Mr. Pan Fangsheng was invited by the Central Conservatory of Music to participate in the "Professor Zhang Shao's 90th Birthday Symposium".

The Erhu is indeed one of the most important and expressive musical instruments in our country. Since Master Liu Tianhua elevated the erhu to the status of a solo instrument, great progress has been made in both the performance and creation of the erhu. Especially after the founding of New China, the development of erhu art has been advancing by leaps and bounds. However, are there any issues that need to be explored and resolved along the way? Now go back and carefully examine the road that has been traveled and summarize the gains and losses in the development. This should be said to be a very necessary and urgent task for the sustainable development of erhu art.

1. Judging from the development trend of erhu performance after the founding of New China, the performance technology is indeed changing with each passing day.

It is not an exaggeration to use four words to describe it by leaps and bounds! However, playing technique is one thing, understanding music and interpreting its connotation is another. Especially in the past 30 years, it seems to be more and more inclined towards the direction of blindly pursuing and improving technology. Naturally, these are also caused by various factors such as grading tests and competitions. But the problem is that it is really hard to say whether the improvement in technique is integrated with the overall concept of the performance. It is very common to practice skills only for the sake of skills. Our slogan should be: Be a musician, not a music maker. That difference is the crux of the problem now. Of course, most piano learners today do not necessarily want them to be musicians in the future. But the purpose of learning music is to cultivate people's sentiments, develop people's intelligence, and purify people's hearts, which is beyond reproach. Seeing that some children who are learning the piano now are not cultivating their sentiments, but are irritating their mood; they are not entertaining themselves, but doing computer-like operations. It's time to guide them correctly!

In fact, the ultimate purpose of musical performance is to reflect the musical image of the entire work and to convey the idea of the work. What is a musical image? A musical image is not enough to play just a few notes. A musical image must not only play the melody completely and skillfully, but also grasp things such as speed, dynamics, rhythm, etc., but also grasp the inner things of the melody and what the music wants to express. This involves the confidence of playing. The so-called "confidence" is not only a question of performance skills, but also a question of the reconciliation of internal and external temperament, the question of the temperature of the performance of the entire piece, and the question of whether the entire musical image can be established. To elevate the metaphysical to the metaphysical, this requires confidence.

Also, purely in terms of technique, there is nothing wrong with most of the techniques of the modern erhu being borrowed from the violin. In fact, the skills between musical instruments are to learn from each other and graft each other to generate new sparks and new skills. However, it seems that this kind of technique used in erhu is almost used for reference, including those noise techniques of "overtones", such as the sound of bowing, percussion of the piano, etc., which are probably basically used.

These "overtones" can be annoying when used too much. Imagine that many of the previous techniques were combined with content, such as plucking strings in "Horse Racing", and horse neighing and bowing in "War Horse Galloping". So how to further develop it now? It seems that only in the further perfect combination of content and skills to open up! We must not only talk about skills but not content. Only in this way can the skills be brought to life.

2. Judging from the creation of some erhu songs in the past 30 years, it seems that they are more and more inclined to the technical aspect, and less consideration is given to the content of the works.

In the 1950s and 1960s, people's material life was still relatively poor, and the spiritual world was either too fanatical or very depressing, but there appeared "The Ballad of Northern Henan", "Sanmenxia Imagination", "On the Prairie", " "The Village Has Changed", "Going to the Market" and other works that combine content and form, content and skills, etc. Then why in the past 30 years, when people's spiritual world has become more relaxed and richer, there have been many works that make no fuss in creation? Many works that only see the technique but not the melody and content? And those, like the Impressionist paintings, where the eyes are here and the nose there.

Music is a piece of sound here, a piece of sound there, the melody is gone, the rhythm is loose, the rhythm is out of order, and it is also known as "avant-garde works". After listening to it, people are at a loss, at a loss, and incomprehensible! There are also some who blindly worship certain Western composition techniques, blindly pursue and show off their skills, and simply ignore the profound artistic tradition of the Chinese nation with a history of thousands of years and the aesthetic concepts and habits of our nation. It’s superficial, and it lasts for dozens of minutes from beginning to end. After listening to it, we don’t even remember a melody, we don’t get it into our minds; after listening to it several times, we have no feeling or impression.

