|
T of C
Home |
My Work |
Hand- books |
Qin as Object |
Qin in Art |
Poetry
/ Song |
Hear / Watch |
Play Qin |
Analysis | History |
Ideo- logy |
Miscel- lanea |
More Info |
Personal | email me search me |
| Repertoire of Qin Songs with lyrics in Cipai and in regular lines Pairing words and music 書畫 Painting and calligraphy Some poets Jiang Kui | 中文 目錄 |
| Qin Poetry and Qin Songs 1 |
琴詩與琴歌
The Old Toper's Chant : enlarge 2 |
As with painting and calligraphy, because qin music was generally created by the same class of people who created classical poetry, often the themes of these art forms overlap. Many titles, such as
Chu Ci and
Hu Jia, are in fact important to all these. As for poetry and song, it may be useful here to suggest the following distinctions between "qin poetry" and "qin songs".
I. "Qin Poetry" is divided here into two categories:
Because the qin is the musical instrument most often mentioned in classical poetry, many such poems are included in the collections listed as "potential lyrics".
Many of these are poems that perhaps could have once been sung with qin, but there is no known surviving tablature. Sources for such poetry are often collections that already have poems that mention qin or have lyrics already set for qin. These include:
II.
"Qin Songs" (including "short songs" and "my qin song repertoire").
Zha Fuxi's Guide, Section 10, includes almost all such lyrics that are in surviving handbooks
(the Index, last column, shows which melodies have lyrics; few are still sung). This section is also dividedd into two categories:
- Melodies clearly intended to be sung4 (actual "琴歌 qin ge" such as the
"short songs" under
my repertoire)
Most of these melodies seem intended for specific lyrics. However, some can (also?) be used for other lyrics using the same pattern. These latter might include:- Settings of melodies that can be applied to lyrics of irregular lengths, such as ci lyrics (see Cipai and Qin Melodies)
- Settings of lyrics in lines of fixed length
- Primarily instrumental melodies with lyrics/text attached
(further comment)
Pairing of characters with tablature does not necessarily mean the pairing was intended actually to be sung. Examples include:
- a setting of Wang Xizhi's Lanting Preface).
- pieces originally published as instrumental melodies, such as those as in 1491
As suggested above, even though many of the texts set to qin melodies are not in a poetic form, qin songs do overlap quite a lot with qin poetry. It is for this reason that qin songs and qin poetry are grouped together here into one section. Nevertheless, there is enough difference that perhaps they should have had separate sections. So now, as a sort of compromise, information more specifically related to qin melodies with lyrics, including qin songs, has been grouped into an appendix. This appendix then has links to further information on the matters outlined, here, beginning with the separate page called qin songs.
So much guqin music has survived because it has been written down (see qin tablature). However, behind every written tradition there usually or always exists an oral tradition that must have influenced the surviving written tradition, though details of the actual non-written music remain unclear or unknown.5
This may especially be true of the qin song tradition. For example, almost all surviving lyrics/text paired to qin tablature is
paired following a rather strict method. Qin songs today tend to ignore the traditional pairing method: to what extent are they following an oral tradition that paired words and music more freely? Any comprehensive study of qin songs must take this into consideration.
Appendix: Outline of information regarding qin songs
Sections on this site dealing specifically with "qin songs" include:
Traditional qin handbooks that include lyrics at best simply pair them with the tablature without giving any further instruction on how they should actually be performed, so this is a topic that needs much further research, beginning with the most faithful possible reconstruction and actual performance of a variety of such songs. On this site issues of how to perform qin melodies with lyrics are discussed here mainly under:
For two exterior references see the footnote Recovering an interrupted tradition.
The qin being representative of "great music", it has been argued that the singing should also be "great"
(bel canto even). However, for the actual sound there seems to be very little information. To begin, though, there is interesting information in these two articles by Professor 徐芃 Xu Peng:
Currently both articles can be downloaded from
manoa-hawaii.academia.edu. (Related comment here.)
In the former work (in particular, p. 412ff), in discussing how the actual singing might have developed during the late Ming dynasty, Prof. Xu suggests the possibility that, just as in the West around this time performance requirements or opportunities led to stronger vocal styles gaining more popularity than the more traditional plain vocal production found in choirs, perhaps in China such performance opportunities may have been leading to stronger dramatic styles, such as "oriole"-like woman's singing and masculine "crane" singing, developing from a plainer style of singing. See, e. g., pp. 439 and 452. (See also this comment on perspective.)
The latter work suggests that the vocal styles that did develop for popular entertainment, Kunqu in particular, were quite different from the singing styles one would generally have heard with qin songs.
There does not seem to be enough information available, however, to know how such changes might have affected the way qin songs might actually have been sung at the time by a skilled singer. In particular, apparently in arts such as Kunqu the singing style became more florid, with many notes assigned to one syllable. Qin songs, however, resolutely maintained their custom of one note per syllable, except when there were left hand ornaments. At the time the amount of left hand ornamenting was apparently increasing in the instrumental qin repertoire (further analysis), but this did not seem to carry over into qin songs, at least not according to the way they were transcribed.
The two earliest handbooks with significant numbers of qin "songs" have a very different approach. The two are:
For the above I have written out transcriptions of all the pieces, but many of those in the 1511 handbook need more work.
