Discussion which was exchanged by Email (from 7/1/2022 – 7/5/2022)
Reflections on Peiyou’s point 1. Marilyn raised the following questions:
1. Does combining guqin fingering notation with western scoring lead to the decline of “classical” guqin playing?
2. What do qin teachers and learners think about learning directly from tablature and imitating one’s teacher (including listening to recordings of older qin players), compared to learning from tablature with western scoring with barlines, and given pitches and rhythm?
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Marilyn, I tend to be sympathetic with your thoughts about Western scores applied to tablature transcriptions, even though I proposed a hybrid system some time ago here; a mixing Qinpu western notation.
Working for several years on classical and extended notation applied to musical contemporary concert music led me to see it as a very particular and stratified usage of musical notation. One of my composition supervisors said to me once: “Be aware of that. Notational symbols have an indelible history attached. If you write down on sheet music, a strong ricochet pizzicato immediately evokes Bartok’s music for everyone who has played or listened to it before.” If you work with any native notation (as qin tablature), please keep it strictly to it.”
Of course. I’m not against using Western notation on qin music. But I see it as problematic a little bit.
André
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If I understand Marilyn correctly, I think her analogy is incorrect. People learned melodies from teachers, not from tablature, so it is misleading to compare learning from tablature with learning from a transcription. A better comparison is learning from a teacher vs learning from any written source.
My teacher said, “Look at me, not the tablature”. I think one reason for this was that the tablature alone did not indicate rhythm. If you asked him why it didn’t he might say that it was because the rhythm was up to you but in fact it was up to him and was only flexible after you learned his rhythm.
In other words, it is wrong to assume that because the tablature did not directly indicate rhythm the tablature was not describing music with rhythm.
Generally speaking I think people would develop their own rhythm after they left their teacher. This could be “bad”, if for example this was because they were not musical – or others thought them unmusical. If others enjoyed the new interpretation it would likely be in relation to other versions, not just as a new creation.
Along this line, if you have a transcription which shows rhythm, even regular rhythm, then hear several recordings, ideally what you would have is not necessarily a strong sense of the indicated meter or meters but a framework that could help you appreciate and yourself even generate a wide variety of interpretations.
Finally, I think criticism of staff notation is often based on thinking it can only be used the way it is used with “classical” Western music. I think that is like throwing out the baby with the bath water, but that is a longer conversation.
Re “the beauty of qin music lies in its sound/timbre, resonance of the string sounds as produced by the finger/hand configurations of plucking, strumming and sliding, and in the unique language of interpreting the guqin tablature.”
Yes, but saying that this means rhythm and melody are not important seems to me rather like saying that if critics analyze Chinese poetry in terms of word choice and allusion etc this means rhyme and meter are not necessary to appreciation.
John
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John,
I didn’t make myself clear — or you misunderstand me. I never said that “rhythm and melody are not important,” on the contrary, they are both vital, and even pre-conscious musical forms (destined like language, to be absorbed by the brain
and muscle memory from infancy, as I am observing from my grandson!)…and rhythm and melody are among the chief reasons one learns from a living exponent. André understood when he quoted his teacher mentioning seeing a score with certain notations, that Bartok’s music might spring to mind as if imprinted on his brain. “Notational symbols have an indelible history attached.” I meant that if one started first to read Western scoring (and were accustomed to doing so), it meant that one’s eye/brain took that in first on a page with dual scoring of barlines, usually above with qin tablature found below. Unless trained to do so, one cannot easily read tablature and score at the same time, because the formal structure of 5-line scoring with barlines would most likely supersede one’s understanding of the qin tablature. In short, the qin tablature, developed to be performed on that instrument tells one so much more about how to produce the music on the qin itself. [André – I am not familiar with your hybrid notation — would you kindly introduce it to us.]
