Yang Zongji was a qinist in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China. His Qin Studies Series is the most representative academic work on Guqin music culture in the early 20th century. In the book, he used the original five-element score to record Xide and scores of dozens of ancient qin music. However, few people today can read his music. Wu Ye, a doctor of musicology and associate researcher at the Central Conservatory of Music, interprets 26 Qinqin pieces, including Guangling SAN and You LAN, from the Qin Studies Series, using the current common simple notation style. Yang Zongji's Musical Score Interpretation of Qin Studies Series was recently published by the Culture and Arts Publishing House, bringing back the disappearing Guqin music score and sound of the Republic of China to our vision. It filled the gap in the nine Yi Qin sect Qin music heritage.

He founded the Nine Yi Qin sect

In the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China Qin strategist Yang Zongji, Yi Shi Bai, Yi Shan people in Ningyuan, Hunan Province. There are different opinions about Yang Zongji's life in the past hundred years. There are also many opinions about his birth and death year.

Wu Ye has been devoted to the research, inheritance and development of traditional Chinese music especially Guqin music for many years. She answered some questions in Yang Zongji's life and academic career. For example, the name Yang Zongji (Yang Shibai) has long been celebrated in the qin circle. Wu Ye learned through an interview with his nephew Yang Baolu that Yang Zongji was not originally named Yang, but was originally named Ouyang and originally named Ouyang Zongji. As for the year of his birth and death, Wu Ye considers 1864 to 1931 to be credible after synthesizing various theories.

Yang Zongji spent his youth in Ningyuan County, Yongzhou, Hunan Province. He began his enlightenment education in Guqin very early, but claimed that he could not play the music properly, and even wanted to give up once frustrated. In 1907, in his forties, Yang Zongji resigned and settled down in Beijing to learn the piano again. In 1908, he paid a visit to Huang Mianzhi, a representative figure of the Jinling Guqin Association. He felt that he could see the sun through the clouds.

Through the analysis of Huang Mianzhi and Yang Zongji's disciples Yang Baoyuan and Guan Pinghu, Wu Ye sorted out the origin, inheritance and development of Yang's qin learning. She divided Yang Zongji's maturity into three stages. The first stage is the accumulation stage. Yang Zongji practiced qin under the guidance of Huang Mianzhi and fully implemented Huang's qin theory. The second stage gradually broke through Huang's inherent norms and incubated his own propositions of piano science. In the third stage, the author initially formed his own theory of piano learning and established the playing system. The second and third stages of demarcation took place between 1917 and 1919. In 1917, Yi Qin was founded by Yang Chongji, and it was not until his strategist Hwang Myun-zhi died in 1919 that another organization was established. At that time, the Jin Shi Qin people s conference center was also transferred from Jin Ling Qin to Jiu Yi Qin.

The grandmaster of the Qin world

In the spring of 1922, Yang Zongji was hired to teach Guqin at Peking University, which brought him fame but also skepticism.  Xiao Youmei said in a Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Music that the Zhou Dynasty paid the most attention to music education, but most of the music officials were blind, so they had to use the method of hitting or hitting the ground. Along the way, people with eyes taught music in the way of blind people, and occasionally with words, but only memorized the general idea. However, Yang Zongji's teaching habit was to use feet instead of clappers, hitting the ground with his feet, and not focusing on teaching people to read music. Xiao Youmei's article is almost a direct satire of him.

Yang Zongji was not at all happy with his criticism. He created a five-element score and added chords, holes, ruler, and lyrics to the right side of the reduced character score. In response, he published the book "Qin Xueda" in 1924. Among them, four clapboard questions and answers, such as "Playing with feet instead of clapboard, can only be called grudging retro, why strange", emphasize the rhythm and rhythm of Chinese guqin music and answer the main criticism of the development of guqin in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, that is, the question of whether guqin has rhythm or not.

"Qin Knowledge Answer" includes twenty-eight questions on qin school, qin score, qin system, and clapboard. It expounds many views and researches on the development trend of Guqin by Yang Zongji, which is the essence of qin theory. It also describes Yang's clear thinking, firm belief, and active response in the face of questions in a society where western learning is progressive and Guqin development is declining. The image of a piano player who is devoted to the career of guqin.

In addition to the Knowledge of the Qin, Yang Zongji published the scores of the remaining volumes of the Qin Studies Series successively during the twenty years from 1911 to 1931, such as the Quintessence of the Qin, the Words of the Qin, the Score of the Qin, the Mirror of the Qin, and the Harmony of the Orchids, a total of 43 volumes. He continued to write until the last year of his life (1931). The Qin Studies Series not only records Yang Zongji's musical scores for learning and composing scores, but also describes his theories on qin and his thoughts on the fate of guqin. It is a treasure house for studying the development of guqin music art in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China.

