12th November 2006

This, the 24th meeting of the London Youlan Qin Society, was held at the home of Sarah Moyse in southwest London.

Introduction

The theme of this yaji was Stephen Dydo's report on the qin conference in Beijing in October, and his electric qin.

Programme

First of all, Cheng Yu introduced our four guests:

Stephen Dydo is president of the New York Qin Society. He is an old friend of the London Youlan Qin Society and has been to several of our gatherings.
Susan Haire is an artist whose paintings have often been exhibited. She has done a number of experimental projects, on one of which she is now working with Stephen.
Ichiro Ikezawa is professor of Japanese literature at Meiji University in Tokyo, now doing research at SOAS.
Shigeko Ikezawa is assistant professor of Chinese literature at Chuo University in Tokyo, currently doing research at SOAS, University of London. She studied qin with Zeng Chengwei in China and Shin'ichi Sakata in Japan.  

The Beijing qin conference

The Beijing qin conference was organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Wu Jinglue. Between 400 and 500 qin players attended. Stephen mentioned a few highlights and showed us the conference schedule:

1. Viewing the qin collection of the Yishu Yanjiu Xueyuan (Academy of Art) . They have two Tang Dynasty qins, and a number of unusual Ming and Qing ones.

2. A talk on the preservation of old Beijing as a way of explaining of the complex issues surrounding the preservation of qin music and ancient arts in general. The speaker gave an impassioned but non-judgemental description of the almost complete destruction of the old parts of Beijing which is currently being undertaken. The conclusion was that while it is of course very important to preserve the qin and and associated arts of calligraphy, painting, literature, one must be aware that things are changing.

3. John Thompson gave a presentation on the possibility of using qin melodies as Blues. He presented as examples three melodies which, with small modifications, became 12-bar Blues. This should not be too surprising as American Blues is also pentatonic, and also uses a floating fa, like nanfang qin playing or guzheng playing. John played and sang, Stephen accompanied him on guitar, playing a Blues shuffle.

4. Stephen's own talk on the electric qin. He explained its position in qin culture thus: if qin is living, breathing, developing, growing and evolving, then the electric qin is a good thing; if it is something static, that we want to capture, describe, codify and put into a museum, then it is a bad thing. It can be extremely disturbing to hear pieces that have been cherished for hundreds of years played through a waa-waa pedal!

5. Wu Wenguang talked about improvisation, and gave a number of concert performances.

6.  Li Xiangting gave a separate talk about improvisation. He talked about it primarily in terms of melody, i. e. you have to have melodies to improvise on, know them well and think about them, and work out how to integrate them into a qin piece. To demonstrate, he asked people to give him melodies and improvised on the spot.

7. Gong Yi talked about performance and also covered improvisastion. He also talked about qin technique. He said that if qin musicians are to improvise, they have to understand their instrument the way western violinists or pipa players understand their instrument,that is, they must learn not just pieces, but also scales, and know where each note is, for all parts of the instrument. He demonstrated why this is important for new types of qin music. Then he played a new piece which was not really tonal, with the same clarity that he brings to his performances of ancient music. 

The electric qin

The goal of the electric qin is not to create a louder qin. That can be done by putting acoustic pickups on the bridge, or microphones around or inside a normal qin. The goal of the electric qin is to enlarge the repertoire of qin technique and qin sound by introducing a different sound-producing mechanism. It produces sound in the same way as an electric guitar. So its relationship to the standard qin is the same as that of the electric guitar to the classical guitar, i. e. they are quite different instruments, requiring some different techniques. The one he had brought can be successfully played with the same techniques as a normal qin, except that one must be careful of the pickups [about 1/4 way between the bridge and 1st hui], and the sound sustains in different ways, so you often have to deaden the sound where on a standard qin you would not. Stephen also plays a silk stringed qin, and said the more he plays that, the more he feels the relationship of the silk stringed qin to the modern qin is about as close as that of the modern qin to the electric qin - they are different instruments. He no longer plays a silk stringed qin in the same way he plays a standard, i. e. steel-nylon stringed qin. The more he plays silk, the more he finds different ways to play it.

In addition to the electric qin itself, he used an effects processor to produce different types of sounds. Stephen demonstrated some of them on the 1st parts of Ping Sha Luo Yan,  Meihua San Nong and Kongzi Du Yi.

Music

After the talks, the following music was played:
  1. Shishang Liu Quan 石 上流泉 (A Spring Flowing over Stones), played by Stephen Dydo*
  2. Qiu Shui 秋水 (Autumn Water), played by Charlie Huang *
  3. Jiu Kuang 酒狂 (Drunken Ecstasy), played by Cheng Yu *
  4. Yu Nü Yi/Xian Pei Ying Feng 玉女意／仙 佩迎风 (Modal Prelude for Yu Nü mode/Immortal Jades Welcoming a Breeze), played by Julian Joseph #
  5. Guan Shan Yue 关山月 (Moon Over the Mountain Pass), played by Christopher Evans #
  6. Fuji 富士 (Mt. Fuji)#, played and sung by Shigeko Ikezawa, with the English translation of the lyrics read by Ichiro Ikezawa. The music is from the Donggao Qinpu 东皋琴谱. The lyrics are:
田子の浦ゆ　うち出でてみれば　真白ろにぞ　富士の高嶺に　雪は降りける。
Tagonourayu uchiidetemireba mashironizo fujinotakaneni yukiwafurikeru.
One day in the morning, I got into my boat and rowed and rowed offshore through Tago Bay.
Suddenly, the morning mist over the water was blown away by a gust of wind.
When I looked up at the sky, the top of Mt. Fuji, covered with pure white snow, appeared.
Again it had been snowing over the crest.

The music was composed by Donggao Xinyue (Japanese name Toko Shin'etsu) 东皋心越, who had escaped to Japan from the crisis between the Ming and Qing Dynasties in China at the end of the 17th century. The music is based on the images in a Japanese classical poem (waka). The poem comes from the oldest anthology of Japanese poetry, Manyoushu 万葉集. It was written by Yamabe no Akahito 山部赤人 (山邊赤人) in the 7th century, by the sea in Shizuoka Prefecture near the centre of Japan, from where Mt. Fuji can be seen even today. Donggao Xinyue contributed to the preservation of old qin music which had disappeared in China. 
  1. You Lan 幽兰 (The Solitary Orchid), played by Dan Nung Ing #
  2. Zui Weng Yin 醉翁引, played by Marnix Wells %
  3. Gu Guan Yu Shen 古馆禹神 (Meeting a Deity in a Deserted House), played by Charlie Huang %
* Stephen's electric qin.
# qin made by Mr Hew in Malaysia.
% Qing Dynasty qin, made in 1804, with silk strings.



    Stephen Dydo playing Shishang Liu Quan on his electric qin
    		Shigeko Ikezawa playing and Fuji, while Ichiro Ikezawa reads his English translation
    		 Stephen Dydo describing the qin
    conference in Beijing


    Copyright the London Youlan Qin Society, 2006. All rights reserved.