Beyond Private and Public: The Continuum of Interpretations in Guqin Music

Guqin was spectacularly re-launched2 into the public limelight at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and later endowed with tremendous multimedia exposure, igniting wide public imagination on the quintessence of Chinese music. Scholars have been trying to approach the guqin from various aspects, including aesthetics, finger techniques, hand movements, literary studies, statistical analysis of fingering, temperament studies, timbral analysis and the like. In this essay, we try to focus on the introverted, private aspect of qin, i.e., the micro-space of music-making. We discovered that for guqin, the music-making process, instead of the sonic product, is the music itself. The notation and playing techniques involve kinaesthetics, timbre, melody and aesthetics related to naturalistic self-realization. In order to reveal the details of the multidimensional process, we devised a transcription of historical scores unpacking the details, and then observed the details in performance analysis, and referenced discourses on guqin produced by practitioners since the Mid-Tang Dynasty (ca. 9th CE). We selected the middle part of the work, Yuge, that is rich in annotations and interpretations in its scores. By comparing the interpretations in corresponding performance recordings, we verify the range of foci on the continuum between unsingability and melodicity in different generations of players. However, these analyses and critiques are not vague impressions but are discovered through referencing a threefold intraconnected system of movement–timbre–melody. Hence, we arrived at a preliminary conclusion that guqin music-making must be a multidimensional process that brings the scores, the movements, the melody and the sonic aspects together. through a process of dialoguing amongst the various dimensions. As we show how the notation indicates hand movements with fingerings producing unique qualities in addition to the pitchtone, we realize that earlier sonic or melodic analyses do not give us a satisfying picture. The ultimate goal in guqin music-making seems to be to achieve a balance through interactivity among the qualities involving natural individualities.