Apart from the four-stringed pipa, other pear-shaped instruments introduced include the five-stringed, straight-necked, wuxian pipa (, also known as Kuchean pipa ()),[20] a six-stringed version, as well as the two-stringed hulei (). [12] The plectrum is also critical to creating the sawari sound, which is particularly utilized with satsuma-biwa. On the plectrum, figure of a golden phoenix with flowers in its beak, The surface of the frets is constantly shaved down by the strings, and one of the most important points in the maintenance of the biwa is to keep the surfaces as flat as possible to get goodsawari. The wu style was associated more with the Northern school while the wen style was more the Southern school. Most prominent among these are Minoru Miki, Thring Brm, YANG Jing, Terry Riley, Donald Reid Womack, Philip Glass, Lou Harrison, Tan Dun, Bright Sheng, Chen Yi, Zhou Long, Bun-Ching Lam, and Carl Stone. (80 30 3.4 cm), Classification: [21] During this time, Persian and Kuchan performers and teachers were in demand in the capital, Chang'an (which had a large Persian community). During the Qing dynasty, scores for pipa were collected in Thirteen Pieces for Strings. The chikuzen-biwa was used by Buddhist monks visiting private residences to perform memorial services, not only for Buddhist rites, but also to accompany the telling of stories and news. The pipa reached a height of popularity during the Tang dynasty, and was a principal musical instrument in the imperial court. Traditional Chinese narrative prefers the story of the Han Chinese Princess Liu Xijun sent to marry a barbarian Wusun king during the Han dynasty, with the pipa being invented so she could play music on horseback to soothe her longings. [10][11] This may have given rise to the Qin pipa, an instrument with a straight neck and a round sound box, and evolved into ruan, an instrument named after Ruan Xian, one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove and known for playing similar instrument. These monophonic do not follow a set harmony. In more recent times, many pipa players, especially the younger ones, no longer identify themselves with any specific school. [49] In Nanguan music, the pipa is still held in the near-horizontal position or guitar-fashion in the ancient manner instead of the vertical position normally used for solo playing in the present day. The biwa is a relative of Western lutes and guitars, as well as of the Chinese pipa. [1][2] Modern researchers such as Laurence Picken, Shigeo Kishibe, and John Myers suggested a non-Chinese origin. It is not used to accompany singing. The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments. 17 Traditional Japanese Musical Instruments You Should Know The satsuma-biwa is traditionally made from Japanese mulberry, although other hard woods such as Japanese zelkova are sometimes used in its construction. In the beginning of the Taish period (19121926), the satsuma-biwa was modified into the nishiki-biwa, which became popular among female players at the time. Use your arrow keys to navigate the tabs below, and your tab key to choose an item, Title: For a long time, the biwa tradition was carried on by wandering blind monks who used the instrument to tell stories such as the Tale of Heike (). By the late 1940s, the biwa, a thoroughly Japanese tradition, was nearly completely abandoned for Western instruments; however, thanks to collaborative efforts by Japanese musicians, interest in the biwa is being revived. [3] From roughly the Meiji period (18681912) until the Pacific War, the satsuma-biwa and chikuzen-biwa were popular across Japan, and, at the beginning of the Shwa period (19251989), the nishiki-biwa was created and gained popularity. Noted contemporary pipa players who work internationally include Min Xiao-Fen, Yang Jin(), Zhou Yi, Qiu Xia He, Liu Fang, Cheng Yu, Jie Ma, Yang Jing(, Yang Wei (),[64] Guan Yadong (), Jiang Ting (), Tang Liangxing (),[65] and Lui Pui-Yuen (, brother of Lui Tsun-Yuen). This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen. Typically, the lowest notes of the arpeggios are open strings, while the highest ones can either be fingered pitches or an open string. The four-string specimen is tuned to a shamisen tuning called honchshi (interval structure, from the lowest string upwards, of P4 - P5, with the top two strings tuned in unison): approximately B2 E3 B3 B3; a typical tuning for the 5-string instrument has the intervallic sequence of P4 (down) P4 (up) M2 (up) P4 (up), approximately E3 B2 E3 F-sharp3 B3. Novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties such as Jin Ping Mei showed pipa performance to be a normal aspect of life in these periods at home (where the characters in the novels may be proficient in the instrument) as well as outside on the street or in pleasure houses.