Lore of the Chinese Lute
- kch0079
- Oct 17, 2015
- 2 min read
Lore of the Chinese Lute: A history both musically and culturally of the Chinese lute.
Music has always been a favourite pastime of the Chinese scholar-official. During his first sojourn in Japan (1935-42), Dr. van Gulik became interested in the guqin, a zither-type stringed instrument dating back to remote antiquity. He dug deep into the literature on the subject and learned to play it under the instruction of a Chinese teacher.8 His first serious book, The Lore of the Chinese Lute, was published by Sophia University in Tokyo in 1940 (R.H. van Gulik and the Qin)
R. H. van Gulik is a very intelligent guqin(古琴) musician. Here is a short conversation form his fellow diplomat Chen Zhimai "When I first knew him, he was already a master of the instrument. It was his habit to carry the guqin, a rather clumsy thing, to various social functions in Chungking, and when the dinner was over, to play a few tunes for his friends' entertainment.9 I well recall one occasion, a hot summer evening, when we all attended a dinner party in a house perched precariously on the bank of the Chialing, a tributary of the Yangtse. After we all had had our share, of food and drinks, Dr. van Gulik started to play an ancient tune which, according to the Chinese, "
He combined the appreciation, spirit and Sinologist's gift of objective of a guqin player. Robert was inspired by the guqin player, he wrote a very creative research of the Chinese 7-string guqin which is a unique and incomparable work about the history and literature of the qins’ ideology with beautiful language and it is around historically contextualized treatment of the subject.
In the book, Gulik used a very unusual perceptive term of choice or name-in-translation, he used the word “lute” but not the common term of “zither” for the guqin, so readers can get the ideological meanings of palimpsest because “lute” means “since olden times in the West has been associated with all that is artistic and refined, and sung by poets." Also, people can understand how guqin became the remarkable symbol and expression of 3000 year history of Chinese literary culture from the tone of his work.
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