Huqin and string instruments
Biography
Liu Changfu was the first erhu performer and educator in mainland China to receive a master’s degree. He served as a senior professor and master’s supervisor at the Central Conservatory of Music; director of the advisory committee of the Chinese Musicians Association’s Erhu Society; vice-president of the Liu Tianhua Research Society; and honorary president of the Huqin Committee of the China Nationalities Orchestra Society. He also held visiting professorships at the Xi’an, Tianjin, and Sichuan conservatories, Inner Mongolia Arts University, and Xiamen University School of Arts.
He received the Lifetime Contribution Award for Folk Music Art in August 2016 and was named Outstanding Folk Music Educator at the eighth Chinese Music Forum in October 2019. Across more than fifty years of professional teaching, his students included Zhao Ge, Tang Feng, Ye Qiang, Yu Hongmei, Ma Xianghua, Liu Yang, Lin Gan, Zhu Jiangbo, Sun Huang, Sun Ting, Han Shi, Zhou Tingting, and Duan Chao; many received awards in national and international competitions and continued into professional performance and teaching.
Liu organized erhu training around foundational technique, applied technique—including style-specific skills—and the performer’s secondary creation of a musical work. He compared individualized teaching to “root carving” and articulated a sequence of “compensation first, growth later” when addressing gaps in a student’s technique and musicianship.
His scholarly essays included Style Skills in Erhu Playing, Technical Application of Erhu Bowing, Shifting in Erhu Playing, Liu Tianhua’s Art of Playing Erhu Music, and Image Thinking in Erhu Performance. He collected his research in Selected Essays on Erhu Performance and Teaching.
His teaching publications included Introduction to Children’s Learning of Erhu, later issued as Erhu Advanced Elementary Course; Learning Erhu with Famous Teachers: 30 Lessons; the two-volume Erhu System Advanced Etude Collection; three volumes of Central Conservatory Erhu, Gaohu and Zhonghu Teaching Scores; the Central Conservatory Erhu Examination Course; the Hong Kong examination-area Erhu Examination Course; and the fifth national erhu examination textbook of the Chinese Musicians Association.
His compositions included the erhu works New Herdsmen of the Grassland and Apricot Blossom Shadows; the zhonghu works Nostalgia and Thoughts Beyond the Frontier; the gaohu works Rain on Yao Mountain and Prairie Little Sisters; and the banhu works Happy Sending Harvest Grain and Mountain Festival. New Herdsmen of the Grassland and Thoughts Beyond the Frontier became widely performed repertoire.
Liu released personal CD and cassette albums, performance VCDs, teaching-demonstration VCDs, and examination-counselling recordings. He lectured at City University of Hong Kong and music institutions in Xi’an, Shenyang, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Tianjin, Shanghai, Xiamen, Zhejiang, and Tainan, and performed at Hong Kong City Hall, Sha Tin Town Hall, Singapore’s Victoria Concert Hall, Macao Concert Hall, and venues in Toronto, Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and many Chinese cities.
He served on competition juries organized by the Ministry of Culture, China Central Television, and the Chinese Musicians Association. CCTV, Beijing Music Radio, Hong Kong television, Singapore television, Wuxi television, Kaohsiung radio, China National Radio, China Radio International, Beijing Television, and China Education Television presented interviews or features on his work, including programs titled Liu Changfu’s Erhu Art and Famous Teachers.
In October 2013, the Central Conservatory of Music presented “Spring and Autumn on the Strings,” a concert and academic symposium marking his fifty years of teaching.
Chinese Contemporary Art Circle Who’s Who, Chinese Cultural Talents Dictionary, Chinese Educational Experts Dictionary, Chinese Musicians Dictionary, and Cambridge World Who’s Who included his professional achievements.
Professional areas
- Erhu performance
- Pedagogy
- Writing and repertoire