[24]. In 1956, after working for some years in Shanghai, Lin accepted a position at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Biwa. These, according to the Han dynasty text by Liu Xi, refer to the way the instrument is played "p" is to strike outward with the right hand, and "p" is to pluck inward towards the palm of the hand. The archlute ( Spanish: archilad, Italian: arciliuto, German: Erzlaute) is a European plucked string instrument developed around 1600 as a compromise between the very large theorbo, the size and re-entrant tuning of which made for difficulties in the performance of solo music, and the Renaissance tenor lute, which lacked the bass range of the While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Bodmin, Cornwall, Great Britain: MPG Books, pp. Corrections? During the Song dynasty, many of the literati and poets wrote ci verses, a form of poetry meant to be sung and accompanied by instruments such as pipa. Influenced by the shamisen, its music is rather soft, attracting more female players. The instrument is tuned to match the key of the singer. (88.9 30.8 29.2 cm) Classification: Chordophone-Lute-plucked-fretted Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1968 Accession Number: 68.62.1 Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings chikuzen biwa Grinnell College Musical Instrument Collection Typically, the lower strings of the arpeggio are open, as indicated with the '0' in Example 4, while the last string hit may either be open or fingered (numbers 1 to 4 refers to the left hand's fingers from the index to the 4th finger, respectively). They included Ouyang Xiu, Wang Anshi, and Su Shi. It has not caught on in China but in Korea (where she also did some of her research) the bipa was revived since then and the current versions are based on Chinese pipa, including one with five-strings. Japanese lute with 4-5 strings and frets. Ye Xuran (), a student of Lin Shicheng and Wei Zhongle, was the Pipa Professor at the first Musical Conservatory of China, the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. The 4 wedge-shaped frets on the neck became 6 during the 20th century. It is one of the most enduring work in Chinese theatre, and one that became a model for Ming dynasty drama as it was the favorite opera of the first Ming emperor. In the narrative traditions where the pipa is used as an accompaniment to narrative singing, there are the Suzhou tanci (), Sichuan qingyin (), and Northern quyi () genres. Yoko Hiraoka, a member of the Yamato Komyoji ryu, presents a lecture/recital of Japanese Biwa music. The artist Yang Jing plays pipa with a variety of groups. Hazusu: This is a sequence of two pitches, where the first one is attacked, and leades to a second one which is not attacked. The typical 5-stringed Satsuma-biwa classical tuning is: CGCG, from first string to fourth/fifth string, respectively. Male players typically play biwa that are slightly wider and/or longer than those used by women or children. Yo-sen has 2 tones regarded as auxiliary tones. [61][33], During the Song dynasty, players mentioned in literary texts include Du Bin (). [2][29] Wang Zhaojun in particular is frequently referenced with pipa in later literary works and lyrics, for example Ma Zhiyuan's play Autumn in the Palace of Han (), especially since the Song dynasty (although her story is often conflated with other women including Liu Xijun),[30][29] as well as in music pieces such as Zhaojun's Lament (, also the title of a poem), and in paintings where she is often depicted holding a pipa. Biwa - Stanford University [11] The style of singing accompanying biwa tends to be nasal, particularly when singing vowels, the consonant , and syllables beginning with "g", such as ga () and gi (). Its pick or bachi () is the largest among all types of biwa it sometimes. In the 13th century, the story "The Tale of Heike" ()was created and told by them. In the 20th century, two of the most prominent pipa players were Sun Yude (; 19041981) and Li Tingsong (; 19061976). This minute design detail gives rise to sawari, the distinctive raspy tone of a vibrating string. The biwa has a shallow, rounded back and silk strings (usually four or five) attached to slender lateral pegs. However, the playing of the biwa nearly became extinct during the Meiji period following the introduction of Western music and instruments, until players such as Tsuruta Kinshi and others revitalized the genre with modern playing styles and collaborations with Western composers. The musical narrative of The Tale of Heike, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music, edited by Alison McQueen Tokita and David W. Hughes. Clattering and murmuring, meshing jumbled sounds, The Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments, 1889, Accession Number: Exploiting the sound of the open strings increases the overall sounds volume. The pear-shaped biwa lute has enchanted listeners in Japan for centuries. The gogen-biwa (, lit. It is the most widely used system for classifying musical instruments by ethnomusicologists and organologists . Shanghai-born