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'''Nie Er''' the Chinese composer (1912-1935) who wrote the melody of the March of the Volunteers, the national anthem of the People's Republic, and who packed a remarkable body of song into a life of only twenty-three years. A violinist and a self-taught melodist, he gave the Chinese people some of its most stirring music.

== Early Life and Musical Talent ==
Nie Er was born Nie Shouxin on 15 February 1912 in Kunming, in Yunnan province, into a poor family. His father died when he was young and his mother ran a small pharmacy, and the boy showed an early gift for music, learning traditional instruments such as the flute and the pipa from local players. His talent attracted notice and supporters, and in 1930, at the age of eighteen, he left for Shanghai to make his way in the new entertainment industry of the treaty port.

There he worked at odd jobs and learned Western music largely by his own efforts, teaching himself the violin and the rudiments of composition. He joined the left-wing theatrical world and became friendly with the playwright Tian Han and others, who brought him into the circles of revolutionary art. The friendship with Tian Han was decisive, for it was this partnership that produced the national anthem and many other songs.

== Songs and the Shanghai Film World ==
In Shanghai Nie Er found work in the film industry, writing and performing music for films. He composed a large number of songs in a short time, many of them film themes and mass songs that spoke of labour, resistance and hope. Their direct melodies and marching rhythms made them easy to sing and quick to spread. Among his best-known works are the song Dockworkers, whose powerful rhythm echoes the work of porters on the Shanghai waterfront, and the Women's March and Graduation Song, which were widely sung by young people and were taken up by patriotic audiences.

He wrote for workers, students and soldiers with equal success. In all he composed some thirty-seven songs, a small body of work of unusual consistency and force. His tunes drew on Chinese folk and operatic material while adopting the techniques of Western popular and march music, and his gift was for a clear and memorable melodic line. He had an instinct for the phrase that a crowd could take up, and his songs were composed to be sung by ordinary people rather than in a concert hall.

== The March of the Volunteers ==
In 1935 Nie Er composed the music for the song whose words had been written by Tian Han for the film Children of Troubled Times. The verse speaks of a nation in peril and calls the people to rise in arms, and the melody, with its ascending intervals and decisive rhythm, gave the words a force that carried them far beyond the cinema. Tian Han had been arrested before the song was finished, and Nie Er completed the setting in difficult circumstances.

The recording was made and the song performed in that difficult spring, and it became one of the most powerful anthems of the Chinese resistance against the Japanese invasion. In 1949 the song was adopted as the national anthem of the People's Republic. Its melody is probably the most familiar piece of music composed by a Chinese author anywhere in the world, and it gave its young composer an enduring place at the centre of national life.

== Technique and Reputation ==
Nie Er was essentially self-taught, and his strength lay in melody rather than in large-scale form. He wrote almost exclusively songs, but within that narrow compass he achieved a variety of mood and a sureness of line that have impressed later musicians. He was also a capable violinist and a student of Western harmony and theory. He understood the power of rhythm to organise a crowd, and his marches and mass songs are built on clear, driving patterns.

At the same time he could write tender and lyrical pieces, and his output includes love songs and film ballads as well as calls to action. His music was inseparable from the political and social life of the 1930s, when songs were a principal means of awakening and uniting the people. He belongs to the left-wing musical movement that used popular forms for patriotic ends, and he was its most gifted member.

== Death and Legacy ==
Nie Er left Shanghai in 1935 and travelled to Japan, intending to study and then to continue his musical education in Europe. On 17 July 1935, while swimming near Fujisawa, he was drowned at the age of twenty-three, and his death cut short one of the most promising musical careers of modern China. Though his life was brief, his reputation is secure, and he is honoured as a national composer. His melody is heard wherever the Chinese anthem is sung, and schools, conservatories and streets in China are named after him.

Statues and memorials preserve the image of the young man with his violin, and a prize for young musicians is named for him. He is remembered as the musician whose song became the voice of a nation. In a single melody, composed in his early twenties, he achieved a permanence that few composers reach in a lifetime, and his brief career stands as one of the remarkable stories of twentieth-century Chinese culture.

== See also ==
* March of the Volunteers
* Children of Troubled Times
* Dockworkers
* Chinese film music

== References ==

<ref name="r1">Nie Er, The Complete Musical Works of Nie Er, People's Music Press, 1957.</ref>
<ref name="r2">Xia Yan, Reminiscences of the Left-Wing Theatre Movement, People's Literature Press, 1979.</ref>
<ref name="r3">Wang Yuxi, Nie Er: A Life, Yunnan People's Press, 1982.</ref>
<ref name="r4">Liu Liangmo, The Story of Chinese National Songs, Overseas Chinese Press, 1945.</ref>

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[[Category:Music]]
[[Category:Composers]]
[[Category:Contemporary China]]