John, I am glad I started to learn qin from mentors who did use the western scoring, and who advocated imitation in a live situation, and then returning to the quiet privacy of one’s study, to learn the meaning of the tablature as it pertained to one’s hands (muscle memory), one’s hearing (mental neuro-memory) and the physical feel of the instrument. Perhaps it’s because my brain and learning process began with seeing a western score first, associating b/w keys or positions on a stringed instrument with those marks on the page — that the 5-line notation with barlines are associated with particular rhythms and pitches on those instruments, that I find them difficult (almost non-transferable ?) on the qin ! This may be my personal shortcoming.
Mine is not an argument for or against the use of western notation in qin learning– that would be the choice of the teacher and pupil. I am merely setting forth my personal preference for learning directly from tablature on the guqin, because it was ingeniously devised expressly for the qin. Goodness, John. Why after your years of experience transcribing a particular qin melody and rhythm onto a western 5-line score, one could take that music and play it with any instrument: violin, cello, oboe, horn, even tuba, or steel drums, and why not ? Of course, the limitations are not in the notation itself, but how one understands the musical possibilities in that notation. As anyone who plays Chopin or even a Mozart Fantasia on the piano knows, the 5-line score with barlines, does not prevent one from executing rubato or any free rhythmic phrases, but that such free interpretation presupposes a high level of performance understanding and feeling for the music.
We might ask those among our attendees who have first learned a western instrument and western notation, how they feel about learning the qin next. They may have more agile minds (and vision) than mine, and if so, this is a non-issue. We have several international members who have first played a western instrument and could well give us their thoughts, too!
Best, to all,
Marilyn 王妙蓮
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Marilyn
Nice letter and nothing really to disagree with, but a couple of things I would like to qualify. This perhaps has to do with doing almost all of my learning directly from tablature rather than from a living teacher.
Perhaps I can phrase this by saying I try to treat the tablature as my teacher. But this “teacher” always has his/her own rhythm. So when I learn from tablature I am trying to learn what that rhythm might have been, not simply trying to be a “composer”. I cannot swear this always makes a difference, but perhaps in some cases I can make an argument based on things like how many notes have been changed (which discussion is not based on the quality of the result but only on the issue of how accurately the result represents the performance the tablature actually described).
But to me this also means learning from from tablature with staff notation is more like learning directly from a teacher than would be learning only from tablature, though perhaps this also requires questioning the “teacher‘ more than is called for in personally learning from a living teacher. Perhaps it is like going from hypothetical teacher to hypothetical teacher.
On a number of occasions I have spoken to people who seem to think that because they are unable to treat existing staff notation flexibly no one can. Thank you for clarifying that you are not one of those people.
John
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I’d love to fill in for #4, regarding social media and the new age of qin learning?
Conversations like the one we’re holding now are impossible without removing the boundaries of physical and informational distance through digital technologies. Regional schools and their biases (on the lighter scale quirks, and on the heavier side outright practice changes that may be fallacious, to others) exist because of local authority and their effect over time. When I first started the Facebook International group, it was intended as the next bridge after Toronto Guqin Society to connect with perhaps other qin societies in North America and perhaps LYQS in the UK. I have not expected that it’d extend to parts unknown to me, like the Ukraine, Israel, SE Asia, and Latin America. Only a few more regions on the map we’ve yet to conquer (eg. Africa, the Middle East, India, and arguably Antarctica)!
As I have prefaced in my book, I started learning not from some teacher, but a medley of online resources, which was free and openly available. This is very different from having to knock on doors and asking for references and permission from live teachers and private libraries, as now we have open access search and resources available with one query line, with thousands of sites containing essays, scores, and of course the original canon. The problem then lies in how a beginner approaches such immense data and turn it into information. This means a fundamental change from past methods of relying on teachers to select information and techniques, as well as scope and breadth of qin studies itself, to critical thinking and research skills as expected of any contemporary student these days. Knowing how to dig deep into the subject matter is key to succeed in the coming age, and to rely on connecting to the global network of experts will help garner second opinions and insights to make it happen.
