Robert Willes and Professor Kory Katseanes, School of Music
My Chinese music study experience began with touring China with the BYU Chamber Orchestra in April of 2011. This tour was a very rich and unique two weeks filled with some of the most beautiful sights in Asia. The Great Wall of China, The Forbidden City, the structures and vastness of the palace left me with a sense of awe at the historical depth and remarkable achievements of the ancient Chinese culture. We performed concerts in Shanghai, Tianjin, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, and Beijing and were very warmly received in all of the venues.
After the chamber orchestra returned to America I stayed in China to do an internship at the Tianjin Music Conservatory. It was fascinating to learn and observe music study in the East. It needs to be said that the following are my observations based on personal experience and are not intended to be sweeping generalizations or judgments of the Chinese culture.
I studied cello with Zhang Iaoshi, a professor of cello performance at the conservatory. He asked me what I wanted to work on while I studied with him and I replied that I was interested in improving my technique. He identified problems with the positions of both my right and left hands. An interesting point that he made was that since Asians have smaller hands they have to learn to fully utilize correct position in order to play everything. He observed that Westerners like me have large hands and often get by with the wrong technique. In order to get the full range of motion from my right hand I would need to place my thumb under my second finger. There were two positions he changed right away with my right hand. The first was the bow hand. He wanted it much more spread out, which was quite the opposite of what I have learned here in BYU. The other suggestion is that my elbow needed to return to a low resting position in every bow stroke. Throughout my lessons with him I was impressed with his repretoir of exercises. Whatever the problem or area to be improved he had a variety of exercises to strengthen or improve technique. I also accompanied another American student to her lesson because she needed help with translation. She worked on perfecting her shifts and once again the professor assigned excellent exercises for her to practice. Other areas I worked on with Professor Zhang was spicatto and vibrato. Once again he assigned various exercises to improve my technique. My teacher was always very clear with what he wanted to change, and he always demonstrated and personally played examples of where these things come into play in the music. One of the greatest things I came away with is the idea for organization and fixing problems. There are an infinite amount of drills that you came make up to overcome any weakness. Through this experience in China it has been empowering and exciting to realize that with the most meticulous attention to detail and technique, the utmost discipline and dedication to practice I can become an excellent musician and technician.
Another area of insightful experiences was our rehearsals with the conservatory orchestra. At our first rehearsal I do not believe that the conductor knew I spoke Mandarin. He gave a speech about the need for them to practice more because they were not as good as the American students. Throughout the rehearsal I noticed that the string section had difficulty ending on time together. One factor contributing to this problem was that there were no bow markings in the music. It was fun to be with other student Chinese musicians and I found them to be very kind, somewhat shy and most of all helpful. We found we had much in common as students of music and it was very enjoyable to make friends, compare past pieces and play compositions together. In subsequent rehearsals I was surprised that some students missed the practice. The most productive rehearsal lasted three hours and was a complete double run through of the program. One of the pieces we performed was written by the president of the school for Yang Qin. It was difficult and was a classic example of Eastern modern composition. The concert took place in the beautiful Tianjin concert hall. The orchestra played very well. They had such a nice and beautiful texture on the Chinese pieces and the other pieces were certainly loud and powerful. The performance was very appreciated by the audience. It was a great experience for me to produce both Western and Eastern music with my new Chinese friends.
I also played chamber music with an assortment of Chinese music students. At first we had problems working out the timing and intonation. This was a common problem with both the violist and the pianist. When we finally performed the pieces at a home by the lake it was a very enjoyable experience. Although the hymns were introduced as American folk tunes I was grateful to feel a special spirit as we performed them.
While at the conservatory I was also able to attend some excellent concerts. An especially memorable one was put on by the high school portion of the Tianjin Conservatory. I was surprised by the level of excellence and musical maturity demonstrated by these young students. They started off with a small chamber orchestra playing Vivaldi’s “Winter” from the “Four Seasons.” Other memorable and notable performances include a very interesting piece performed on the sona, a small reeded trumpet. The sona was accompanied by a small ensemble made up of traditional Chinese instruments. Strangely enough the accompanying ensemble had the “melody” or rather the theme most of the time, however this was not the key point of interest. The sona player was not only dressed wildly but his playing and solo was also quite unusual. His solo consisted of wild animal noises repetitive screeching entrances and downright outlandish noises. His monkey call was a highlight of the evening.
It was wonderful to see the dedication and the enjoyment of these fabulous young performers. Their excitement on stage was fun and refreshing. One more thing that impressed me and is something that I hope to achieve is their consistency and seemingly coolness in performance. There was much to learn from these youngsters.
