The artistic aesthetics of Guqin has been pursued continuously since the Guqin came into being, and it has never stopped.

The ancients chose tongzi to make the qin, in pursuit of the beauty of the sound of the qin, because the tongmu can emit a clear and both the sound of gold and stone, and it is not deformed. Ji Kang, a master of qin learning, put forward extremely high requirements on the production of qin: the tong of Yishan must be selected, "it is Sun Zhi, who is quasi-measured, and the most thoughtful, and made into an elegant qin. , Carpenter Shi Fenjin... mistaken for the rhinoceros elephant, borrowing the green, the string is the silk of the gardener, the emblem is the jade of Zhongshan. The sound and shape of the beautiful efforts.

For ancient man-made qin, the highest standard of timbre beauty is "nine virtues". If you have a good tone, you must also pursue a beautiful shape. "According to the legend of Shang Yao, there are more than 80 kinds of people who are good at playing the qin." There are so many styles, which is the result of people's continuous improvement of the beauty of the shape of the guqin.

When you have a good qin, from the beginning of playing, starting from the sitting position, the qin masters and sages have various regulations: you must face the five emblems and sit upright; when playing, you should drop your elbows and shoulders; Be quiet but not irritable"; "Listen to be quiet and considerate, not to chase sound" (Song's "Sounds of Ancient Times") and so on. This is only a basic requirement for beginners, so as to gradually form a dignified and elegant playing style, and also give the listener a visual beauty.

In order to achieve the ideal aesthetic effect when the ancients played the qin, it was necessary to put forward specific requirements for playing techniques and formulate aesthetic standards. In the early Ming Dynasty, Leng Qian's "Sixteen Methods of the Sound of the Qin" was a theoretical work that discussed the aesthetics of performance in a systematic and in-depth manner. The requirements for the sound of the piano are summarized in sixteen characters, namely light, loose, crisp, smooth, high, clean, clear, empty, secluded, odd, ancient, light, moderate, harmonious, fast, and Xu. Combined with the performance characteristics of the piano sound, it is explained one by one.

After Leng Qian, Xu Qingshan's "Qin Condition of Xishan" in the late Ming Dynasty was also a work on the aesthetics of Guqin music. In view of the inadequacies of the "Sixteen Laws of the Sound of the Qin", Xu expanded it into twenty-four situations, and mentioned "harmony" in the first place, and discussed it in detail. This is because "harmony" has been discussed continuously in Chinese traditional music theory since the pre-Qin period, and it has always been valued.