On 5/15/2022 NYQS dapu yaji 紐約琴社打譜雅集 I presented my dapu of CZY 採真游
Slides and
Notes:
Slide1 : Following Jim's Daoist piece, I am going to talk about my dapu of another daoist piece, Cai Zhen You from XLTQT. I will briefly talk about the following topics. Motivation, About the title, The Epilogue of CZY from XLTQT, the tuning and mode, and how to perform.
In the fall of 2006,when I went to TW to meet some qin friends, I heard a friend talking about this piece, saying it is a daoist piece. I was very curious so I decided to study it myself in early 2007.
Slide2: About the title: Cai Zhen You.
Cai means to pick, to select, to gather
Zhen means real, the genuine, natural property
You means purposeful traveling
So I decided to translate it as Travelling to Gather Truth
The composer is unknown, it could have been composed before the Ming dynasty
The name of Cǎi Zhēn Yóu could be taken from the book of Zhuang Zi, Section FOURTEEN - THE TURNING OF HEAVEN (see the next slide)
Slide3: from the quote of ZHuang Zi, I feel this phrase could help my understanding of the Cai Zhen You: "Free and easy, he rested in inaction; plain and simple,"
Slide 4: at the end of this piece in XLTQT, there is this footnote, and I also find this phrase could help my understanding of this piece: "the mind of a hermit who was arrogant and stayed outside the world."
Slide 5: CZY is using standard tuning, and the mode is Jue Mode. You can tune your qin from the 1st to the 7th string as CDFGACD or 1 to 2 steps lower. For example, my silk string qin is tuned one step lower. In this tuning, I sing it as 2 3 5 6 7 2 3 in order to match the Jue Mode.
Slide 6: The decision of 2 3 5 6 7 2 3 was made recently after I recorded my playing and put in REAPER (Audio recording software) to generate a staff notation system for me to understand why it is in Jue Mode. Due to limited time, I will not spend too much time on this matter. But will just show this drawing of a scale that I think is the closest scale to CZY. I also analysed all the notes that have been used in each section. 3 (角) and 6 (羽) are used the most, then is the 7 (Ren Jue/Bian Gong)
Slide 7: To decide how to play, first I have to decide the phrasing, as this traditional notation does not give clear indication of phrasing. Then there are some parts that are not quite clear such as where to repeat.
This piece does not have complicated fingering. So the rest is just to play it and to decide the rhythm and a few parts where I need to decide the pitches.
Slide 8: Here are the places I need to decide where to repeat. In section 4, which is the only section that has hui positions between dots where I need to be careful for pitch decisions.
Slide 9: Such as here 78 and 67...
Slide 10: This is also in section 4. There is a wang lai technique here. It can be played as 11212 or 11717, I decided to play it as 11717.
And this is the only #5 note in the entire piece.
Slide 11: This is the ending part of CZY. You can see the ending phrase starts with Ruen Jue (ti) and ends with Yu Jue (La Mi) together. My understanding of Jue Mode is that it is based on the Chinese circle of fifths system, the Jue was generated from Yu, and Jue generates Ruen Jue. They are like a mother to son to grandson relationship. So one might find these three notes used quite a lot in a Jue Mode piece, especially in the beginning or/and end of a phrase or/and a section and the final ending.
Slide 12: To decide the rhythm. I have no method but using my intuition. Now I will play CZY on a silk string qin.
The following 6 pages of staff notation are from my own study of the mode. I am not an expert of transcribing music into staff notation. The rhythm presented in these pages are just for reference, as my playing of this piece will not be exactly the same every time.
Please listen to my playing on silk strings : https://youtu.be/WLfMxFm9TbI
