江苏省古琴的魅力与传承：从《中国古今音乐考》到“九霄环佩”

法国总统马克龙访华时，接待方特别展示了千古名琴“九霄环佩”，并为其演奏了一曲《流水》。《高山流水》原本是一首曲子，象征着知音，到了唐代才分为《高山》和《流水》两首曲子。

“九霄环佩”是一把唐琴，琴腹中刻有制作年代——至德丙申，即公元756年。现存的古琴中，有刻晋款和隋款的，但专家大多怀疑其真实性。唐琴是目前无争议的最早古琴，国内仅存15张（一说17张）。“九霄环佩”制作完成时，李白55岁，杜甫44岁。

“九霄环佩”的展示引发了“古琴热”，许多网友好奇：古琴特色鲜明，为何普及度不高？要回答这个问题，这个需要回顾历史。

The French missionary Jean-Joseph-Marie Amiot highly praised the achievements of the Chinese in the field of music in his work "Research on Ancient and Modern Chinese Music", believing that the Chinese were the first nation to master acoustics and widely absorbed the essence of this science. "Research on Ancient and Modern Chinese Music" is the first book to systematically introduce traditional Chinese music to Europe. In the book, Amiot gave a very high evaluation of the guqin, believing that the ancient Greek lyre, Pythagoras' harp, and his innovation of the four-stringed zither, etc., were all first attempted by the Chinese.

Recently, during French President Macron's visit to China, the host specially displayed the ancient famous guqin "Jiuxiao Huanpei" and played a piece of "Flowing Water" for him. "High Mountain and Flowing Water" was originally a piece of music, symbolizing a bosom friend, and was divided into "High Mountain" and "Flowing Water" in the Tang Dynasty.

"Jiuxiao Huanpei" is a Tang Dynasty guqin, with the production date inscribed in the belly of the guqin - Zhide Bing Shen, that is, 756 AD. Among the existing guqins, there are those inscribed with Jin and Sui dynasties, but experts mostly doubt their authenticity. Tang Dynasty guqin is the earliest guqin without controversy at present, and there are only 15 (some say 17) remaining in China. When "Jiuxiao Huanpei" was made, Li Bai was 55 years old and Du Fu was 44 years old.

The display of "Jiuxiao Huanpei" has triggered a "guqin fever", and many netizens are curious: The guqin has distinctive characteristics, why is its popularity not high? To answer this question, we need to look back at history.

It should be specially explained that there was the term "guqin" in the Tang Dynasty, but it was different from the concept of today. Today, it specifically refers to traditional Chinese plucked string instruments, and this term started in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China. Before that, it was directly called "qin". For the convenience of writing, this article uniformly calls it "guqin", but the author hopes to remove the word "gu" and directly call it "qin", because "qin" is its formal name that has been passed down for thousands of years.