The 'Early Music' ErhuAuthor(s): Colin HuehnsSource: The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 54 (May, 2001), pp. 56-61Published by: Galpin SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/842445Accessed: 01/10/2009 12:52

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=gal.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Galpin Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Galpin SocietyJournal.

http://www.jstor.org

COLIN HUEHNS

The 'Early Music' Erhu

The erhu is a Chinese bowed stringed instrument with two strings; instruments of this family are unique for, unlike any bowed stringed

instrument anywhere else in the world, the bow-hair is placed between the

strings of the instrument and the strings are stroked with both the inner and outer faces of the bow-hair. The instrument comprises (see Figure 1) a thin

spike, at the top of which are two pegs - one for each of the two strings. At the other end of the body is a tube resonator at the front of which is a membrane (traditionally of snakeskin) on which is placed a bridge, over which the two strings run.

Instruments of this family were first made eight to nine hundred years ago in China and have been popular ever since, initially as folk instruments

accompanying traditional opera, though since Liu Tianhua's reforms in the 1920s and 1930s, the erhu has become a solo instrument of distinction, widely performed on and also taught in conservatoires.

As with many folk instruments, erhu were not normally preserved as objets d'art and once the snakeskin membrane had become soft or damaged as

pegs

restraining loop or qianjin

spike si -- strings resonating chamber

bow-stick

bridge 'f e^^ feltpad

supporting stand

snakeskin

Figure 1. Diagram of the modem erhu.

56

Figure 2. Front view of the 'early music' erhu (right) and modern erhu (left). Notice the qianjin or restraining loop towards the top of the spikejust below the pegs.

would normally happen within a few decades, they were normally discarded. Thus, very few erhu survive from the period before the Com- munists took power in 1949. On a recent trip to China however, I was

lucky enough to be able to purchase one such pre-1949 instrument, to have the opportunity to re-string it in the traditional manner with silk strings, and thus to be able to compare it with my recently-made erhu, bought new, which I normally use when teaching and performing.

Both are fine instruments and can be said to be representative instruments of the period which produced them. My 'modern' erhu is made from the finest grade of wood normally used for erhu - red sandalwood

(pterocarpus indicus); my Chinese experts were unable to tell me what wood was used for my 'early music' erhu but it is clear that it is not red sandalwood or hong mu ('red' wood), the wood types nowadays most usually used for erhu construction. As one would expect, the modern erhu is tooled with more precision, the vertical spike is straight and the pegs are fitted

perpendicular to the spike; on the other hand, the vertical spike of the 'early music' erhu is slightly, but noticeably, curved and the pegs fit in at slightly oblique angles.

The innovations in erhu construction since 1949, rather similar to the innovations in violin construction at the beginning of the nineteenth

century, are all intended to increase the volume of the instrument.

Compared with the violin, the erhu is a much quieter instrument and

attempts to match the projecting power of the violin have been the spur to innovations in erhu construction since 1949. Nevertheless, when

performed publicly, the erhu normally still requires amplification. Even so, the innovations carried out on my early music erhu to produce my modem erhu have still resulted in an approximately four-fold increase in its volume. The most important of these is to increase the size and change the construction of the small resonating chamber at the foot of the erhu. Where once this was a simple cylinder with a circular face at either end, now it is,

57

in this modern erhu at least, an octagonal cylinder. This modern erhu is recognisable as having been made in a Beijing workshop by the octagonal shape of its resonating chamber; modem erhu from Suzhou (another important erhu-making centre) are recognisable by their use of a hexagonal resonating chamber. The modern erhu resonating chamber is now carved out of one piece of wood where once it was constructed from a set of longitudinal plates joined by thin slivers of wood; these slivers, in the case of this erhu, are of another, lighter, colour (when I acquired this erhu there was a large crack on one of these joins and this needed to be mended before the instrument could be played). The wood is also now thicker, more solid and heavier than before. The volume has also been increased by inserting a toilet roll-shaped appliance (made out of wood) into the modern erhu resonating chamber. The attractive wooden lattice at the back of the early music erhu has also been removed to allow the sound greater freedom to ring out and only the vestige of this remains on the rim of the modem erhu (though this rim remains circular in both instruments). The overall shape of the chamber has also changed: where once it was the same in diameter at both ends, now it is larger in diameter at the snakeskin end with a noticeable taper towards the other (back) end.

Early music erhu specialists in China require that the instrument should contain no metal whatsoever, feeling that this adds a metallic edge to the sound. This is certainly a purist, ideological and slightly romantic ideal and if each item of metal on the modern erhu taken individually, were replaced with wood, there would only be a marginal effect on the overall sound, though the cumulative effect of all these changes would still be considerable. Let us start with the pegs. In this modem erhu, the wooden pegs have been replaced by brass pegs fitted with an internal screw. Thus tuning is easily done simply by turning without applying pressure as with guitar pegs, as opposed to relying on the friction between the peg and the hole into which it is inserted to hold the peg in place. In fact, only-a fraction

Figure 3. Side view of the early music erhu (left)

5 and modern erhu (right). 58

Figure 4. Rear views of the modern erhu (left) and

early music erhu (right).

