It is commonly observed that
most Chinese music is in duple time, with triple and
compound meters almost unheard-of. As usual, the
qin
bucks
expectation.
The easiest thing to say about rhythm in
qin
music is: “There
isn’t any.” Which is to say, there are no particular
expectations about how melodies should be laid out in time.
Individual players may choose to play in regular or
irregular rhythms, usually intermixed with generous
syncopation and unusual phrasing. Particular sections may
end up being in duple, triple, or compound time, or (as in
Guangling style) there may be disciplined and highly
irregular transitions among these throughout an entire
piece. The important thing is that rhythms are essentially
unique to each piece, each interpreter, and even each
performance; there is no systematization whatsoever, beyond
a general avoidance of triple meters.
Despite the irregularity built into qin
rhythms, most
players perform in a rhythmically rather straightforward
fashion. With some (like Guan Pinghu), there is always a
clear and strict pulse behind the shifting phrasal
patterns. Some prominent players and schools, however,
linger on irregularity and make it a signature expressive
device. One example is Wu Wenguang, whose approach to
rhythm is highly elastic, traversing and at times suddenly
switching between the extremes of tight combinatoric
patterns and long, ringing, lingering space. Several
players from older schools, including Liu Shaochun and Wang
Huade, use syncopations tight yet apparently random and
headlong, yielding an effect I customarily call “ricochet.”
All in all, qin
rhythms follow a
by-now familiar template: potentially limitless
sophistication driven not by systematic theory but by
individual sensitivity and experimentation.