藝工琴棋好生無量天尊﹗ Juni L. Yeung, MA (Toronto)
Regarding learning from digital sources on the internet, many qin players started like this at the beginning of this century.
I agree with Juni about: “this means a fundamental change from past methods of relying on teachers to select information and techniques, as well as scope and breadth of qin studies itself, to critical thinking and research skills as expected of any contemporary student these days. Knowing how to dig deep into the subject matter is key to succeed in the coming age, and to rely on connecting to the global network of experts will help garner second opinions and insights to make it happen.“
As I said before, my first contact with qin music was a CD from master Li Xianting in 94′. Sixteen years later, in 2012, one of my composition students went to NY to visit Peiyou, and then he put us in touch. Soon I started learning by Skype online lessons with Peiyou. Today, ten years passed in the blink of an eye. And somehow, Brazilians interested in qin music are constantly knocking on my door, despite the immense amount of data concerning qin music they have searched on Google. Shortly, I became a Brazilian qin master, even if I don’t see myself that way. I am pretty far from this figure of absolute mastery of qin, definitively (saying it often to them).
This feeling of being responsible for qin transmission among Brazilians and the overwhelming presence of social media and service streaming put me in a very delicate situation. I can’t cut off the potential students by their discovery of qin in Chinese doramas, saying this is not the “real qin music” (after all, what is “real”?), nor I can’t say “stop to search videos on Google and pay attention to me”. Which would sound absurd and ridiculously quixotic. Then, I see myself every day in the middle of a cross-road, thinking about what to do next.
André
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Marilyn, about the system notation I am working on…
The hybrid system notation is a work in progress, started in August 2021, which I repeatedly interrupted to rethink its purposes. Mainly, I develop an idea for a system to deal with the consequences of transcribing qin tablatures into western classical notation, trying to avoid the dissociative effect of sight-reading in bivalent musical sing representations.
This happens when the superimposed notation (Western + Qinpu) tends to put the classical European music notation as a refined translation of tablature. For a large majority of qin players (beginners), I know the five lines staff indicate an enhanced version of tablature that diminished the Qinpu to some sort of flawed system. For me (maybe I’m overthinking this issue), when we use western notation to fill something we believe is missed on tablatures, we cease to understand Qinpu accepting the classical European notation versions as the actual one.
For musicians who aren’t trained in critical thinking of written music composition (which I believe are just a few), the classical European notation assumes the position of a universal musical system. Then, create the false impression that nothing has to be done anymore.
Anyway, I am not satisfied with my results; I am thinking a lot of giving up and trying to inscribe some different notation signs into the tablatures, which I am working on, to represent the rhythms that I feel as potential.
I even started to write an article about it, which I copy the first pages here below:
Beyond Qin tablatures
Observations on the new notation system for guqin.
André Ribeiro, Aug 2021
New York Qin Society.
sub-theme: ‘Notation’
In a recent qin event promoted by New York Qin Society, I presented sketches of a system notation called « qin combined notation » — a hybrid notation focused on rhythmic phrasing melody. It was a valuable opportunity to observe the different uses of qin tablatures and Western notations among qin players, which I do not intend to examine thoroughly here.
In general, I will sustain that new notation systems derived from the original tablatures (commonly called 琴谱 qínpǔ) mainly serve for the analysis of the repertoire’s pieces. It means giving a graphic form in line with the original melodies to provide another way of musical sight-reading. Transcribing the original tablatures to another notation system (such as classical European) might illustrate aspects that escape the usual readings of tablatures. In a certain way, it is a transcultural proposal to capture things often outside the usual contemporary mindset on qin musicians.
Let’s consider that rewriting Qin melodies in another notation system assumes the features of an analysis instrument. So, it is not a primary medium to sustain musical performances. Mainly because, from the beginning, the new system notation birth as a subsidiary system, constantly referring to the tablatures. It is a mirror (or filter) reflecting a few aspects that escape our daily tablature readings.
