Chinese Instrumental Music · Xiansuo String Ensembles · SE10132

Thirteen Suites for Strings

Thirteen suites for plucked and bowed strings

13parts

Introduction

A gongche manuscript of 1814 in which Rongzhai and two companions wrote down thirteen suites for strings

The Thirteen Suites for Strings are the pieces collected in the Xiansuo Beikao, which survives as a manuscript in gongche notation dated 1814. Its compiler was Rongzhai, a Mongol man of letters of the Qing, who with two companions, Long and Xiang, learned the music from He and Fu of the Mongol music office. The two teachers passed on only the fingerings, with no written score, so the three pupils wrote the music down note by note and beat by beat. Each learned different instruments: Rongzhai the pipa and huqin, Long the sanxian and Xiang the zheng. The suites run from Sixteen Beats and The Moon on High to Three Refrains at Yang Pass, Song of Joyful Union and The General's Command. Cao Anhe and Jian Qihua later transcribed the whole collection into staff notation, and Yang Yinliu wrote a study of Sixteen Beats. A concert in Beijing in January 1986 played every suite, and in 2009 Lin Ling, Tan Longjian and others recorded the complete set in the order of the 1814 manuscript.

Thirteen Suites for Strings

Introduction

Parts