Yu Ge is one of the Four Great Pieces of the Guangling School — and perhaps the most deceptively simple of them all.
The piece is attributed to Liu Zongyuan (773–819), the Tang dynasty poet and essayist who was exiled to Yongzhou in his prime. Stripped of his position at court, he retreated to the Yu Stream, where he fished, wandered the mountains, and wrote some of the most luminous prose in the Chinese literary canon.
The Jiao'an Qin Score describes the spirit of the piece in a single breath: "Having settled in Yongzhou, he made his home by the Yu Stream. He turned away from the dust of the world and gave himself to the mountains and rivers. His fisherman's song carries a cool and distant mood — wandering beyond all things — with the true flavor of selling fish, drinking cheap wine, and sleeping drunk among the reeds."
That last image is not romantic. It is free.
Mei Yueqiang compiled this version from two sources: the Wuzhi Zhai Qin Score and the Jiao'an Qin Score, weaving their traditions into a single interpretation. The melody moves in eighteen sections — unhurried, expansive, spilling over its own edges like a river that has forgotten it has banks. It does not perform contentment. It simply is content.
In the Guangling tradition, Yu Ge is not played to be heard. It is played to remember what it feels like to want nothing.
Recorded by Mei Yueqiang. Part of the ongoing series presenting his complete surviving recordings.
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