5, period of the Northern Wei (384-441 A.D.), A Song dynasty fresco depicts a female pipa player among a group of musicians, Group of female musician from the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period (907-960 AD), A mural from a Yuan dynasty tomb found in Hengshan County, Shaanxi, showing a man playing the pipa, A group of Qing dynasty musicians from Fuzhou. It is made out of wood, with a teardrop-shaped body and a long neck with four or five high frets, and is stringed with four or five silk strings that are plucked by a big pick called bachi. The body is narrower and smaller than the other types of biwa. The 5 String Pipa is tuned like a Standard Pipa with the addition of an Extra Bass String tuned to an E2 (Same as the Guitar) which broadens the range (Tuning is E2, A2, D3, E3, A3). A rapid strum is called sao (), and strumming in the reverse direction is called fu (). The sanxian (Mandarin for 'three strings') is a type off fretless plucked Chinese lutes. The strings are usually tuned to A2 D3 E3 A3 , although there are various other ways of tuning. Sometimes called the "Chinese lute", the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body with a varying number of frets ranging from 12 to 31. The most basic technique, tantiao (), involves just the index finger and thumb (tan is striking with the index finger, tiao with the thumb). This is a system used to classify all musical instruments.This system was created by Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs.The Hornbostel-Sachs system is based on how an instrument vibrates to produce sound. are crucial techniques to create the biwas subtle in-between notes that are unique for fretted instruments. These players had considerable influence on the development of pipa playing in China. The name "pipa" is made up of two Chinese syllables, "p" () and "p" (). The horizontal playing position became the vertical (or near-vertical) position by the Qing dynasty, although in some regional genres such as nanguan the pipa is still held guitar fashion. 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 . Description. Region: East Asia. The narrative biwa music adopts a relative tuning; the pitch is decided to match with the players range of voice. Hornbostel-Sachs or Sachs-Hornbostel is a system of musical instrument classification devised by Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs, and first published in the Zeitschrift fr Ethnologie in 1914. 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. This is the original form of biwa that came to Japan in the 8th century. Its plectrum is small and thin, often rounded, and made from a hard material such as boxwood or ivory. 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. Because of this tradition as a narrative music, the biwa is mostly played solo and is less commonly played with other types of instruments, except in gagaku () or the court orchestra where it is used in its original instrumental role, and in modern instrumental repertoire. They recognized that studies in music theory and music composition in Japan almost entirely consisted in Western theory and instruction. For example, a piece like "The Warlord Takes off His Armour" is made up of many sections, some of them metered and some with free meter, and greater freedom in interpretation is possible in the free meter sections. In modern biwa, particularly in Satsuma-biwa, one sometimes strikes the soundboard sharply to get percussive effects. 3 (Winter, 19771978). NAKAMURA Kahoru, the biwa player with whom we worked, mentioned that for a concert including pieces in two different modes, she tunes two biwas before the concert. Guilds supporting biwa players, particularly the biwa hshi, helped proliferate biwa musical development for hundreds of years. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Instrument Information Origins. to the present. 77-103. [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. After having arrived in Japan via the Silk Road for purely instrumental music, the biwa evolved over time into a narrative musical instrument. 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 tuning of the strings changes according to the pieces mode. With this, the biwa entered a period of popularity, with songs reflecting not just The Tale of the Heike, but also the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, with songs such as Takeo Hirose, Hitachimaru and 203 Hill gaining popularity. (92.7 20 12.7 cm), Classification: 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. Waribachi: This is a downward sweeping of the four strings, dividing the motion into two groups of two notes. 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. 36 1/2 7 7/8 5 in. The nishiki-biwa (), a modern biwa with five strings and five frets, was popularised by the 20th-century biwa player and composer Suit Kinj (, 19111973). The pipa pieces in the common repertoire can be categorized as wen (, civil) or wu (, martial), and da (, large or suite) or xiao (, small). With turned wrist, he gathered the strings to pluck and strum faster. Fine strings murmur like whispered words, The number of frets is considerably fewer than other fretted instruments. 5.5 in. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Famous solo pieces now performed include: Most of the above are traditional compositions dating to the Qing dynasty or early 20th century, new pieces however are constantly being composed, and most of them follow a more Western structure. 