This, the 46th
meetingof theLondon Youlan Qin
Society, was held at the home of was held at the home of Cheng Yu in
Pinner, London. We were delighted that qin master Dai Xiaolian of the
Guangling School, based in Shanghai, was
able to join us.
Introduction
This yaji as
usual, was informal.
Cheng Yu welcomed Dai Xiaolian to our meeting and expressed her thanks
to AMC for arranging for her to be the guqin teacher at this year's summer
school.
Talk by Dai Xiaolian
If one says that I belong to the Guangling School, it’s true that when
I was young I learned the Guangling style from Zhang Ziqian, but later,
when I went to the Shanghai Conservatory, we were not allowed to be too
one-sided and limit ourselves to one style; we had to learn pieces from
various schools and seek out the best aspects of each school.
But if one asks what the Guangling School was from the point of view of
tradition, then I feel today that it had a style that was perhaps
linked to its basic concepts, for example its better works are
instrumental and it excludes vocal works. This is related to its
ideology and has been handed down in the Guangling School right up to
the present. However the real differences between schools are limited.
Transport today is convenient and people can exchange their ideas, ways
of teaching, and traditions. So today I feel that the most important
distinctions are in personal styles. For example, Li Xiangting has said
that his playing style has strong, Northern, bold and uninhibited
elements.
I feel that we can divide styles into two types, Northern and Southern.
The Southern style gives more attention to detail and is smoother,
while the Northern style is more unconstrained, even perhaps rougher.
Recently, during my time at the conservatory, I have been trying to
break away from traditional pieces and create more contemporary,
creative works using our capabilities as a specialist music school. I
feel that the traditional pairing of guqin
and xiao – ever since ancient
times guqin and xiao have been played together, and
generally the same pieces – is reaching a dead end and is not enough to
satisfy modern tastes. Peoples’ tastes today are perhaps too
three-dimensional, because they have heard a great many Western works.
So now, in place of the traditional way of having guqin and xiao play in parallel with each
other, I am looking for guqin
and xiao duets. Over the last
two or three years we’ve held symposia exploring combinations of the guqin with other instruments, for
example duets for guqin and pipa have been composed, there are
pieces for guqin and erhu, and duets for two guqin have been written. Today I am
continually pushing these forms forward.
In reality this is a way for people to co-operate. At a traditional yaji one person would play Ping Sha Luo Yan and the next would
play Meihua San Nong, and at
the next yaji they’d play the
same set of pieces again. I feel that it would be good to have
something different and bring people the opportunity and spirit of
cooperation.
There is modern recognition too of electronic effects. Last year I went
to France twice and took part in the debut performances of modern
works. The guqin was used not
only with other Chinese instruments, but also with Western instruments,
including the cello and violin, clarinet and oboe. Performing modern
works is very challenging, but no matter what the result, how well I
play or how people value it, I will carry on playing them.
For me the crucial thing is to resolve the problem of the different
sounds of the guqin and other
instruments. The guqin is
very quiet but other instruments, such as the pipa, are louder and brighter, so
that a guqin would need a
microphone.
But the most difficult thing is to find a composer who is willing to
help.
On this visit people have asked whether I use silk strings or
steel-nylon strings. Generally, if I’m playing in public I use
steel-nylon strings because they are more stable. Silk strings often
get are out of tune before you finish playing a piece, and that spoils
the feeling of the piece, but sometimes I use silk strings at home. It
depends on the piece – some sound better on silk and others on
steel-nylon.
One of my students had a poor guqin
that sounded really bad with steel-nylon strings, so I suggested
putting silk strings on it. The moment he played it with the silk
strings he said it was a treasure and the sound had immediately become
much better. Perhaps you can try for yourselves.
People will often say they want a perfect guqin. Everyone wants to buy a guqin that has everything. But for
specialists like me, what we want is guqin
that are evenly balanced. What is ‘evenly balanced’? A guqin has three kinds of timbre:
open notes, stopped notes (including glissandi) and harmonics. If they
are balanced and the guqin
has a good feel, then that guqin
is not at all bad. Some guqin
sound good when you play stopped notes, but sound wooden when you play
open strings. That kind of guqin
is no good.
If you truly want to play at your best, you should have two or even
three and choose the one that best suits the piece you’re playing. If
you’re going to play Ping Sha Luo Yan,
use a guqin with silk
strings; if you are going to play Guangling
San or Xiao Xiang Shui Yun
I suggest you use one with steel-nylon strings, which have a bigger
sound; silk strings can easily go out of tune with such fast pieces.
Apart from that I have no suggestions. Perhaps you should discuss it.
What I have done is tell you about my experiences.
The more a guqin is played
the better it will become. Some guqin
makers say that the instruments they make won’t sound good until a
hundred years have passed. Who can wait that long? I would never buy a guqin that would take 100 years to
develop a good sound.
Loudness is another aspect. If you are playing for 100 people you might
need to use a microphone, but it is best if you don’t have to. Some
people tell me they have wonderful guqin,
but they are quiet. But how can you use a quiet guqin to play for 100 people unless
you use a microphone? It doesn’t matter how good a guqin sounds, a microphone will
bring an electronic feel to it, so we should avoid microphones as far
as possible. Listening to the unamplified music sounds better.
However sometimes there’s no choice. If you want to play with violins
or cellos you have to use electronic sound. I can quite like it in
these circumstances. When I was in France this time they had good
microphones, and that solved a lot of problems.
Music
The following music was played:
Qiu Shui秋
水 (Autumn Waters),
played by Charlie Huang
Gu Guan Yu Shen 孤馆遇神
(Meeting Ghosts in a Deserted House), played by Julian Joseph
Bi Jian Liu Quan碧
涧流泉
(A Spring Flowing in a Green Valley), played by Dai Xiaolian
Guangling San
广陵散, played
by Dai Xiaolian
Zui Weng Yin醉
翁引 (The
Drunken Old Man),
played by Marnix Wells
Guan Shan Yue 关山月
(Moon
over the Mountain Pass), played by Cheng Yu (qin) and Dennis Lee (xiao)
Er Quan Ying Yue 二泉映月
(The Moon Reflected in Erquan Pool),
played by Dennis Lee (xiao)
Changmen Yuan
长门怨
(Lament at Changmen Palace),
played by Cheng Yu
All
pieces played on a qin made
by Ni Shiyun
Dai Xiaolian gave a short talk
about the Yushan School of qin music.
Dai
Xiaolian playing Bi Jian Liu Quan
Charlie
Huang playing Qiu Shui
Copyright the London Youlan Qin Society, 2010. All
rights reserved.