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Friday, 7 November 2003 The Metropolitan Museum of Art 7:15 P.M. Uris Auditorium
Music for Qin Five melodies from Shen Qi Mi Pu (Handbook of Spiritual and Marvelous Mysteries), published by Zhu Quan in AD 1425.
* * * * * The classical qin has remained virtually unchanged since AD 500. The earliest surviving music, the seventh century You Lan manuscript, contains playing instructions in longhand. Subsequently, a shorthand notation developed with a few surviving examples from the Song dynasty (960-1280), but the earliest extant collection--from which are in the concert performed five melodies--is Shen Qi Mi Pu (Handbook of Spiritual and Marvelous Mysteries), published in AD 1425 by Zhu Quan, a son of the first emperor of the Ming dynasty. John Thompson plays direct transcriptions, while Yuan Jung-Ping is closer to a millennium-long process of (mainly) aural transmission. He Ming Jiu Gao (Cranes Cry in the Nine Marsh-pools). In his preface to this melody, which alludes to a passage in the ancient Classic of Poetry, Zhu Quan says that he raised two cranes in his garden. When there was a heavenly breeze they would dance; when they looked up at the Heavens they would cry out. In the middle of this melody is a section called "The cranes dance". Zhu Quan concludes, "People know that cranes are birds with a divine spirit, and thus someone created this composition." Qiao Ge (Woodcutter's Song). Zhu Quan writes that, when the Yuan dynasty soldiers invaded Hangzhou (1275) the famous qin player Mao Minzhong went into hiding and "wrote this tune to attract like-minded people to go into seclusion with him." As much as the literati tradition respected scholarship, they also had the idea that some people, especially fishermen and woodcutters, could understand the Dao without formal education. Jiu Kuang (Wine Mad). Zhu Quan associates this melody with the famous drinker Ruan Ji (210-263), who is said to have drunk to avoid serving in a corrupt government. Stories associated with this melody claim that elevated people do not drink like common men. The coda is labeled "The sound of an immortal exhaling his wine." Mei Hua San Nong (Three Variations on a Plum Blossom Theme). This piece is a musical ode to the blossoming plum. It was originally a celebrated melody for the xiao vertical flute associated with the musician Huan Yi of the Jin dynasty (266-420). Since then it was adapted for the qin in the Tang dynasty (618-907) by Yan Shigu. Here, and in the following piece, Jung-Ping performs the melody as it was taught by his teachers Sun Yuqin and Wu Zhaoji with slight correction derived from the original Shen Qi Mi Pu. Xiao Xiang Shui Yun (Misty Rivers Xiao and Xiang). This piece is attributed to Guo Chuwang of the Southern Song (1127-1297). It portrays the clouds above the rivers Xiao and Xiang, obscuring the distant Jiuyi Mountain at the North. At a time when Northern China was conquered by the foreign Jin dynasty (1115-1234), this piece symbolized mournful longing for one's lost homeland.
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