biwa instrument classification biwa instrument classification

The biwa developed into five different types in its long history: . Modern biwa music is based on that medieval narrative biwa music. Ms Biwa () Japanese. Malm, William P. 1959. Non-traditional themes may be used in these new compositions and some may reflect the political landscape and demands at the time of composition, for example "Dance of the Yi People" which is based on traditional melodies of the Yi people, may be seen as part of the drive for national unity, while "Heroic Little Sisters of the Grassland" extols the virtue of those who served as model of exemplary behaviour in the People's commune.[48]. A. Odaiko B. Taiko C. Tsuridaiko D. Tsuzumi 2. An English translation was published in the Galpin Society Journal in 1961. The biwa is a four stringed lute and it is approximately 106 cm long (42 inches). The short neck has four raised frets, each one specifically assigned to one of the left hand fingers. In all biwa styles, except for Gaku-biwa (, please refer to the section Types of Biwa), fingers are positioned between the frets, not on the frets. The gogen-biwa (, lit. The performer sings while playing the biwa, and the instrumental part is modular in structure in that there are dozens of named or numbered phrases that the player must internalize and that are used as the building blocks of the instrument part that supports the vocal part. Players from the Wang and Pudong schools were the most active in performance and recording during the 20th century, less active was the Pinghu school whose players include Fan Boyan (). Dunhuang, Mogao Caves. to divide instruments into eight categories determined by materials. The basic technique is to pluck down and up with the sharp corner. It was those blind monks who fell outside of governmental protection who, during the 17. century, creatively modified the biwa to introduce a shamisen flavor, such as making frets higher to play in-between notes. In 2015, pipa player Jiaju Shen () released a mini album composed and produced by Li Zong (),[73] with E-pa music that has a strong Chinese flavor within a modern Western pop music mould. Harmonics: The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th harmonics of each open string can be performed by attacking the string with either the plectrum or the finger, and in both cases, the overall sonority is quite soft. The biwa strings are plucked with large wooden pick called bachi (, The basic technique is to pluck down and up with the sharp corner. Gao Hong graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music and was the first to do a joint tour with Lin Shicheng in North America. Shakuhachi 2. The fingers normally strike the strings of pipa in the opposite direction to the way a guitar is usually played, i.e. In performance it was held sideways and played with a plectrum. When Yamashika died in 1996, the era of the biwa hshi tutelage died with him, but the music and genius of that era continues thanks to his recordings. It is however possible to produce the tremolo with just one or more fingers. Biwa Description The biwa is a four stringed lute and it is approximately 106 cm long (42 inches). 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. 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. 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 (). The biwa's twangy plucks were most commonly accompanied by a single voice during court performances, but its popularity spread the instrument made its way into religious sermons and oral history . [21] The pipa underwent a number of changes over the centuries. , one can make two or three notes for each fret and also in-between notes. The da and xiao categories refer to the size of the piece xiao pieces are small pieces normally containing only one section, while da pieces are large and usually contain multiple sections. In spite of its popularity, the nin War and subsequent Warring States Period disrupted biwa teaching and decreased the number of proficient users. Even the biwa hshi transitioned to other instruments such as the shamisen (a three-stringed lute).[15]. The biwa player with whom we worked, NAKAMURA Kahoru, improvised ten different versions of this rhythm. Example 4 shows the basic melody of Etenraku's section B and C, and its rhythmic accompaniment. https://japanese-music.com/profile/nobuko-fukatsu/. Omissions? This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen. And thanks to the low tension of the strings, it is easy to bend the strings by adding pressure. 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. This minute design detail gives rise to sawari, the distinctive raspy tone of a vibrating string. CLASSIFICATION DIAGRAM OF WOOD A fundamental structure of string instruments in the Asia and Western is a box-sound hole structure [4,5] as seen in the harpsichord, guitar, violin, and biwa . The Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments, 1889, Accession Number: [9] When singing in a chorus, biwa singers often stagger their entry and often sing through non-synchronized, heterophony accompaniment. Typically, the duration of each group subdivides the measure into two equal durations. Outside influence, internal pressures, and socio-political turmoil redefined biwa patronage and the image of the biwa; for example, the nin War of the Muromachi period (13381573) and the subsequent Warring States period (15th17th centuries) disrupted the cycle of tutelage for heikyoku[citation needed][a] performers. Each type has different and unique tones, techniques, and musical styles. All rights reserved. Its pick or bachi () is the largest among all types of biwa it sometimes. 