Jianzipu and Guqin Tablature

Jianzipu records strings, positions and fingers but not rhythm, so each generation rebuilds the music.

Related

GuqinJianzipu (Qin Tablature)Dapu (Realizing Qin Tablature)Gongche Notation

Staff notation tells you how high and how long. Guqin jianzipu tells you which string, which position marker and which finger. The two scripts do not record the same thing; jianzipu records an action.

Time and place

China in the Tang dynasty, around the eighth century, in the region of Chang'an and Luoyang. Earlier qin scores were written out in full sentences; the only surviving example, Jieshi Diao You Lan, is a sixth-century piece preserved in a Tang copy. The abbreviation into symbols is traditionally credited to the Tang player Cao Rou, though the date is not settled and is usually given only as the middle Tang.

What happened

Jianzipu breaks a fingering instruction into parts. The upper element names the left-hand finger, the lower gives the string, the position marker sits beside it, and a side element gives the right-hand stroke; the parts are stacked into a single block-like character. From that character a player knows the string, the node, the finger and the pluck, but not how long the note lasts. Rhythm came from a teacher, or was rebuilt by a later player in the process called dapu, working from fingering and phrase marks. One score could yield different rhythms and breaths in different qin schools, so a single piece has several legitimate forms.

What changed

Qin music could survive across dynasties, and fingering written a thousand years ago can still be read, which is the notation's great achievement. The price is that rhythm was never fixed, so every dapu is a re-creation and the differences between schools acquired an institutional place. Compared with gongchepu, jianzipu does not mark relative pitch at all, only action. Compared with staff notation, it hands pitch to strings and nodes and leaves rhythm blank. Each script chooses what to remember and what to forget; jianzipu chose the hand.

Listen for the turn

The catalogue holds no guqin recording, so these three folk melodies stand in for the sound world the notation had to handle. Begin with Gao shan diao, whose title echoes the qin piece High Mountains and Flowing Water, and hear the pentatonic frame carrying the tune. Then Yang guan ge, on the same theme as the qin song Yang guan san die, and listen to the repeated farewell phrases and their phrasing. Finally Moli hua, a pentatonic melody thick with ornament, exactly the space jianzipu leaves to the player. Then ask how much a performer must supply when the score gives no rhythm.

Related

The instrument is Guqin; see Jianzipu (Qin Tablature) and Dapu (Realizing Qin Tablature), and compare Gongche Notation.

Sources

• 《中国音乐词典》编辑部编，中国音乐词典（人民音乐出版社）— 减字谱条目核对，未引用
• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry China — qin notation checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.