Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (20)
Similar to Introduction to Japanese Music - Week 3
Similar to Introduction to Japanese Music - Week 3 (20)
More from Keith Hennigan
More from Keith Hennigan (11)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Introduction to Japanese Music - Week 3
- 1. Introduction to Japanese Music Week 3 – Biwa, Heike Monogatari
- 2. The Biwa
- 3. Mōsōbiwa • ‘Blind priest’ biwa • Accompaniment to sutras and chanting
- 4. Mōsōbiwa • ‘Blind priest’ biwa • Uncertain origins
- 5. Mōsōbiwa • ‘Blind priest’ biwa • Uncertain origins • Beggars playing for alms
- 6. Mōsōbiwa • ‘Blind priest’ biwa • Uncertain origins • Beggars playing for alms • Government protection for schools and guilds
- 7. Heike Monogatari • The Tale of the Heike • Supposedly written in the late 12th/early 13th century by Yukinaga
- 8. Heike Monogatari The knell of the bells at the Gion temple Echoes the impermanence of all things. The colour of the flowers on its double-trunked tree Reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall. He who is proud is not so for long, Like a passing dream on a night in spring. He who is brave is finally destroyed, To be no more than dust before the wind.
- 9. Heike Monogatari Gion shouja no kane no koe shogyou mujou no hibiki ari. Shara souju no hana no iro jousha hissui no kotowari o arawasu. Ogoreru hito mo hisashikarazu, Tada haru no yo no yume no gotoshi. Takeki mono mo tsui ni horobinu. Hitoe ni kaze no mae no chiri ni onaji.
- 10. Heike-biwa • Yukinaga taught the tale to Shobutsu • Gagaku; shomyo; blind biwa traditions • ‘New and unique’ Japanese musical form
- 11. Tōdō • The Tōdō (Tōdōza) established in the 14thC • Former schools and guilds of biwa performers merged into a single complex for blind musicians • Later included other genres and instruments, as well as other blind professionals
- 12. Tōdō • The Tōdō (Tōdōza) established in the 14thC • Former schools and guilds of biwa performers merged into a single complex for blind musicians • Later included other genres and instruments, as well as other blind professionals
- 13. Instrument
- 14. Instrument • Strings 1, 3 and 4 tuned to the pattern a-e’-a’ • String 2 tuned to e’ at the third fret • Frets iii, iv and v play major 3rd, 4th and 5th • First fret creates the sawari buzzing sound
- 15. Musical Style - Structure • Chords and arpeggios; single-string plucking developed • Preludes, interludes, short motifs and codas • Some exist in particular sequence – others have regular functions (opening, connecting, etc.)
- 16. Musical Style - Structure • Vocal line built from kyokusetsu, melodic patterns • Formulas have particular associations, and often fixed biwa preludes • Biwa and vocal parts do not overlap, but are played consecutively
- 17. Musical Style - Tetrachords • Vocal style derived from shomyo – using tetrachords built around nuclear tones • Intermediate tones may be min.3rd or min.2nd over lower tone • Patterns usually progress upwards, ending on the highest tone
- 18. Musical Style - Vocal • Heikyoku sections delivered in three ways: – Ginsho ; declamatory, syllabic – Rosho ; intoned, syllabic – Eisho ; pitched, melismatic No meter to syllabic sections, but a regular pulse Melismatic sections in free rhythm
- 19. Notation • Developed for amateur players during Edo period • Heike Mabushi (1776) – divides the Tale of Heike into roughly 200 pieces • Standardized Todo revision; included an index of biwa notation
- 20. Satsuma Biwa • Noble, classical music, cultivated by the Shimazu clan in Kyushu • Uses similar narrative tales • More technical elements to biwa playing • Biwa often played simultaneously with vocals
- 21. Chikuzen biwa • Revived (or started) in the 19thC • Heavy influence from narrative shamisen music • Quieter and more lyrical
- 23. Resources • Lecture by Yoko Hiraoka (http://www.japanesestrings.com/yokolecture.html) • Junko Ueda, Japon: L’epopee des Heike (Disque VDE Gallo, 1990) • Japan: Satsuma Biwa (OCORA, 2013) • Yoshinori Fumon, Satsumabiwa – Japan’s Noble Ballads (Celestial Harmonies, 2001)
Editor's Notes
- [Play Fukuhara Ochi] The biwa is a lute, (same origin as the European lute, from Iran!) and is a very important part of Japanese music up to and including the present day. Several genres of biwa music exist, each with their own history. We’ll pay special attention to the biwa practice known as Heike-biwa, and centred around the Tale of the Heike. The Japanese goddess of music, Benzaiten, is usually depicted with a biwa – as in the background picture here.
