Sihe Ruyi

Introduction

Its forerunner Sihe appears in an 1860 pipa manuscript; later players dropped the gongs and drums.

Sihe Ruyi is one of the Eight Great Pieces of Jiangnan sizhu and grew out of Sihe, a widely played instrumental tune. The researcher Li Ya identifies the Sihe in the pipa manuscript Xianxu Youyin, compiled in 1860, as the earliest known score, while a sizhu manuscript copied by Xu Jinsheng in 1886 already carries the title Sihe Ruyi in eight sections. The piece is thought to come from mixed ensembles of strings, winds, gongs and drums, and literati players later removed the noisy percussion passages to make it a pure sizhu suite. The shifan percussion suite Luogu Sihe is closely related, and Yunqing grew from the same family of tunes. Shanghai players also call it the Bridge, because the performers hand the music on section by section.