Erhu
Erhu ( Chinese 二胡 , pinyin èrhú ) is a two-stringed, bow- struck tubular lute that is played in Chinese music . During the Song Dynasty , the erhu first became popular in southern China , which is why it is also called nanhu ( Chinese 南胡 , pinyin nánhú , Chinese 南 , pinyin nán - "south"). Forerunners of the gauntlet violins came to China as early as the Tang Dynasty . The most famous Chinese string instrument , like the other Chinese spit violins, belongs to the huqin family, which is related to its alleged Mongolian origin.
Design and distribution
Today's metal strings, like the silk strings used earlier, lead from the pegs at a large distance from the neck over a bridge that is placed in the middle of a snake skin membrane to the neck extension protruding at the bottom of the body. The small sound body consists of red hardwood species of the genus Pterocarpus . The neck is formed by a round rod, which is made of bamboo in the simpler versions, and redwood in the case of better instruments. The musically usable string length is defined by a tuning loop made of a cord that is tied to the neck in the upper area.
The bamboo bow hairs made of horsehair are passed through between the strings. The musician sits on a chair and holds the erhu propped up vertically on one thigh. The strings are tuned to a'-d 'with a fifth apart , which corresponds to the middle two strings of the violin . In order to strike the a′-string, the bow must be pushed up, correspondingly pushed down for the d′-string. The fingers on the left touch both strings, but do not press them down to the neck, so neither the fingerboard nor the frets are required. Different glissando and vibrato effects can be created by depressing the string to varying degrees . Flageolet tones can be produced by gently touching the finger .
In the 19th century in China the erhu became the main instrument of the national opera and a solo instrument in popular music . In today's Chinese music, the erhu is still one of the most popular instruments.
Several gauntlets made their way from China to Thailand and Cambodia, among others. The tubular body of the erhu corresponds to the sor duang in Thailand , and another Chinese spit violin with a coconut body, yehu , was used in Thailand as the sor u . A single string fiddle similar to the erhu exists in Malawi . This instrument, which is unusual for Africa, is called Chewa kaligo by the local people . The Ugandan pipe spit violin endingidi probably goes back to Chinese models that came to the interior of East Africa with Arab intermediaries in the 19th century. The relationship with the ravanahattha is unclear. It is played in north Indian folk music and appears in illustrations from the 19th century as a two-stringed tubular violin.
literature
- Patty Chan: Playing Erhu. Bridging the gap. Self-published, Ontario 2011, ISBN 978-0-9868296-0-4 ( Google Books )
- Terence M. Liu: Instruments: Erhu. In: Robert C. Provine, Yosihiko Tokumaru, J. Lawrence Witzleben (Eds.): Garland Encyclopedia of World Music . Vol. 7: East Asia: China, Japan, and Korea. Routledge, New York / London 2001, pp. 175-178
- Jonathan Stock: A Historical Account of the Chinese Two-Stringed Fiddle Erhu . In: Galpin Society Journal , Vol. 46, March 1993, pp. 83-113
- Shuo Zhang: Erhu as Violin: Development of China's Representative Musical Instrument, c. 1990-2008. (PDF; 589 kB) MA thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 2009
Web links
- Erhu . podium-wendel.de
Individual evidence
- ^ Roger Blench: The Morphology and Distribution of Sub-Saharan Musical Instruments of North-African, Middle Eastern, and Asian, Origin. (PDF; 463 kB) In: Laurence Picken (Ed.): Musica Asiatica. Volume 4. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1984, ISBN 978-0-521-27837-9 , p. 172, ill. P. 173