Liu Guilian graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music and became the director of the Shanghai Pipa Society, and a member of the Chinese Musicians Association and Chinese National Orchestral Society, before immigrating to Canada. L 31 1/2 W. 11 13/16 D. 1 5/16 in. However, another variant of the biwa known as the ms-biwa or the kjin-biwa also found its way to Japan, first appearing in the Kyushu region. By the Kamakura period (11851333), the heike-biwa had emerged as a more popular instrument, a cross between both the gaku-biwa and ms-biwa, retaining the rounded shape of the gaku-biwa and played with a large plectrum like the ms-biwa. Among the major variants are the gakubiwa (used in court music), the msbiwa (used by Buddhist monks for the chanting of sutras), the heikebiwa (used to chant stories from the Heike monogatori), the chikuzenbiwa (used for an amalgam of narrative types), and the satsumabiwa (used for samurai narratives). When two strings are plucked at the same time with the index finger and thumb (i.e. [66] Some other notable pipa players in China include Yu Jia (), Wu Yu Xia (), Fang Jinlong () and Zhao Cong (). What is known is that three main streams of biwa practice emerged during this time: zato (the lowest level of the state-controlled guild of blind biwa players), shifu (samurai style), and chofu (urban style). The biwa is a four stringed lute and it is approximately 106 cm long (42 inches). Biwa is a 4-stringed lute played with a large spectrum. Two basic types of wood are used to make stringed musical instruments: woods for soundboards (top plates) and those for frame boards (back and side plates). In modern biwa, particularly in Satsuma-biwa, one sometimes strikes the soundboard sharply to get percussive effects. [citation needed]. A new way to classify the acoustical properties of woods and clearly separate these two groups is proposed in this paper. Although shaped like a Western lute, the Biwa's back is flat and it has a shallower body. Northern Wei dynasty (386534 AD). The short neck of the Tang pipa also became more elongated. [20], Garfias, Gradual Modifications of the Gagaku Tradition 16, Garfias, Gradual Modifications of the Gagaku Tradition 18, Ferranti, Relations between Music and Text in "Higo Biwa", The "Nagashi" Pattern as a Text-MusicSystem 150, Learn how and when to remove this template message, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Biwa&oldid=1097578427, This page was last edited on 11 July 2022, at 14:28. the fingers and thumb flick outward, unlike the guitar where the fingers and thumb normally pluck inward towards the palm of the hand. If you have comments or questions about this object record, please complete and submit this form. Each school is associated with one or more collections of pipa music and named after its place of origin: These schools of the solo tradition emerged by students learning playing the pipa from a master, and each school has its own style, performance aesthetics, notation system, and may differ in their playing techniques. The Met Fifth Avenue 1000 Fifth Avenue The biwa has a shallow, rounded back and silk strings (usually four or five) attached to slender lateral pegs. By the Song dynasty, the word pipa was used to refer exclusively to the four-stringed pear-shaped instrument. Ms Biwa () Japanese. The instrument itself resembles gaku-biwa but is slightly smaller, and is held horizontally. While the modern satsuma-biwa and chikuzen-biwa both originated from the ms-biwa, the satsuma-biwa was used for moral and mental training by samurai of the Satsuma Domain during the Warring States period, and later for general performances. The biwa developed into five different types in its long history: Gaku, Heike, Ms, Satsuma, and Chikuzen. Beginning in the late 1960s, these musicians and composers began to incorporate Japanese music and Japanese instruments into their compositions; for example, one composer, Tru Takemitsu, collaborated with Western composers and compositions to include the distinctly Asian biwa. The biwa became known as an instrument commonly played at the Japanese Imperial court, where biwa players, known as biwa hshi, found employment and patronage. The wen style is more lyrical and slower in tempo, with softer dynamic and subtler colour, and such pieces typically describe love, sorrow, and scenes of nature. 1. 2. Options are limited when considering that a fingered string between two open strings must be fingered on the 4th fret to avoid damping. For the left hand, as mentioned above under the Construction section, bending of the strings (oshikan ) and delicate control of it to create a vibrato effect (yuri ) are crucial techniques to create the biwas subtle in-between notes that are unique for fretted instruments. Chordophone-Lute-plucked-fretted, Credit Line: [40] Through time, the neck was raised and by the Qing dynasty the instrument was mostly played upright. A pipa player playing with the pipa behind his back. Biwa - Wikipedia to the present. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. In biwa, tuning is not fixed. There are more than seven types of biwa, characterised by number of strings, sounds it could produce, the type of plectrum, and their use. This article is about the Chinese instrument. In the 18th century, samurai in the Satsuma area (southern part of Kyushu island) adopted the blind monks biwa music into their musical practices. Jiaju Shen from The Either also plays an Electric 5 String Pipa/Guitar hybrid that has the Hardware from an Electric Guitar combined with the Pipa, built by an instrument maker named Tim Sway called "Electric Pipa 2.0". Classification of Musical Instruments: Sachs-Hornbostel - LiveAbout Taiko Related Articles on Traditional Japanese Instruments 1. 36 1/2 7 7/8 5 in. The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments. . Wu Man is probably the best known pipa player internationally, received the first-ever master's degree in pipa and won China's first National Academic Competition for Chinese Instruments. [17] Even higo-biwa players, who were quite popular in the early 20th century, may no longer have a direct means of studying oral composition, as the bearers of the tradition have either died or are no longer able to play. The pipa is one of the most popular Chinese instruments and has been played for almost two thousand years in China. Japanese Musical Instruments. (92.7 20 12.7 cm), The Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments, 1889. The nut is a rounded edge at the 90-degree bend where the neck meets the peg box, and the broad flat surface just below the bend has a very shallow trough carved into it perpendicular to the course of the strings (see detail #5). The four and five-stringed pipas were especially popular during the Tang dynasty, and these instruments were introduced into Japan during the Tang dynasty as well as into other regions such as Korea and Vietnam. Biwa playing has a long history on Kyushu, and for centuries the art was practiced within the institution of ms, blind Buddhist priests who performed sacred and secular texts for agrarian and other rituals. Since biwa pieces were generally performed for small groups, singers did not need to project their voices as opera singers did in Western music tradition. In Satsuma-biwa classical pieces, the thickest string (the first) is in principle used only as a drone, and usually tuned to the same note as the third string, making the second the lowest. Figure 4 introduces the biwas six traditional tunings. These two modern styles came to Tokyo with the local reformists who led the Meiji Restoration, and became the center of the contemporary music scene in the late 19th to early 20th century. Though formerly popular, little was written about the performance and practice of the biwa from roughly the 16th century to the mid-19th century. The encounter also inspired a poem by Yuan Zhen, Song of Pipa (). Classification (Sachs-Von Hornbostel revised by MIMO) 321.312 chordophone--spike box lute or spike guitar: the resonator is built up from wood, the body of the instrument is in the form of a box through which the handle/neck passes The earliest-known piece in the collection may be "Eagle Seizing a Crane" () which was mentioned in a Yuan dynasty text. Archlute - Wikipedia However, false nails made of horn existed as early as the Ming period when finger-picking became the popular technique for playing pipa.[24]. [72] He was also the first musician to add a strap to the instrument, as he did for the zhongruan, allowing him to play the pipa and the zhongruan like a guitar. Like with the shamisen, a distinctive raspy tone quality called sawari is associated with the chikuzen biwa. It may be played as a solo instrument or as part of the imperial orchestra for use in productions such as daqu (, grand suites), an elaborate music and dance performance. In the 9th century the Ms (blind monks') biwa began to be used by blind musicians as an accompaniment to chanted religious texts and sutras. Painted panel of the sarcophagus of Y Hung, depicts one of the Persian or Sogdian figures playing pipa. Ieyasu favored biwa music and became a major patron, helping to strengthen biwa guilds (called Todo) by financing them and allowing them special privileges. Several types of biwa, each with its own social setting and repertoire, have evolved in Japan over the past 1300 years, the specimens pictured here being called most accurately the chikuzen biwa. The basic technique is to pluck down and up with the sharp corner. The biwa sounds as written, and it is tuned to an A-430Hz. The traditional Satsuma-biwa has 4 strings and 4 frets (Sei-ha and Kinshin-ryu schools), and newer styles have 5 strings and 5 frets (Nishiki and Tsuruta-ryu schools). The biwa is a plucked string instrument that first gained popularity in China before spreading throughout East Asia, eventually reaching Japan sometime during the Nara period (710-794). 