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 are seven main types of Biwa, each distinguished by the number of strings, sound produced, and use. Detail #2 shows the backside of the instrument; detail #3 is a side view revealing both the shallowness of the bowl-shaped resonator and the height of the frets that are glued onto the neck. 20002023 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1. 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. ) Painted panel of the sarcophagus of Y Hung, depicts one of the Persian or Sogdian figures playing pipa. The number of frets is considerably fewer than other fretted instruments. Sometimes called the "Chinese lute ", the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body with a varying number of frets ranging from 12 to 31. Typically, the duration of each group subdivides the measure into two equal durations. 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 6. In the early 1950s, he founded the traditional instruments department at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. 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). The biwa is a four stringed lute and it is approximately 106 cm long (42 inches). His well-received compositions, such as November Steps, which incorporated biwa heikyoku with Western orchestral performance, revitalized interest in the biwa and sparked a series of collaborative efforts by other musician in genres ranging from J-Pop and enka to shin-hougaku and gendaigaku. 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. In biwa, tuning is not fixed. The instrument itself also varies in size, depending on the player. [25] Extra frets were added; the early instrument had 4 frets (, xing) on the neck, but during the early Ming dynasty extra bamboo frets (, pn) were affixed onto the soundboard, increasing the number of frets to around 10 and therefore the range of the instrument. The pipa is held in a vertical or near-vertical position during performance, although in the early periods the instrument was held in the horizontal position or near-horizontal with the neck pointing slightly downwards, or upside down. Though its origins are unclear, this thinner variant of the biwa was used in ceremonies and religious rites. [40] Through time, the neck was raised and by the Qing dynasty the instrument was mostly played upright. 4. Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded. Beginning in the late 1960s to the late 1980s, composers and historians from all over the world visited Yamashika and recorded many of his songs; before this time, the biwa hshi tradition had been a completely oral tradition. Biwa Four frets Figure 1 NAKAMURA Kahoru Biwa's back is flat Biwa's plectrum Figure 2 Although shaped like a Western lute, the Biwa 's back is flat and it has a shallower body. to the present. This article is about the Chinese instrument. 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. [citation needed], In 2014, an industrial designer residing in the United States Xi Zheng () designed and crafted an electric pipa "E-pa" in New York. Further, the frets and the nut are wide, which provides a surface, not a point, for a string to touch. The instrument is also held vertically while playing. The short neck of the Tang pipa also became more elongated. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/502655, Mary Elizabeth Adams Brown ; Clara H. Rose (d. 1914), The Met Collection API is where all makers, creators, researchers, and dreamers can now connect to the most up-to-date data and images for more than 470,000 artworks in The Met collection. As the biwa does not play in tempered tuning, pitches are approximated to the nearest note. This biwa often has five strings (although it is essentially a 4-string instrument as the 5th string is a doubled 4th that are always played together) and five or more frets, and the construction of the tuning head and frets vary slightly. Use your arrow keys to navigate the tabs below, and your tab key to choose an item, Title: 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 (710794). [41] Three Ming dynasty pieces were discovered in the High River Flows East (, Gaohe Jiangdong) collection dating from 1528 which are very similar to those performed today, such as "The Moon on High" (, Yue-er Gao). The biwa strings are plucked with large wooden pick called bachi () that requires a full-handed grip. Few pieces for pipa survived from the early periods, some, however, are preserved in Japan as part of togaku (Tang music) tradition. There are some types of traditional string instrument. Biwa performers also vary the volume of their voice between barely audible to very loud. Catalogue of the Crosby Brown . Shakuhachi One of the most popular traditional Japanese wind instruments is the shakuhachi. 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). 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. Its pick or bachi () is the largest among all types of biwa it sometimes. 13 in. The biwa is a pear-shaped instrument with four or five strings. [56], Texts from Tang dynasty mentioned many renowned pipa players such as He Huaizhi (), Lei Haiqing (), Li Guaner (), and Pei Xingnu (). Typically 60 centimetres (24 in) to 106 centimetres (42 in) in length, the instrument is . 1984. In Satsuma-biwa classical pieces, the thickest string (the first) is in principle. 