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Huqin (胡琴 pinyin: húqín) are a family of bowed string instruments used in Chinese music. They consist of a round, hexagonal, or octagonal sound box at the bottom with a stick attached that protrudes upwards. Instruments in the huqin family have two strings (except the sihu, which has four strings tuned in pairs) and their soundboxes are typically covered with either snakeskin or thin wood. Huqin instruments have either two or four tuning pegs, one peg for each string. The pegs are attached horizontally through holes drilled in the stick. Most huqin have the bow hair pass in between the strings.

The most common huqin are the erhu (essentially a Chinese violin), zhonghu (Chinese viola), and gaohu (a higher pitched instrument commonly used in Cantonese music.) Over thirty types of huqin instruments have been documented.

Huqin instruments are believed to descend from an instrument called the xiqin (奚琴), originally played the Xi, a nomadic people of Central Asia.

In the 20th century, large bass huqin such as the dihu, gehu, and diyingehu were developed for use in modern Chinese orchestras. Of these, the gehu and diyingehu are essentially versions of cellos and double basses designed to have a timbre that would blend in with the sound of traditional huqin. These instruments are played in the same way as cellos and double basses, and are very different to the traditional huqin.

Similar instruments are also used in neighboring countries, such as Mongolia, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.

List of huqin instruments

External links

Photographs

See also

Bowed instruments | Chinese musical instruments | String instruments | Continuous pitch instruments

huĉino | Húqín | 胡琴

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Huqin".

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