Members:
Henry Chan
Peiyou Chang
Stephen Dydo
Matthew Flannery
John Thompson

Guests:
Jason Ginsberg
Pen Knag
Ralph Knag
Stephen Bourne

Business

There was discussion about the relationship between the NYQS and the Chinese Guqin Study Society (Zhonghua Guqin Xue Hui 中華古琴學會) of Taiwan headed by Yuan Jung-Ping, a resolution was carried to join the ZGXH, including payment of a $100 fee.

There was discussion of a proposed trip to China and/or Taiwan during the fall or winter of this year based on the theme of the guqin. Ideally, it would involve coordinating a meeting and performances with Yuan Jung-Ping and the ZGXH.

There was also discussion of current membership and how this should be determined. Payment of dues and attendance were discussed as membership criteria. Recent members are Henry and Ian. Currently eligible to join (having met such criteria as attending three meetings) are Yuni and Ralph. The society was reminded that Rembrant and Elizabeth and Bunching have formally resigned from the society, primarily because of the problem of distance.

Music

John was in New York on home leave, he and Suzanne having completed their first year in Mumbai. He reported to the society that they have a large apartment in a quiet neighborhood, and so he has been able to make one room into his studio and add sound insulation so as to do recordings. He also now has a Flip video camera and has used it to record several video pieces for instructing students. Last summer, after participating as a teacher in “The Way of the Qin,” an instructional tour in China for guqin students, he returned there in September to do his Marco Polo program with FA Schola. He has been to Singapore several times to do small performances and lecture demonstrations. In January, he attended the conference of the Indian Musicological Society in Mumbai.

There is evidence that in the past some Indian music instruments used silk strings, so he is seeking more information about that. And through contacts made there, he has since done several guqin performances for local audiences in Mumbai. He has considerably expanded information on his website, which now averages about 15,000 hits daily, most of which are people accessing his mp3 files through intermediary websites in China. The most recent additions to his site are the pages “Guqin and Tea” as well as a section “Guqin and Film” under the page “House of the Lute.” He has been invited by the Hangzhou Museum to participate in an event there this October, which will feature performances on two Tang dynasty qins in the Museum’s collection. At the same time, he plans to present a paper comparing the harmonic overtones produce by silk, nylon-metal, and composition strings. He has also been invited to conferences at Hong Kong University’s Jao Tsung-I Petit Ecole in December and another to be held in Suzhou in 2011. At each, he will present new or recent dapu.

For the Hong Kong conference, John will compare four related melodies he has reconstructed:

“Chun Jiang Qu”春江曲 (“Spring River Song”), 1511
“Chun Jiang” 春江 (“Spring River”), 1539
“Chun Jiang Wan Tiao”春江晚眺 (“Spring River Evening View”), 1530
“Qiu Jiang Wan Diao” 秋江晚釣 (“Autumn River Evening Fishing”), 1549.

At the meeting, he played the first three of these melodies, preceding these with his interpretation of “Chun Gui Yuan” 春閨怨 (“Spring Chamber Lament”) from Longyinguan Qinpu (1799). This is the earliest surviving version of a melody today generally known as “Yulou Chunxiao” 玉樓春曉 (“Spring Dawn from a Jade Tower”). Then Stephen played a later version of the tune (the first appearance under the title “Yulou Chunxiao”), from the Meiain Qinpu (1931).

After John, Peiyou played “Wang Zhaojun,”王昭君 a piece based on the woman of the same name who was a consort of Han emperor Yuan. Because she refused to bribe the court portrait painter, his portrait of her was ordinary despite her god looks. Subsequently, Emperor Yuan was visited by the Xiongnu king, Huhanye Shanyu (King Huhanye), who wished to become an imperial relative by marrying a member of the emperor’s court. He was presented with a selection of five women, of whom Wang Zhaojun was the only volunteer. It was only after the Shanyu had chosen Wang to be his bride that Emperor Yuan realized too late that Wang was a great beauty. There are several stories or versions of this famous story.

“Wang Zhaojun” is a piece from the repertoire of early Japanese court music, which is divided into three categories. 1) Kuniburi no utamai, or Shinto religious music and folk songs and dances native to Japan; 2) komagaku, or Goguryeo and Manchurian music; and 3) togaku, or Chinese and South Asian music from the time of the Tang dynasty. “Wang Zhaojun” belongs in the third category. Togaku was the focus of Laurence Picken’s research at Cambridge, now continued by Elizabeth and Rembrandt Wolpert, who provided the score for “Wang Zhaojun,” originally written for the five-string pipa. The original melody was expanded by Stephen into a concert piece for Tomoko to play on the kugo; Pei-you further adapted it for performance on the qin. Because this piece was taken from the pipa literature, adapted to the kugo and then the qin, it has a style strikingly different from that of most works in the traditional qin repertory.

Jason Ginsberg discussed some of the similarities and differences qin music and the genre of music for the bagpipe known as piobaireachd (literally, 'piping'). Piobaireachd is the oldest form of bagpipe music, and was the dominant (and possibly only) form of music played on the bagpipe until the mid to late 1700's. Like the qin, the great highland bagpipe (the standardized modern form of the Scottish bagpipe) has its own distinct solo repertoire and is primarily a solo instrument. Some particular similarities include: oral transmission of the tunes; a heavy emphasis on grace notes and elaborate systems of ornamentation; use of theme-and-variation structure; use of a mean-tone temperament tuning system; both instruments are felt to convey profound feelings; both are quintessentially solo instruments; in both, the timing of the music is quite unusual, and does not follow a strict metrical pattern; in both, there is an area of modern research devoted to reconstructing older styles of playing.

Jason also noted a number of differences between the instruments. (For Jason’s fuller account, click here.)