is played by the open second string, also called shang.
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3. Other examples from the Song dynasty (Golden Oriole and the other brief modal preludes to be found in Shilin Guangji and Taiyin Daquanji) were perhaps originally published around the same time as this, but survive in later editions.
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4. Songs of the Whitestone Daoist (白石道人歌曲 Baishi Daoren Gequ
These songs, which include 古怨 Gu Yuan have been often re-published. There is some discussion of the musical content below.
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5. 姜夔 See Nienhauser, Indiana Companion, p.262ff (Chiang K'uei).
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6. Jiang Kui's music
Jiang Kui's 17 ci poems and 10 ritual songs are are all songs written not in qin tablature but in other notation forms. These tell the basic notes, but do not specify how they were to be performed. For transcriptions and further details see:

7. 鄱陽 Boyang; 漢陽 Hanyang; 湖洲 Huzhou; 吳興 Wuxing.
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8. Transcription by Rulan Chao Pian
When writing her book, Prof. Pian apparently did not realize that prior to the late Ming dynasty the tablature instruction "8 9" for a finger position did not mean "8.9", as at present, but "somewhere between 8 and 9", in this case 8.5. There are details of this under Tuning a Qin. These mistakes were not corrected in the reprint of Prof. Pian's book.
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9. See L.E.R. Picken, A Twelfth-Century Secular Chinese Song in Zither Tablature, Asia Major, Vol.16 (1971), pp.102-120. Also 41049.281 and David Knechtges (trans.) Wen Xuan, III, p.202.
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10. 汾陰行 Fen Yin Xing by 李嶠 Li Jiao (644-713)
Picken, op. cit. says emperors were once buried at Fen Yin. There is a discussion of Fenyin Xing in Stephen Owen, The Poetry of the Early Tang, pp.118-121.
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11. Tablature and lyrics
The tablature can be found in QQJC I/7-8 (and many other places). The original lyrics are:

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

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