Nie Er Essentials

A violinist and composer best known for March of the Volunteers, the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China, Nie Er brought Chinese elements to Western structure in songs that dramatised the struggles of the working class in the 1930s. In his roles with Lianhua Film Company and Pathé Records in Shanghai, he composed music for left-wing films, operas and stage plays, often in collaboration with lyricist Tian Han. Although the Yunnan native’s career was cut short in 1935 by his untimely death from drowning, the small body of work he left behind had an outsize influence on revolutionary music in 20th-century China.