- The Biwa is a lute, of Chinese origin like most Japanese instruments. Several lutes (four and five string, and a round-bodied Chinese lute) were used in the blessing ceremonies for the Buddha at Todaiji in the 7th century- these are preserved in the museum there. The four-string biwa remained a part of the gagaku ensemble – we might remember – and from there was taken up by priests (or imported a second time to Kyushu?), as well as diverging into other forms and styles of music. There existed a solo repertoire for biwa music in the Heian times – probably narrative, similar in droning style to gaku-biwa. There are several kinds of biwa today: the gaku-biwa; heike-biwa is very similar, but smaller; the Satsuma biwa; the Chikuzen biwa. I will come to each in turn, as they are associated with their own genres, and describe them as we go.
- The first genre other than gagaku to use the biwa was so-called ‘moso-biwa’. The mosos were blind priests, who accompanied their Buddhist chanting with biwa playing.
- The origins of this moso-biwa are uncertain, whether it was developed from gagaku or elsewhere – but, it seems likely that the moso-biwa instrument was imported along with Buddhism, directly from China, in the Nara period or early Heian. This was lower-class music, unlike the high-class gagaku.
- Moso-biwa began of course in Kyushu. Most of these priests were mendicant, beggars who moved from house to house and town to town during the year, playing for alms.
- As their livelihood died during the Kamakura period, they seemingly took to telling stories and more secular performances to keep attracting money and alms. These blind musicians were protected by the government, firstly under their own schools and guilds, later under the Todo (established ?), or the great organization of blind musicians in Japan, which existed until the modern era. Another word commonly used in ‘zato’, meaning a blind musician, one not ordained as a priest. Zato-biwa is equivalent to moso-biwa, the same Repertories played by unordained blind musicians.
- The Tale of the Heike, or Heike Monogatari, is often named as the first great Japanese epic, or novel. It is studied as a great work of literature, but unusually has had its transmission over centuries upheld by musicians, rather than in another form. It documents the rise and fall of the Heike clan, specifically the events of the Genpei war (1180-85), in which the two great families of the Taira (Heike) and Minamoto (Genji) clashed. This was also, after a fashion, the beginning of the samurai rule over Japan which would last until the 19th century. Taira and Minamoto were both descended from the imperial line; the families were created by previous emperors with too many relatives Vying for power in the capital. The Taira based themselves in the Kansai, or western region; the Minamoto were sent to the east, or Kanto, And became the leaders in the colonization and civilization of the north and east. The Genpei war was instigated… As a result, the Minamoto marched on Kyoto, and sent the Taira fleeing west… The war finished in the famous battle of Dan-no-Ura (1885), in which… (Heike crabs) This tale, and its many, many stories, involving a host of characters, is immensely famous throughout Japan, and forms the basis for very many narrative genres – the first and greatest of these, was, however, Heike-biwa.
- The famous opening of the epic work [Play Opening – Gion Shoja]
- Supposedly, the author of the Heike monogatari, Yukinaga, taught his tale to a blind musician named Shobutsu, who recited it with accompaniment from his biwa. This origin tale neatly accounts for each of the three main influences on the Heike-biwa practice: gagaku, shomyo chanting, and blind biwa playing. Heike-biwa therefore appeared during the early Kamakura period (century), a ‘new and unique’ form of music in Japan, and thought to be the first narrative genre (katarimono) which appeared (though compare this to koshiki shomyo?). During the Kamakura period, the moso and zato players played secular works, for entertainment, as well as religious pieces. The stories from the Tale of the Heike were very popular, and expanded into a huge genre. Heike-biwa reached its peak of popularity in the 14th and 15th centuries (1370-1470). Performed in public, as paid concerts, in Buddhist ceremonies, and in noble houses.
- In the early Muromachi period (ashkage shoguns), former schools and guilds of biwa performers merged into one complex for blind musicians, the Todo, founded by Kakuichi, which also included shamisen and koto music. Heike was much diminished by the Sengoku Jidai – the form was preserved, rather than moving with the times - performers turned to joruri and shamisen.
- The era of civil war prior to the Edo period had threatened biwa-playing, greatly reducing the numbers of practitioners. However, the Tokugawa shoguns instated Heike-biwa as an official music of the shogunate, enjoying the tales of great samurai deeds from the Genpei war. Heike also continued amongst samurai and higher classes as a pastime. The Maeda and Hatano schools were founded (from within the Todo?) which continued into the twentieth century, and are our main sources.
- The standard heike-biwa instrument was adapted from the gaku-biwa, though made smaller (and easier to carry around, dismantle). The instrument has four strings and five tall frets. Roughly 80cm long. Gakubiwa had one less fret, and uses a different plectrum.
