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| Qin and Togaku | 首頁 |
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Gagaku |
雅樂 1 |
| Especially Togaku "Tang music" 2, i.e., "Music from the Tang Court"3 | Zheng4 notation as found in a gagaku score;
see Music from the Tang Court, Vol. 1, pp. 30-31 |
The word "gagaku" is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese characters whose modern pronunciation is "ya yue", literally "elegant music". During the Han dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE) the term yayue came to be used for court ceremonial music. During the Japanese Heian period （794-1185) the Japanese obtained a substantial body of music from China (and Korea), much of it music as played in the Chinese court during the Tang dynasty (618 - 906).5 This imported music joined with some indigenous Japanese music, also preserved in the court, eventually forming a distinctive style of music called gagaku.6
During the Tang dynasty, at the court in Chang'an one could hear music from many parts of Asia. In the Japanese court the music thought to be specifically of Chinese origin came to be called Togaku (Tang music). Ensembles in the Japanese court have played Togaku since at least the end of the Heian period. Most Japanese scholars insist that the Togaku as played by Japanese gagaku ensembles today preserves Tang dynasty court music. However, the music they play sounds nothing like any known Chinese music from any period. Their performances also differ greatly from the written scores acquired earlier in the Heian period.7 Japanese tradition says that the written scores consist of only the skeletal outlines of the music,8 but this explains the discrepancies in only a very superficial way.
In the 1950s, Dr. Lawrence Picken (L.E.R. Picken, 1909 - 2007) of Cambridge University in England formed the Tang Dynasty Music Research Project to re-evaluate the original scores.9 According to their research, the written scores, in fact, contain the original music. This music was played by the Japanese aristocracy throughout most of the Heian period, consciously preserving the Chinese tradition. During this period the music slowed down, but did not become unrecognizable. The repertoire apparently became smaller, and sections were omitted from some melodies. But because they played the music largely as written, melodies could still be revived.
The radical change came at the end of the Heian period, when the court musicians changed from being literate aristocrats, who could read the original scores, to being professionals (mostly commoners), who could not. The ornamentation for various types of gagaku were elaborated and standardized, eventually becoming the actual melodies. The repertoire became fixed, with the main melodies played by just two of the instruments, the hichiriki and ryuteki.
The Tang Dynasty Music Research Project, by stripping away all the music not in the ancient written scores, has revealed melodies which not only sound more Chinese than does gagaku, they share potentially noteworthy modal characteristics with early qin music, some of which on a completely different basis has claims to preserving Tang dynasty music. Some of the music in both repertoires may even pre-date the Tang dynasty.
However, reconstruction of the the way the Togaku melodies might have been played in China remains problematic. Comparing the parts for the different instruments in the gagaku ensemble suggests that the music was heterophonic, as has long been typical in Chinese music.10 And whether played in ensemble or solo, such music generally was not played exactly as written, but was embellished by performers according to their feelings, skills, and/or the occasion.11
It is an odd fact that the earliest Chinese music has been preserved in Japan.12 This is true whether one is referring to the music preserved in the Togaku manuscripts, or to music for the qin. Notation/tablature and instruments for both genres were brought to Japan during the Tang dynasty. In the case of the qin one can point specifically to the melody
You Lan and to at least two Tang dynasty qin preserved there.13
However, whereas music in the Togaku repertoire was played for centuries by aristocrats (before becoming the ritualistic music heard in the Japanese court today), there is little evidence of similar interest in the music for the qin. One can only speculate as to the reasons for this. One reason might have been that the Japanese did not realize that the zheng was a different instrument from the qin: the character qin was often used in Japan for the koto (zheng).14 Alternatively, those who were aware of the difference perhaps felt that the zheng was an acceptable substitute for the qin. One can also point to the relative complexity of qin tablature, or suggest that Chinese scholars were less willing (if not forbidden) to teach this music to non-Chinese. Of course, it might simply have been that Japanese aristocrats' enjoyment of the music in the Togaku repertoire made this sufficient for any need they may have felt to show respect for Chinese culture.
A major difference between these repertoires seems to be that, whereas qin tablature presents basically complete versions of the music as actually played, gagaku notatation and tablature present only the basic melodies. On the other hand, whereas the qin tablatures that arguably date from the Tang dynasty are few in number, there is a great amount of Tang material surviving in Togaku scores.
As for which is the earliest, the earliest surviving
qin tablature was apparently written down in the 7th century CE (see again
You Lan), but the music must have been quite a bit older. In addition, a number of examples of tablature surviving from 15th century publications may have their origins in the Tang dynasty as well (see, e.g., the Wang Shixiang's article on Guangling San), but it will be extremely difficult to prove which parts of which melodies actually date from the Tang dynasty.
The Togaku scores may date from the 9th to the 12th centuries, but some are clearly based on much earlier materials. It is quite possible that some of these may be pre-Tang, but again, exactly which parts of which melodies will also be very difficult to prove.
Making music from the original qin scores is called
dapu. Often such scores are quite freely interpreted, but the tablature itself contains sufficient information that one can make a good case that it can be used for
historically informed performances of qin music dating from at least the 7th century CE.
