The guqin (古琴) is a seven-string musical instrument, which is placed horizontally in front of you on a table and is played with two hands.
A guqin in Kaifeng, Henan province, China. It can be easily confused with the guzheng, but that instrument has over 20 strings. The guqin is usually played solo, but it can also be played in a (small) orchestra.
Learning Guqin
My wife has been playing the Guqin for many years and has taken lessons in Weimar, Germany. She also teaches beginning students from home with private Guqin lessons.
Buying a guqin
Prices range from ~300 euro (~2000 RMB) up to tens of thousands of euros. Some ancient instruments are priceless:
We found this guqin instrument in Henan Museum (Zhengzhou). It dates back to the Song Dynasty (960–1279). In the background you can see a painting from Emperor Huizong.
A little history
The guqin is one of the oldest Chinese instruments still played – it appears in the Book of Songs nearly 3,000 years ago, and Confucius is said to have played it. For most of Chinese history it was the instrument of the scholar-official class, one of the ‘four arts’ a cultivated person was expected to practise alongside chess, calligraphy and painting. It was played alone, quietly, as a form of self-cultivation rather than performance.
It has seven strings – silk traditionally, now often steel wound with nylon – and no frets. Thirteen mother-of-pearl dots (hui) along the body mark the harmonic points. Players use three kinds of tone: open strings, flute-like harmonics, and stopped notes slid along the string, which give the guqin its sighing, speech-like quality.
Guqin music is written in a tablature called jianzipu that specifies each finger movement but not the rhythm, so reviving an old piece (dapu) is partly an act of interpretation. UNESCO listed the guqin as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2003. Guan Pinghu’s recording of Flowing Water (流水) was chosen for the Voyager Golden Record and is currently somewhere beyond the edge of the solar system. Other pieces worth knowing are High Mountains (高山), Three Variations on Plum Blossom (梅花三弄) and the fierce Guangling San (广陵散).
Listen
Guan Pinghu playing Flowing Water – the Voyager recording:
A modern performance of Flowing Water on a Song-dynasty instrument: