Yang Yinliu: Founder of modern Chinese national music study

Yang Yinliu (1899-1984), born in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, was a distinguished music historian and theorist.

Widely recognized as the founder of the study of national music in China, Yang published Draft of Ancient Chinese Music History, the country's first monograph on music history. His other notable publications, such as Tianyun Studio's Kunqu Opera Opern and Yayin Collection, are also invaluable to the study of Chinese traditional music.

Yang joined the Wuxi Tianyun Studio at the age of 12, where he learned Kunqu Opera and traditional Chinese musical instruments such as the pipa (a four-stringed Chinese lute) and sanxian (a three-stringed plucked instrument). In 1936, Yang served as a music researcher at the Harvard-Yenching Institute and taught Chinese music history at Yenching University. In the 1940s, Yang was appointed director of the National Music Research Institute (MRI) of the Central Conservatory of Music (predecessor of the MRI of the Chinese Academy of Arts). In 1979, he became the advisor to the Chinese National Academy of Arts.

Yang made a special trip to his hometown, Wuxi, in 1950 with the aim of documenting, sorting and publishing six famous pieces by the local folk musician Ah Bing. Thanks to his efforts, Ah Bing's greatest erhu (a two-stringed fiddle) piece, The Moon Reflected on the Er-quan Spring, was passed on and can still be appreciated by the whole world to this day.