"Jieshi Diao·Youlan" is the earliest extant guqin score in my country, and it is also the only qin music that has been preserved in the way of written notation.

The original copy of this score is hidden in Japan. The late Qing scholar Yang Shoujing discovered the Baosutang copy of this score when he visited Japan from 1880 to 1884. It was later copied and engraved by Li Shuchang, the then minister to Japan, and included in the "Guyi Congshu" compiled and printed by him. It was published in the tenth year of Guangxu (1884).

The spectrum of "Jieshi Diao·Youlan" included in the "Qinqu Collection" is photocopied according to the photos donated by Nishigamo Shinkoin, Kyoto, Japan, and is actually the mother copy of "Gu Yiben". There are 4954 Chinese characters in the whole score, and the music is recorded by describing the playing techniques of the qin music in detail, such as the fingering of the left and right hands, the sequence of the strings, and the emblem position.

(Such two sentences as "Ye lying on the middle finger ten and a half inch Xu's businessman, index finger and middle finger hold the palace businessman" in the text spectrum, only one symbol is needed in the minus character spectrum):

From the preface of the score, we can see that the existing "Jie Shi Diao·You Lan" was passed down to Wang Shuming before his death by Qiu Ming (493-590), a native of Lianghuiji in the Southern Dynasties, and should be regarded as an old song of the Six Dynasties. Qiu Ming was a hermit at the end of the Liang Dynasty. He was hidden in Jiuyi Mountain. He died in Danyang County in the tenth year of Emperor Kaihuang of the Sui Dynasty (590) at the age of 97. He is proficient in the qin, and he is excellent in the piece "You Lan", and "his voice is low and his ambition is far, but he cannot be taught by others". However, judging from the handwriting and fingering of the manuscript, it is suspected that it was transcribed in the early Tang Dynasty. Yang Shoujing pointed out that Baosutang's shadow manuscript "the calligraphy is vigorous, the characters are flying, and the trial is the original work of Li and Tang people".

After this score was published in China, Yang Zongji, a qin master in the capital, conducted pioneering research and notation on this score from 1911 to 1914, and published "Youlan Ancient Fingering Solution", "Youlan Minus Character Score" and "Youlan Five Elements Score". ". In the 1950s, other qin masters such as Guan Pinghu, Yao Bingyan, Xu Lisun, and Wu Zhenping made notation for the qin piece "Jieshi Diao·Youlan", and their related research was further deepened.

The tune of "Jieshi tune" has a very early origin, and it is generally believed that it was played as a dance piece in the Wei and Jin Dynasties. As early as the Three Kingdoms period, Cao Cao wrote the poem "Stepping out of the Xiamen Xing" in his Qing Dynasty business music. "Nanqi Book·Lezhi" says: "Jie Shi Diao, the speech of Emperor Wu of Wei, Jin thought it was "Jie Shi Dance Song", and its song has four chapters." The spectrum of "Jie Shi Diao·Youlan" is also divided into four beats, which is exactly the same as The structure of the "four chapters of its song" is consistent.

"You Orchid" was first a famous song in "Chu tune". The poet Xie Huilian of the Southern Dynasties recorded in "Xue Fu" that "the ballad of Chu is composed of "You Orchid". It was later adapted into sequ, jian, and qin, and many literati also wrote poems to describe it. For example, Lu Ji of the Jin Dynasty said in "The Journey to the Southeastern Corner of Sunrise": "The sad song is voiceless, and the elegant rhythm broadcasts "You Orchid"." In Northern Wei Luxi's "Two Songs of Satire Zhen Dinggong", he said: "What is the tune of the aid qin?" You Orchid" and "White Snow"." Liu Yun of the Liang Dynasty said in his "Poems on Pounding Clothes": "In the clear night, I urged the column to play "You Orchid"." Sima Xiangru's "Beauty Fu" also mentioned in the Han Dynasty: "Fu Xian is "You Orchid", "The Orchid" The song "Bai Xue"." It can be seen that the qin piece "You Orchid" was already a very famous qin piece during the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties.

