Guqin and Historically Informed Performances of Early Chinese Music

The Chinese silk string qin zither remains basically unchanged for at least 1700 years, but legends take it back much earlier. As the chosen instrument of the Chinese literati it has close connections with the two great Chinese philosophies: Daoism and Confucianism. And because the literati liked to write things down it has the only non-Western detailed written music tradition pre-dating Western influence. In this lecture John Thompson will discuss the history and philosophy of the qin, and will also give some description of how he reconstructs them, with examples.