So far, the art of erhu music plays an important part on both solo and tutti.

This article chooses four works from different periods and styles to do the discussion.

Except the new work《Yin Hua-Pai Lu Ssu Tê Tsu Chi》which is written by the author and the composer, the other three works 《Waves Washing away the sand》、《Beautiful Coconut Tree Island》、《Erhu Rhapsody No.3》can make us improve our different performance styles during the process of learning the art of playing instruments. We can hear those works from different concerts or contests; we are also familiar with those melodies.

There are big differences in the playing skill of each work. The four works belong to different periods. The differences of periods or the composer’s music learning background are all the important factors of creating different music style. There are also relationship among the various music styles and the social background and the audiences’ tastes at the time. Under so many factors, if the one who plays erhu uses the same aesthetic and plays habit or skill to do the music annotation, it’s difficult to show the music language that the composer want to represent, and it’s more difficult to let the audiences have echoes in their hearts. Take the four characteristic works which are chosen in this article for example, the first one, 《Waves Washing away the sand》, was translated from the pipa composition. The biggest character is that how to keep the character of pipa music and add some erhu music to have more expression after translation and have more outstanding performance. The second one,《Beautiful Coconut Tree Island》, is based on the folk songs of Southeast Asia. Besides the source material is the Southeast Asia melody which is seldom selected, there are so many variations in this work. The third one, 《Erhu Rhapsody No.3》, is based on the Xinjiang folk music; this work is also the appointed song of the final erhu contest (young group) in the third Golden Bell Awards. It’s also the popular work of learning playing erhu in recent years because of the special music language and hard skill. These skills advance the erhu playing technique a lot; for the performers, the key points that they have to take notice are big different from the former two works. The forth one, 《Yin Hua-Pai Lu Ssu Tê Tsu Chi》, is a new work which is composed by the author and Li-ren He who’s a Taiwanese composer. They used the melody of Taiwan ballad “Pai Lu Ssu” as their source material instead of China music. This work also shows the beauty of countryside in old Taiwanese’ rural lives by the graceful melody instead of showing the superior skill of erhu music.

The styles of the four works are absolutely different. Through the discussion, we hope that you can know more about the playing styles and skill, and understand the differences and characters when you play these works.