Jianzipu 

 

 

“Another kind of tablatures, known as the jianzipu 減字譜or abbreviated character tablature, invented by Chen Zhuo陳拙and Cao Rou曹柔, then emerged. Jianzipu written in the Song Dynasty (c 960 - 1279) and later times were based on the system devised by Cao Rou, which had gradually become standardised. The earliest extant jianzipu score is that of Guyuan [Ancient Grief] 古怨, a work by Jiang Baishi姜白石 (Jiang Kui姜夔, 1155 - 1221), a poet from the Song Dynasty, as part of a collection of his poems. 

Jianzipu is a notation system in which the execution, string, fingering, position for stopping (ie, position of the hui) and the relative time value of the note (eg, quick, slow, rest) are first written in Chinese characters. Then strokes are deducted from these characters or only the radicals of the characters are retained. Each thus “abbreviated” character may act as a symbol by itself or several “abbreviated” characters may be combined to form a compound character, which in turn represents a compound symbol. Most of the ancient qin scores available today are notated this way. Jianzipu scores are still useful to a certain extent in modern qin compositions, although nowadays most scores are written in a combination of jianzipu and Western stave or cipher notation.” (Chan Hing Yan)