“兴于诗，立于礼，成于乐”，音乐，在传统文化之中向来占有举足轻重的地位。琴是载道之器，是文人雅乐，古代文人喜欢以琴会友，以琴言心。伯牙子期因“高山流水”成知音，李白却用诗句“闲坐夜明月，幽人弹素琴”感叹世上无知音。

“Poetry makes a man, courtesy develops a man, while music fully matures a man”. Music plays a significant role in the traditional culture. Musical instruments are for conveying truth, for cultivating taste, for making friends, for expressing emotions. Rarely people can be as lucky as Boya and Ziqi who can appreciate the talent and ability of each other, so there is poetry from Li Bai “sitting alone in the moonlight, listening to the tweedle from the hermit” to sigh that no one is able to aprreciate his music in this world.

琴棋书画，琴为首。琴在古代特指古琴，又称七弦琴，还有很多好听的别称，比如瑶琴、绿绮、丝桐。文人雅士喜欢将琴声视为自己的心声，一张案几，一炉沉香，宁息静心轻抚琴弦，声在外而念在其中。

Lyre-playing, chess, calligraphy and painting are four accomplishments of the traditional Chinese, and the lyre-playing comes the first. The lyre has various beautiful nicknames like Yaoqin, Lvqi, Sitong. The scholars tend to regard the tweedle as their inner voice, sitting with a shelf for lyre and a Chinese eaglewood to smooth all the twists inside.

孔子爱琴，无论何时，操琴弦歌之声不绝；嵇康爱琴，以琴曲《广陵散》作为自己和生命的绝唱；刘禹锡爱琴，一首《陋室铭》代表文人淡泊名利之心，时常调素琴、阅金经；木匠爱琴，付诸心血30年，只为成为一名传统斫琴师。

Confusious loves the lyre, there is the sound of it flowing around anytime; Ji Kang loves the lyre who takes the Guang Ling Verse as the epic poetry of his life; Liu Yuxi loves the lyre who expresses his simplicity towards life by his poetry An Epigraph in Praise of My Humble Homethe carpenter loves lyre who spent 30 years on making a lyre to be an expert in this field.

马岳思是一名普通的木匠，以前的他从未想过会成为一名斫琴师。第一次见到古琴，听到琴曲，他觉得那是天底下最动听的声音。凭着木匠对木头的敏感，他很快记下古琴的模样和材质，回到家后，凭着记忆做出了古琴的琴胚。

Ma Yuesi is an ordinary carpenter who had never been thinking about being a lyre-maker, while the first time when he heard the sound of lyre, he thought it was the most beautiful sound in this world. Depending on his sensitive to woods he remembered the appearances and materials fast and then he made a lyre embryo according to those memories.

没有琴弦的琴自然无法弹奏，请人装上琴弦后一把“古琴”算是制作完成了，虽然音质不佳，但是却让他爱上了斫琴，从此一门心思扑在了上面。

It certainly cannot be played without strings, so he asked someone for help and finished his first lyre. Although with poor quality of sound he could never stop making it.

马岳思工作间，在一座杭州余杭崇贤随处可见的农村老宅里。在这里，他和木头打了半辈子的交道，从普通木匠到一名制作古琴的人，他下了不少功夫。最幸运的是，他成为了浙派古琴大师徐匡华的弟子，从此一入“琴”门深似海。在学习制琴过程中，马岳思没有过多的参照古代典籍的理论知识，而是在一天又一天的实践中逐渐成为一名独立的斫琴师。

His workshop is located in an old house in Hangzhou Province, and it is in there that he bacame an expert of lyre-maker from an ordinary carpenter. The luckiest thing is that he has becaome the disciple of Xu Kuanghua who is the lyre expert of Zhejiang genre. In the process of learning, Ma Yuesi didn’t refer much to the traditional theories, but it is the effort and practice day by day that made him an independant lyre-maker.

古琴的制作，原料选取讲究。在马岳思的斫琴作坊的房梁上，密密麻麻地堆满了各种老木料，尤其是年代久远的老杉木、老桐木，更是制作古琴的良材，这些到处收集来的木材，都是他的宝贝。

The selection of the original materials is rather exquisite. There are lots of old wooden materials on his beams especially the antique firs and paulownias which are fine woods for making lyres. These collected wooden things are all his treasures.

作为一名斫琴师，马岳思在制作工序上，遵循古法工艺，严谨且缜密。塑性、挖槽、上漆、打磨、调音……等一百多道工序，一丝不苟。人制琴，琴养人，马岳思常说，心静了才能制琴，是琴让他学会了静。闲时，马岳思会家中、江边或深山，抚琴而坐，弹一首琴曲给自己听。

As a lyre-maker Ma Yuesi strictly follow the ancient process which has more than one handred steps such as shaping, chamfering, painting, grinding, tuning...... People make lyres, and lyres cultivate peopel. Ma Yuesi always said that only when calm dwon one can be ready for making it, it is lyres that make him learn to be peaceful. In spare time, he will go to the river bank, go to the deep mountain or just stay at home to play a song for himself.

马岳思的斫琴生涯已有30年，每一把古琴的制作仍细致如初。但在古琴创作上，他却有更大的“野心”。在一次故宫博物院展览中，看到唐代斫琴世家雷氏家族的“大圣遗音”时，他激动了好久，还说：“这琴发音松脆，造型古朴，是传世古琴中的至品，这辈子能有这样的一把琴相伴，还有什么可求的”。

It’s been 30 years for his lyre-making career, but he is still as patient as before. While he is ambitious in making lyres. Once he saw the “ Sound of Mahatma” made by Reye's family in the exhibition center of the Palace Museum, he was excited for quite a while and said: “ it’s a handed-down masterpiece with perfect sound and simple appearance, if I were lucky enough to own this kind of lyre, I would not regret to die”.

他的“野心”就是做一把传世的好琴，怀着一颗不惧孤独和清苦的执着之心，带着这份对千年技艺的敬畏之心，成为一名传统的斫琴师，将古琴之美、古音之韵传世下去。

His “ambition” is to make a great handed- down classical lyre with the heart of perseverance and determined loneliness, to spread it with the respect for the historic craftsmanship, and to be a traditional lyre-maker to carry forward the antique beauty of its rhythm and appearance.

撰稿：心尘，译者：尚小桦