Where did the Zither come from?

TT: Once again, we would like to thank you for your very enthusiastic support and your willingness to share your knowledge about music with the readers of Suoi Nguon. To save time, I would like to start with the first question about the musical instrument called “zither”: Please tell us where the zither came from.

TQH: The zither (đàn tranh) is probably the musical instrument that the Vietnamese people know about the most today. The zither was originated from China. The word "Tranh" means "debate", or "quarrel". According to an old legend, under the Qin Dynasty in China, there was a famous musician teacher who had two sons both learning how to play the zither. At that time, the zither had 25 strings. One day the sons fought against each other when both wanted to play the zither, which was the only one owned by the family. Bothered by the noisy fight, the father took the instrument and cut it into two pieces, one piece had 13 strings (the zither with 13 strings still exists today in northern China, similar to the Japanese KOTO) and the other piece had 12 strings (still commonly used in Korea and Mongolia). Another theory says that a man named Meng Tian, a wealthy merchant during the Qin Dynasty, invented the zither by cutting the original instrument into two small zithers, one with 12 strings and the other with 13 strings.

According to Professor Nguyen Huu Ba, there is another legend about a musician who taught the 32 string instrument. The teacher had two daughters. Normally, the younger one would let her older sister play first. But one day, the younger sister wanted to play first, starting the fight with her older sister. The noise woke the father up and he angrily cut the instrument into two pieces, each had 16 strings. And since then, the 16 string zither appeared in Vietnam.

No one in Vietnam today can determine exactly when the zither started to show up in the country. The only certain thing is that the zither was mentioned in the description of a small orchestra under the Tran Dynasty (1225-1400) in a book called “Vu Trung Tuy But” written by Pham Dinh Ho. Mr. Pham Dinh Ho indicated that the zither at that time had only 15 strings, instead of 16 or more, as currently existed in Vietnam, and that the instrument was played by plectra (or onglets), made of silver, or by two small sticks of wood similar to the tool used to play the 48 chord instrument. But the technique of playing with two small sticks of wood has disappeared.