Gu Yuan Preface

The "Songs of the White Stone Taoist" is a collection of lyrics by Jiang Kui, who lived during the Southern Song dynasty. His courtesy name was Yaozhang, and he was from Poyang. The title "White Stone Taoist" was his pen name. This collection primarily features a single guqin score he composed titled "Ancient Lament. The exact dates of Jiang Kui's birth and death are not well-documented; it is known that his poetry and songs were mostly created between the third year of Emperor Xiaozong's Chunxi period (1176) and the third year of Emperor Ningzong's Qingyuan period (1197). During the Jiatai era, he had this collection (or part of it) carved into wooden blocks, but even people during the Yuan dynasty seldom saw it, possibly because it was not published after being carved.

In the early Qing dynasty, a handwritten copy of the "Songs of the White Stone Taoist," consisting of six volumes, was discovered. This copy was obtained by Songjiang's Lou Yan, and from that point onward, three editions and printings emerged:

1. In the third year of the Qianlong reign (1738), the Wu Wu year (戊午), Zhang Yishu from Nanhui asked his friend Zhou Gengyu to transcribe a copy from Lou Yan's collection in Beijing. After thorough checking and revisions with Li E and others, it was printed in the year of Jisi (己巳) as six volumes, known as the "Zhang Edition" (1783).

2. In the eighth year of the Qianlong reign (1743), the Guihai year, Lu Zhonghui from Yangzhou obtained a copy of the Lou edition (possibly also a transcribed version) sent to him from Beijing by Fu Zeng (also known as Yaolin). That same year, he printed a block edition but decided to combine the second and sixth volumes, as they were sparse, resulting in a four-volume edition. This became the most widely reproduced edition, later referred to as the "Lu Edition".

3. In the second year of the Qianlong reign (1737), Renhe’s Jiang Bingyan had earlier borrowed a transcribed copy from Fu Zeng that belonged to Fu himself. "He burned the midnight oil for three nights to copy it down and then returned it." This transcribed version ultimately came into possession of Mr. Chen Niantong and was not published until the second year of the Republic of China (1912), when Zhu Xiaozang printed it in his Qiangcun Collection (彊村叢書) as six volumes. Zhu Xiaozang noted that due to the textual emendations in the Zhang edition and the rearrangement of chapters in the Lu edition, the version based on Jiang's copy — which Jiang himself meticulously checked but had not yet been carved — had fewer inconsistencies than the two previous editions. Zhu indicated, "I adhered closely to Jiang's score for publication... and even the accompanying scores have slight discrepancies, following the style of imitation without being able to exhaustively list them."

Thus, the version of the qin piece "Ancient Lament" adopted the present edition comes from Zhu Xiaozang's collection.

Because during\ the period following the Qianlong reign of the Qing dynasty even qin players found themselves increasingly distanced from the ancient qin scores of the Southern Song dynasty, when transcribing, people did not know that the "first string" was anciently referred to as "big string," and often miswrote the "big string" found in various scores as the "sixth strings" (大 looks like 六). Additionally, they were unaware that the during the Tang and Song dynasties the position where the (left hand) finger was to be placed on the string in relation to the hui was written in terms of being left or right of whatever string rather was being played (rather than using the modern decimal system). Although his led to giving wrong pitches in all three editions of Gu Yuan. errors in the Zhu edition are the fewest.

When actually playing according to the score, this ancient score from over seven hundred years ago in the Zhu edition also requires the following corrections:

At the end of the first section the instructions at the end "乞豆井作" should be "从豆再乍" (repeat from the beginning).

In harmonics part (or the first section), "一七六" should be "厂七六" (indicating a run over the 7th and 6th strings) and then in the second line the figure that has two twos (二｜二) should have "七｜二" (indicating playing an octave on the 7th and 2nd strings)

In the second section the tablature next to the character "何" should indicate "hitting the 6th string in the 11th position"; next to "覆" the instruction should be to "hit the open sixth string"; paired to "雲" should again be "hit the 6th string in the 11th position" be "特"; next to the lyrics "過" and "谷" should first hook then hit the 6th string while stopping the string with the left middle finger in the 10th position. Next to the third 兮 the cluster should indicate hooking the second string while stopping the string with the ring finger in the 11th position, and next to "誰" the instruction should be to hook the fifth string while stopping it with the ring finger in the 9th position.

