B.Ed., Gad.Dip.Mus., M.Ed (Comp)
Adelaide - South Australia
The Đàn Tranh is perhaps the best known of Vietnamese instruments. It belongs to the long board zither family, an important group of Far Eastern string instruments, which include the koto (Japan), cheng (China), an Koyakeum (Korea). The Đàn Tranh has along board resonator with a slightly arched surface and bridges that are movable.
Literaly, "Đàn" means "musical instrument", but why is this instrument called the Đàn "Tranh" or the "Tranh" instrument? To find the answer for this question, I asked my ĐànTranh teachers when I was in the National Conservatorium of Music (Saigon). They gave two answers according to the meaning of the word "Tranh":
- Tranh is a sort of weed with long and narrow blades used as a roofing material. Long strings of the zither stretching over the board look like theses weed's blades. thus, the instrument called the "Đàn tranh".
- Tranh also means dispute in the Vietnamese language. In the olden times, there was a disputation over a zither. To settle the problem, it was cleaved in two, one with sixteen strings and he other with thirteen strings. The sixteen string zither that is in use today is called Đàn Tranh, the musical instrument of disputation.
Later I heard a legend... In ancient time, there was a great master the zither. He had two daughters learning zither with him. However, he had only one zither which, by that time had 32 strings. One day, the two daughters quarrelled about using the zither. The master was very angry. He cut it into two equal parts and made two zithers of sixteen strings. Since that day the Vietnamese cannot find 32 string zithers but many sixteen string zithers.
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