The Development of Chinese Guqin Art

Records of the guqin are first found in the Poetry Scriptures, the Book of Shang and other documents. The Shangshu reads, "Shun played the five-stringed zither and sang the poetry of the southern kingdom, and the world was ruled." It can be seen that the qin was initially five-stringed, and there were seven strings in the Zhou Dynasty. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, Ying Shao (应劭), "The seven strings of the qin are the seven stars of the law, with the big strings for the ruler and the small strings for the subjects, and the king of Wen and the king of Wu added two strings to harmonize the grace of the ruler and the subjects." During the Three Kingdoms period, the seven-string and thirteen-emblem type system of the guqin was basically stabilized, and has been passed down to the present.

The guqin is mainly played in two forms: qin song and solo performance. According to the literature, during the pre-Qin period, the guqin was mainly popular among people above the rank of scholars, except for the elegant music used in suburban temples and rituals, pilgrimage meetings and ceremonies, and it flourished in the folklore after the Qin Dynasty. On the form of qin for vocal accompaniment, as early as in the "Shangshu", there have been wrestling pat qin and serpent to sing the record. Zhou Dynasty, more singing with qin and sepals, called the string song, that is, since the Tang and Song Dynasty, the so-called qin song. From the Han Dynasty, Cai Yong's "zither drill", there are five songs, that is, the string song of the Zhou Dynasty, in which the twelve drill, the nine cited, as well as the Hetao miscellaneous songs, are invoked qin and song.

Spring and Autumn and Warring States period, the guqin's solo music has a certain artistic expression, such as Bo Ya playing the qin Ziqi good listening to the legend. At that time, there were famous qin masters such as Shi Juan of Wei, Shi Kuang of Jin, Shi Wen of Zheng, and Shi Sang of Lu; and famous qin tunes such as "High Mountain", "Flowing Water", "Pheasant Flying Toward the Sea", "Yangchun", and "Baixue" have been recorded in the annals of history.

Han, Wei and Six Dynasties period, the guqin art has developed significantly, in addition to the "Xianghe Song", "Qing Shangle" in the accompanying instrument, but also in the form of song performance. For example, the instrumental piece "Guangling San", "Big Hu Jia Ming", "Small Hu Jia Ming", etc. reflected an important development stage of guqin as an instrumental music performance. At the end of Han Dynasty, Cai Yong's father and daughter and Jikang between Wei and Jin were famous guqin players and composers at that time. Such as Jikang is good at playing the famous guqin song "Guangling San", which has been passed down as a good story in history. The famous music composed by JI's four: "long clear", "short clear", "long side", "short side"; Cai's five: "spring", "clear water", "secluded", "sitting in sadness", "Autumn Thoughts"; rumored to be the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove of Ruan Ji's zither song "wine madness" as well as the Sixth Dynasty Song Wang Yi-Qing, "crowing in the night".

During the Sui and Tang dynasties, the development of guqin music was somewhat inhibited by the prevalence of Western music and the rise of the pipa. However, due to the production of guqin sheet music, it not only promoted the dissemination of guqin music at that time, but also had far-reaching historical significance for the inheritance and development of guqin music in the later generations, which made the history of ancient Chinese music enter into a period with sound to follow. Zhao Yeli, at the end of the Sui Dynasty and the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, sorted out the popular textual fingerings of the time and compiled works explaining the playing method, such as "The Right Hand Method of Playing the Qin" and "Picture of Playing the Qin Hand Gestures". The famous zither piece "Jieshi tuning yulan", which was passed down from Qiu Ming in Liang of the Southern Dynasty and now exists as a handwritten volume of Tang that was transmitted to Japan, is the earliest, and the only known, textual score of the guqin in China.

The poets of the Tang Dynasty, such as Li Peak, Li Chip, Li Bai, Han Yu, Bai Juyi, Zhang Hu and Yuan Zhen, all wrote immortal poems for the guqin. Bai Juyi hobby guqin, in the "night zither" has: "Shu qin wood sex real, Chusi sound rhyme clear." His zither is very high, and can play and sing, even in the journey boat still to the guqin as a friend, he wrote in the "boat night aid qin": birds perched on the moon, the moon shines in the night river, outside the body are no matter, only qin in the boat. The seven strings of the zither are friends, the two ears are friends, the heart is quiet that the sound is light, and its hearing is not ancient or modern." Zhang Hu's "Listening to Yuezhou Xu play the zither" also has: "Jade law is a subtle symbol of the ancient zither, philosophers see the heart of saints. The south wind in the end of the day seems to be a legacy, and the nine suspected apes and birds are chanting all over the mountain." It describes the rich expressive power of the guqin. Famous qin masters of the Tang Dynasty included Zhao Yeli, Dong Tinglan, Xue Yijian, Chen Kangshi, and Chen Humble. Zhao Yeli summarized the qin schools of the time by saying, "The sound of Wu is clear and gentle, like the Yangtze River flowing widely, stretching and passing slowly, with the style of a scholar of the country, while the sound of Shu is agitated and rapid, like the rapid waves running into the thunder, and is also a momentarily handsome." Up to now, it still conforms to the characteristics of the Wu and Shu schools. Dong Tinglan of the Sheng Tang Dynasty composed "Big Hu Jia" and "Small Hu Jia" and other zither pieces. Xue Yijian summarized the role of guqin music in his book "The Secret of the Qin" as follows: "It can observe the wind and teach, take in the soul, identify joy and anger, please the emotions, calm the mind, strengthen the courage and bravery, eliminate the dust and vulgarity, and frame the ghosts and gods. And proposed that the player must be "fixed in the spirit of the mind, focusing on the emotions", which was emphasized by later generations of zither players, thus leading to many of the norms of playing the zither.

