(b 4 Feb 1895, Jiangyin, Jiangsu province; d 8 June 1932). Chinese composer and music reformer. Liu Tianhua's practical musical education began at middle school in 1909, when he joined his school band as cornet player. By 1914 Liu was employed as a school music teacher in the cities of Jiangyin and Changzhou. At this time, and despite his initial training in Western music, Liu became increasingly interested in Chinese traditional music. Liu studied the two-string fiddle erhu and four-string lute pipa particularly seriously, but also learnt Kunqu opera singing, the seven-string zither qin and other folk instruments. Liu also devoted much time to the collection of folk music, contracting a fatal bout of scarlet fever while investigating folk percussion music in the Tianqiao district in Beijing.
In 1922 Liu took a teaching post at Beijing University, where he became active as a music reformer. Liu, his associates and pupils strove to develop a new genre of ‘national music’ (guoyue), drawing on Chinese regional folk traditions, which they attempted to synthesize into a single, national style. Liu saw guoyue as open to modernization and development in ways in which he felt the regional traditions were not. He was also anxious to adopt aspects of Western music theory, and to use Western models of music education and dissemination in the transmission of his new genre. In 1927 he was founding editor of the journal Yinyue zazhi (Music magazine).
Liu's principal musical monument lies in his book of studies for erhu and pipa first published after his death in 1933. The ten unaccompanied erhu solos in this collection, commonly played today, include Bingzhong yin (‘Groaning During Sickness’), Yueye (‘Moonlit Night’), Chuye xiaochang (‘Festival Night Canzonetta’), Xianju yin (‘Reciting During Leisure’), Kongshoung niaoyu (‘Birds Singing on the Deserted Mountain’) and Guangming xing (‘March of Brightness’). They combine traditional characteristics (small-scale sectional form, conventional fingering patterns, descriptive titles) with aspects of Western music (such as compound time, tonal procedures and violin techniques).
Liu Fu, ed.: The Musical Compositions of the Late Liu T'ien-hwa (Beijing, 1933)
T.M. Liu: The Development of the Chinese Two-stringed Lute Erhu Following the New Culture Movement (c 1915–85) (diss., Kent State U., 1985)
Liu Tianhua chuangzuo qu ji [Collection of Liu Tianhua's compositions], ed. YYS (Beijing, 1985)
J.P.J. Stock: ‘An Ethnomusicological Perspective on Musical Style, with Reference to Music for Chinese Two-stringed Fiddles’, JRMA, cxviii (1993), 276–99
JONATHAN P.J. STOCK