Regarding the content of this qin piece, the original score does not describe the situation. However, Yang Shoujing's "Ancient Records of Classics and Books" from the title of the original score "also known as "Yi Lan", which is the content of expressing unmet talent and untimely birth. According to "Qin Cao", in the Spring and Autumn Period, when the sage Confucius traveled around the world, he was not appreciated and used by the princes of various countries. On his way from Wei State to Jin State, he saw the lush orchids and miscellaneous flowers in the hidden valley. The grass is in the company, which touched the self-inflicted feeling of being under-appreciated and untimely, and created a qin song called "Yi Lan". On the way, he played the piano and exclaimed:

Habitual valley wind, rain with overcast.

The son returns home, and is sent to the wild.

What a heaven, nowhere.

Free and easy Kyushu, nowhere.

The world is secretive and does not know the wise.

Getting old, getting old.

Its words are like complaining or crying, like resentment and anger, like a lyrical song of sadness and sorrow. It expresses the author's unhappy mood through the description of the lush and fragrant orchids in the deep mountains and valleys. Such themes and contents were especially suitable for the ideological state of some gentry literati who were dissatisfied with the status quo and could not find a way out.

However, it is obviously not credible to say that this piece was composed by Confucius. There are also "Yi Lan" and "You Orchid" in the existing qin scores. The solution of the problem generally follows the theory of "Qin Cao", but its tune has nothing in common with "Jie Shi Tiao · You Lan". In addition, in the fifty-eighth volume of Yuefu Poetry Collection, there is a lyric "You Orchid" written by Bao Zhao of the Southern Dynasty Song Dynasty. Judging from the sentence in the poem, "the flower falls and knows the end, and the empty and sorrowful sitting is wrong." The orchids in the deep mountains and valleys are used to express the underappreciated and unsatisfactory mood, which is consistent with the mood of the existing tunes.

"You Orchid" consists of four stanzas. At the end of each stanza, there is a roughly similar tune with grief, anger and sentimentality, which means summarizing the whole stanza. If it is related to Cao Cao's poem "Stepping Out of the East Gate", the end of each paragraph is also "Fortunately even, the song ends with Yongzhi". Therefore, on the surface, the structure of "You Orchid" seems to be a four-paragraph structure with a closing, but this is only seen in terms of lyrics and macroscopic paragraphs. In fact, the structure of "You Orchid" is quite varied and very logical.

The tune of "You Orchid" is elegant and euphemistic. After an introduction at the beginning, the scales rise gradually, accompanied by ups and downs, showing a kind of bumpy pursuit and progress. At the end of the paragraph, there is a gradually ascending glissando in the bass area, showing deep anger and exclamation.

The second paragraph expresses the melancholy and melancholy feelings through the presentation, comparison and reproduction of the clear overtone theme. In the subsequent expansion paragraphs, the musical mood is further ups and downs and deepened. At the end of the piece is an exclamation of mixed feelings.

The tune style of "Jie Shi Tiao · You Lan" is very unique. Its scale form is a seven-tone scale with inflection, which is far more varied than a simple pentatonic scale, and the length of its phrases also varies greatly. The basic tonality of the whole piece is the C palace tune, and the contrasting ones mainly use E Shang, E angle, etc., which has some relationship with the three tunes of Qing, Ping and Se at that time. In Guan Pinghu's score of "Jie Shi Diao · Youlan", the tuning is in positive tune, that is, the C palace is played by the F palace. The position of its palace sounds has not changed, so in the passages where the E quotient appears, the possibility of two-tone interweaving is actually formed.

In Xu Lisun's "Jieshi Diao·Youlan" score, he adopted the "slow-angle tone" tuning method, that is, the yellow bell is used as the palace (the first string), and the first to seventh strings are C, D, E, G, A, c, d, due to the relationship of the tuning method, show a transition from the C house to the E house in the second paragraph, and the third paragraph shows the interweaving of the two tones. In terms of fingering, this piece mostly uses the right-handed head fingering, which shows the characteristics of "more sound and less rhythm" in the early qin music.

As a musical instrument with profound cultural connotations in the history of human music, the guqin pursues not the external performance, but the return to the heart and the sustenance of the heart.

The preface of "Jie Shi Diao · You Lan" states that "the sound is small and the ambition is far", which is the inherent musical quality of the qin music. The secluded and quiet musical artistic conception is in harmony with the natural environment of the empty valley and the orchid, expressing the sentimentality, depression and loneliness deep in the heart. And this kind of injury is not timely, and the gentleman's conduct of loving Lan Fang has won the resonance of later literati.