Music of Guqin

Lecture and Performance of Guqin by Dai Wei, Shanghai Conservatory of Music

Thursday, October 10, 2013
4:30 PM - 6:30 PM
Young Research Library Presentation Room

The qin is also known as the guqin ("ancient zither") and as the seven-string zither. Its music was composed and played by the literati in ancient China. Traditional qin music is mainly solo; however, it is also used in qin songs (qin'ge), and since the Qing dynasty, an ensemble format of qin and xiao (endblown flute) has also become popular. Traditional qin music relates closely to Chinese poetry and Chinese paintings. In today's talk, Prof. Dai Wei will introduce traditional qin music and perform eight classical pieces.

Dai Wei holds a Ph.D. in Chinese music history and has been named a "dawn scholar" by the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission. She is an associate professor in the Department of Musicology of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, and an adjunct associate professor of qin in the Conservatory's Department of National Instrumental Music. She is active in a number of Chinese scholarly and performance associations, and in the UNESCO-affiliated International Council for Traditional Music. In addition to numerous audio recordings, she has performed at several major concerts in China and Japan, and more recently at the Huntington Library in San Marino and UC Berkeley. Her next public concert will be in San Diego on October 12th, 2013.

Since her appointment at the Shanghai Conservatory in 2000, Dai Wei has offered several courses on qin performance and history. Starting in 2008, ten theses written by undergraduates and graduate students under her mentorship have been awarded prizes in national competitions; seven of these were on qin-related topics. 

Cosponsored with the UCLA Richard C. Rudolph East Asian Library

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