Jieshi Diao Youlan means "Solitary Orchid in the Stone Tablet Mode" or just "Solitary Orchid" ("Secluded Orchid" or "Elegant Orchid" in some translations). It is the name of a piece of music or melody for the guqin

Guqin

The guqin is the modern name for a plucked seven-string Chinese musical instrument of the zither family...

 which was written before AD 908, and is possibly the oldest surviving piece of written music in the Far East.

History

The original manuscript was found in Kyoto

Kyoto

is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, and was probably imported during the Tang Dynasty

Tang Dynasty

The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...

 from China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 along with Buddhism

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

. It is believed to be a copy of an earlier manuscript and contains a lot of written 'corrections', mistakes and vagueness. Because it is damaged in some places, there has been much study into how it is played.

Notation

The manuscript of Youlan is written in a special old form of guqin notation, known as wenzi pu (lit. "written character notation").

Tonality

The melody is noted for its use of microtones, especially at the cadences at the end of each of its four sections when three tones between ti and do (and in the case of the third section, the halfway tone between ti and do is further divided) are used. This creates a mysterious effect that sounds modern to new listeners.