Inverted Hanging Curtain

Introduction

A yangqin solo that Yan Laolie made from the third section of the old piece Three Precious Buddhas

Inverted Hanging Curtain is a yangqin solo arranged by Yan Laolie, a yangqin master of Cantonese music. Yan, also known as Yan Gongshang and born Yan Xingtang, is regarded as the founder of the Cantonese school of yangqin playing. He took the third section of the old piece Three Precious Buddhas and reworked it for solo yangqin with grace notes, held notes, detached notes and rolled and short tremolos. Like Drought Thunder, which comes from the same old piece, it uses the right-hand beater technique that he devised to strike the falling beat. By the late 1920s his leading pupil, Luo Qiyun, had recorded it together with Linked Rings. Writers on the genre count it among the representative pieces of the founding period of Cantonese music.