Erhu
Categories: Chinese musical instruments | Necked bowl lutes | String instruments | Bowed instruments | Drumhead lutes
The erhu (二胡, Pinyin èrhú), commonly known in the West as the 'Chinese violin', is a two-stringed bowed instrument, capable of producing sad, mysterious, joyful or voice-like melodies. It belongs to the huqin family of Chinese instruments, together with the zhonghu, gaohu, banhu, jinghu and sihu. The erhu dates back to the 13th century. It is believed to evolve from the xiqin(奚琴), which was described as a foreign, two-stringed lute in an encyclopedic work on music by music theorist Chen Yang called Yue Shu, written during the Northern Song Dynasty. The xiqin is believed to originate from Central Asia, and have come to China in the 10th century.
The first character of the name of the instrument (二) is derived from the fact that it has two strings. The second character (胡) indicates that it is part of the huqin family. The name of the huqin family, in turn, indicates "barbarian" origins, showing that the instrument may have been based on Mongolian bowed instruments.
The erhu is unique in that sound is produced through the vibration of the python skin stretched over the qin tong (sound box) of the instrument (which in Southern China is hexagonal, while it is octagonal in Northern China). Also unusual is that there is no fingerboard, the player stops the strings by pressing their fingertips onto the strings. The bow hair is never separated from the strings (which were formerly of twisted silk but are today usually made of metal); it passes between them as opposed to over them, as with western bowed stringed instruments.
The tip of the hardwood neck is sometimes elaborately carved into shapes such as a bat or dragon's head.
A notable composer for the erhu was Liu Tianhua, a Chinese musician who studied Western music as well. Many of his works for the instrument from the 1920s are still played frequently.
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Notable performers
- Wang Guotong (王國潼)
- Liu Mingyuan (劉明源)
- Min Huifen (閔惠芬)
- Yu Hongmei
- Jiebing Chen
- George Gao
- Karen Hua Qi Han
- Hua Yanjun (A Bing) (華彥君;阿炳) (c. 1893-1950)
- Sun Wen-ming (孫文明) (1928-1962)
- Rongchun Zhao
- Sing Su
- Jiang Fengzhi (蔣風之)
- Ding Lufeng (丁魯峰)
Reference
- Liu, Terence M. Development of the Chinese Two-stringed Bowed Lute ERHU Following the New Culture Movement (c. 1915-1985) (1988). Ph.D. dissertation. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University.
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