2. The biwa is a plucked lute chordophone of Japan. The Biwa is a four-stringed Japanese lute with a short neck that was commonly used in Japanese court music in the seventh and eighth centuries. ________. Hornbostel-Sachs - Wikipedia Typically, the three-note rhythm is either short-short-long or long-short-short. Mural from Kizil, estimated Five Dynasties to Yuan dynasty, 10th to 13th century. Typically 60 centimetres (24 in) to 106 centimetres (42 in) in length, the instrument is . It always starts from the 4th string and stops on either the 3rd, 2nd, or 1st string depending if the arpeggio contains 2, 3, or 4 pitches, respectively. Another new style called Chikuzen-biwa () was created in the 19th century in northern Kyushu Island, based off of the blind monks biwa music, and adopting shamisen, Satsuma-biwa, and other contemporary musical styles. Life in post-war Japan was difficult, and many musicians abandoned their music in favor of more sustainable livelihoods. The biwa (Japanese: ) is a Japanese short-necked wooden lute traditionally used in narrative storytelling. Once assembled, four wound silk strings of varying thicknesses are at one of their ends tied to the string holder bridge (detail #4) and the other to the tuning pegs. Western performers of pipa include French musician Djang San, who integrated jazz and rock concepts to the instrument such as power chords and walking bass.[70]. Pipa | musical instrument | Britannica From the Dingjiazha Tomb No. The loquat is in the family Rosaceae, and is native to the cooler hill regions of south-central China. Sandstone carving, showing the typical way a pipa was held when played with plectrum in the early period. Public domain data for this object can also be accessed using the Met's Open Access API. Other noted players of the early 20th century include Liu Tianhua, a student of Shen Zhaozhou of the Chongming school and who increased the number of frets on the pipa and changed to an equal-tempered tuning, and the blind player Abing from Wuxi. The biwa is a stringed instrument used in Japan as a sort of story telling method. Today, the instrument is played in both narrative and instrumental formats, in the traditional music scene as well as in various popular media. In previous centuries, the predominant biwa musicians would have been blind monks (, biwa hshi), who used the biwa as musical accompaniment when reading scriptural texts. 2. The 5-string specimen is larger (the vibrating length of its strings is 30.3 inches) and heavier than the 4-string specimen and also has some delicate decorative detail added that is carved out of mother-of-pearl (detail #8 and #9). There is little space between the strings on the first three frets, causing obstruction when attacking an upper string whose immediate lower string is fingered in one of the first three frets. Formation: Japanese. Figure 5 shows examples of harmonic structures of, 2, 3, and 4 pitches in Ichikotsu-ch. Biwa traditions began with blind priests who traveled from village to village singing sutras. The sanxian is made in several sizes. [16], While many styles of biwa flourished in the early 1900s (such as kindai-biwa between 1900 and the 1930s), the cycle of tutelage was broken yet again by the war. . to the present. A player holds it horizontally, and mostly plays rhythmic arpeggios in orchestra or ensemble. This type of biwa is used for court music called gagaku (), which has been protected by the government until today. Shamisen. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are as essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. Songs are not always metered, although more modern collaborations are metered. The fourth and fifth strings, if 5-stringed, are tuned to the same note. The Museum's collection of musical instruments includes approximately 5,000 examples from six continents and the Pacific Islands, dating from about 300 B.C. The higo-biwa is closely related to the heike-biwa and, similarly, relies on an oral narrative tradition focusing on wars and legends. Therefore the sound of the biwa is very strong at the attack but it has almost no resonance, and in that sense, its contribution to the overall sound of the orchestra is more rhythmic than harmonic. Recently, this instrument, much like the konghou harp, has been revived for historically informed performances and historical reconstructions. The loquat (Eriobotrya japonica) is a large evergreen shrub or tree, grown commercially for its orange fruit and for its leaves, which are used to make herbal tea.It is also cultivated as an ornamental plant.. Famous pieces such as "Ambushed from Ten Sides", "The Warlord Takes Off His Armour", and "Flute and Drum at Sunset" were first described in this collection. The strings are depressed not directly against the frets, but between them, and by controlling the amount of applied pressure the performer can achieve a range of pitches and pitch inflections.