Confucius learns the qin: ten days on one piece, and strings and song unceasing

One room, two people, one qin. The student plays and the teacher listens.

The student is playing the same piece he has been playing for ten days. The teacher is growing a little impatient. He is a court musician of the state of Lu, he has taught many people, and he has never seen a student this slow. He says: you can go on to the next piece.

The student does not look up. He says: I know the tune well now, but I have not yet grasped its measure.

The student is Confucius.

Ten days without moving on

The story comes from the biography of Confucius in the Shiji (the "Records of the Grand Historian", written by Sima Qian around 100 BCE). Sima Qian tells it in careful detail:

Confucius studied the qin with Shi Xiangzi, and for ten days he did not advance. Shi Xiangzi said: "You may add something new." Confucius said: "I have practised the tune, but I have not yet grasped its measure." After a while the teacher said: "You have practised the measure; you may add something new." Confucius said: "I have not yet grasped its intent." After a while the teacher said: "You have practised the intent; you may add something new." Confucius said: "I have not yet grasped the man who made it." After a while, Confucius grew solemn and fell into deep thought, and then looked up serenely into the distance with a far-reaching air. He said: "I have grasped the man. He is dark of complexion and tall of stature, his eyes gaze far as if across a great distance, and he is like one who rules the four quarters. Who could have made this but King Wen?" Shi Xiangzi rose from his mat and bowed twice, saying: "My own teacher said that this piece is called the Air of King Wen."

The "measure" is the rhythm and underlying rules; the "intent" is what the music is trying to say. King Wen of Zhou was the virtuous ruler whose son founded the Zhou dynasty around 1046 BCE, and a model king for Confucius.

The teacher rising to bow to his student is the center of gravity of the story. Shi Xiangzi knew the name of the piece, but he knew only the name. Confucius did not know the name, yet he saw the man in the music. The knowledge was with the teacher; the understanding was with the student.

Four levels

Later generations have quoted this passage again and again because it divides "learning a piece" into four levels, each marked by a single word:

1. The tune (曲, qu): the melody. The hands can play it from beginning to end.
2. The measure (数, shu): rhythm, structure and rules. Playing it correctly, knowing where to go faster and slower, where a section begins and where to pause.
3. The intent (志, zhi): what the piece is meant to express. Playing it with meaning, so that a listener knows what the music is saying.
4. The man (为人, weiren): seeing, through the piece, the person who made it. What kind of person he was, and why he wrote this.

A learner today will find these levels strikingly modern: the tune is reading the score, the measure is rhythm and technique, the intent is the meaning of the piece, the man is style and spirit. The road from beginner to mature player runs exactly this way, and most people stop at the second level. Many can play a piece correctly; few can play it with meaning; very few can see a person in it.

One detail is often overlooked. Between each stage Sima Qian writes "after a while", not "the next day". The ten days were only the beginning, and the whole process may have taken months, more time on one piece than any student Shi Xiangzi had taught.

The Kongzi Jiayu ("School Sayings of Confucius"), in its chapter on understanding music, records the same episode. The wording differs slightly, but the skeleton is the same.

Who Shi Xiangzi was

The "Shi" in Shi Xiangzi is not a surname but a title meaning court musician. Before the Qin unification such musicians were often blind, the office passed down in families, and the title preceded a personal name: Shi Kuang, Shi Juan, Shi Xiang. The Analects, the collection of Confucius's sayings, tells in its "Weizi" chapter how the court musicians of Lu scattered, and that "Xiang, who struck the chime stones, went to the sea"; this Xiang is usually identified as Shi Xiangzi, a Lu court musician expert at the stone chimes who also taught the qin.

A court musician teaching the qin to a political figure in his thirties was nothing unusual. The qin was required of the educated class; the Book of Rites says a gentleman does not put away his qin and se without cause. What the musician had never seen was a student who learned so slowly and so deeply.

Strings and song unceasing

Confucius's life is inseparable from the qin. Here "the qin" means not just the instrument but a way of living and a way of teaching: xiange (弦歌), "strings and song", singing poetry while playing.

The Records of the Grand Historian say that when he edited the 305 poems of the Book of Songs, the oldest collection of Chinese poetry, he "sang every one of them to strings", seeking to bring them into accord with the ancient court music. In other words, for Confucius the Book of Songs was not something read but something sung. He sang all three hundred and more, one by one.