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. Dunhuang, Mogao Caves. Public domain data for this object can also be accessed using the Met's Open Access API. It has the largest body and relatively short neck among biwas. Figure 4 introduces the biwas six traditional tunings. 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 most eminent 20th century satsuma-biwa performer was Tsuruta Kinshi, who developed her own version of the instrument, which she called the tsuruta-biwa. [38] It has however been suggested that the long plectrum depicted in ancient paintings may have been used as a friction stick like a bow. This type of instrument was introduced to Korea (the bipa ), to Japan (the biwa ), and to Vietnam (the tyba ). Four or five frets are attached to the body, and it is played with a large wooden plectrum (bachi). The traditional pieces however often have a standard metrical length of 68 measures or beat,[46] and these may be joined together to form the larger pieces dagu.[47]. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/500681, Mary Elizabeth Adams Brown ; James L. Amerman, The Met Collection API is where all makers, creators, researchers, and dreamers can now connect to the most up-to-date data and images for more than 470,000 artworks in The Met collection. Ms Biwa (), Dimensions: Like pearls, big and small, falling on a platter of jade. 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". [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 (). [citation needed]. the finger and thumb separate in one action), it is called fen (), the reverse motion is called zhi (). 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. Credit Line: The Crosby Brown Collection . This singing style is complemented by the biwa, which biwa players use to produce short glissandi throughout the performance. [42] During the Qing dynasty there originally two major schools of pipathe Northern and Southern schools, and music scores for these two traditions were collected and published in the first mass-produced edition of solo pieces for pipa, now commonly known as the Hua Collection (). Chordophone-Lute-plucked-fretted, Credit Line: A Sound Classification Musical instruments can be classified by the Western orchestral system into brass, percussion, strings, and woodwinds; but the S-H system allows non-western instruments to be classified as well. Pei Luoer was known for pioneering finger-playing techniques,[25] while Sujiva was noted for the "Seven modes and seven tones", a musical modal theory from India. https://japanese-music.com/profile/nobuko-fukatsu/. (80 30 3.4 cm), Classification: [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. Played with a large wooden plectrum, the instrument has four or five strings of twisted silk stretched over four or more . (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 Heike Biwa (), Medium: There are more than seven types of biwa, characterised by number of strings, sounds it could produce, the type of plectrum, and their use. 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 fingers normally strike the strings of pipa in the opposite direction to the way a guitar is usually played, i.e. The transmission parameter (product of propagation speed and Q value of the longitudinal wave along the wood grain . The frets of the satsuma-biwa are raised 4 centimetres (1.6in) from the neck allowing notes to be bent several steps higher, each one producing the instrument's characteristic sawari, or buzzing drone. As well as being one of the leading pipa players of his generation, Li held many academic positions and also carried out research on pipa scales and temperament. Omissions? This next instrument seems to have some spiritual meaning behind it. 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. Koizumi, Fumio. [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. In the 13th century, the story The Tale of Heike ()was created and told by them. [66] Some other notable pipa players in China include Yu Jia (), Wu Yu Xia (), Fang Jinlong () and Zhao Cong (). 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. [citation needed]. , one can make two or three notes for each fret and also in-between notes. Life in post-war Japan was difficult, and many musicians abandoned their music in favor of more sustainable livelihoods. The method of holding the plectrum is different when performing kaeshibachi or kakubachi, and consequently composers need to allow a few seconds for the repositioning of the hand when using the two techniques in sequence. An English translation was published in the Galpin Society Journal in 1961. These styles emphasized biwa-uta () vocalisation with biwa accompaniment and formed the foundation for edo-uta () styles of playing, such as shinnai and kota.