Se (musical instrument)
Se ( Chinese 瑟 ) is an ancient Chinese vaulted board zither . The plucked instrument has 25 to 50 strings and a range of up to five octaves.
Origin and Distribution
The history of the se goes back to earlier Chinese history . It was one of the most important stringed instruments in China , along with the vaulted board zither guqin . The se was during the Western Zhou Dynasty and the two periods of the Spring and Autumn Annals, a very popular instrument. The surviving specimens were excavated in Hubei and Hunan provinces and in the Jiangnan region . Other sites were Jiangsu , Anhui , Shandong and Liaoning . The tomb of Margrave Yi of Zeng (in the late 5th century BC) in Hubei Province was a treasure trove of ancient Chinese instruments, including a complete set of the bianzhong ( Chinese carillon ), the se , the guqin , stone carillon and a drum. The margrave's musical entourage, which consisted of 21 girls and women, was also buried with him. During the Warring States' era, the first types of guzheng developed from the se . Therefore, it is mentioned that the guzheng is essentially a smaller and simpler version of the se (with fewer strings).
According to legend was Fu Xi the se created, so it is expected that the se already during the Xia Dynasty arose. It was also passed down that the word for music yue (樂) is composed of the characters si for silk (絲) and mu for wood (木), and that this is a representation of se . There are many mentions of the se in Chinese literature , as in Shijing (The Classic of Poetry) and Lunyu (The Analects of Confucius).
The se was always considered to be a high-quality musical instrument and was already played in the Zhou dynasty with ritual music for offerings.
A similar instrument, called a seul , is derived from the se and is still played twice a year in South Korea for Confucian ritual music at the Munmyo Shrine in Seoul. In Vietnam this instrument was called sắt and was used to a limited extent together with the cầm (equivalent to the Chinese guqin ).
Design
The strings of the se were made of twisted silk in different thicknesses. Lüshi Chunqiu commented on the number of strings of the se that a five-string had become a 15-string and Shun, when he came to power, added eight more strings to the se , so that it now had over 23. Another tradition states that the se originally had 50 strings, and the Shiban later changed this to 25 strings, which led to the statement that a large se had 50 and a medium se only had 25 strings. Another tradition says that Fuxi created a 50-string se (called a sha) and the Yellow Emperor reduced it to 25 strings. There is also said to be a small se that only has 13 strings (like the Japanese koto ). However, archaeological excavations have also found those with 19, 23, 24 and 25 strings. The number of strings differed from place to place, as did the length of the instrument.
All excavated se have a similar construction, namely a flat long board made of wood. The ceiling of the se is slightly vaulted. The strings are stretched on wooden pegs. In order to string the instrument with the strings, a butterfly knot must be tied at the beginning of the string, which is pulled through a bamboo stick. Then the strings are pulled over the bridge and over the top as well as over the bridge at the other end and finally fed into the instrument.
Although the se and the guqin are both old zithers, they are still distinct and diverse instruments.
Style of play
There are very few that the se play that was largely died during the old days. The only significant se player in the 20th century was Wu Jinglüe, who was primarily a guqin player. There are few surviving examples of musical tablature for the instrument; most exist in Qinpu, in which the Se was used to accompany the Qin.
Recently, a new interest in music arose and some musicians began to study it. There are also some music factories, the modern se manufactured wrapped with nylon metal strings. But the instrument has yet to be thoroughly explored using modern media before it can be fully accepted as a playable instrument for general musical purposes.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jin Jie: Chinese Music (= Introductions to Chinese Culture. ). Updated edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 2011, ISBN 978-0-521-18691-9 , p. 52.
- ^ A b c Sharron Gu: A Cultural History of the Chinese Language. McFarland & Company, Jefferson NC 2012, ISBN 978-0-7864-6649-8 , p. 14.
- ^ "Brief Bio of Yadong Guan - Sacred Music From China" ( Memento of August 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), Sarnia Concert Association