Other insights into Chinese music and culture was gained through attending the Chinese opera. Professor Wang arranged for us to attend the opera in Beijing, and it was interesting to note the differences between Western and Eastern opera. The first is the set. The Beijing opera sets were always very simple and the focus seemed to be very different than drama in the western world. While the sets were very simple the costumes were very elaborate. It seemed like all the focus and attention were to be on the performer and what he was singing or doing. Perhaps Beijing opera is this way because it evolved from something similar to the “real sound of China” that Professor Wang spoke of referring to the extremely simple styles from the Suhang area. That form of opera included only one performer singing and playing the Sanxian, sometimes with Pipa accompaniment. Another interesting focus of the Beijing opera style is that as soon as you see a character you know what his role will be. Each character has a distinguishing mark of some form. The comedian has a diamond and the judges have dark faces, where as the character of lesser moral stature has a white face. I suppose that this once again puts more focus on the performer and less on the plot or other aspects of the story. This causes more attention to be paid to the singing and the personal aspects an actor might bring to the stage in his or her performance. One more note on the subject of the focus of the performance would be that there is no pit in Chinese opera. The musicians are out in plain sight for all of the audience members to enjoy and watch. In the Beijing opera I think that this once again emphasizes the attention and focus on the skill of the performer and his ability to perform. The reason that the opera and other traditional performances sometimes sound out of tune is that in some areas of origin of Chinese folk music, they divide the octave into equal parts with one less scale degree than we do. I noticed an extremely flat leading tone in the opera, but that would make sense since our teacher said that the fourth and seventh scale degree were the most audibly changed in this style. The Beijing opera was a fascinating cultural experience.
One particularly enjoyable and unusual event was being a celebrity for a night at the conservatory’s equivalent of American Idol. The singers sang to me, the emcee remarked about my reaction and after I was mobbed for photos and autographs. It was insightful into the pop culture’s opinion of the West, and it was fun to have my fifteen minutes of fame.
Learning to play the erhu was a fun and rewarding endeavor. I had the wonderful opportunity of learning the erhu from Zhuming laoshi. He was a recent graduate from the Central Conservatory on the erhu. The erhu is basically like a small two stringed cello. In fact that is what the “er” in erhu means, two. The “hu” originally meant an ethnic minority that the instrument came from. The instrument is about the size of a viola and is held in the crook of the hip and thigh. On one end of the instrument is the small sound box with a snake skin stretched across one side. On the skin is placed the bridge and under the bridge is a mute to mute an already soft sound. He said it was to mute the sharp poignant harsh sounds. On the other end are two large tuning pegs. Something interesting to me about the erhu is how bowing the instrument differs from its western string counterparts. The hair of the bow is not tight like the cello and it is also strung through the two stings. To play the higher string pressure is applied outwards and the sound resonates from the inside of the hair, or the hair facing the wood of the stick, rubbing the string. In order to play the lower string the pressure is applied directly from two fingers on the inside of the hair of the bow. The sound is made from the opposite side of the hair against the string. The open strings resonate at the D above middle C and an A above that.
Learning to play the instrument and draw a beautiful sound proved to be a difficult task. Much less pressure and more finesse are required to play this touchy and delicate instrument. No more than the weight of the bow itself was needed to draw a clear sound, in fact any more pressure causes an unpleasant crunching noise. After practicing the erhu for a little while, my own cello felt like it took so much tension to make proper sound.
The quality and sound of the erhu when our teacher played was gentle and similar to the human voice. Our teacher explained that was what was so special about the erhu. In interpreting music you had to know where the music was from because that greatly affected the sound and the accents you applied. In every region in China there is a different dialect of Chinese that has a very different feel to it. When you interpret a piece of traditional music on the erhu, you are basically imitating the sound of the language. The accents, vibrato and even the ornamentation change depending on where the piece is from. Very little is notated on the traditional score and much is up to the performer and his knowledge of the different regions and their respective languages.
One of the tools used to imitate the voice is vibrato. In playing the erhu, there are two kinds of vibrato. One is used to bend the pitch up from the original note and the other is to bend the pitch under the original note. The structure of the erhu aids us in accomplishing the first style of vibrato. Since the instrument has no fingerboard, the string can be pushed past where the fingerboard might be to tighten the string and raise the pitch. This done in rapid succession constitutes the first type of vibrato. The second is more similar to that of the cello and violin except that it is a finger vibrato and the finger does not vibrate above the note. It simply starts at pitch and then moves lower and then back up to the note. There is a third type of vibrato but it is only used to imitate the violin when playing the Western classical repertoire.
He had us do exercises to help us master these techniques, such as choosing a Chinese phrase and imitating the tones and accents on the cello. Erhu lessons were very enjoyable. The teacher was very kind and I believe many of the lessons learned on the erhu are very applicable to the cello and the study of western music. I am grateful for the opportunity and will continue to practice the erhu. It was enjoyable to give a presentation and concert on Eastern music and the erhu to music students here at BYU. It is not an instrument that we are familiar with and in many ways it embodies the Chinese culture.
My experience in China has enriched my life. From learning new techniques on the cello to making new friends, from playing Eastern concertos to attending a Beijing opera I will forever treasure my stay in China. I love to play my beautiful erhu and I am grateful to have this small remembrance of a fabulous experience.