Qin pieces from later handbooks tend more clearly to be qin songs: pieces intended for singing. I have also reconstructed a number of these, mostly from before 1700.
In sum, the handbooks published before 1700 that I have so far found to have the most significant focus on qin songs include,
Of particular interest after 1700 should be several handbooks that seem to have set kunqu melodies for qin, such as
those listed here, but I have not yet been able to study these in detail.
Specific qin melodies with lyrics that I have reconstructed and played can be divided into at least four categories. My These four categories for the melodies with lyrics are:
Or some longer ones, such as the following:
All these types are discussed further under Qin songs.
Almost all of the above melodies with lyrics are from the Ming dynasty. Not much research has been done comparing how the appoach to them may have changed during the Qing dynasty. Such a comparison could be particularly difficult since it seems likely that many qin songs remained within the purely oral tradition. It does seem, however, that during the Qing dynasty there were much fewer long seemingly instrumental melodies with lyrics attached. However, there may have been attempts to make qin melodies out of opera lyrics
(example).
1.
Qin Poetry and Qin Songs
2.
Illustration
3.
Classic collections
300 Tang Poems (唐詩三百首;
Wiki)
Others do not mention qin but their lyrics have been used as lyrics for qin songs. Qin songs using such lyrics include:
In addition the melody Autumn River Night Anchorage says it was inspired in part by Zhang Ji's poem
Maple Bridge Night Anchor.
4.
"Melodies clearly intended to be sung": those fitting Chinese poetic forms
This is all related to the fact that qin tablature describes finger positions and playing techniques but does not directly indicate note values (rhythms). Thus, reconstructing old qin melodies (dapu) begins with looking for structures within the musical phrases. If the melodies have lyrics the structures of those lyrics can give clues. Here the Wikipedia article Classical Chinese poetry forms shows something of the complexity of the whole issue of these structures (see, for example, the sections under old, new, regulated, unregulated]).
However, with qin melodies the musical analysis begins with the simple question of whether there are:
Then when reconstructing these old qin melodies trying to decide when poems with fixed or variable line length should similarly have melodic phrases that also have fixed or variable time length/rhythm.
5.
Oral tradition of qin songs
Qin songs and oral tradition
The main entries that have commentary on various aspects of qin song include:
Several of her modern publications are discussed here
An outline history and books of transcriptions
(see further).
Recordings by many people of his song settings are included in his
CD sets (see further)
page has examples of the first two types. On these videos I play the melodies but do not sing the lyrics. Instead most videos show the original lyrics together with Romanization and translation, inviting the listeners themselves to sing or read along.
lyrics only in the first half of each section; only other like this: Qing Yun Ge?)
Also other melodies from the 1511 Taigu Yiyin
lyrics only at beginning of each section; only other like this Yan Yi Ge?)
preface says melody can be used with any lyrics of this structure (also 杏壇吟 Xing Tan Yin; [7+7]x2)
- Sung as prelude to 漁歌 Yu Ge
楚歌 Chu Ge (1425): can have this as a prelude, or the same lyrics can accompany the melody of Section 7
Mei Shao Yue can use this as a prelude
In addition to dividing qin songs into the above two categories for existing pieces, i.e., "Melodies clearly intended to be sung" and "Primarily instrumental melodies with lyrics/text attached", there is the issue of creating and/or adapting melodies to make qin songs using either new or existing lyrics (some of which might be performmed by other media). My own efforts along this line include:
Only one of Jiang Kui's songs was set for qin but I have also set for qin some of his songs written in popular notation; perhaps these songs, and the early qin repertoire in general, can assist in interpreting other early songs by him or others but not written in qin tablature.
Ricci presented these to the Ming Court around 1601. He wrote the lyrics but the source of the music is not known. I have made settings by adapting the music of Mozi Sings with Emotion for qin, with the idea that someone will eventually arrange these melodies for keyboard (further comment).
These melodies, to be played on qin with voice and/or other instruments, were inspired by people who also see an affinity between qin and blues.
The melody Riverside Purification Ceremony, published in 1664, set Wang Xizhi's Lanting Preface for qin. It would then be natural to set some of the poems from the Lanting Scroll for qin as well, perhaps using existing qin songs with
similar word patterns.
Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a
separate page)
What is written here about qin songs in particular must be considered very tentative. See, in particular, further comment under Qin Songs.
(Return)
See further.
(Return)
References in the Book of Songs are included on a page devoted to mention of qin in ancient records. Other collections such as the Chu Ci do not mention qin directly, but their poems have become the subject of several qin melodies. 300 Tang Poems is also worthy of mention:
This might also be written 300 Poems of the Tang Dynasty or Three Hundred Poems of the Tang Dynasty. Poems in this collection that mention qin include the following:
(Return)
Leaving aside the old attitude that "if you play then you must sing", "melodies clearly intended to be sung" can be further divided into those with lyrics from verses with lines of variable length (not to mention unregulated verse) and those from verses with lines of fixed length (such as "regulated verse"). However, it is beyond the scope of this website to go into great detail about this topic, though it may be important to a fuller understanding of specific old qin melodies.
(Return)
For example, the articles on voice production by Xu Peng listed above describe what must have been a significant oral tradition of singing.
(Return)
Return to top, or to the Guqin ToC.