(For the third section the text hear gives a similar number of instructions on the correct way to play. The correct positions are all given in my transcription.)

The piece "Ancient Lament," being an original composition along with its self-written and self-carved score, concretely illustrates the development of the qin's simplified tablature up to the end of the twelfth century. Additionally, since the tablature forms for qin scores from the Yuan and Ming dynasties have documented references, it is possible for players to use these differences to discern the approximate dates of any ancient qin scores created.

Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a separate page)

1. QQJC Baishi Daoren Gequ Gu Yuan preface
Probably written ca. 1960
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2. 查阜西 Zha Fuxi and 吳釗 Wu Zhao
The Qinqu Jicheng series started to come out in 1981, after Zha Fuxi had passed away. Wu Zhao's role throughout this, other than editing, is not clear and crediting of his work seems to be inconsistent.
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4. Original text (OCR scanned; note that OCR cannot detect nor can my computer reproduce qin tablature, hence the 「」 empty brackets).

二白石道人歌曲古怨序

《白石道人歌曲》是南宋姜夔（字堯章，鄱陽人，號白石道人）的歌詞集，祇刊載了他自己作的一個古琴曲譜，名日《古怨》。姜夔的生卒年月不甚詳，祇知道他的詩詞歌曲多作於南宋孝宗淳熙三年（一一七六）至寧宗慶元三年（一一九七）之間。在嘉泰間他曾將這一集子（或一部分）刻成了板，但是甚至元代的人也很少見到，可能是刻了之後未及印行之故。到清代初期發現了一個元代陶宗儀的手鈔本《白石道人歌曲》六卷，爲松江樓儼（敬思）所得，從此纔有了以下三種轉鈔本和刻本：

（1）乾隆三年戊午，南匯張奕樞請他的朋友周耕餘，從北京樓儼處鈔得一本，與厲g等「重加點勘」，刻於乾隆己巳，仍爲六卷，世稱「張刻本」。

（二）乾隆八年癸亥，揚州陸鍾輝得到符曾（藥林）從北京寄給他看的樓藏本（可能也是轉鈔的），同年即刻成板本，但他認爲「第二卷、第六卷爲數寥寥，因合爲四卷」，這就是後來據以翻刻轉刻得最多的「陸刻本」。

（三）乾隆二年，仁和江炳炎已先從符曾處借到符自藏的鈔本，「秉燭三夜，繕完而歸之」。這一轉纱本最後爲陳念通先生收得，直到民國二年癸丑纔由朱孝臧（彊村）刻人他所編的彊村叢書，仍爲六卷。據朱孝臧說，因爲張本「有所點竄」，陸本「并卷移篇」，而朱氏所據的江本則是「江氏手自寫校，未付剞人，亥豕之嫌自較二刻爲尟」，「爱一依江譜授梓.…至其旁譜亦稍有參差，依樣鈎摹，未遑枚舉」。因此，本編的琴曲《古怨》採用了朱孝臧的村叢書本。

由於清乾隆以後甚至彈琴家對於南宋的古琴譜字亦多隔膜，在轉鈔時人們不知「一絃」古稱「大絃」，往往把諸中的「大絃」寫成「六絃」也不知不當徵的音位在唐宋間例用左右兩徽兼示，所以徽位也多錯誤，這些錯誤在三個刻本中都是共同的，但是朱刻本的其他錯誤最少。在實際按譜鼓曲之時，對朱刻本中這個七百多年前的古譜也必須先作以下的校正：

第一段旁譜末一譜字「」是「從頭再作」。
泛聲第一行的「一七六」應是「厂七六」；第二行的「手」應是「」即「」。

第二段「何」字的旁譜應是「」；「覆」字的旁譜應是「」；「雲字的旁譜應是「」，「過」字和「谷」字的旁譜應是「」和「」；第三「分」字的旁譜應是「」；「誰」字的旁譜應是「」。

第三段「歡」字應有旁譜「」；「山」字的旁譜應是「」；「」字，第一「年」字、「汾」字、「上」字的旁譜都應是「」；，最後一個「分」字旁譜中的「」應移在下一譜字「塾」的上方，寫成「」。

姜古怨一曲，因是自製曲，又是自寫自刻的譜，它就很具體地給我們指出古琴曲的减字譜發展到十二世紀末期的情况；又，元明以來的琴譜指法形式是有文獻可徵的，因此彈琴家有可能辨别任何一個古代琴譜寫成的大約年代。

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