Introduction to Guqin in Chinese Guqin Art

Qin China has a long history. The Chinese guqin is one of the oldest plucked instruments in the world. It is mainly produced by strings and wooden chimes. It has a history of more than 3,000 years and was only called "guqin" in the early 20th century.

About its creators there are sayings: "Fuxi made the harp in the past", "Shennong made the harp", and "Shun made the five-string harp to sing the southern wind".

The art of guqin has a wide influence in the history of Chinese music, aesthetics, social culture, and ideological history. It is one of the main representatives of ancient Chinese spiritual culture in music.

In the pre-Qin era, Qin was already very popular.

Most of the common guqin styles today are those after the Wei and Jin Dynasties. They are generally 110cm long, 17cm wide at the head and 12cm wide at the tail. They are divided into large, medium and small shapes. The number of strings is five, nine,

There are ten strings, twelve strings, twenty strings, etc.

The most common one is seven-stringed, so Guqin is also called lyre.

The panel of the guqin is made of paulownia wood. There are thirteen small white dots on the outside of the panel, which are called emblems and are the symbols of the musical scale.

The material for making the emblem can be jade, gold, bone, or clam shell.

The strings of the guqin are made of silk, which is strong and has pure pronunciation.

Guqin's tone is pure and elegant, with three kinds of tones: scattered tones; overtones; and hand tones.

The scattered sounds are simple, steady and profound like the sound of bells and drums; the overtones are as bright as pearls. The guqin has 91 overtones, with the highest note being the D in the third group of small characters; it also has four sets of overtones with the same pitch, so many overtones.

, which cannot be compared or achieved by any musical instrument in the world.

As for the hand-sounding sound of the guqin, it is one of the masterpieces of guqin art. It is like a human voice whispering in a low voice, and the phonology is particularly long, deep and touching.

Starting from the Tang Dynasty, the guqin had its own dedicated notation. This notation records the string position and emblem position, and the playing methods of the left and right hands, but does not directly record the pitch.

It is composed of Chinese character radicals, numbers and some subtracted characters, which is called the subtracted character spectrum.

The meticulousness and scientific nature of the subtractive notation of Guqin music is such that modern notation methods such as staff notation cannot replace it to this day.

There are more than 150 kinds of guqin scores recorded in subtracted notation and passed down to this day. It preserves a large number of ancient music works and is a huge and precious music treasure house.

Guqin's playing method, notation, history, temperament, aesthetics and other aspects have long formed an independent and complete system, which is called "Qin Xue".

Its content is profound and extensive. It is a representative of traditional Chinese music and a mirror reflecting Chinese philosophy, history and literature.