琴弦上的絕響·《二泉映月》的傳世之謎A Swan Song on the Strings · The Mystery of How The Moon Reflected on the Second Spring Survived
China’s Beethoven · Blind Musician AbingA Swan Song on the Strings · The Mystery of How The Moon Reflected on the Second Spring Survived
China’s Beethoven · Blind Musician Abing琴弦上的絕響·《二泉映月》的傳世之謎
中國的貝多芬·瞎子阿炳

Abing, whose original name was Hua Yanjun, was a folk musician whose life was marked by adversity and whose final years were ravaged by poverty and illness. Amid the hardships of his existence, he performed, refined, and created a vast repertoire of folk music, including works worthy of being passed down through the ages.

Yet on the streets of Wuxi in those years, almost no one truly recognized the immense artistic value contained in his music. To many hurried passersby, he was merely a blind and destitute man playing his instrument in the streets to stay alive—a pitiful sight scarcely worthy of a second glance.

Had it not been for Li Songshou, a young neighbor twenty-eight years his junior, would Abing’s music have attracted the attention of professional musicians in time? Would it have been transcribed and recorded before his death? These might have become questions to which history could offer no answer.

The Moon Reflected on the Second Spring, the erhu masterpiece that has moved the world, might never have had the chance to survive.

And yet, the coincidences of history are often astonishing.

In the 1930s, Abing lost his sight and fell from his former position as the presiding Taoist priest of a temple to the life of a blind street performer. At the time, he was still living in a small, dilapidated, low-roofed room inside the Leizun Temple on Library Road in Wuxi.

The room was cramped, sparsely furnished, and filled with worn-out belongings. Li Songshou, then still a young boy, lived at Number Four, Library Road, only a short distance from Abing’s dwelling.

Coincidence? Fate? Or the will of Heaven?

Abing, whose original name was Hua Yanjun, was a folk musician whose life was marked by adversity and whose final years were ravaged by poverty and illness. Amid the hardships of his existence, he performed, refined, and created a vast repertoire of folk music, including works worthy of being passed down through the ages.

Yet on the streets of Wuxi in those years, almost no one truly recognized the immense artistic value contained in his music. To many hurried passersby, he was merely a blind and destitute man playing his instrument in the streets to stay alive—a pitiful sight scarcely worthy of a second glance.

Had it not been for Li Songshou, a young neighbor twenty-eight years his junior, would Abing’s music have attracted the attention of professional musicians in time? Would it have been transcribed and recorded before his death? These might have become questions to which history could offer no answer.

The Moon Reflected on the Second Spring, the erhu masterpiece that has moved the world, might never have had the chance to survive.

And yet, the coincidences of history are often astonishing.

In the 1930s, Abing lost his sight and fell from his former position as the presiding Taoist priest of a temple to the life of a blind street performer. At the time, he was still living in a small, dilapidated, low-roofed room inside the Leizun Temple on Library Road in Wuxi.

The room was cramped, sparsely furnished, and filled with worn-out belongings. Li Songshou, then still a young boy, lived at Number Four, Library Road, only a short distance from Abing’s dwelling.

Coincidence? Fate? Or the will of Heaven?

Li Songshou had loved music from an early age and was learning to play the erhu. Because the two families lived so close to each other, he had the opportunity to approach Abing and seek his guidance in playing the instrument.

Abing was very fond of children and felt an especially warm affection for a younger music lover like Li Songshou. Eager to improve his playing, Li often visited Abing’s home, sitting quietly beside him and listening intently as he played the erhu and pipa.

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In Li Songshou’s later recollections, one melody had left an extraordinarily deep impression on him. It was the piece that would one day become world-famous as The Moon Reflected on the Second Spring. Whether he was in good spirits or bad, Abing often played this melody. It was calm and unadorned, yet plaintive and heartrending, as though a man who had suffered all his life were telling a merciless world of his sorrow, anger, and refusal to surrender.

Again and again, the melody drifted into Li Songshou’s ears. After hearing it so often, Li, blessed with a sensitive ear and an extraordinary memory, silently engraved its beautiful yet desolate strains upon his heart.

Even after he grew up, Li Songshou continued to visit Abing frequently. Sometimes he read newspapers aloud to him; at other times, he helped tune his instruments or replace their strings. On one occasion, Li tried playing for Abing the melody that had long been fixed in his memory.

