Performers › Musicians
Liu Tianhua
Erhu and pipa player and composer whose ten erhu pieces, including Liangxiao and Guangming xing, and systematic etudes brought the erhu into the conservatory and onto the solo stage.
Also known as Born Liu Shouchun
Liu Tianhua, born Liu Shouchun in Jiangyin, Jiangsu, grew up playing band and silk-and-bamboo music and later taught at the Peking University Music Institute and other schools while studying Western composition and violin. He gave the erhu a fixed tuning and a multi-position fingering system, wrote 47 erhu and 15 pipa etudes, and composed ten erhu pieces, among them Bingzhong yin, Kongshan niaoyu, Liangxiao and Guangming xing, as well as pipa pieces such as Gaijin cao and Xulai. In 1927 he founded the Society for the Improvement of National Music in Beijing with Xiao Youmei, Yang Zhongzi and others. He died of scarlet fever in Beiping in 1932, aged thirty-seven.
Life and times
Dates 1895 CE–1932 CE