One of the greatest contemporary Chinese erhu soloists, Min Hui-Fen, used to say to me, in a definitive manner, that 'what is special about bowed string instruments, erhu and violin alike, is that it delivers a continuous line that flows without stop--different from a sound point in time delivered by plucking a string or striking a key on the piano'. She suggested that I must follow this and play always a long, continuous musical line that hold the continuous breath and vibrato. Now Indonesian rebab player would disagree with this generalization--they are trained aesthetically to play fiddle music in a highly discontinued manner. Where they got this idea of breaking a continuous musical line into several parts and let them flow out one by one is for sure from the singing, if you've heard the Indonesian singers, whom the fiddle imitates. Where erhu master got her idea--not necessarily a traditional Chinese one--is possible to be related to the modern solo erhu aesthetics that is akin to the influence of violin music. Yes, to think about it, great violinists know how to play a long continuous line of music that can last a few minutes without apparently taking a breath, and that is for sure a very different typology than the Indonesian rebab.
No comments:
Post a Comment