The Comparative Study On The Playing Techniques Of Erhu And Gaohu Between The Jiangnan Sizhu And Guangdong Yinyue

Thriving at their best in the 1920s and 30s, Jiangnan sizhu (the "silk and bamboo" instrumental chamber music from the south bank of the lower Yangtze River )and Guangdong yinyue (Cantonese music) are two typical types of silk-and-bamboo music and especially, the latter even experienced its special development and booming in Shanghai, resulting in their all-too-frequent contact and exchange, which, in a way, bring in the two's sharing the influence and permeation with each other. As it were, the merging of these two big kinds of music in their developments objectively caused the birth of gaohu (a high-pitched fiddle), the principal instrument in Guangdong yinyue and opened a new era for the development of it.As the principal instruments separately in the two great types of music, erhu and gaohu are the important carriers of their styles and they possess a long historical origin. Besides being born out of erhu, gaohu, according to its basic performing technique, can be included in the former's local schools and as for performing techniques, its development trend is greatly being influenced and inspired by its counterpart in erhu. Being the dominant instruments separately in the two types of silk-and-bamboo music, they represent the unique styles of local music through their special performing techniques. What's more, in Guangdong yinyue and Yueju (Cantonese opera) ,they are always including erhu, whose performing techniques make use of those of gaohu.To study and acquire the playing styles of Jiangnan sizhu and Guangdong yinyue is essential for erhu player to perfect and collect his/hers playing experiences of local musical genres. As well as the understanding rooted in practice and summarizing rules, oral teaching which inspires true understanding, has always been the way of studying the playing styles of these two types of music. However, the grand occasions for exchanging in the two types of music have been no longer in existence; as it comes along, the performances of silk-and-bamboo music in colleges are barely connected to ones of genuine folk music and training biased toward the style of local music also appears, at the same time, with few professional erhu players taking part in folk music clubs for silk-and-bamboo music. The weakened communication atmosphere for traditional silk-and-bamboo music has led to the polarization between "the academic school" and "the folk school" and its succession and development is experiencing the embarrassing collisions among playing standardization, score-using standardization and improvisation; therefore, as far as the techniques of improvisation is concerned, their classification and induction are problems demanding prompt solution.Moreover, to feature the two types of silk-and-bamboo music, erhu and gaohu players apply such techniques as appoggiatura, glissando, ornamentation and bowing to their improvisations while obvious discrepancies can be found in the practical applications of performance techniques with certain general characteristics. If players don't have enough acknowledgements about the characteristic of rhyme and rhythm in different types of music, they may confuse one thing with another in exerting relevant techniques in details, resulting in ambiguity of playing styles.With the ideas mentioned above, I looked up the relevant documents and reached to such findings as followed. The history, the style, the form, the mode and the future direction of the two great types of music have been the hot research areas. As for the performing techniques of erhu in Jiangnan musical style and the ones of gaohu in Guangdong yinyue, there are certain research results. However, there are few contrastive studies on these two types of music and the only systemic study comes from Dr. Ruan Hong's graduate paper named Comparison Research for the evolvement of Jiangnan sizhu and Guangdong yinyue in Shanghai, who ever majored in musicology at Shanghai Conservatory Of Music. There are also monographs on Cantonese music that sporadically mention the relevancy of these two types of music while up to now, there has been no comparative study on the performing techniques of erhu and gaohu, the typical instruments of the two types of music.In view of this fact, besides collecting and consulting lots of documents and recordings, I visited silk-and-bamboo music clubs and also confered with experts of these two types of music. According to my own study and performance experiences, by doing up and contrasting the typical performing techniques of Jiangnan sizhu and the ones of Guangdong yinyue, I try to distinguish both of them in playing styles to give an accurate interpretation of the styles of the two and provide certain theoretic reference for the contemporary compositions with the styles of the two types.The whole essay consists of three chapters: chapter one introduces gaohu's invention by reviewing the history of these two types of music mentioned and reasons the relationship between gaohu and erhu according to gaohu's birth and its performing techniques; chapter two briefly illustrates of erhu and gaohu in the two traditional ensembles; chapter three, the key one, analyzes and contrasts erhu and gaohu in detail as regards their style-related interpretation of the two types of music, especially, stressing the discrepancy between both of them.