(b Yongshun, Hunan, 1895; d 1976). Chinese performer and scholar of the qin plucked seven-string zither. Brought up in Hunan, he studied the qin, and qin songs, from 1908. Moving to Shanghai, he helped found the celebrated Jin Yu qinshe qin society in 1936, while maintaining the amateur tradition of the qin. He made a lecture tour of the USA in 1945. Having taken part in a revolt against the Nationalist airline for which he worked, he moved to Beijing after the People's Republic of China was established in 1949. There he founded the Beijing Qin Research Association and joined the Chinese Music Research Institute, in whose intense scholarly atmosphere he thrived in the 1950s, working alongside eminent musician-scholars such as Yang Yinliu and Guan Pinghu. In 1956 Zha Fuxi led a major project to document qin players over the whole of China; the recordings and transcriptions of this project form the basis for our understanding of qin styles today. He further undertook painstaking historical work on qin scores, initiating the major project of facsimiles Qinqu jicheng, a series of historical biographies of qin players, and writing many articles. His historical work was also manifest in his interpretations of qin songs and vocal music from other early collections of notation. See also China, §IV, 4(ii)(a).
ed.: Cunjian guqin qupu jilan [Index of extant qin pieces and scores] (Beijing, 1957)
with Xu Jian and Wang Di: ‘1956 nian guqin caifang gongzuo baogao’ [1956 fieldwork report on the qin], Minzu yinyue yanjiu lunwenji, no.3 (Beijing, 1957), 1–8
ed. Huang Xudong and others: Zha Fuxi qinxue wencui [Collected works of qin scholarship of Zha Fuxi] (Hangzhou, 1995)
Qinqu jicheng [Anthology of qin pieces], ed. YYS and Beijing guqin yanjiuhui (Shanghai, 1981–)
Zhongguo yinyue daquan: guqin juan/An Anthology of Chinese Traditional and Folk Music: a Collection of Music Played on the Qin, China Record Co. CCD-342 to CCD-349 (1994); reissued as Zhongguo yinyue daquan: qindao chanyun, Xueding chuban youxian gongsi CRCD703 to CRCD710 (1996)
STEPHEN JONES