Flowing Water
Flowing Water is one of the most celebrated pieces in the Chinese guqin repertoire. Together with its companion piece High Mountains (高山), it originates from the legend of Bo Ya and Zhong Ziqi recorded in Liezi · Tang Wen — the story that gave the Chinese language the phrase “高山流水” (high mountains, flowing water), now a metaphor for true friendship and mutual understanding through music.
The Ming-dynasty Shenqi Mipu (神奇秘谱, 1425), the earliest extant guqin tablature collection, was the first to split the legend’s music into two separate pieces and notes:
“High Mountains and Flowing Water were originally one piece. Its first part expressed the grandeur of mountains — the joy a benevolent man takes in the high places; the second part expressed the flow of water — the joy a wise man takes in the streams.”
Historical Versions
The most widely transmitted version today is the Seventy-Two Rolling and Brushing strokes (七十二滚拂) version, edited by the Sichuan-school master Zhang Kongshan in the late Qing dynasty and preserved in Tianwen’ge Qinpu (天闻阁琴谱, 1876). Through the dense use of right-hand techniques such as gun (rolling), fu (brushing), chuo (sliding upward), and zhu (sliding downward), the piece paints water in every form — from quiet trickles to roaring torrents.
In 1977, NASA included a recording of Flowing Water performed by Guan Pinghu on the Voyager Golden Record, as one of the works representing Chinese civilization to the cosmos.
Performance Notes
- Structure: eight sections in the standard layout. The first four depict flowing streams; sections five and six contain the dense rolling-brushing climax; the last two return to calm.
- Technical challenge: the long passage of continuous gun and fu in section five demands extraordinary control of right-hand strength and timing — this is the main barrier for new players approaching this piece.
- Tuning: F-key standard tuning (仲吕均 zhonglü), shared with other pieces such as High Mountains, Yangguan Sandie, and Plum Blossoms.
About This Score
The version on this page is based on Zhang Kongshan’s seventy-two-stroke edition, cross-checked with Guan Pinghu’s 1956 recording. All fingerings are encoded in the Qixianpu (七弦谱) format and can be opened directly in the online editor for further editing, annotation with numerical (jianpu) notation, or export to PDF.
Further Reading
- Zhu Quan, Shenqi Mipu (1425) — the oldest surviving collection of guqin tablature, public domain
- Zhang Kongshan, Tianwen’ge Qinpu (1876) — the source of the seventy-two-stroke edition
- Guan Pinghu, Collected Guqin Pieces — modern performer’s edition
出处文献
- 神奇秘谱（1425）
- 风宣玄品（1539）
- 天闻阁琴谱（1876，张孔山七十二滚拂本）