Is this the problem of the composer or the problem of the millions of viewers? ! In fact, the erhu is a melody instrument that can best reflect people's voices. It can be said that there is no musical instrument that can move the heartstrings of every Chinese like the erhu. Our erhu predecessors Liu Tianhua, A Bing, modern erhu composer Liu Wenjin, etc., the music they composed is not only beautiful and smooth in melody, but also profound in thought. It really touches the depths of people's souls. Isn't this a profound inspiration and example for us? ? The two most influential pieces of Chinese music in the world today, "The Yellow River" and "The Liang Zhu", are they not winning with Chinese-style melody? [Su] Mazel said at the beginning of his book "On Melody": "The melody is the foundation of music, and in most cases, the essence of the musical image is concentrated on the melody." Some composers said , the good and beautiful melody has been written for the previous masters such as Tchaikovsky, and now it can only be developed from another aspect.

Is this correct? We will not comment here for the time being. At least the melody that the composers did not say about the Chinese erhu has been written by Liu Tianhua, A Bing, and Liu Wenjin. As [Austrian] Ernst Toch said in the book "Melodyology": "The melody is infinite, the theme is limited; the melody is the concept, the theme is the material." In short: Chinese still like beautiful melody Even if there are some so-called "avant-garde" works that have won awards in the international music scene, it is only that a large part of them caters to the tastes of foreign judges, and the Chinese often won't buy it. Composers, please pay more attention to some melody! Techniques that are divorced from melody and content are castles in the sky and mirages.

3. The emergence of the so-called "new folk music" is indeed a relatively beautiful phenomenon on the stage in recent years. The most eye-catching is the erhu standing and playing the qin.

This is of course understandable, the violin is mainly played standing up. In the past, we often emphasized that form obeys content. In fact, the change of form is also very important. The famous German music critic Hanslick once said: "There is no art that wears out many forms as quickly as music." Some musicians in today's international music scene are striving for changes in form, such as Clayderman The piano music of Chen Mei, the violin music of Chen Mei, and the saxophone and Chinese erhu ensemble, etc. The problem is that it is not advisable to show off the changes in form too much and the content is too poor. Overemphasizing the change of form and ignoring the solidification and improvement of content, the result is to put the cart before the horse.

For example, the current form of the Girls' Twelve Band is indeed very novel, especially popular with young people. However, using women as the highlight, covering up or even replacing hearing with visual sense, replacing the interpretation of music with body movements, and completely commercializing art appreciation, it almost goes against the original intention and purity of music art. From the perspective of the sustainable development of erhu and folk music, it would be even better if we focus on the improvement of content while creating new forms.

The main thing is that the work can stand up, and its form can have many changes. If the work cannot stand up, it will only be short-lived. Therefore, for sustainable development, works are still the key! Composers must not take it lightly!

4. There seem to be too many competitions of various ethnic instrumental music, among which the erhu is indispensable.

The original intention of the competition is to promote and improve the level of instrumental music performance and enthusiasm for learning, as well as to promote the national music, but the actual effect is a bit unflattering. For example, according to normal circumstances, the championship and runner-up are always decided in the competition, but now there are often a large number of gold medal winners, a large number of silver medal winners, and some players who have not yet been eliminated, also known as "everyone is happy". This is probably only possible in Chinese-style literary competitions.

If Li Na is tied for the first place with the other two in sports competitions, what kind of competition is that? It shows that the organizers of our competition had the suspicion of unclear purpose and impure motives. Maybe it's succumbing to sponsors, giving money to people's face or whatever. But in this way, it gives others face but loses the fairness and principle of the game. Some judges, out of selfishness and the interests of the region, scored unfairly or made arrangements for each region, which obviously violated the purpose of the competition and was not conducive to the normal development of the instrumental music competition.