In a lakeside garden framed by bamboo and pines, scholars and women gather on a pavilion terrace, playing zithers, a pipa and a flute. Below, a lively street of people, a sedan chair and a horse passes, with sails on the distant lake.
Songs of the Shijing and Chu
Work Chants (Haozi)
Yuefu Songs
Tang–Song Sung Lyrics
Mountain Songs (Shan'ge)
Songs of Tibet and the Northwest Peoples
Songs of the Southern Peoples
Qin Songs and Chanting
Mongolian and Northern Peoples' Songs
Ditties and Popular Tunes (Xiaodiao)
Hua'er
Grand Song of the Dong
Chinese Art SongQin Songs and Chanting
The strings answer the voice that chants the poem
Introduction
Songs sung to one's own qin, with the chanting of classical verse
Qin songs are literati songs sung by the player while plucking the guqin, usually to classical poems; representative pieces include Three Refrains of Yangguan, Old Grief, Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute, The Phoenix Seeks His Mate, Moon over the Mountain Pass and Autumn Wind Lyric. This record also covers chanting (II-137), the tradition of intoning classical poetry and prose in local dialect with drawn-out melodic tones, each chanter with a tune of his own. Jiang Kui's Old Grief, from the Southern Song, is written with qin fingering notation and is the earliest surviving qin song score, and the Zheyin shizi qinpu of 1491 holds the earliest score of Three Refrains of Yangguan. In the Ming the Jiang school favoured qin songs, but the later Yushan school objected to their one-note-per-word setting and promoted purely instrumental playing, and qin songs declined. The instrument itself and instrumental qin music belong to the guqin record.
Timeline
- 1200OriginVolume one of Jiang Kui's Songs of the Daoist of White Stone, from the Southern Song, contains one qin piece, Old Grief, with fingering notation written beside the words: the earliest surviving qin song score.
- 1491EvolutionIn 1491 Gong Jing compiled the Zheyin shizi qinpu, which holds the earliest surviving score of the qin song Three Refrains of Yangguan, eight sections of it extant; in the Ming the Jiang school, represented by Xie Lin, Yang Biaozheng and Yang Lun, was known for singing qin songs.
- 1876EvolutionIn 1876 Zhang He compiled the Qinxue rumen, with an arrangement of Three Refrains of Yangguan based on a Ming version; it is the version most often sung today.
- 2008ImpactIn 2008 chanting (the Changzhou chanting) entered the second national list (II-137): the intoning of Tang poems, Song ci and other classical texts in the Changzhou dialect.
Heritage Listings
- 2008National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage2nd batch · 2008: II-137 chanting · Changzhou chanting · no. 636 · nominated by Changzhou · Jiangsu