Moon Over Xi Jiang River - 西江月（潮乐）

[zaxle12]

The sounds of cello appropriately add depth to the music.

[joo6769]

It does not matter if it serves as a bass. It should not have appeared in a traditional classical chaozhou ensemble. Does the composer of this piece of music have a cello in mind? No! Hence, it corrupted the composer's artistic creation I don't mind if it is a modern artistic work but not in a traditional classical work.

[cacalacapoo]

Chinese music is typically transmitted from generation to generation and as doing so, gets changed along the way also. So are you saying that something like the ruan or la ruan shouldn't even be used? There's also a larger sanxian that's not used; only the smaller sanxian IS. I suppose that one might want to use the larger one for bass. Long story short; they aren't that nitty gritty about things like that.

[dbadagna]

Many traditional Chaozhou ensembles use cello these days. Culturally, I think they like the lower sound, because they already had several sizes of fiddles. Take a look at the huge "dihu" this Singapore Chaozhou temple band. It must be the same register as a cello, but is it really "traditional"? Go to Flickr dott comm and put in photos slashh mohhong slashh 2583666485 to see a photo of one of these huge instruments.

[joo6769]

How come a western string instrument, the cello, appeared in a teochew ensemble?

[cacalacapoo]

It serves as a bass..

[dbadagna]

The cello was added many years ago, first in the style performed in Shantou, in Guangdong in mainland China. Elsewhere, such as in Singapore, one can find the dihu (huge bass huqin) used as a bass instrument, or sometimes the dahu (pitched one octave below the erhu). It is simply the case that in Chaozhou music, as in Chinese music in general, many ensembles do have a preference for adding large, low-pitched bowed (and plucked) instruments--sometimes Chinese ones, and sometimes Western ones.

[tigerdragon55]

the music conjures up rustic images