Yu Qiao Wen Da first appears in the Ming dynasty collection Xin Zhuang Taiyin Xu Pu. This version was transmitted by Wang Jianhou, based on the Kumu Chan Qin Pu score, and unfolds in nine sections.
The melody is flowing and expansive — a conversation between a fisherman and a woodcutter, their voices alternating and interweaving, axes and oars sounding against each other in the music. The piece expresses the spirit of two men who have chosen the mountains and rivers over the world of affairs: at ease in green hills and clear water, content with what they have, asking nothing more of life than this.
In the guqin tradition, the fisherman and the woodcutter are not simply laborers. They are the classical image of the scholar who has stepped back from ambition — who has found, in simplicity, something that ambition never could have given him.
The dialogue between them is not an argument It is a recognition.
Recorded by Mei Yueqiang. Part of the ongoing series presenting his complete surviving recordings.
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