Song Dynasty Guqin Culture And Literature

Guqin, also called Chinese lute, is one of the precious heritage of Chinese ancient culture. In ancient time, the educated Chinese considered it not only an instrument of music, but also a symbol of the harmony between the people and god. What's more, all legends of Guqin are combined to different aspects of Chinese history, philosophy and literature. Guqin's position in music history is very special. The specific social group of Guqin's player and audience had given Guqin a noble state among the other instruments, and guqin's development, research are all accomplished by the literates, who were the ruling estate of the country. When we are going to research Guqin and its culture, we just can't strip it out from its cultural matrix. The lute is a treasure of Chinese traditional culture. In order to evaluating the treasure more precisely, the author suggests using a multi-discipline perspective on the research work since this may be a comprehensive way of doing it.Song dynasty is one of a cultural summit in Chinese history; it's also an important period of Guqin's development. In song dynasty, literates considered Guqin as a symbol of their political ideal and a reflection of ancient ideal world. They further developed guqin's musical theory and made excelled achievement on both musical and literate level. Base on the effort made in Song dynasty, the art of Guqin was prosperous in Ming and Qing dynasty. To this extent, literate in Song had a remarkable influence on the traditional Guqin culture.This paper present here is a research on Guqin culture which is synthesis of Chinese traditional Music, etiquette, Confucianism and Daoism. It's not limited to Guqin music but is about all aspects of Guqin culture of Song dynasty. This paper contents 4 parts: Guqin musical culture of song, The impact of royalty And literate on Guqin, the contribution made by religious monks and A case study of the history of Guqin Written by Zhu Changwen in North-Song dynasty.As the quintessence of Chinese traditional culture, guqin has been placed on the UN list of Non-Material World Cultural Heritage, more and more people are studying Guqin playing as well as its culture matrix. However, till now, no research on Guqin culture in a very dynasty has ever been available, comprehensive thesis on this field are also rare. This paper is intended to fill the theoretical vacuum.