The Analects records that at Wucheng, a small town governed by his disciple Ziyou through ritual and music, he "heard the sound of strings and song". Confucius smiled and said: "Why use an ox-cleaver to kill a chicken?", meaning, why such grand methods for so small a place? Ziyou answered earnestly that the master himself had taught that a gentleman who learns the Way loves others, and common people who learn it are easy to lead. Confucius told his disciples: he is right; I was only joking.

It is one of the rare light moments in the Analects, and its background sound is strings and song.

The Zhuangzi, in its chapter "Autumn Floods", describes Confucius surrounded by hostile men at a place called Kuang, in real danger, while "his strings and song did not cease". His disciple Zilu came in and asked how the master could be in the mood to play. Confucius answered:

I have tried to avoid hardship for a long time and could not escape it; that is fate. I have sought success for a long time and could not reach it; that is the times. One who knows that hardship and success depend on fate and the times does not fear great danger.

And when he had finished, the siege was indeed lifted.

For Confucius, strings and song were a method of education, not entertainment: a poem sung is remembered, and ritual joined with music is absorbed. In later Chinese, a place where "strings and song never ceased" is one whose schooling was never interrupted. A musical practice became a name for education itself.

The two Orchids

Legend says that Confucius traveled from state to state without finding a ruler who would employ him. On the way back from Wei to Lu he saw an orchid blooming alone in a deep valley and sighed: "The orchid ought to be the fragrance of kings, yet here it flourishes alone, in the company of common grasses." He stopped his carriage, played the qin, and composed a piece. The Qin Cao ("Qin Melodies"), a collection of stories behind qin pieces attributed to the Eastern Han scholar Cai Yong, records it as Yilan Cao (猗兰操, "Air of the Luxuriant Orchid"); later it was also called Youlan Cao, "Air of the Secluded Orchid".

This story and the story of learning the qin form a pair. One is about how he learned; the other is about how he composed. For whom does an orchid bloom in a deep valley? For whom does Confucius teach his learning in an age of disorder? That is the meaning of the piece. The Tang writer Han Yu wrote a poem called Yilan Cao in response to Confucius's piece:

How lush the orchid, how its fragrance spreads. If no one picks it to wear, what harm is that to the orchid?

One clarification. The Jieshi Diao Youlan (幽兰, "Secluded Orchid in the Jieshi Mode") that survives today, the only qin piece preserved in wenzipu (文字谱, the earlier prose notation), in a Tang-dynasty manuscript kept in Japan, is not the same work as Confucius's Yilan Cao. The preface to that score says it was handed down by Qiu Ming of the Liang dynasty (502–557), and its content has nothing to do with Confucius. The shared name causes confusion. For Jieshi Diao Youlan itself there is a separate article (in Chinese).

Why the qin matters to Confucianism

The "Record of Music" chapter of the Book of Rites says:

Music is the harmony of heaven and earth.

In the Confucian system, music is not an art but part of the order of things. When sound is harmonious, people's hearts are harmonious; when hearts are harmonious, society is harmonious. The qin is the instrument best suited to this system. Its voice is quiet, unsuited to noisy banquets, and suited to one person or a few listening in stillness.

So the rule that a gentleman keeps his qin and se by him was not because every scholar loved music, but because the qin was a tool of self-cultivation. Confucius insisting on "grasping the man" follows the same logic: the qin leads to a person, and the person to virtue. You play a piece to see a person in it; you learn the qin to become a certain kind of person.

This also explains how he could play while surrounded at Kuang. The qin was not something to play only in the mood; it was part of who he was, as a scholar under siege goes on reading.

For learners

The story of Confucius learning the qin has at least one direct use for players today: do not hurry to change pieces.

Learners today easily rush on to the next piece as soon as they can play one through. After a year they "know" a dozen and can play none worth hearing. That is Shi Xiangzi's "you may add something new", the road Confucius refused.

Take Xianweng Cao, the short piece most learners start with. Knowing it with the hands is the first level. Steady rhythm and a clear distinction between san yin (open string), an yin (stopped note) and fan yin (harmonic) is the second. Bringing out the quiet, contemplative quality of its repeated phrases is the third. As for the fourth, what kind of person stands behind the piece, that probably takes many years of playing.

Ten days without moving on is not slowness. It is learning a piece all the way through. To choose a piece in this spirit, each entry in the guide to classic repertoire (in Chinese) gives the meaning of the piece and who it suits. Pick one, and then do not hurry to change it.