Figure 5. The pegs of the two erhu. The early music erhu is on the left; the modemrn erhu is on the right.

of modern erhu have this innovation, considered to be a boon because it allows for effortless tuning of the strings. Whether the peg is metal or wood seems to have little effect on the overall colour of the sound, but with metal

pegs, the string passes over a metal roller on its way out of the peg. Placing a small piece of folded paper here, that is, avoiding a metal string touching a metal roller, has a considerable effect on timbre, removing a small, but

clearly noticeable, harshness in the sound. The string on its journey downwards passes through the qianjin (see

Figure 1) before it reaches the playing area. Both erhu have been fitted with the time-honoured device of tying a shoe-lace here to keep the strings in

position. Almost all modern erhu are sold with metal qianjin and this really does add nastiness to the sound: far better the shoe-lace! At the bottom end of the erhu, the string is attached to the instrument, in the early music version, on to a wooden spike, in the modern version on to two metal screws. The purist would remove the metal screws and replace them with wooden ones, but, in this case, the effect on the sound really is marginal.

One of the most attractive parts of the early music erhu is the lovely dragon head at the scroll end of the instrument. Dragon heads are not unknown in modern instruments, but more usual is the curved end shown here. These dragon heads may be attractive to look at, but their effect on the sound is minimal. At the other end, the modern erhu is equipped with a

heavy wood support whereas the early music version is without this. This

Figure 6. A view of the stritgs of the two erhu (bow removed). The modernz erhu is on the left; the early music erhu is on the right.

59

recent innovation is found on perhaps only half of modern erhu. It helps to allow the sound to project out unencumbered by folds of clothing and, in addition, has the useful function of anchoring the erhu more securely on the left hip. Without this support, the erhu can jump around when changing position or applying heavy vibrato; frequent and complex position changes are very much part of modern technique.

Most closely connected with the sound the erhu produces are the innovations connected with the bow and the strings. Previously, strings were usually made of silk; nowadays, this has almost entirely been

superseded by metal. This is now so universal that it is virtually impossible to get hold of silk strings. The reasons for this are in part practical: silk strings break easily and it is common for strings simply to snap in performance; silk

strings also loose their pitch quickly like gut violin strings. However, the sound difference is immense and, in this respect, the timbres produced by strings made of these two different materials belong to two different worlds. The silk string sound is soft and gentle, almost woolly, but also very beguiling; the metal string sound is more robust and smooth. Under the

fingers, silk strings have a finely woven texture which caresses the

fingertips; metal strings feel hard and smooth. Silk strings tend to give a soft attack and react only gradually to friction with the bow-hair - a lot of rosin is required: metal strings are much more instantly responsive. In higher registers, silk strings are particularly weak and open strings tend to produce wolf notes - not so metal strings. While these are not insurmountable

problems by any means, tuning silk strings to lower pitches than metal

strings certainly helps. The bows used by both instruments also show marked differences. Most

likely to have greatest impact on the sound is the difference between the width of the bow-hair: with the early music erhu, there are perhaps a quarter of the number of strands of the modern erhu bow-hair. Silk strings snap too

easily for there to be any more strands on the early music bow. The sheaf of

Figure 7. The bows belonging to the two erhu (removedfjrom between the strings). The modern bow is on the

left; the early music erhu bow is on the right.

60

Figure 8. The author playing the erhu (modern version). The body of the instrument is

placed on the left hip, the spike held vertically, and the instrument bowed horizontally.

strands is cylindrical with the early music erhu bow; it is flat with the modern erhu bow and held flat by metal or plastic flattening sheathes through which it passes at both point and heel. These differences have a considerable impact on the volume and timbre ofthe sound produced: the sound is thicker, richer and louder with the modern erhu bow and quieter and more delicate with the early music erhu bow. The shape ofthe bow is also different: with the modern erhu bow, the bow-stick and hair run broadly parallel for much of their length; with the early music erhu, the bow is much more arched, particularly towards the point. The early music bow is also shorter than the modem bow. The tension on the bow-hair is also different: much looser on the modern erhu bow; this is perhaps because innovations and improvements in bow technique have given modern players the ability to be able to control and manipulate a looser bow-hair. The modern erhu bow-hair tension can also be changed with the same screw mechanism as that of a modern violin bow whereas with the early music erhu bow, the bow-hair would need to be untied, re-wound and re-stuck, a very complex and time-consuming process. The modern bow also has the addition of a small frog at the heel mainly so that the hair can be removed easily from the frog by simply unclipping it if the player wants to remove the bow from between the strings.

Taken together, these innovations in construction are considerable. They place the music played by the two different erhu into two different sound worlds. The modern erhu is versatile, can project its sound and can play a vast variety of different music from concertos to regional music of various different styles. The early music erhu is limited to that small amount of music, mainly the so-called 'silk-bamboo' music of southern China and the compositions of Liu Tianhua and his contemporaries where finesse of texture, deftness of execution and subtleties of timbral palette are most important. But both, nevertheless, express different aspects of the same aesthetic ideal.

61