Liu Tianhua was born in Jiangsu in 1895, and 2021 marks the 126th anniversary of his birth.
The Seminar and Kick-off Ceremony of "Centennial Masters and Music" was held on November 18, 2014 at the China Academy of Arts. Guangming Daily, Beijing Youth Daily, China Art Daily, Xinhua Net, China News Network, People's Net, Guangming Net, People's Political Consultative Conference Net, China Daily Chinese Net, Sina, Sohu and others reported on the launching ceremony.
Nearly a hundred years ago today, Liu Tianhua, a young musician, was a teacher at Peking University. At that time, he was teaching at Peking University, including Li Dazhao, Chen Duxiu, Lu Xun and Hu Shi.
In 1922, the Music Institute attached to Peking University was established. Liu Tianhua was hired by Peking University to teach at Peking University. At that time, Peking University's letter of appointment to Liu Tianhua was written "Professor Pipa". The establishment of the Erhu course at the Peking University Music Institute is the result of Liu Tianhua's efforts.
Manuscript of Liu Tianhua's "Bright Walk"
At that time, Liu Tianhua was in a period where people regarded the erhu as a plaything of a "pawn of a peddler". From the Tang and Song dynasties to the Ming and Qing dynasties, the performance of national instrumental music such as guqin, pipa, three strings, pipes, flutes and drums has been perfected day by day. As a traditional national musical instrument, it is widely accepted, but the erhu is rejected because of its "hu" nature, and the structure is simple and still in a primitive state. It is mostly regarded as "rude and lascivious and not enough to be elegant". Therefore, during the planning and establishment of the Peking University Music Institute, Xiao Youmei, the director of academic affairs, actually did not approve of the establishment of erhu courses.
However, Liu Tianhua has been in contact with Erhu since childhood and has special feelings for Erhu. As a child, he once bought a paper tube erhu from the market. The family was once incomprehensible. In the first few years of his employment at Peking University, when Liu Tianhua was in a poor life situation, he "occasionally went to the market to buy an erhu and played it every day to express his undesirable situation and ambition in his heart."
In 1915, Liu Tianhua wrote the first draft of his debut novel, Erhu Solo's "Yin in illness". Prior to this, the erhu was almost never presented in front of the audience in the form of a solo performance. It is generally used as an accompaniment to opera, rap, folk song and dance, or participate in the ensemble of folk bands.
People's general understanding of erhu has not become an obstacle to Liu Tianhua. On the contrary, changing people's deep-rooted prejudices about erhu has become an important reason for Liu Tianhua to open an erhu course.
Under the efforts of "Li Chen Xiao Youmei, Shang shu Cai Yuanpei", the Peking University Music Institute officially stated in the letter of appointment to Liu Tianhua that "teach pipa and erhu two instruments". Since then, the erhu has finally gained a place in colleges and universities.
In addition to working in colleges and universities, Liu Tianhua also enthusiastically tutors erhu lovers in the society. In between jobs, he volunteered to teach a telephone office worker from a disadvantaged family for several consecutive years; he also proposed the establishment of a summer music school to provide opportunities for music lovers in society and music teachers in primary and secondary schools, advocating that "the less tuition fees are collected, the better".
In order to better change the attitude of people at that time to erhu and fundamentally find out the differences between Chinese and Western music, in 1923, Liu Tianhua began to learn violin. Under the heavy teaching pressure at that time, Liu Tianhua's 28-year-old "advanced age" to learn the violin, which is considered to be one of the most difficult musical instruments, was hindered by the obstacles. According to his son, "Although the class hours were heavy, my father still maintained five or six hours of practice every day. Sometimes for a few minutes of such a hot dish, he refused to sit down and rest. With one hand in the case, he began to unbutton his robe with the other. I walked to the study, and the button was just unbuttoned. As soon as I took off my clothes, I started practicing. ”
Liu Tianhua and The National Music Improvement Society
Many historians believe that Liu Tianhua's erhu teaching system began to take shape since 1922. By the 1930s and 1940s, a group of young musicians represented by Liu Tianhua's disciples formed the erhu creative team, such as Chen Zhenduo, Chu Shizhu and others, who were active on the stage of erhu performance and creation.