Any new system notations to decipher qin tablatures will always be in a subsidiary condition. That is to say, they are fundamentally an extended notation toward those aspects of musical reconstruction (Dapu 打譜) that cannot be referred so well to the old tablatures or aren’t clear enough to the qin players’ average contemporary mindset.
As an extended notation, a subsidiary system can be a valuable tool to clarify some elements that initially are murky to a beginner’s eyes. One is about the ending notes qin players do to reach specific notes or conclude a musical section. The beginner’s eyes used to search for hand positions that match with tablature’s signs take into account that some of the movements need to be slightly smooth, sliding from one point to another on the soundboard.
However, paying close attention only to fingerings as the key to playability naturally deviates from tablatures’ music analysis. Because it is common for students to trust their teacher’s knowledge by copying his gestures, they focus all their energies on fingering and techniques. Consequently, those aspects of the formal structure are constantly diminished in plain sight.
Although students need to accomplish the qin’s initial playing techniques, they should consider them the first steps that make the tablature’s actual interpretation (for future performances) possible. We must not consider fingering techniques as a final condition to revive some parts of a musical piece. Instead, it represents a tool for making choices around the miscellanea of possible paths to interpreting the old qin melodies and envisioning the formal structures and designs that can jump to our hand’s movements.
Because the relevance of qin musical analysis to performance is so blurred today, we try to do our best to reveal the traces that led us to think about a new format applied to the European way of music notation. Among the several issues related to the reconstruction of old tablatures, first, I chose the ending notes.
The Ending Notes
We do not immediately apprehend the design of the melodic endings on the old tablatures at first. We see only signs of punctuation in the initial reading of the tablatures — a big blank circle on the bottom of a line indicates a phrasing mark. We should know the function of these empty circles is borrowed from the Chinese writing system, so we presume them as a typical dot.
However, by paying close attention, we can grasp it as part of a comprehensive way of referring to the length of melodic phrasing to the proper way to close musical phrases. Although subsumed into tablature, the expected value of these blank punctuation marks is not something at sight. Just cadences, we say, thinking through the lenses of Western music training.
Nevertheless, qin’s musical cadences do not have the same function as those that figure in the tonal system of European music. That is a practice of melodic ending based on the tension interval resolution between notes. Throughout the history of European vocal music, cadences reflected conventional melodic patterns, whose numerical interval ratios were based on the resolution of the tension of the simultaneous melodic lines at the end of sections of a musical piece. For instance, the early medieval motets, such as Perotin’s, Vitry’s, Machaut’s and others.
Totally different are the qin melodies put in perspective of ending notes. The primary purpose is to add colour to the open strings; we say the cadences sound shading colour. Since timbre is usually the reference in qin playing, the endings represent a unique procedure to musically sign the phrasal structures (like a calligrapher who finishes his brushstroke). For an experienced musician, how it touches the strings initially tells us how the ending will be in advance. So, the opening notes struck on the soundboard frequently set the tone of colour we put in the perspective of the endings.
As the color tone is such a distinctive feature in qin performances — when musicians strike the strings — the final notes are expected to have unique colors for different performers. In the sound design of the punctuations, these empty blank markers are, in fact, filling out with the interpreter’s poetic soul (even when it connects melodic segments). Those empty blank markers might induce the interpreter to search for a better way to add color to the open resonating string, as shown in measure 9 (figure 01).
The example above is « 春骁吟 Chūn Xiāo Yín » taken from Zìyuǎn táng qínpǔ 自远堂琴谱. The first phrasal structure happens after nineteen strokes (considering the previous sliding note before the open 2nd string stroke). In the mixed tablature I used as a reference (qinpu and jianpu notations) shown in figure 02 below, the notation for the ending note doesn’t provide any graphical representation of the sliding note. We see rhythmic subdivisions fitted by a binary time signature (can we say “quantized”?) without indicating the melodic phrasing design.
