Jiang Kui (ca. 1155 - 1221), a major poet, musician and critic, was a native of Boyang, in modern Jiangsu province. He 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.³ Jiang Kui never achieved important office, making a living by selling his calligraphy and getting patronage from wealthy friends

He wrote Gu Yuan (see also QSCB, Chapter 6b1-6), the earliest qin melody to survive in China, as well as 17 ci songs and 10 ritual songs.⁴ There are very few other pre-Qing dynasty songs in which the lyrics and music are known to have been composed by the same person.

His Sketches to Investigate Antiquity of Qin and Se (Qin Se Kaogu Tu) is described in Qinshu Cunmu.

His Discussing Qin Tones⁵ is said to be one of the best known works from the Song dynasty concerning the qin.

Two of his poems connected to Zhang Yan are mentioned in Rao, Chapter 4.

The original essay in Qin Shi Xu begins,

Incomplete. ⁶

 
Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a separate page)

1. 姜夔 Jiang Kui
Jiang Kui, ，字堯章 style name Yaozhang, 號白石 nickname Baishi (White-stone). See Nienhauser, ICTCL (Chiang K'uei), p.262ff. QSCB Chapter 6b1-6 says he belonged to the School of Poetic Meter (格律派 Gelü pai; ICTCL 675, 858 are both Ming reference), also known as the Delicately Restrained School (婉約派 Wanyue Pai ICTCL 263 [Jiang Kui], 327 [same time]).
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2. 18 lines; credited source: 海紅寮碎墨
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3. 鄱陽 Boyang; 漢陽 Hanyang; 湖洲 Huzhou; 吳興 Wuxing
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4. 詞調（十七首）、越九歌（十首） 17 ci songs and 10 ritual songs (entitle "9 Songs of Yue"). Transcribed in Pian.
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5. Tuning strings method (定絃法 Ding xian fa)
21570.xxx. Hsu Wen-Ying, The Ku-ch'in, p. 327, writes (text edited here) that Jiang Kui "petitioned to the Royal court of the Southern Song dynasty to regulate the musical tones for rituals, and made a list with analyses of theories on different ways to tune the guqin." Hsu goes on to discuss the different tunings, presumably taking all this from his Qin Lü Shuo.
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