- Heike-biwa uses relative pitch; the strings 1, 3 and 4 are tuned always to the pattern (a, e’, a’), while the second is tuned to (e’) at the third fret. Frets 3, 4 and 5 are fixed at major third, fourth and fifth. The first fret is moved to achieve the sawari effect, or buzzing strings; the second fret is rarely used, and placed equidistant between 1and 3. The first fret is an odd shape, so that the first and third strings create a buzzing sound against it when plucked. This effect was used by the Nagoya school, and probably only came into use from the late 17th or early 18thC (around the same time as the same sound was developed on the shamisen). The string is pressed close behind the fret – no, at different places in different styles! Gakubiwa played on the fret, Heike and others played between frets to allow for pitch bending. Sometimes plucked with the left hand. Damping of notes is used; as is bending the pitch with the left hand after the note is struck.
- Chords and arpeggios were sometimes played, an echo of gagaku style, but more single-string melodic plucking was developed and added. Biwas parts are played as preludes, interludes, coda and short motifs (often single notes or chords, in order to propose the tone for the next section), almost always separate from vocal parts. Some formulae frequently exist in sequence, and follow or precede others. They also have regular functions, as opening, closing or connecting passages in each ‘dan’ (or series of formulae).
- The musical structure is built from kyokusetsu, or melodic formulae and patterns. This is taken from koshiki shomyo. ‘Suzuki’ (Ashgate track 5) starts with kudoki, then sage, kamiuta and sashikoe. Overall consists of 19 formulae. Different formulas will often have particular assosciations: lament, elegant, battle, etc. Most formulas have fixed biwa preludes.
- Heike vocals have definite melodies based on nuclear tones, usually a dominant tone and the fourth above it. The music progresses upwards, from the lowest tone to reach the highest. These tetrachords are based on shomyo melodic styles. One group of melodic patterns uses the min’yo scale and tetrachords (?) with the intermediate tone a minor third over the base, and tetrachords are conjunct. In other groups, tetrachords are disjunct and use miyako-bushi tetrachords, with a minor second up from the base. The theory is that the former came from biwa-hoshi, while the latter came from koshiki shomyo.
- Heike sections can be delivered three ways: ginsho, declamatory, syllabic without pitch; rosho, intoned syllabic recitative-style with pitch; and eisho, or melismatic with pitch. There are also intermediate stages. Syllabic sections have no meter, but a regular pulse of one beat per syllable. Melismatic sections are free rhythm.
- Notation was developed in the Edo period for amateur players. Ogino Chiichi edited the Heike Mabushi score in 1776, providing a widely disseminated notation. The Heike Mabushi divides the tale of Heike into about two hundred pieces. The oldest extant score is from 1687, of the Maeda school – it uses names of formulae, and hakase (symbols to indicate movement) between text. There are roughly thirty basic hakase, and many more compound or derived from these. The Heike Mabushi of 1776 was the result of Todo revisions of Heike scores, and became adopted as a standard. Oral transmission is still important, of course. This book also contained an index with biwa notation, a form of tablature with string and fret numbers, techniques, to accompany an oral teaching. Improvisation declined due to this formalization, and it became more refined, more upper-class.
- At the end of the Muromachi period, Satsumabiwa appeared (more rhythmic, narrative singing, different instrument). Different instrument; one less fret (nowadays one more string?), wider plectrum This was established as a type of noble, classical music, cultivated by the Shimazu clan in their lands in Kyushu. Similar in style to Heikebiwa; stereotyped melodies used to build narrative pieces. Adoption by lower classes, however, added a level of faster, melodic and technical playing to the biwa accompaniment. Also, excessive melismatic improvisation was added to vocal parts As well as unaccompanied sections, vocal and biwa often sound together. [Play Yashitsune] c.6.27
- Post-Meiji, this also begat Chikuzenbiwa (less narrative, influence of shamisen music). Now a major national genre. Biwa became very popular under Meiji, and was used to accompany dancing, to accompany Chinese poetry, and new schools were founded which developed these innovations. The instrument has five frets and four/five strings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prCu14xEpnQ – ‘Funa Benkei’
- Meiji abolished the Todo, and Heike largely disappeared. The Nagoya lineage of the Maeda school maintained oral transmission. The Tsugaru lineage (started by a sighted nobleman) also preserved Heike from the Maeda school. There has been a solid and considerable amount of research undertaken in Japanese on extant biwa traditions. The Heike monogatari has, of course, been the subject of enormous literary scholarship.
- Yoko Hiraoka (Lecture) Junko Ueda, Japon: L’epopee des Heike (Disque VDE Gallo, 1990) Japan: Satsuma Biwa (OCORA, 2013) Yoshinori Fumon, Satsumabiwa – Japan’s Noble Ballads (Celestial Harmonies, 2001)