"The Qin Study Series is his precious wealth. Contemporary Qin people should cherish it, study it, inherit it and carry it forward." Wu Ye remembers that when she was a child, her grandfather, Wu Jinglue, a piano player, used to read the books of Qin Learning and praised them for their outstanding achievements. When sorting out Wu Jinglue's 1963 mimeographed Lyre Textbook, I found my grandfather's comments on Yang Zongji. Zafuxi, an expert on qin, also commented, "In the past 30 years, Shi Baiqin has been the only one in Yandu and has been integrating great works again. The Qin disciples are all over the world, and the Qin Altar has become a great master."

Due to its rich content, numerous categories and difficult academic work, Qin Study Series has rarely been studied except as a classic reference. Wu Ye felt that it was necessary to make a systematic study of Yang Zongji and his great works. "In the process of studying Yang Zongji, the ancestor of the piano master, I truly realized how admirable his spirit of persisting in pursuit of piano skill, exploring piano learning and writing for 20 years is." In 2006, Wu Ye began to brew and collect information, which took five years to write "Yang Zongji and his < Qin Science Series >", published by the People's Music Publishing House, for the first time a comprehensive, systematic and in-depth analysis of Yang Zongji's contribution to the history of Guqin development, and admitted that he created a position of nine Yi sect in the Qin platform, and pointed out his shortcomings and historical limitations. As an appendix to "Research on Yang Zongji and his Qin Studies", music score interpretation is an important part of practical investigation, but it has not been published for more than ten years due to its huge volume, difficulties in raising publication funds and the impact of the epidemic.

Interprets and interprets 26 music pieces

In the Qin Studies Series, Yang Zongji recorded dozens of Qin tunes with five elements, forming a sizable text library of Qin tunes performance with actual records of current values. Two lines in the five elements are used to record the melody and rhythm of the qin music. The method is to add the ruler to the plate, and each line is one line. Although contemporary qin practitioners are still taught to reduce the character spectrum, but the public generally do not understand the reduction of the character spectrum, and on the scale point board notation has been unfamiliar. In addition, Yang's music has not been handed down by recording, so most of Yang's music has lost its actual performance function. Nowadays, there are few piano players in public who use Yang's scoring and playing methods to play the piano pieces included in the Qin Studies Series.

In order to reflect Yang's actual performance and qin theory, Wu Ye followed the practice of modern translation of ancient texts, taking dozens of qin songs recorded in five element notation as objects and interpreting them with the current common simple notation. The process of musical score interpretation is complicated and difficult. The original spectrum is the vertical row of the traditional spectrum, and the five elements spectrum is also divided into squares on the basis of the vertical row. The square structure of the arrangement of troops reflects Yang's theory of piano. When this vertical grid structure was converted into a contemporary horizontal grid structure, it created a series of problems. Therefore, interpretation should take into account Yang's theory of lyology and the norms of contemporary notation, so as to make interpretation more reasonable and conform to the reading and usage habits of contemporary readers. In addition, due to problems in notation, copying and other links, there were doubts and errors in the original score, so Wu Ye corrected the score one by one by referring to Qin Studies Series and other sources.

The recently published two volumes of Musical Score Interpretation of Yang Zongji's Qin Studies Series was edited again on the basis of the appendix of Yang Zongji and His Studies on Qin Studies Series. With the support of scholars such as Wu Wenguang, Lin Chen and Wang Hong, the author proofread more than 500 pages of musical scores for 10 times. The book was awarded as a project funded by the National Publishing Fund in 2020, and included in the national Key book publishing special plan during the 14th Five-Year Plan period in 2021. It contains 26 Qinqu songs composed by Yang, including the famous Guqin exercises such as Guangling SAN, Youlan, Fishing Song, Xiaoxiang Water Cloud, Li SAO, Hujia 18 Times, and Three Nong of Plum Blossom. Music interpretation makes these biographies accessible to more contemporary readers and Bridges the gap between traditional and contemporary music styles. The descendants of the Jiuyi Qin school, as well as those who are interested in studying the development of the aforesaid aforesaid music during the Republic of China, Yi Qin and scholars can use this Yi Qin interpretation to restore its actual performance function.

Of course, reading this book in conjunction with Yang Zongji and His Qin Series will provide readers with a more systematic and organic understanding of Yang Zongji and the Jiu Yi Qin sect. However, Yang Zongji and his Studies of Qin Studies were almost sold out and only appeared at a high price in the used book market. Wu Ye hopes that the relevant authorities can provide publishing support to republish the book, not only to let more readers know about Yang Zongji, the predecessor of the qin industry, but also to correct some mistakes and omisations published in the previous year, so that contemporary qin research results can be better protected and Guqin, an "intangible heritage" art, can be better passed on.