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My work
1
Guidelines for this work |
個人工作
聲之 Sounding out;2 in photo by Lincoln Potter |
This includes my:
Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a separate page)
1.
Guidelines for my work (中文)
My professional focus is helping to restore the world's oldest living written instrumental music tradition, that of the Chinese guqin silk-string zither. That the guqin music I play is both beautiful and transporting is due less to me than to the beauty of the materials I am working with: the melodies written down in great detail long ago, the instrument with its rich colors and long-lasting tradition, the rare beauty of silk strings. Indeed, the philosophical, historical and musical qualities of the guqin suggest to me that, as China continues to recover and develop her traditions, the revival of early guqin music is inevitable.
If in this process my own experiences allow me to play a contributing rôle, perhaps it could be in the following ways.
None of this conflicts with making new qin music - I have also done some of this. The important point is that with all great music the beauty is in the performance as much as in the musical material itself. For this reason public performances must be of high quality and in an appropriate setting. "Appropriate" may not be the same as "traditional". Traditionally the qin was played only for a small group of friends. With a larger audience a quiet modern recital hall with good acoustics, where one has to imagine a traditional setting, is preferable to a noisy traditional hall or garden, where one has to imagine the music.
Likewise, the depth of listeners' appreciation is related to their musical, historical and philosophical understanding. Thus explanations must be accurate and understandable to the layman as well as useful to the scholar.
The present website is dedicated to the achievement of all these goals.
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2.
Sounding Out (聲之 Sheng Zhi)
聲之 (Sheng zhi), the calligraphy in the background, is by 袁中平 Yuan Jung-Ping (separate image).
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