Video

• SCWGuqin.com
• About me
• The context of the guqin
• The challenge of the guqin
• Chinese influences
• Non-Chinese influences
• Performances
• Video
• Links

1. Oulu Wang Ji (Wuzhizhai/Ziyuantang tradition)

This is one of the most personalized pieces in my current repertoire; I owe a debt to Guan Pinghu and Pu Xuezhai, but the rendition is essentially my own. Among the most prominent masters, only Li Xiangting plays this piece today--and he does so in only about half the time. I enjoy slowing down radically, as it allows me to explore "space" and the architecture of lingering sound. Oulu Wang Ji ("Seagulls - Forgetting Schemes") is fundamentally a piece of admonition. It draws from an old story wherein a surprised fisherman discovers that seagulls have no fear of him until he thinks about killing them for dinner. How anybody could make that into a piece of music is beyond me, but apparently somebody succeeded! The music explores both the vast, misty scenery of the original tale and the stern moral lesson that our intentions are never entirely opaque to others, and that every motivation bears consequences.

Click on the title for this next one. I'd YouTube it as well, but YouTube seems to accept only videos under 10 minutes in duration.

2. Qiu Sai Yin
My rendition here is substantially in the tradition of Wu Jinglüe and his son Wu Wenguang. Qiu Sai Yin, whose title is difficult for me to translate with confidence, concerns the loneliness, despair, and yearning of Wang Zhaojun, a noble lady married off to a northern nomad prince. Moreso than most qin pieces, this one bears multiple interpretations. It is also associated with the exile and suicide of Qu Yuan (under the title Sao Shou Wen Tian) and of an ancient qin master's learning music through listening to the sounds of nature, while stranded alone on a distant island (as Shuixian Cao or "Water Immortal"). One of the most respected and exquisite pieces in the modern repertoire, Qiu Sai Yin makes use of the Shang mode - S R2 M1 P N2 S, which I'm keeping in sargam notation just to force you to learn it! Shang mode lacks the third interval (ga), the most emotionally decisive for any scale, leaving its flavor indeterminate and conveying majesty and mystery without straightforwardly positive or negative feelings. During the present performance my "intention" was mainly on the Wang Zhaojun story; it will be interesting to see what happens when I try out the "water immortal" instead.