Foreword
In the early spring of 1961 I saw a Chinese qin at close quarters for the first time. It was lying in front of me on a wooden table in a bare classroom at the University of Peking. Seven strings of tightly twisted silk stretched over a sound box made of black lacquered wood. After a certain amount of difficulty I had managed to get hold of a Chinese student who had promised to try to teach me the basics of playing the qin, and we were due to have our first lesson. He had brought his instrument with him. It dated from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), and had been passed down through his family since that time.
When I touched one of the strings, the tone that was released made the whole room vibrate. It was as clear as silver, but remarkably it also had a kind of metallic dullness, as if the instrument were made not of wood, but of bronze. During the years which followed it was precisely the tone of the instrument that captivated me the most, from the finest bell-like tones or fanyin, "the floating sounds" as they are called in Chinese – delicate as the sound of the tiny temple bells right on the edge of the roof timbers when the wind gently stirs them – to the vibrating depths of the thick bass strings.
The melodies I later tried to learn were ancient and almost always consisted of a series of individual tones, no rich chords such as you find in European piano music, just individual tones, sometimes in octaves produced simultaneously on two different strings, where the different frequencies made the sound float and shimmer.
For more than two thousand years, the qin was the principal instrument of the educated classes. Many of the most dedicated players were philosophers and monks, and for them the instrument was a means to achieving self-realisation. Playing the qin was a kind of meditation, a way to free themselves from the world and to find a way to wisdom. But the qin also offered a refuge to tired officials, exiled opponents of the system, and poor poets, enabling them to escape from a harsh world and showing them the way to peace and the heart of Chinese culture.
The instrument has been surrounded by such a deep reverence that we have no equivalent in the West, and it is sung about in countless poems. Many gripping tales of various qin players and their fates are still extant and are constantly quoted, and many instruments well over a thousand years old are still in full use. It is a living and remarkably long tradition.
Over time the playing of the qin became ritualised and surrounded by a rich flora of stipulations, which regulated when and how one ought to play or absolutely must not play, how one should be dressed, how one should sit and what the room where one was playing should look like. It wasn’t just a case of dashing in from the kitchen and knocking out a quick tune while the rice was cooking. Playing required preparation, both mental and practical – it was in many ways a sacred activity. During recent decades this ceremonial behaviour has of course been scaled down somewhat, but the instrument is still perceived as a unique object and is preserved within families as a relic, even if no one plays it today. But new generations will come. Be sure of that.
The instrument is difficult to play. Everything is about the beauty of the individual tones and how the player produces them, tone after tone. There are 26 different kinds of vibrato and a further 54 clearly differentiated holds - nothing is left to chance.
One problem for beginners is that the music is not written in notes of the kind we are used to. Instead, a "note" is written as a combination of different signs and symbols that indicate on which string and where on that string the tone is to be produced, with which finger and which position. Another difficulty is that the notes give no detailed information on rhythm or phrasing, nor do they indicate how to move on to the next tone. Without a good and patient teacher, who can give step by step instructions, it is impossible to succeed.
Just as is the case with other highly specialised musical instruments, playing the qin demands a lifelong commitment from its exponents if they are to achieve a good result, and there are few who can meet such a demand. But if you approach the music of the qin in a very simple way, you will meet not only a unique and captivating music, you will also come close to the whole of ancient classical Chinese culture.
Many of the basic rules governing people’s lives and conduct, as they are formulated within the Confucian and Taoist traditions, pervade the ideology surrounding the playing of the qin. And every individual piece of music is charged with associations with nature – the orchid, the blossoming apricot tree, the tall mountains and the swirling waters of the streams, the crane, the skein of wild geese against the sky – motifs which also recur in countless poems and paintings throughout China’s long history.
