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37. Former Red Cliff Rhapsody
- Standard tuning:2 5 6 1 2 3 5 6 played as 1 2 4 5 6 1 2 |
前赤壁賦
1
Qian Chibi Fu |
The Former Red Cliff Rhapsody and Latter Red Cliff Rhapsody are personal accounts (in the form of fu, poetic essay/rhapsody) by the famous poet Su Dongpo (1037 - 1101). They describe a trip he made with some friends to a scenic spot called Red Cliff.3 According to Su's account, this is the place where over 800 years earlier the famous Battle of Red Cliff took place.4
This setting for qin, a largely syllabic arrangement of both the preface and the fu itself (former and latter parts), does not appear in the 1511 edition of Taigu Yiyin, but only its continuation, dated 1515. It then survives in ten further handbooks to 1802, all with the same lyrics but different music.5
This fu is also the subject of a number of famous paintings.6 For example,
There are several published translations of the poem into English. See, for example,
According to Chao Buzhi's Preface to the Continuation of Li Sao,9 the former and latter parts of Red Cliff Rhapsody were written by Master Su....(Translation incomplete.)
1. (Preface)
2.
3.
4.
5.
6. (harmonics)
7. (harmonics)
8.
9.
10. (harmonics)
1
There are at least two Chibi on the Yangzi river, one upstream from Wuhan, where the battle evidently took place, and one downstream, which is where in this poem Su Dongpo imagined it took place. See further in the footnotes below.
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2
Taigu Yiyin does not organize melodies by mode. The version in 1539 is grouped under zhi mode, while in 1585 it is in shang mode, but these melodies are quite different from here.
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3
Su Dongpo's Red Cliff was apparently down the Yangzi River from the modern city of Wuhan, near 黃岡 Huanggang (Huangzhou). This Red Cliff is also the subject of a poem by Su Dongpo called 赤壁懷古 Chibi Huaigu (see
online translation). Photographs of this site show immediately the gap between the images by painters and the geographical reality Dongpo's Red Cliff. See, for example, the images now on 華夏 Huaxia web pages dated
2005 and
2007. See also the next footnote below.
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4
There apparently is/was some confusion about the location of this battle. The most commonly named site is up the Yangzi River from Wuhan, near the modern Hunan border.
There is quite a bit of information on the internet about this battle. See, for example, Battle of Red Cliffs (in connection with a popular film). Available online photographs of the cliff here may suggest that this location has more in common with the paintings than does Dongpo's Chibi (see previous footnote), but more panoramic photographs would also show the paintings to have been very fanciful. (See, for example, the
Chibi website.)
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5
Tracing various versions of Chibi Fu
Burton Watson, Selected Poems of Su Tung-p'o; Port Townsend, Copper Canyon Press, 1994; pp. 94 - 98
Stephen Owen, An Anthology of Chinese Literature; New York, W.W. Norton, 1996; pp. 292 - 294 and (#2) 675 - 676
Victor Mair, The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature; NY, Columbia U. Press, 1994l; pp. 438 - 440
Liu Shih-Shun, Chinese Classical Prose: The Eight Masters of the T'ang-Sung Period; Hong Kong, Chinese University Press, 1979. pp. 260 - 267
In Chinese and English; the Former Fu is currently available
online (simplified Chinese, English and Vietnamese!).
Original preface
8
Music and Lyrics: Ten sections 10
(Originally undivided; the divisions here follow later versions)
In autumn of (1082 CE), during the full moon of the 7th lunar month, I and some friends went floating on a boat, and traveled below Red Cliff....(see translation references above).
Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a
separate page)
Zha Guide 14/152/283 (Qian Chibi Fu) and 14/153/285 (Hou Chibi Fu);
28/--/-- (Chibi Fu) is a separate entry, but this must be a mistake: it only repeats three already listed under Qian Chibi Fu, and all have lyrics). The listed examples have publication dates as follows:
Note the changed tunings.
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6 For a possible Japanese example see the Metropolitan Museum website (Return)
7 This long scroll is partially reproduced in Masterpieces of Chinese Paintings Overseas, Vol. I, pp. 112/3. (Return)
8 The Chinese original is as follows:
9
晁補之 Chao Buzhi (1053-1110; sometimes transliterated Zhao Buzhi)
14239.2 "宋鉅野人，字无咎...." Chao was a Song dynasty scholar-official from Juye (in Shandong), style name Wujiu. He was a friend and protégée of Su Dongbo. His writings included a 琴趣外篇 Qin Qu Waipian.
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10 The original Chinese lyrics are not clearly divided into sections. However, later versions seem to suggest arranging them into 10 sections, as follows:
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