Guqin - Jieshi Diao Youlan 《碣石調‧幽蘭》 [Solitary Orchid]

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Jieshi Diao Youlan 《碣石調‧幽蘭》, meaning "Solitary Orchid in the Stone Tablet Mode" is probably the world's oldest written score for a specific musical instrument, dating before 903 AD, that is sufficently detailed enough to be able to reconstruct the melody to more or less how it would have been played over 1,000 years ago. It is preserved in a scroll which was discovered in Kyoto, Japan and has been dated to the Tang dynasty. The scroll is actually a copy of an earlier manuscript, which means it could date even earlier.

The original tablature was written in a longhand form which uses the plain written language of the time to systematically describe exactly how to play the melody, step-by-step. This is called 'wenzi pu' which is different from the simplified form used today, called 'jianzi pu'.

There has been many attempts to reconstruct the melody, and this is my attempt. I tried to follow the tablature exactly as it was written and used my own intuition on rather vague passages in the text.

Also, thought about deleting this in 2013 but am keeping it for reference of my previous dapu attempts.