In my transcription to an extended notation, at bar 9 (figure 01), the fingering above horizontal lines indicates a fixed hui position for students, sliding up from hui 12 to 10. However, we know the slides notes referred to as qin oral culture are hiding, mainly because the way masters do it is more focused on gesture energy dynamics. As Peiyou Chang said: “Old masters liked to say cángtóu 藏頭 (the head or the beginning of sliding is hidden). Therefore the indication of the starting point of Chuò 綽 and Zhù 注 can just be a reference [for students].”
We might think it is unnecessary to indicate specifications about melodic embellishments like these endings since they belong to the oral instructions domain and are hidden in practical terms. On the other hand, making the design of the ending notes visible allows students to retain their attention to specific moments like this. Also, it provides a detailed picture of the closure of phrasal structure as indicated by a graphical cadential formula. Therefore, allow us to take the subsidiary notation to support learning (visually) and analyze the essential components for the melodic reconstruction.
Let’s take it as a preset for study after tablature reading. Extended notation can be magnified to point to other readability levels, carrying to further developments in the sounds’ graphical representation, such as the rhythmic improvements on ornamentation or subtle sliding rarified notes. Putting the hybrid system notation in perspective to the field of analysis, one can consider the more detailed notation, however complex it may be, enlightening about sound.
The Actual and Scraped Tones
Since we perceive that fingernails scraping on strings constitute a component of musical gesture, it is worthy (for analytical purposes) that these may have their proper signs. Though they are considered purely accidental, resulting from left-hand movements, the scrapes integrate our listening, shaping our musical perceptions in micro-units we call ‘sound percepts,’ which need to be traced as a vital element in a gesture.
We call modes of striking the strings two primary ways of attacking the fingernails in both hands concerning the resulting timbre. Usually, we used to think of hitting only with the right-hand pinches. But a simple observation while playing qin gives us the visual clarity that the fingernails of both hands (not to mention the digital pulp) are the primary medium for sound production.
We can say that the strings act as a material resistance between the fingernails and the soundboard wood. The kinetic energy of hands converging on such a small point produces many detectable and nameable sounds based on our perception. Based on our taste for discriminating sonic events by borrowing terminology referring to material qualities, it would be correct to say.
Also, the fingernail scrapes pose the limits of sound audibility in qin performances as an aesthetic component. It shares structural functions regarding rhythmic cohesion, which led me to think about them as rarified sounds related to the actual tones, which struck with greater intensity on the soundboard.
For this reason, I considered using small note heads to represent a specific reading level for minimal sounds, as it occurs on bar 8 (figure 3) of Chūn Xiāo Yín. For this brief analysis, we have subtle sounds rubbed related to the minimum perceptible and sounds anchored in the soundboard by the pinching of the right hand’s nails on the strings. Both have the function of making the sounds last, although they act differently. Pinching sounds (by the right hand) resonate with an audible and well-defined frequency that I call ‘actual tone’; sounds rubbed over the soundboard produce low-intensity frequencies merged with fingernails’ scraping on strings that I call ‘scraped tones’ or ‘sound shaded.’
This finding led me to consider the expressive musical sense of the latter scraped as an intrinsic consequence of the actual tones. A difference in sound structures distinguishes them, such as while the pinch of the right hand places a well-defined frequency in the foreground of the sonic events. On the other hand, the left-hand friction produces a sonic compound at which frequency is dimmed, allowing the overlapping of fingernail scrapes. Consequently, we have two basic approaches to qin sound production: well-defined pitches and rubbing sounds acting together for the sounding imbalance (I’m thinking of music as an unceasing movement). In contrast, the inequality of sound and dynamic power generates tension.
We might say, using another terminology, that there is variability around ‘sound granulation’. From this use of the word ‘granulation,’ we seek to pose the sound production of the qin in terms of its sound materiality instead of reinforcing subjective qualities referred to as the aesthetic appreciation of sound. I am trying to avoid turning the musical analysis into a choice between sounds desirable or not.