Abing was astonished when he heard it and asked where Li had learned the piece.

Li Songshou smiled and explained that he had heard Abing play it so often and liked it so much that, after listening to it again and again, he had naturally committed it to memory.

Li Songshou casually asked, “What is this piece called?”

Abing sighed and replied, “It is something I made up myself. I just play it however I please. It has no name, and I never intended to pass it on to anyone.”

By the late 1940s, Li Songshou was studying the erhu under the renowned performer Chu Shizhu, the foremost disciple of Mr. Liu Tianhua.

In the winter of 1949, before the beginning of a lesson, Li Songshou casually played the melody that had been deeply imprinted upon his mind since boyhood, simply to warm up his fingers.

Standing nearby, Chu Shizhu became completely absorbed. Suddenly, he interrupted: “Stop for a moment—stop. What piece is that?”

Taken aback by his teacher’s unexpected question, Li Songshou replied, “It is a piece that Blind Abing, a folk performer in Wuxi, used to play while walking through the streets to earn a living.”

“Who composed it? What is its title?” Chu Shizhu pressed him.

Li Songshou smiled helplessly. “Abing composed it himself. I asked him several times what it was called, but he always said that it was only something he played however he pleased and that it had no name.”

Chu Shizhu immediately asked, “Can you play the entire piece for me?” Drawing upon the vivid memories of his childhood, Li Songshou performed the composition from beginning to end.

Chu Shizhu listened in breathless concentration and was extraordinarily moved. He exclaimed, “This is a masterpiece wrung from the very heart and soul. It could never have been produced by simply playing whatever came to mind!”

Chu Shizhu then asked Li Songshou whether he knew the composer personally.

Li explained that his family lived very close to Abing and that the two households were on excellent terms. He then gave Chu Shizhu a concise account of Abing’s tragic and tumultuous life.

According to Li Songshou’s recollections in his later years, the renowned music educator and ethnomusicologist Yang Yinliu entered the room while the two men were talking and overheard their conversation.

Yang Yinliu said with emotion, “I know the Hua Yanjun you are talking about. I studied the pipa with him when I was eleven years old. He was only seventeen or eighteen then, but he was already a well-known Taoist musician in Wuxi. He was indeed exceptionally gifted. After he lost his sight, I even consulted him about Buddhist ceremonial music for gongs and drums.”

Li Songshou then told the two men about Abing’s circumstances at the time. By then, Abing was already seriously ill and frequently coughing up blood. He could no longer go out to perform, and his life was desperately difficult. He survived only with the support of his wife, Dong Cuidi, and the help of relatives and friends.

Deeply concerned by what he heard, Yang Yinliu urged Li Songshou to find a way, the next time he returned to Wuxi, to transcribe as many of Abing’s compositions as possible.

This farsighted suggestion became an essential step in the eventual rescue of Abing’s music.

Around the Qingming Festival in 1950, Li Songshou returned to Wuxi and made a special visit to Abing. Abing’s complexion was yellow with a bluish pallor, and his body was even thinner than before, but his spirits remained reasonably good. After they had exchanged greetings, Li asked Abing to play a piece for him, specifying the melody he had once played every evening while walking through the streets.

Abing refused several times, but Li Songshou pleaded so persistently that he finally agreed.

He tuned the strings and drew a deep breath. With a sweep of his bow, the melody—uniting feeling and scene, weeping and lamenting—once again reverberated through the cramped, dilapidated room.

When the music ended, Li Songshou asked, “This piece is already known throughout Wuxi. Why don’t you give it a beautiful name instead of always saying that it is merely something you play at random?”

Abing burst into laughter. “Do you think I was fooling you? It truly has no name. In any case, no one wants to learn it.”

Li Songshou immediately seized upon his words. “We all want to learn it! Mr. Yang and my teacher both admire your music very much. They have asked me to write it down in musical notation so that it can be introduced to erhu students at the conservatory and passed down from one generation to the next.”

A little embarrassed, Abing muttered, “Wouldn’t that mean displaying my shortcomings before the entire conservatory?”

“This would not embarrass or disgrace you. Mr. Yang thinks very highly of your music,” Li Songshou replied sincerely.

“Is that really true?” Abing asked, only half convinced.

To transcribe the piece as accurately as possible, Li Songshou asked Abing to play it several more times—and as slowly as he could.

