The morin khuur (Mongolian: ) is a Mongolian bowed stringed instrument an

example being the Kobyz (Kazakh: ) or kyl-kobyz is an ancient Kazakh string instrument.
The full Classical Mongolian name for the morin khuur is morin-u toloai tai quur (Which in
modern Khalkh cyrillic is ) meaning fiddle with horse's head. It is
known in Chinese as matouqin ((Chinese: ). It produces a sound which is poetically
described as expansive and unrestrained, like a wild horse neighing, or like a breeze in the
grasslands. It is the most important musical instrument of the Mongolian people, and is
considered a symbol of the Mongolian nation.
The instrument consists of a trapezoid wooden-framed sound box to which two strings are
attached. It is held nearly upright with the sound box in the musician's lap or between the
musician's legs. The strings are made from hairs from horses' tails, strung parallel, and run over a
wooden bridge on the body up a long neck to the two tuning pegs in the scroll, which is always
carved into the form of a horse's head.
The bow is loosely strung with horse hair coated with larch or cedarwood resin, and is held from
underneath with the right hand. The underhand grip enables the hand to tighten the loose hair of
the bow, allowing very fine control of the instrument's timbre.
The larger of the two strings (the "male" string) has 130 hairs from a stallion's tail, while the
"female" string has 105 hairs from a mare's tail. Traditionally, the strings were tuned a fifth apart,
though in modern music they are more often tuned a fourth apart. The strings are stopped either
by pinching them in the joints of the index and middle fingers, or by pinching them between the
nail of the little finger and the pad of the ring finger.
Traditionally, the frame is covered with camel, goat, or sheep skin, in which case a small opening
would be left in back. But since the 1970s, new all-wood sound box instruments have appeared,
with carved f-holes similar to European stringed instruments [1].
Morin khuur vary in form depending on region. The Instruments from central Mongolia tend to
have larger bodies and thus possess more volume than the smaller-bodied instruments of Inner
Mongolia. Morin khuurs (matouqin) built deeper in China also tend to be of poorer quality
construction than their northern cousins. In Tuva the morin khuur is sometimes used in place of
the igil.
The morin khuur is one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity
identified by UNESCO.
Among the Chinese, the matouqin is one of several instruments in the huqin family which also
includes the erhu.

Contents
[hide]

1 Origin

2 See also

3 References

4 External links

[edit] Origin
One legend about the origin of the morin khuur is that a shepherd named Kuku Namjil received
the gift of a flying horse; he would mount it at night and fly to meet his beloved. A jealous
woman had the horses wings cut off, so that the horse fell from the air and died. The grieving
shepherd made a horsehead fiddle from the now-wingless horse's bones, and used it to play
poignant songs about his horse.
Another legend credits the invention of the morin khuur to a boy named Skhe (or Suho). After a
wicked lord slew the boy's prized white horse, the horse's spirit came to Skhe in a dream and
instructed him to make an instrument from the horse's body, so the two could still be together and
neither would be lonely. So the first morin khuur was assembled, with horse bones as its neck,
horsehair strings, horse skin covering its wooden soundbox, and its scroll carved into the shape
of a horse head.
Chinese history credits the evolution of the matouqin from the xiqin (), a family of
instruments found around the Shar Mren River valley (not to be confused with the Yellow
River) in what is now Inner Mongolia. It was originally associated with the Xi people. In 1105
(during the Northern Song Dynasty), it was described as a foreign, two-stringed lute in an
encyclopedic work on music called Yue Shu by Chen Yang. Though it should be explained that
the morin khuur is a Mongolian instrument and not Chinese.
The fact that most of the Turkic neighbors of the Mongols possess similar horse hair instruments
(such as the Tuvan igil the Kazakh kobyz and the Kyrgyz Kyl kyyak) points to a possible origin
amongst the Turkic peoples that once inhabited the Mongolian Steppe and migrated to what is
now Tuva, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.