Nie Er [Nieh Êrh]

(b Kunming, Yunnan province, 15 Feb 1912; d Fujisawa, Japan, 17 July 1935). Chinese composer. Originally named Nie Shouxin, he was one of the leading composers of revolutionary songs in China in the early 1930s. After studying several Chinese instruments, including the dizi and the erhu, he spent six months as a soldier in 1928. He took up the violin and the piano, and in 1931 joined Shanghai impresario-composer Li Jinhui’s Bright Moon Song, Dance and Theatre Troupe as a violinist. By 1933 Nie had joined the Communist Party and gained experience as a composer of film songs, and the following year he took a post with the Pathé (Baidai) Record Company in Shanghai, working on a succession of left-wing film projects until his death by drowning in 1935.

In his 37 songs Nie employs both a Western heptatonic and a Chinese pentatonic melodic language, sometimes together in the same song. March rhythms and fanfare motifs are common, and the mainly syllabically set texts are predominantly concerned with the expression of revolutionary sentiments. Many of the songs first appeared in films, and were widely used by left-wing activists in the conflicts with Japan in the 1930s as well as in subsequent political movements. While his early death robbed the Communist Party of a skilful melodist, it also provided them with a convenient revolutionary role model for subsequent generations of professional musicians. Nie’s importance lies more in this symbolic aspect than in his specific compositions. Further information is given in Wang Yuhe: Zhongguo jin- xiandai yinyuejia pingzhuan [A critical biography of modern and contemporary Chinese musicians] (Beijing, 1992), 131–64.

WORKS

JONATHAN P.J. STOCK