Recording of Autumn Wind Song #
Mid-september I decided to record myself playing the guqin. The selected tune was Autumn Wind Song, Qiu feng ci 秋風詞 in chinese.
The audio track is available from the Internet Archive website and may be found searching for the track title or just using the keyword guqin (shortcut). During the last gathering, David filmed Joan playing this one.
There are just few guqin tunes which can be sung while playing and Qiu Feng Ci is one of them. Part of the lyrics are a poem by the great Tang dynasty poet Li Bo 李白. However, I did not dare to sing while playing it.
Li Bo’s poem is entitled Three, Five, Seven Words, and just following you’ll find the translation (by Fredric Lieberman):
Fresh autumn breeze
bright autumn moon
falling leaves collect and scatter
winter ravens roost then flutter
when, my love will we meet again?
now, tonight I feel only sorrow
The remaining lyrics for this tune are also another poem, but by another lesser poet.
Here you have this beautiful tune’s original tablature. The tablature is read from right to left, from top to bottom. The first column is the tune title. The second column, fourth column, and so on, are just the lyrics. The third column, the fifth column, and so on are the fingering instructions. There’s a column which should not be considered, the twelfth which holds the qin pu title and it’s just where the sheet folds.
As you may see, there’s a correspondence between plucks and words. You can listen a sung version by Charlie Huang.
You can find the fingering symbols described in the Meian Qinpu translation published by Cítara China and freely available at Google Books.