[2]. Continent: Asia. The instrument is plucked with a pick made out of animal horn. The instrument is played with a large wedge-shaped plectrum called a bachi. [31] The pipa is mentioned frequently in the Tang dynasty poetry, where it is often praised for its expressiveness, refinement and delicacy of tone, with poems dedicated to well-known players describing their performances. Heike-biwa is an accompaniment instrument specifically used to chant the Tale of Heike stories () in the traditional way dating from the medieval era. The same piece of music can therefore differ significantly when performed by students of different schools, with striking differences in interpretation, phrasing, tempo, dynamics, playing techniques, and ornamentations. February 20, 2008. Chordophone-Lute-plucked-fretted, Credit Line: Tataku: This is similar to hazusu, except that this time, two non-struck pitches follow the struck one. Koto. This may be due to the fact that the word pipa was used in ancient texts to describe a variety of plucked chordophones of the period from the Qin to the Tang dynasty, including the long-necked spiked lute and the short-necked lute, as well as the differing accounts given in these ancient texts. In the 18th century, samurai in the Satsuma area (southern part of Kyushu island) adopted the blind monks biwa music into their musical practices. 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. The satsuma-biwa is traditionally made from Japanese mulberry, although other hard woods such as Japanese zelkova are sometimes used in its construction. The biwa is a plucked lute chordophone of Japan. Example 4 also shows the biwa's standard one-measure motive. 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. [71][self-published source] In 2014, French zhongruan player and composer Djang San, created his own electric pipa and recorded an experimental album that puts the electric pipa at the center of music. Title: Satsuma Biwa () Date: ca. 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. The strings are sounded with a large, thick, fan-shaped plectrum called a bachi (detail #6), traditionally made of wood (the practice bachi pictured here is made from resin). The two-headed tacked drum hung in an elaborate circular frame in court music is a gaku-daiko or tsuri-daiko. Clattering and murmuring, meshing jumbled sounds, The gagaku biwa (), a large and heavy biwa with four strings and four frets, is used exclusively for gagaku. Chikuzen was an historic northern province on Kyushu, the southern-most main island of Japan. The excerpt is performed by the ensemble Reigakusha. [69] The instrument is also played by musician Min Xiaofen in "I See Who You Are", a song from Bjrk's album Volta. [24] However, it continued to be played as a folk instrument that also gained the interest of the literati. [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. Over 100 years after its development, the H-S system is still in use in most museums and in large inventory projects. Popularly used by female biwa players such as Uehara Mari. 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. 11.7 in. [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. With the abolition of Todo in the Meiji period, biwa players lost their patronage. Each type has different and unique tones, techniques, and musical styles. This type of biwa music has been preserved until now in gagaku (), or the court orchestra. Multiple strings are often played in one pluck like an arpeggio. Chikuzen biwa music is narrative music much beholding to narrative shamisen music. Its plectrum is the same as that used for the satsuma-biwa. greatest width of resonator The plectrum also contributes to the texture of biwa music. It is made out of wood, with a teardrop-shaped body and a long neck with four or five high frets, and is stringed with four or five silk strings that are plucked by a big pick called bachi (). Performers on the instrument frequently pluck two notes simultaneously, producing a variety of intervals, especially when the singer is silent. 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. Yoko Hiraoka, a member of the Yamato Komyoji ryu, presents a lecture/recital of Japanese Biwa music. This is the original form of biwa that came to Japan in the 8. century. In both cases, the sound of the non-struck pitches is not hearable when performed with the orchestra, but the gesture itself might help the biwa player keep time. Plucking in the opposite direction to tan and tiao are called mo () and gou () respectively. 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. So, here are six traditional Japanese instruments you can listen to today! Typically 60 centimetres (24in) to 106 centimetres (42in) in length, the instrument is constructed of a water drop-shaped body with a short neck, typically with four (though sometimes five) strings. [6][7] According to Liu Xi's Eastern Han dynasty Dictionary of Names, the word pipa may have an onomatopoeic origin (the word being similar to the sounds the instrument makes),[6] although modern scholarship suggests a possible derivation from the Persian word "barbat", the two theories however are not necessarily mutually exclusive. 20002023 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Typically, the second pitch is fingered on the same string one or two frets lower than the first one, and the note is attacked and then lifted off into the second fret position. Techniques that produce vibrato, portamento, glissando, pizzicato, harmonics or artificial harmonics found in violin or guitar are also found in pipa. Biwa players no longer enjoyed special privileges and were forced to support themselves. Thought to be of Persian origin, the biwa was brought to Japan in the 8th century via Central Asia, China and the Korean Peninsula. [19], Other musicians, such as Yamashika Yoshiyuki, considered by most ethnomusicologists to be the last of the biwa hshi, preserved scores of songs that were almost lost forever. 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.