To visualize this sound-related condition in the analysis perspective, I purposely graphically represent them, as we shall see, to realize logically that actual tones are inseparable from the scraped tones. In reality, hypothetically thinking qin instrument as one uninterrupted string, we can take the rubbed sounds (in an imaginative way) as an idealized procedure of adding extra color to the resonant sound spectrum on an open string.
For instance, we can presume a sound continuum when the 2nd string is stroked, followed by the 5th string pressed down in the tenth hui position, an octave above. It means one sonic event, a single sound continuum attaching both strings. Suppose the tablature indicates ads or movements along with the soundboard. In that case, we can deduce it as adds or embellishments for melodic purposes. However, we can get closer in this analysis and take them as melodically articulated extensions to underline or address to merge to the open string that is still vibrating. So what implications can we consider from this angle?
By carefully observing the closure of the first part of Chūn Xiāo Yín (from g17 to g19), we can easily recognize these articulated extensions addressed to the second string of the qin as timbral expressions; or merely colors detached from the harmonic spectrum aurally and painted (by the musician) on the soundboard. Assuming this angle of analysis as a legitimate point of departure for understanding different approaches to line contours, we can propose new conceptions of qin music gesture instead of keeping our eyes only on the paths of the hands between the hui positions. In that case, it will give us a sense oriented to enhance perceptions about those qualities implied on qin melodic lines against open strings sound.
However, in any approach toward gesture for structuring qin pieces, one must consider that gesture is a particular biodynamic component of each performer. The way the gesture unfolds in the hands of each qin player, in addition to the particularity that circumscribes it, shows common features regarding sensitive movements by hands that one can transmit from a teacher to a student; and that brings another perspective to subsidiary notations involving reading and reconstruction of the tablatures.
A typical example of the importance of the gesture as a structural element of the performance is the Gǔnfèi 滾沸 technique in the piece « Píngshā Luòyàn 平沙落鴈 », where the right hand must circle the strings from bottom to top in a clockwise direction to obtain the characteristic sound, also to allow the dry attack (fú 伏 technique) at the end that cuts the resonances abruptly. This example would not be a clear manifestation of well-defined tones of the open strings, rubbed by the nails and then scratched by the sound cut abruptly by the same hand? (…)
André Ribeiro
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“ For musicians who aren’t trained in critical thinking of written music composition (which I believe are just a few), the classical European notation assumes the position of a universal musical system. Then, create the false impression that nothing has to be done anymore.”
I would think that the first thing one must do to explain something to someone untrained in critical thinking is to explain critical thinking, or at least show what problems a lack of critical thinking can cause. In this case one can say that any tablature or notation system is incomplete and give examples showing how this is the case.
Here for example one needs to emphasize not only that any notation system is subsidiary. As indeed with any tablature system – in fact any written system is subsidiary to the actual music. Even a recording is subsidiary, representing only one interpretation of the “real thing”.
In the music analysis section of my website I write extensively on how end notes (as well as identifying other important notes) can be used to characterize or identify musical modes in Ming dynasty music. Personally I find that having a feeling for the mode is an essential part of appreciating a melody. How a mode works musically seems to me fundamental to appreciating the poetic descriptions of what the mode or the particular melody signifies.
And yet I find very little analysis of how qin Melodie’s actually work.
As for Andre’s explanations I am afraid I don’t really understand them, starting with whether this new system is intended to be prescriptive of how a melody should be played, or of how it was played on one occasion (which is my understanding of traditional qinpu). If the interpreter is supposed to “search for a better way” to play a note, can this not be done through finger technique explanations rather than with each and every pu cluster?
Does “scraping” mean stopping a string with a left fingernail and “rubbing” mean stopping it with flesh? I learned that the default was half nail – half flesh; but again the degree of each varied from a playing to playing depending on such matters as the qin you were using as well as its strings.
John