Cao Rou of the late Tang Dynasty created the minus-word score in view of the fact that the textual score was extremely complicated and inconvenient to use. In the late Tang Dynasty, Cao Rou created the minus-word score in view of the fact that the textual score was extremely complicated and inconvenient to use. That is to say, on the basis of the textual score, the Chinese character score was reduced to a kind of score, similar to the playing symbols, which was the early form of the minus-word score of the guqin. In the Tang Dynasty, there were famous zither players like Dong Tinglan (during the reign of Kaiyuan and Tianbao), who inherited the most famous sound of Shen and Zhu from his teacher Chen Huaigu, and was good at playing the zither pieces "Big Hu Jia" and "Small Hu Jia". Xue Yi Jian, a zither player in the Tianbao period, could play 40 big tunes and 300 miscellaneous tunes, and had seven theoretical writings, such as "The Three Gorges and the Flowing Spring", "Hu Jia", "Crowing in the Night", "Farewell to the Crane Cult", and "White Snow", etc. He was also a good player in the late Tang Dynasty, as well as Chen Kangshi. In the late Tang Dynasty, there is also a qin man, Chen Kangshi, based on Qu Yuan's "Li Sao," made by the qin music and so on.

The guqin of the Song Dynasty, on the one hand, had a nostalgic tendency towards retroism, and on the other hand, due to the guqin's long practice in playing "Xianghe Song" and "Qing Shangle", its far-reaching connection with folk music, and the historical tradition of the old sound of the qin music of the Chu and Han dynasties, the guqin music in the tendency towards retroism has not been annihilated, but rather, has its own twists and turns in the development of the guqin music. During the Southern Song Dynasty, the outstanding zitherist Guo Shin (called Chuwang, born in 1190, died after 1260) and his disciples Liu Zhifang and Mao Minzhong made certain contributions to the development of guqin music in terms of organizing and composing the heritage of the guqin. For example, Guo Shin's zither compositions "Xiaoxiang Shuiyun", "Pan Canglang", and "Autumn Hong"; Liu Zhifang's "Forgetting the Machine" and "Wujiang Yin"; and Mao Minzhong's zither compositions "Fishing Song", "Woodcutter's Song", "Peilan", and "Mountain Dwelling Yin" have been handed down to the present day. At that time, there were also famous zither music such as "Chu Song", "Eighteen Beats of Barbarian Pipe" and "Zephyr Yin"; zither songs such as "Ancient Grievance" by Jiang Kui (1155-1221 A.D.) and "Drunken Master's Yin" by Cui Xian, a Taoist priest from Mount Lu. The history of the qin written by Zhu Changwen of the Song Dynasty is a true record of the history of the qin in the Sui, Tang and Song Dynasties.

Due to the development of printing technology in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, a large number of zither scores were published and circulated, and there are more than 140 kinds of zither scores in the records, from which we can see that there are more than 300 zither songs created in the Ming Dynasty alone. Leng Qian, a zither player in the early Ming Dynasty, wrote "The Sixteen Methods of Zither Sound", a theory on the aesthetic ideas, playing techniques and artistic performance of the guqin. Zhu Quan, the 17th son of Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming Dynasty and King of Ning, was a zitherist of the Ming Dynasty who made outstanding contributions to the development of the guqin art. He included 64 pieces of art treasures before the Tang and Song dynasties, and presided over the compilation of the "Magical Mystery Record" for 12 years, which was published in 1425, and is the earliest existing zither record in China. At the end of the Ming and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, Xu Shangying further proposed the "Twenty-four Conditions of the Qin". Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, the famous qin tunes include "Autumn Hong", "Flat Sand and Falling Geese", "Fisherman and Woodcutter's Question and Answer", "Good Night Leader", "Narcissus Exercise", "Gulls and Herons Forgetting the Opportunity", "Longxiang Exercise", and "Wulie Dancing in Autumn Breeze", and so on.

During this period, due to the influence of folk music (especially opera music), there was an outstanding development of guqin techniques, especially the innovation of left-handed techniques, such as "Xiaoxiang Shuiyun", "Hu Jia 18 Beats" and other qin tunes in the "Wuchi Zhai qin score", with the left-handed techniques being extremely delicate and never seen before. Many of the later zither scores have also reached a new stage in organizing and processing the dissemination of traditional guqin music. Famous zither players in the Ming and Qing dynasties include Yan Cheng, Xu Jie, Jiang Xingyou, Xu Changyu, Jiang Wenxun, and Zhang Kongshan, etc. Famous zither players in modern times also include Huang Mianzhi, Yang Zongji, and Wang Yanqing.

During the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, due to the war and social changes, especially the limitations of the guqin itself, guqin music was on the verge of extinction. At that time, a number of qin clubs and organizations appeared all over the country, such as the Yueyun qin set in Beijing, the Deyin qin society in Jinan, the Jinyu qin society in Shanghai, the Chuanxuan qin society in Changsha, the Vowel qin society in Taiyuan, the Guangling qin society in Yangzhou, the Qingkouqin society in Nanjing, and the Mei'an qin society in Nantong, and so on, and all of them had a certain social influence in their activities. In particular, the Shanghai Jin Yu Qin Society, the longest duration, the greatest impact on the qin community.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, guqin music has been valued and rescued by the government, which has investigated, collected, and organized various kinds of genealogies lost in the folklore and recorded a batch of sound; discovered a batch of lost qin tunes, such as "Guangling San," "The Orchid," etc.; and cultivated a batch of guqin musicians, which has opened up a new prospect of organizing, researching, and developing the guqin music in the future. Famous qin artists include Guan Pinghu, Wu Jingliu, Long Qinfang, Cha Fuxi, Zhang Ziqian, Xia Yifeng and so on.