Chen Yaxin, a disciple of Liu Tianhua, once recalled: "At that time (in the 1930s), Mr. Jiang Fengzhi, a famous disciple of Mr. Jiang Fengzhi, often held erhu solo concerts in the Concord Auditorium, and each performance was bound to be full. At that time, the enthusiasm of the audience had already reached its peak, and it was really a boom. ”
In the period after Liu Tianhua came to Beijing to teach, the performance activities in the city gradually became active. Working in Beijing has enabled Liu Tianhua to have extensive access to various folk artists and traditional artists. In addition to teaching, Liu Tianhua is active in Beijing's hutongs: visiting artists all over the city, from entertainers walking the streets to the famous Peking Opera master Mei Lanfang. He has been constantly learning, collecting and organizing folk music.
This is the case with the so-called "teaching and learning". This stage was also the peak of Liu Tianhua's creation, and most of his erhu works were finalized during this period. These works have become the treasures of Chinese national music.
In 2017, Professor Zhou Yingchen of Peking University commented on Liu Tianhua in the article "Two Development Paths of Chinese Music School":
"Liu Tianhua's works have now been regarded as real Chinese music, real works with national style, but at that time, they were too novel, too trendy, too avant-garde. Liu Tianhua's unfinished manuscript, The Dispute Between Chinese and Western Music, is an important document in the history of modern Chinese music. ”
The long river of history runs silently. In addition to the yellowed historical manuscripts and blurred video materials, there are always some emotions that have not faded away after a hundred years, spanning time and space and outlining the real characters in their minds.
Article source | Peking University Musical Theatre Research Center
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On November 18, 2014, the launching ceremony of "Centennial Masters and Music" was unveiled
On November 18, 2014, the launching ceremony of "Centennial Masters and Music"
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The large-scale cultural project "Centennial Masters" is China's first large-scale series of biographical documentaries focusing on the masters and masters who made outstanding contributions to Chinese civilization in the 20th century, and is jointly produced by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, the Central Radio and Television Corporation, the China Academy of Arts, the Central New Film Group, the China Literature and Art Foundation, the Centennial Yizun (Beijing) Cultural Communication Co., Ltd., and the Silver Valley Art Museum.
From 2013 to 2017, the filming of 43 masters in the first season of "100 Years of Masters" has been completed, which is divided into art, calligraphy, Peking Opera, drama, music and literature. The filming of 57 masters in the second season of "Centennial Masters" has been launched in 2018, adding science and technology, education, traditional Chinese studies, architecture, traditional Chinese medicine, opera and film, which are scheduled to be completed in 2021, when the "100 Years, 100 People, 100 Episodes" documentary, "100 Masters Special Exhibition" and "100 Books Publishing" will be used as a gift for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China.
The completed documentary "100 Years of Masters" has been broadcast on CCTV (one set, three sets, four sets, nine sets, ten sets, fifteen sets, discovery channels, international channels), China Education Television, provincial satellite television, overseas television stations and other 115 tv stations at home and abroad, which have been widely praised and have repeatedly set new high ratings for similar documentaries. "100 Years of Masters (International Edition)" is broadcast worldwide in 8 languages.
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The series of books "100 Years of Masters" has been distributed to nearly 1,000 colleges and universities across the country for three consecutive years by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and the Ministry of Finance as a "High Art entering the campus" study book.
"Centennial Masters" has been selected for two consecutive years by the Propaganda Department (Information Office of the State Council) as the "Record China" communication project, is the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television "14th Five-Year" documentary key topic planning project, "Record the New Era" documentary boutique project and documentary key project, or CCTV major theme main line publicity and key topic selection project, but also the National Arts Fund, China Literature and Art Foundation, China Art and Literature Foundation, Beijing Municipal Government Cultural Innovation and Development Fund, Beijing Culture and Art Fund, Funded by the Beijing Radio and Television Network Audiovisual Development Fund and the Special Fund for Supporting Cultural and Artistic Creation in Xicheng District, Beijing. It has won 9 documentary awards.
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