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. 105-126. Biwa music is based on a pentatonic scale (sometimes referred to as a five-tone or five-note scale), meaning that each octave contains five notes. 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]. Modern notation systems, new compositions as well as recordings are now widely available and it is no longer crucial for a pipa players to learn from the master of any particular school to know how to play a score. 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 fingers and thumb flick outward, unlike the guitar where the fingers and thumb normally pluck inward towards the palm of the hand. 2008. Use your arrow keys to navigate the tabs below, and your tab key to choose an item, Title: Tokyo:Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai. Sandstone carving, showing the typical way a pipa was held when played with plectrum in the early period. The five-stringed pipa however had fallen from use by the Song dynasty, although attempts have been made to revive this instrument in the early 21st century with a modernized five-string pipa modeled on the Tang dynasty instrument. An early depiction of pipa player in a group of musicians. 'five-stringed biwa'), a Tang variant of biwa, can be seen in paintings of court orchestras and was used in the context of gagaku; however, it was removed with the reforms and standardization made to the court orchestra during the late 10th century. 1. [51] The music collections from the 19th century also used the gongche notation which provides only a skeletal melody and approximate rhythms sometimes with the occasional playing instructions given (such as tremolo or string-bending), and how this basic framework can become fully fleshed out during a performance may only be learnt by the students from the master. Instrument Information Origins. Japanese and foreign musicians alike have begun embracing traditional Japanese instruments, particularly the biwa, in their compositions. Performers on the instrument frequently pluck two notes simultaneously, producing a variety of intervals, especially when the singer is silent. later versions were played by the blind Japanese lute priests of the Heian period and it was also played as background music for story-telling Techniques that produce vibrato, portamento, glissando, pizzicato, harmonics or artificial harmonics found in violin or guitar are also found in pipa. Also, thanks to the possibility of relying on a level of virtuosity never before attempted in this specific repertory, the composer has sought the renewal of the acoustic and aesthetic profile of the biwa, bringing out the huge potential in the sound material: attacks and resonance, tempo (conceived not only in the chronometrical but also deliberately empathetical sense), chords, balance and dialogue (with the occasional use of two biwas in Nuove Musiche per Biwa), dynamics and colour.[4]. Liu Dehai (19372020), also born in Shanghai, was a student of Lin Shicheng and in 1961 graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Biwa. NGDMI v.1: 234-237. The biwa has a shallow, rounded back and silk strings (usually four or five) attached to slender lateral pegs. He also qualified as a doctor of Chinese medicine. 4. In the early 20th century, twenty-five pieces were found amongst 10th-century manuscripts in the Mogao caves near Dunhuang, most of these pieces however may have originated from the Tang dynasty. Pipa is commonly associated with Princess Liu Xijun and Wang Zhaojun of the Han dynasty, although the form of pipa they played in that period is unlikely to be pear-shaped as they are now usually depicted. Biwa performers also vary the volume of their voice between barely audible to very loud. 1800 Geography: Japan Culture: Japanese Medium: Wood, mother-of-pearl and ivory Dimensions: 35 12 1/8 11 1/2 in. The heike-biwa (), a biwa with four strings and five frets, is used to play The Tale of the Heike. 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. In this case, the left hand fourth finger taps the string so that the un-attacked pitch or pitches can be somewhat heard. Its plectrum is slightly larger than that of the gagaku-biwa, but the instrument itself is much smaller, comparable to a chikuzen-biwa in size. Several related instruments are derived from the pipa, including the Japanese biwa and Korean bipa in East Asia, and the Vietnamese n t b in Southeast Asia. Typically 60 centimetres (24 in) to 106 centimetres (42 in) in length, the instrument is . This causes a sustained, buzzing noise called sawari () which adds a unique flavor to the biwa sound. This is a type of biwa that wandering blind monks played for religious practice as well as in narrative musical performances during the medieval era, widely seen in the Kyushu area. The instrument initially used for this practice was the four-stringed chikuzen biwa (gallery #1), which was produced and sold cheaply--a fact attested to by the numbers of such instruments taken overseas by working-class emigrants. (de Ferranti, p. 122) [The instrument pictured in gallery #1 is very likely one of those many biwas taken overseas--it was purchased in a Honolulu shop specializing in Japanese antiques many of which were brought to Hawaii by Japanese immigrants in the early 20th century.] Like the heike-biwa, it is played held on its side, similar to a guitar, with the player sitting cross-legged. Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded. 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 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. Of particular fame were the family of pipa players founded by Cao Poluomen () and who were active for many generations from the Northern Wei to Tang dynasty. The Koto came from the Chinese zither "Gu Zheng" during the Nara period in Japan. The design and construction of the 5-string Chikuzen biwa pictured in gallery #2 is basically the same as for the 4-string model described above except accommodations need to be made to the pegbox (detail #7) and bridge (detail #8) for the additional string. Its plectrum is much smaller than that of the satsuma-biwa, usually about 13cm (5.1in) in width, although its size, shape, and weight depends on the sex of the player. often-used technique is rubbing the long side of the bachi on the strings to get wind-like sounds. The biwa has a shallow, rounded back and silk strings (usually four or five) attached to slender lateral pegs. II, p. 30. Traditionally, the duration of each pitch subdivides the measure into two equal durations. [10] An instrument called xiantao (), made by stretching strings over a small drum with handle, was said to have been played by labourers who constructed the Great Wall of China during the late Qin dynasty. This overlap resulted in a rapid evolution of the biwa and its usage and made it one of the most popular instruments in Japan. This is due to the fact that the space between the strings on the first three frets is so short that a fingered 1st fret on the 3rd string, for example, would damp the following 4th string, as shown on Figure 7. 36 1/2 7 7/8 5 in. Hornbostel-Sach Classification of instruments is a means of sorting out instruments according to how it produces sound. Also known as mouth organ. 11.7 in. There are some confusions and disagreements about the origin of pipa. The biwa's Chinese predecessor was the pipa (), which arrived in Japan in two forms;[further explanation needed] following its introduction to Japan, varieties of the biwa quadrupled. Its classification is a type of a Chordophone. Its tuning is A, E, A, B, for traditional biwa, G, G, c, g, or G, G, d, g for contemporary compositions, among other tunings, but these are only examples as the instrument is tuned to match the key of the player's voice. Members of these schools are sighted and include both females and males. An example tuning of the four string version is B, e, f and b, and the five string instrument can be tuned to C, G, C, d and g. For the five string version, the first and third strings are tuned the same note, the second string three steps down, the fifth string an octave higher than the second string, and the fourth string a step down from the fifth. 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. Its tuning is A, c, e, a or A, c-sharp, e, a. 2000. It produces distinctive ichikotsuch () and hyj (). Brian Grimm placed the contact mic pickup on the face of the pipa and wedged under the bridge so he is able to plug into pedalboards, live computer performance rigs, and direct input (DI) to an audio interface for studio tracking. 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). Upon its arrival, the biwa was used in purely instrumental music in the court culture the instrument appears in various works of literature and art in the 10th -12th centuries, depicting nobles enjoying it in rituals as well as in their private lives. Sometimes called the "Chinese lute", the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body with a varying number of frets ranging from 12 to 31. It is assumed that the performance traditions died out by the 10th or 11th century (William P. Malm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sanshin 4. Due to the slow growth of the Japanese mulberry, the wood must be taken from a tree at least 120 years old and dried for 10 years before construction can begin. On the plectrum, figure of a golden phoenix with flowers in its beak, [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 (). It had a pear-shaped wooden body with two crescent-shaped sound holes, a curved neck, four strings, and four frets. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. The pipa reached a height of popularity during the Tang dynasty, and was a principal musical instrument in the imperial court. In the 18th century, samurai in the Satsuma area (southern part of Kyushu island) adopted the blind monks biwa music into their musical practices. If you have comments or questions about this object record, please complete and submit this form. The open strings are shown in the first measures, and the pitches assigned the left-hand fingered notes in the following four measures. As one of the modern types of biwa that flourished in the late 19, centuries, Satsuma-biwa is widely played today in various settings, including popular media.