Mysterious Music Score - Three Books in One Volume

Author: Compiled by the Press
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2001-01-01
Features: The Miraculous Secret Scores was compiled in the early Ming Dynasty during the Hongxi year of Yisi (1425 AD) and is the earliest existing collection of guqin (Chinese zither) pieces. The 64 pieces collected in the book were carefully selected by the compiler from the "thousand and more tunes compiled by various guqin score collections" of that time, including many historically influential masterpieces. Due to the difficulty of preserving ancient music compared to other cultural relics, many ancient tunes have either been lost or altered beyond recognition. Thus, the ancient tunes preserved in guqin scores were considered by the Tang people as "the old sounds of Chu and Han passed down by guqin players." Ancient tunes are an indispensable basis for summarizing the experience of predecessors in musical composition and exploring the laws of traditional music. Although over a hundred ancient score collections have preserved thousands of tunes in the past five centuries, the historical value of the ancient musical works preserved in The Miraculous Secret Scores remains the highest.
The entire book is divided into three volumes. The first volume, titled The Ancient Divine Masterpieces, contains 16 pieces. The compiler believed these were "the ancient zither pieces that were secrets not passed down by the ancients," and he intentionally selected those with higher historical value from the contemporary tunes, labeling them as "ancient." For example, The Gallant Strum of Guangling was considered "to have two versions in the world." After comparing them, the compiler chose "the correct version." Similarly, the Song Dynasty had divided The High Mountain into four sections and The Flowing Water into eight sections, but the compiler adopted the Tang Dynasty's version that "did not divide into sections." These ancient scores were already no longer taught at that time, so the compiler was unable to mark the phrasing. Their score formats and structures preserved more ancient characteristics. The second and third volumes, titled The Divine Masterpieces Beyond the Clouds, contain 48 pieces. These scores were the compiler's "tunes previously received," including those originating from the Han Dynasty such as The Peacock Flying in the Morning and The Chu Song; those adapted from the Jin Dynasty's flute tunes such as The Plum Blossom in Two Styles; those passed down from the Northern and Southern Dynasties' Western folk songs such as The Nightingale Crying; the popular large and small Hu Jia tunes from the Tang Dynasty; and works by the famous masters of the Song Dynasty's Zhe School such as Gu Chuwang's Surging Water and Clouds and Mao Minzhong's The Woodcutter's Song. These works were long active in the ancient guqin scene and possessed enduring artistic vitality. The compiler, through inheritance and teaching, had practical experience in performing them, so they "were marked with phrasing," and their score formats differed significantly from the first volume. These two volumes were named Beyond the Clouds because the Song Dynasty's Zhe School had a massive score collection titled The Miraculous Clouds of the Purple Mist Cave, which contained over 400 pieces. Under its influence, the Yuan Dynasty compiled the book The Divine Masterpieces Beyond the Clouds. The name "Beyond the Clouds" indicates that it directly originated from the Song and Yuan Dynasty's Zhe School, inheriting the most prestigious scores in history.