潮州音乐家苏文贤，一九○七年十二月一日出生于潮州，一九七一年八月十一日与世长辞，享年六十四岁。一九二六年，苏氏在泰国曼谷一金铺工作，其少东谢少圃正从潮州琵琶师祖洪沛臣习奏琵琶，苏氏不时偷学，为谢发现并传其技。同时每年返故里，更得洪沛臣高足“琵琶王”王泽如赐教，尽得洪沛臣之真传。又向新加坡籍著名筝家郑祝三习筝，得“鸡啄粟”特技之真传。一九五六年，应邀到东北音专（即今沉阳音乐学院）任教，一九五八年，广州音乐专科学校成立，苏氏调任古筝与二弦主科教师，其首先运用双手弹筝的手法改编潮乐《天上梯变奏曲》，打破潮州传统乐曲均由头板、拷打、三板构成的板式格局，按同宫系统，用“鱼咬尾”的传统创作手法，连接一首乐曲的首尾，这一新的板式连接法，使之成为潮乐常用之演奏格式。
SU Wen-xian
SU Wen-xian was born on December 1, 1907 in Chaozhou, Guangdong province and passed away of illness on August 11, 1971. In 1926, when he was working in a gold smith shop in Bangkok, Thailand, he had a chance to watch the young master XIE Shao-pu in learning the pipa with the well known pipa master HONG Pei-chen of the Chaozhou school and tried to learn by himself. Xie discovered this and let him studied with him. When he took his annual vacation every year at homeland, he further studied the pipa under WANG Ze-ru and also the zheng under ZHENG Zhu-san. In 1956, he was appointed to teaching in Shenyang Conservatory. In 1958, he was transferred to the newly established Guangzhou Conservatory. In there, he used the new both hands technique of zheng to arrange new piece for it, which broke the tradition of Chaozhou style and created a new format on performing. This was well received and be used by most of the musicians later.