A study on qinpai through the changes in the Guangling School qin playing

There are several schools of qin (the Chinese seven-stringed zither) playing called qinpai in Chinese. The existence of such schools of playing is significant to the transmission and development of qin music culture. My study focus on a traditional school of qin playing---"Guangling pai". Drawing upon literary documents, interviews, surveys, recordings and analysis, I attempt to combine both musicological and anthropological approaches to explore the social-cultural meaning of "qinpai " in the past and present. Any cultural element has a complex interrelationship with historical, social and individual facts. This study aims to explore the following issues: (1) How are the historical, social and individual processes in qin music balanced? (2) How do qinpai holds together in these three-processes? (3) How does meaning change in the process of perceiving a qinpai? (4) How does qin music adapt itself to the radical changes that have taken place in the general Chinese cultural environment and at the same time survive the ongoing displacement of traditional Chinese culture by Western music culture?;There are six chapters in this dissertation. First, the introduction is theory and method of this dissertation. In chapter one and two, start with the discussion of the meanings of "style" and "music style (or school)", and then educe the concept of "qinpai"; chapter three, based on the study of the historical process of " Guangling qinpai", I advance a analytic model for the study of qinpai; chapter four is a discussion on how to distinguish the "tradition" and "change" in human culture, especially in the qin music culture; chapter five and six are the study focus on musical change of Guangling qinpai since the middle of 20th.;Recently, ethnomusicologists started to discuss music style and its change in particular music-making contexts. However, there have been very few studies on a particular school of playing. The aim of my study is to cover the panorama of qin music, its continuity and changes, it also hope to bring about an approach to qin music study by focusing on a case study of qinpai, a particular school of qin playing, the Guangling school.