This article continues my series on working with sound across creative and cultural contexts. Have you ever seen or heard a Mongolian version of a string quartet?
_______________________________________
_______________________________________
NOTES
The piece here is “Идрэнгийн говиор” (Idrengiin Govior) usually translated as “Through the Gobi of Idren” a title that immediately places the listener in the stark meeting place of mountain and desert in western Mongolia (Badamsuren et al. 2022). “Idren” refers to the Idren mountain range in Gobi-Altai, and the music seems to carry that landscape within it: broad, singing lines, a sense of open distance, and a rhythmic pulse that suggests movement across immense terrain (Levin, Daukeyeva, and Köchümkulova 2016; Hutchins 2025).
Written for morin khuur quartet rather than the standard Western combination of two violins, viola and cello, it offers a strikingly different chamber sound world, rich in grain, resonance and the vocal, almost wind-shaped quality of bowed horse-head fiddles (Weina 2018). In this performance, a double bass replaces the bass khuur, subtly further dissolving the distinction between Mongolian and Western chamber idioms.
_____________
Since my first visit to Mongolia, I’ve been struck by the extent to which memorisation is embedded in the training of Mongolian musicians from an early age: with no manuscript stands or sheet music to mediate between player and instrument, once the music has been internalised, attention settles entirely on the collective making of sound, and in this quartet on the finely balanced interplay of the instruments.
_____________
The composer, Chinzorig Tseden-Ish, was born in 1955 in Mogod soum, Bulgan Province, and died in 1999, leaving behind an extraordinarily substantial body of work. A State Prize-winning figure in modern Mongolian music, he composed across a wide range of forms, from songs and choral works to larger concert and stage pieces, and he is remembered for the assurance with which he brought together Mongolian musical feeling and broader classical structures (Tsetsentsolmon 2015). Even in a relatively compact work such as Idrengiin Govior, one hears that gift for joining atmosphere, melody and form. For me, the music is pictorial…
The performance is by members of the Mongolian State Morin Khuur Ensemble, the country’s leading professional ensemble devoted to the morin khuur, Mongolia’s iconic horse-head fiddle (Tsetsentsolmon 2015). In this setting, the quartet format becomes a finely balanced conversation of closely related timbres, each instrument contributing to its texture.
The ensemble’s players bring an authority that comes not only from technical polish but from deep stylistic understanding, allowing the music’s changes of colour, weight and momentum to register with remarkable clarity. What emerges is not simply a novelty—a “Mongolian string quartet”—but a persuasive chamber tradition in its own right (Curtet 2021).
This particular performance also connects with the wider work of the Morin Khuur Center of North America, which has helped introduce the instrument and its repertoire to audiences beyond Mongolia through teaching, festivals and community activity. Briefly noted here, its importance lies in the way it supports both transmission and encounter. Its concertmaster and morin khuurist Jigjiddorj Nansaddorj (pictured above on the left) helps link the authority of the state ensemble tradition with newer international contexts, showing how a work like Idrengiin Govior can travel far from the Gobi while still retaining the sound of its place of origin.
____________________________
Further Reading
Badamsuren, B., O. Chuluunbaatar, A. Colwell, and J. Curtet, eds. Mongolian Sound Worlds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2022. [A rich introduction to the sonic imagination of Mongolia, this volume is especially helpful on landscape, timbre, and the cultural meanings carried by instruments such as the morin khuur.]
Curtet, Johanni. “Un art du timbre vocal. Variations esthétiques dans la pratique du khöömii en Mongolie.” Cahiers d’ethnomusicologie 34 (2021). [Though centred on khöömii, this essay illuminates timbre as a core Mongolian aesthetic idea, making it valuable for hearing morin khuur music in a broader cultural frame.]
Hutchins, K. A Song for the Horses: Musical Heritage for More-than-Human Futures in Mongolia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2025. [This recent study explores music, animals, and environment in Mongolia, offering a vivid context for understanding how sound can evoke place, movement, and cultural memory.]
Levin, Theodore, Saida Daukeyeva, and Elmira Köchümkulova, eds. The Music of Central Asia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016. [A standard reference work, useful here for situating Mongolian music within wider Central Asian traditions of nomadic listening, landscape, and instrumental expression.]
Tsetsentsolmon, Baatarnaran. “Music in Cultural Construction: Nationalisation, Popularisation and Commercialisation of Mongolian Music.” Inner Asia 17, no. 1 (2015): 118–41. [A clear account of how modern Mongolian music has been shaped by institutions, national culture, and performance practice, including the important role of state ensembles.]
Weina, O. “‘You Can’t Sing Urtyn Duu If You Don’t Know How to Ride a Horse’: ‘Urtyn Duu’ in Alshaa, Inner Mongolia.” Asian Music 49, no. 2 (2018). [This article beautifully connects Mongolian vocal and instrumental style with horsemanship, motion, and landscape, making it especially apt for the imagery and sonority described above.]
Refer to the INDEX for other music and articles that may be of interest.
End of transcript.
© 2013-2026. CP in Mongolia. “Soundscape 16: Idrengiin Govior” is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Music and documents linked from this page may be subject to other restrictions. Posted: 7 March 2026. Last updated: 7 March 2026.