Ancient instruments revive the music of the past
Print Edition
BEHIND every performer who plays Chinese classical music is a craftsman who made the instrument.
Shen Zhengguo, the deputy director of Shanghai Guqin Study Association, takes that relationship very seriously.
After working in a government-owned Chinese musical instrument factory for more than three decades, Shen left to create his own studio for restoring, studying and promoting authentic ancient Chinese musical instruments.
Shanghai Daily talked with Shen as he restored guqin, a seven-stringed instrument, and other pieces for the Minhang Museum.
“I believe restoring old instruments is not just about showing people how the ancient instruments looked but also giving them the chance to appreciate how they sounded,” he said.
Shen has been involved with Chinese folk music all his life. In 1976, the then 14-year-old, graduated from primary school and began work as an apprentice at the Shanghai No. 1 Factory for Traditional Chinese Folk Music.
The six-year apprenticeship was bittersweet. He was assigned to learn the craft of making sheng, a wind instrument. The work was very tedious. Shen had to file bamboo and blow the reed repeatedly to get the right sound.
Bitter start
“My hands were covered with calluses and my mouth had a foul taste,” he said. “There was no easy work.”
But Shen said the painstaking experience was worth it. It gave him an appreciation that went beyond mere carpentry skills. He came to appreciate the cultural importance of traditional instruments, which led him to take up the study of calligraphy and seal cutting. He took evening university courses to improve his knowledge.
In 1984, many of the old craftsmen working for the factory were set to retire. Shen was assigned to record all their experiences and skills in making instruments.
That was a turning point. Each craftsman talked to him at length about his years in the factory. Shen absorbed it all like a sponge.
“There are many tricks to making a good instrument,” he said. “For example, the bows for the erhu, a two-stringed instrument, vary from production site to production site. The bows made in Fujian Province have different shapes and create different sounds from those made in Anhui or Zhejiang provinces. They also taught me a lot about the best materials to use in making instruments and where to find them.”
Armed with all the knowledge he learned, Shen set out to reincarnate ancient instruments.
In 2008, he established his own studio, which he calls Dahetang. That translates as “the hall of grand tunes.”
One of his goals is to re-create instruments from different eras.
“I want to revive the essence of culture behind the instruments as much as possible,” he said. “To revive lost masterpieces.”
That was no easy task.
“Sometimes I felt nauseous and dizzy after a day working at the studio, and the result of the work wasn’t satisfactory,” he said. “But I kept going and the discomfort was worthwhile because I learned from the experience.”
It’s a slow process. A guzheng, which is a plucked instrument of 21 or 25 strings, can take Shen a whole month to make, from choosing the wood to giving it a final polish and tuning.
“It is like raising a newborn baby,” he said. “Usually, we don’t show a baby to people until it’s at least one month old.”
Shen has adopted strict standards for every instrument he remakes, including those for the Minhang Museum. Many of the instruments were originally made in the 1930s, when Chinese folk musicians formed the Datong Music Society to archive musical scores and improve their instruments. Many of the instruments the society made later became the prototypes of modern Chinese musical instruments.
Shen said he wasn’t particularly keen on the recent “Impression, Chinese Music” project undertaken by the China Central Chinese Orchestra, which claimed to be reviving the ancient music depicted in the Dunhuang frescoes in the caves along the ancient Silk Road.
The project used dozens of remade ancient instruments to play scores from the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD). The Dunhuang murals were painted hundreds of years ago. Based on those murals, 86 historical musical instruments were reincarnated. The concerts, which began in late August in Beijing, created quite a cultural debate about authenticity.
Dream of revival
Shen said the goal of the project was admirable and the concerts had great visual impact, but the scores played were not actually the same as the music of the Tang Dynasty.
“For example, in the Tang Dynasty, the pipa, a plucked string instrument, was made from silk and not the steel commonly used today,” he said. “The tone quality between the two materials is quite different. Also, in ancient times, a flat pick rather than a fingernail was used when playing the pipa.”
Shen said ancient craftsmen used jade, hawksbill carapace and mother-of-pearl as ornamentation on the instruments, but the “Impression, Chinese Music” project used paint.
“They saw a flower painted in the frescos, and they painted a flower on the instrument,” he said. “I don’t think it makes a good replica.”
Shen said he has a dream to revive the ancient Tang music in a more authentic manner.
“I want to gather together some musicians and train them for months on the ancient ways of playing and give them high-quality replicas of the ancient instruments,” he said. “That would be a true revival of the golden age of Chinese music.”
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