T of C 
Home 		My
Work		 Hand-
books		 Qin as
Object		 Qin in
Art		 Poetry
/ Song		 Hear
Qin		 Play
Qin		 Analysis History Ideo-
logy		 Miscel-
lanea		 More
Info		 Personal email me search me
Handbook List / Prefaces / Table of Contents / Additional commentary / Original Taigu Yiyin 首頁
Taigu Yiyin
Music Bequeathed from Antiquity
By Xie Lin1 and Huang Shida2
 		 太古遺音
1511 / 1515
謝琳、黃士達
Xie Lin himself?3                    
Two editions of this Taigu Yiyin have survived:

  1. Xie Lin Taigu Yiyin (1511)
  2. Huang Shida Taigu Yiyin (1515)

The former has 36 melodies, latter adds two more; otherwise they are almost identical. Of these 38 melodies, only nine seem related (and these often distantly) to ones published earlier; some of these titles are also partly or completely different.4

Like Zheyin Shizi Qinpu, this handbook consists of pieces with lyrics. However, they seem more genuinely to represent a sung tradition, as is discussed in the Zha Fuxi's introduction. And whereas no earlier source for the Zheyin lyrics has been found (the suspicion is that they were added because of a theory that qin music should be sung, but that most of the idiom is in fact purely instrumental), most lyrics here can be found in classical sources. These include two from Shi Jing and at least 20 from the Song dynasty edition of Yuefu Shiji, including all ten "qin pieces" of the Tang poet Han Yu.

This pairing of melodies with classical lyrics recalls descriptions of the work of the Song/Yuan dynasty qin player Yu Yan, but I have not heard that anyone has found specific connections.

For further information about Taigu Yiyin see:

(Caution: much of the commentary and many of the translations are incomplete and/or unpolished)

 
Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a separate page)

1. 謝琳 Xie Lin 36661.xxx
Xie Lin had the nickname 雪峰 Xuefeng. See the commentary by He Xu.
(Return)

2. 黃士達 Huang Shida 48904.xxx
From 豸山 Zhishan (37338.xxx ?). No information on him outside his tablature.
(Return)

3. From page 3 of Xie Lin Taigu Yiyin
(Return)

4. Melodies in Taigu Yiyin related to ones published earlier
The nine that are musically related are:

Unrelated melodically are these related titles:

Although this 1511 handbook was published later than the 1425 and 1491 handbooks, it is not certain that the song versions of these melodies date later than the instrumental versions. On the other hand, many of these seem to have the characteristic that most of the 1491 melodies have of seeming to be instrumental melodies to which lyrics have been added.
(Return)

 
Return to the guqin handbook list or to the Guqin ToC.