The Banhu Tradition

With a thin paulownia soundboard instead of snakeskin, the banhu leads the bright, hard-edged bangzi opera family

Related

BanhuBanqiang Form

Time and place

The banhu rose with bangzi opera in the Ming and Qing and is found on stages in Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei and Henan. In Qin opera around Xi'an, Hebei bangzi in Baoding and Tianjin, Henan opera in Kaifeng and Zhengzhou, and pingju in Tangshan and Shenyang, it is the lead string of the wind band.

What happened

Bangzi opera beats time with a hard wooden clapper and sings high, so the accompaniment needed a bowed instrument brighter and harder than the erhu. The banhu replaced the snakeskin face with a thin paulownia soundboard, and the sound turned sharp and penetrating, able to climb with the voice. After the 1950s players arranged opera passacaglias and labelled tunes into solos, and works such as Capriccio on a Qin Opera Theme took the banhu into the concert hall while it remained indispensable in the opera pit.

Musical features

The body is usually a coconut shell or hardwood shell with a thin paulownia board, a fingerboard on the neck, two strings and a horsehair bow. Tuning is usually a fourth or fifth apart, the register sits above the erhu, and the tone is bright with a sandy edge. Because the board vibrates hard, volume and carrying power are strong, and slides and vibrato have corners. Techniques include fast bowing, shaking bow, slides, vibrato, strikes and harmonics.

What to listen for

Hear the hard, bright board, then the short strokes that follow the voice. In Qin opera the banhu slides downward in the bitter mode and leaps in the joyful one; Henan opera phrases are more connected. The library's Zou Xikou from Shaanxi, Huagu Diao from Kaifeng and the Hebei bangzi number are a Shaanxi tune, an eastern Henan tune and a bangzi opera excerpt, not banhu recordings.

Common misunderstandings

The banhu is often taken for a small erhu, or assumed to be an opera instrument only. It has a wooden soundboard and a fingerboard where the erhu has snakeskin and none, so tone and technique differ; it also has concert solos. Another mistake is to think it belongs only to bangzi opera, when pingju, Henan opera and the modern orchestra use it too.

Sources

• 《中国音乐词典》编辑部编，中国音乐词典（人民音乐出版社）— 条目与年代核对，未引用
• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry "China" — framework and dates checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.