At present, although Togaku scores as interpreted by the Tang Dynasty Music Research Project have formed the basis for a number of modern re-creations, to my knowledge there is not yet sufficient information about Tang dynasty performance practice to enable one to evaluate how closely even the most historically informed reconstructions resemble what one might have heard in China at that time.15
The qin was not included in the Togaku repertoire, and the music from these two repertoires is said to come from two entirely different sources: literati tradition in the case of qin, mostly court but also popular tradition in the case of Togaku. Nevertheless, it is important that there be research comparing these two traditions, whether to improve our understanding of the modality of music from that time, or to understand better the relationship between the music as written down and the music as actually played.
1.
雅樂 42903.172 正樂也 "correct music"; references are mostly Han dynasty; makes no mention of Japan
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2.
唐樂 Tang yue 3714.374 "Chinese music" (no reference to Japan).
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3.
Music from the Tang Court
Each volume has a descriptive subtitle, the most complete version of which seems to be, "a primary study of the original unpublished, Sino-Japanese manuscripts, together with a survey of relevant historical sources, both Chinese and Japanese, with full critical commentary and detailed structural analysis of all items transcribed".
Seven of 25 projected volumes have been published, all but the first by Cambridge University Press. Most are out of print, and little information about them is available online. Published volumes (also called fascicles) include:
4.
Koto and so
According to current gagaku practice the ryuteki and hichiriki play the main melodies, while the other instruments provide simple accompaniment. The Tang Dynasty Music Research Project has shown that these ryuteki and hichiriki melodies were added later, and that in fact all instruments played the melodies.
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5.
Most notably during a mission from Japan in the mid ninth century.
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6.
Forms of gagaku included (not all survive):
7.
These have been preserved basically in two great manuscript collections, one belonging to Minamoto no Hiromasa (918-980), the other to Fujiwara no Moronaga (1138–92).
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8.
They probably have less than 10 per cent of the notes as played today.
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9.
The original group consisted of Lawrence Picken, Rembrandt Wolpert, Elizabeth Markham, Allan Marett, Jonathan Condit and Yoko Mitani. They were later joined by Noel Nickson and some others. At present the project is directed by Wolpert and Markham from the Center for the Study of Early Asian and Middle Eastern Musics at the University of Arkansas.
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10.
See heterophony. In heterophonic music each performer is playing essentially the same melody, but each interprets it in his/her own way. Much of traditional jazz is thus heterophonic.
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11.
The Togaku repertoire includes a number of modal preludes. Perhaps these were played in China much as written: such modal preludes in the qin tradition tend to be short and relatively straightforward.
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12.
The closest competitor is the set of 25 pipa lute scores copied down in the 10th century CE and discovered at 敦煌 Dunhuang in western China. It is my understanding that reconstructing the way these short melodies actually might have been played could only come from learning the idiom preserved in the Togaku repertoire.
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13.
One at the 正倉院 Shoso-In in Nara, the other at the 法隆寺 Horyuji Temple in Ueno. See Van Gulik, Lore, pp. 200-209 (photos between pp. 196/7) and pp. 223, 236 (photo between pp.192/3).
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14.
Van Gulik discusses this issue in some detail in his appendix The Chinese
Lute in Japan (Lore, pp. 217 - 224). He points to the fact that although the You Lan tablature and the two Tang qin were brought to Japan, they were unknown to most people. He adds that most Chinese music came to Japan via Korea (or Koreans), and concludes that the qin was never really played in Japan until the monk
Shin-Etsu arrived there in 1677.
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15.
I am not a specialist in this area, and so do not know to what extent it will be possible in future to make cases for historically informed performance, or even to evaluate claims that currently may be made (other than on such straightforward matters as choice or style of musical instruments). One possible avenue to explore, presumably, is further comparative analysis of differing versions of the same melodies in surviving Heian scores. If a number of these show both plain and ornamented versions, and if one can make a good argument that the ornamentation is of the sort that one might have heard in Tang dynasty China, then one might use this ornamentation together with the surviving Heian scores to re-create the sort of heterophonic improvisation which presumbably went on in China during performances of these melodies.
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Return to the Guqin ToC
or to miscellanea.
Qin and Togaku
Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a
separate page)
This is the title for a series of books with transcriptions of Chinese music (togaku) in the Japanese court music repertoire (gagaku) as re-interpreted by the Cambridge Tang Dynasty Music Project; published by Cambridge University Press. The main editor/author was Lawrence Picken. Others include Rembrandt Wolpert, Elizabeth Markham, Allan Marett, Noel Nickson, Yoko Mitani and Jonathan Condit.
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The Chinese zheng zither, generally called koto in Japan, is correctly written with the same Chinese character as for zheng, 箏 (in modern times it is sometimes incorrectly written with the character for qin, 琴). It was called so (or 樂箏 gaku so) in the gagaku ensemble. There is surviving notation or tablature for five melody instruments in the gagaku ensemble, and also percussion indications. The five melody instruments are:
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