Abing cooperated, playing the entire piece twice more from beginning to end. Li Songshou’s wife, Cao Zhiwei, also took part in transcribing the music.

The husband and wife listened while repeatedly checking their notation. Whenever they encountered a passage that was difficult to record accurately, they asked Abing to slow down, and sometimes requested that he play the same passage several times.

Li Songshou found that the principal melody Abing played on this occasion did not differ greatly from the score he had written down from memory, although he made corrections to several details. He also recorded in detail the bowing and fingering techniques Abing used in his performance.

After repeated listening, comparison, and revision, the erhu solo that would later become renowned throughout China and the world was, for the first time, recorded in relatively complete musical notation.

After returning to Nanjing, Li Songshou submitted the score to his two teachers, Chu Shizhu and Yang Yinliu, for their review.

Both men were astonished by what they saw and immediately asked whether Abing could perform other compositions.

Li Songshou replied that Abing was not only accomplished on the erhu but also a master of the pipa. The folk pieces he had performed during his lifetime might have numbered in the hundreds.

But Li Songshou also clearly understood that no matter how meticulously the score was transcribed, written notation could never fully reproduce Abing’s superb and distinctive performance techniques. The same note, played by different musicians, could produce entirely different effects.

Abing’s music contained far more than melody. It held his breathing, rhythm, strength, and emotion; the humiliation and suffering of half a lifetime; and the stubborn defiance of a man who refused to bow his head or sink into despair. The best way to preserve Abing’s music was not merely to leave behind a written score, but to record the sound of his playing directly.

In 1950, the Central Conservatory of Music was formally established in Tianjin. The faculty and educational resources of several institutions, including the former National Conservatory of Music, were reorganized and merged to form important components of the new conservatory. The institution subsequently established a research organization devoted to traditional Chinese music, and musicians including Yang Yinliu, Cao Anhe, and Chu Shizhu participated in the related investigation and study of folk music.

Not long afterward, Chu Shizhu told Li Songshou that the music research organization had just received a portable wire recorder imported from abroad. In an era when China was rebuilding from widespread devastation and professional equipment was desperately scarce, it was an exceedingly rare and precious recording device.

When Li Songshou learned the news, he immediately thought of Abing’s dangerously deteriorating health. He wrote at once to Yang Yinliu, explaining the seriousness of Abing’s illness and urging them to travel to Wuxi as soon as possible to make an emergency recording of his playing.

Yang Yinliu understood very well that China had only just emerged from years of war. Countless folk artists were living in poverty, and the precious skills they possessed could disappear forever at any moment through illness, destitution, or death. The news Li Songshou brought made the matter even more urgent.

A folk-music genius capable of producing such an extraordinary composition had already reached the final stage of his life. Unless action was taken immediately, Abing’s unique music might follow him into the grave and be lost forever.

Fortunately, Yang Yinliu, Cao Anhe, and their colleagues were already conducting field research and recording folk music. Li Songshou’s transcription, his recommendation, and the news of Abing’s grave illness made the rescue of Abing’s music a task that could no longer be delayed.

At the end of August 1950, Yang Yinliu and Cao Anhe returned to their hometown of Wuxi, where Li Songshou joined them.

They brought with them an imported wire recorder, an exceptionally precious piece of equipment at the time, intending for the first time to preserve the actual sound of Abing’s own performance.

Yet when they found Abing, they discovered that matters were far from proceeding as smoothly as they had imagined. Abing had not performed formally for more than two years, and there was no usable erhu or pipa in his home. His fingers had grown stiff, and his physical strength had greatly declined. His body was desperately weak, and there was very little time left.

This was a musical rescue racing against death.

Several days later, on the night of September 2, 1950, the sound of Abing’s long-silent instruments finally rose inside Sansheng Pavilion.

That night, a slender, slowly turning recording wire preserved forever in the history of Chinese music the immortal works created and performed by an impoverished, gravely ill, and virtually unknown blind street musician.

It was through these sounds, preserved almost by miracle, that the world truly discovered Abing for the first time. He was not merely a blind man wandering the streets and playing music to survive, but a master of folk music who had woven the suffering, humiliation, grief, fury, and defiance of half a lifetime into his strings and, through his own unique musical language, attained a level of artistry worthy of the world.

Although only six recordings by Abing ultimately survived, those six works alone were enough to place his name among the great musicians of the world who likewise created immortal music through suffering.

(To be continued)