gagaku

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Traditional court and religious music of Japan.

It first appeared in Japan as an import from Korea in the 5th century AD and had become established at court by the 8th century. Though little notation from before the 12th century survives, a mostly later body of music continues to be performed at Shinto ceremonies. Gagaku employs transverse flute (ryuteki), double-reed pipe (hichiriki), mouth organ (sho), gong (shoko), drums, and stringed instruments including the biwa (see pipa) and koto. It may accompany dance (bugaku) or be played independently (kangen); it is further classified either as togaku, the so-called music of the left (which included Chinese and Indian materials), or as komagaku, the music of the right (including Korean examples). (The terms left and right were derived from the Confucian-based administration system of the capital during the Heian period.)

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koto - Japanese musical instrument, a long zither with movable bridges and usually 13 strings.

More on "gagaku" from the 32 Volume Encyclopædia Britannica:

gagaku - ancient court music. The name is a Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese characters for elegant music (ya yueh). Such music first appeared in Japan as an import from Korea in the 5th century and had become an established court tradition by the 8th century. The various forms of North Asian, Chinese, Indian, Southeast Asian, and indigenous Japanese music were organized in the 9th century into two ...

Shinto - The Japanese from ancient times have valued emotional and aesthetic intuitions in expressing and appreciating their religious experiences. They found symbols of kami in natural beauty and the forces of nature, and they developed explicitly religious poetry, architecture, and visual arts. Shrine precincts are covered with green trees and are places of a serene and solemn atmosphere, which is ...

arts, East Asian - Christian music had, in fact, been introduced into Japan as early as the mid-16th century with the arrival of Portuguese merchants and Roman Catholic priests. With this importation came Catholic music and Western musical instruments, the most lasting of which was the double-reed shawm, which survives today as the tuneful accessory of itinerant noodle sellers. The bowed rebeca lute may have ...

colotomic structure - in music, use of specified instruments to mark off established time intervals. In the tuned percussion ensembles (gamelan) of Java and Bali, for instance, a musical unit of 16 measures may be marked by four instruments: a small gong striking once every odd-numbered measure; a larger gong striking each 4th, 8th, 12th, and 16th measure; another gong striking each 6th, 10th, and 14th; and the large ...

arts, East Asian - In modern performances the sho plays a fascinating cluster of harmonies, although there is some feeling that the original Chinese interpretation of its notation was melodic, with little or no harmonic addition. Part of the performance problem, outside the impressive age of the music, is that gagaku notations came only in part books, which were often rather like Western "lead sheets"; i.e., they ...

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