The strings are usually tuned to A2 D3 E3 A3 , although there are various other ways of tuning. Sort by. Different sized plectrums produced different textures; for example, the plectrum used on a ms-biwa was much larger than that used on a gaku-biwa, producing a harsher, more vigorous sound. [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). Its boxwood plectrum is much wider than others, often reaching widths of 25cm (9.8in) or more. 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. [68] The Shanghai progressive/folk-rock band Cold Fairyland, which was formed in 2001, also use pipa (played by Lin Di), sometimes multi-tracking it in their recordings. Multiple strings are often played in one pluck like an arpeggio. [19] Pipa acquired a number of Chinese symbolisms during the Han dynasty - the instrument length of three feet five inches represents the three realms (heaven, earth, and man) and the five elements, while the four strings represent the four seasons.[7]. On the plectrum, figure of a golden phoenix with flowers in its beak, Yo-sen has 2 tones regarded as auxiliary tones. 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. [45] Other collections from the Qing dynasty were compiled by Li Fangyuan () and Ju Shilin (), each representing different schools, and many of the pieces currently popular were described in these Qing collections. 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. Seeing its relative convenience and portability, the monks combined these features with their large and heavy gaku-biwa to create the heike-biwa, which, as indicated by its namesake, was used primarily for recitations of The Tale of the Heike. Resonator design, chordophone: bowl with wood soundboard, Vibrational length: tension bridge to ridge-nut, Pitches per string course: multiple (by pressure stopping against fretted fingerboard), 4-string biwa (gallery #1): The . [34][57][58] Duan Anjie described the duel between the famous pipa player Kang Kunlun and the monk Duan Shanben () who was disguised as a girl, and told the story of Yang Zhi () who learned how to play the pipa secretly by listening to his aunt playing at night. The instrument itself resembles gaku-biwa but is slightly smaller, and is held horizontally. Traditionally they are lashed with heavier rope, though some modern instruments are tightened with large screws. This article is about the Chinese instrument. 36 1/2 7 7/8 5 in. [17][14] Starting about the 10th century, players began to hold the instrument "more upright", as the fingernail style became more important. With turned wrist, he gathered the strings to pluck and strum faster. The pipa pieces in the common repertoire can be categorized as wen (, civil) or wu (, martial), and da (, large or suite) or xiao (, small). The instrument has seen a great decline . 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. There are some confusions and disagreements about the origin of pipa. The biwa has a shallow, rounded back and silk strings (usually four or five) attached to slender lateral pegs. Kakisukashi: This is a three or four-note arpeggio with two strings in unison. 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 4-string chikuzen biwa (gallery #1) is constructed in several parts and needs to be assembled and strung before being played. The most basic technique, tantiao (), involves just the index finger and thumb (tan is striking with the index finger, tiao with the thumb). This seeming shortcoming is compensated for by the frets height and the low tension of the strings. The open strings are shown in the first measures, and the pitches assigned the left-hand fingered notes in the following four measures. Chordophone-Lute-plucked-fretted, Credit Line: The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments. 1984. 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. The Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments, 1889, Accession Number: Classification: Chordophone-Lute-plucked-fretted. 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. [23], During the Song dynasty, pipa fell from favour at the imperial court, perhaps a result of the influence of neo-Confucian nativism as pipa had foreign associations. These tunings are relative, the actual pitches a given biwa is tuned to being determined by the vocal range of the singer/player. Kakubachi: This is the performance of arpeggio with a downward motion of the plectrum, and it is always loud. [13] What the plectrum is made of also changes the texture, with ivory and plastic plectrums creating a more resilient texture to the wooden plectrum's twangy hum. Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded. From the 3rd century onwards, through the Sui and Tang dynasty, the pear-shaped pipas became increasingly popular in China. Mural from Kizil, estimated Five Dynasties to Yuan dynasty, 10th to 13th century. At the beginning of the 13th century, Heike biwa players began telling of tales of the rise and fall of the Taira . to the present. It is assumed that the performance traditions died out by the 10th or 11th century (William P. Malm). Liu also studied with other musicians and has developed a style that combines elements from several different schools. Example 4 shows the basic melody of Etenraku's section B and C, and its rhythmic accompaniment. It is not used to accompany singing. Among ethnomusicologists, it is the most widely used system for classifying musical instruments. The strings are numbered from the lowest (first string) to the highest (fourth string). Moreover, it always starts from the 1st string and stops on either the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th string depending if the arpeggio contains 2, 3, or 4 pitches, respectively. In performance it was held sideways and played with a plectrum. In Japan, the biwa is generally played with a bachi instead of the fingers, and is often used to play gagaku. 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 The short neck of the Tang pipa also became more elongated. This type of biwa music has been preserved until now in gagaku (), or the court orchestra. By the middle of the Meiji period, improvements had been made to the instruments and easily understandable songs were composed in quantity. In the 18th century, samurai in the Satsuma area (southern part of Kyushu island) adopted the blind monks biwa music into their musical practices. Bodmin, Cornwall, Great Britain: MPG Books, pp. Heike Biwa (), Medium: Reflecting its history as an instrument for samurai, its music is often described as dynamic and heroic. 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. It was in the late 20th century that this instrument started to be re-discovered and re-evaluated in various musical settings, such as soundtrack for movies and ensemble and orchestra music, culminating in Toru Takemitsus signature piece November Steps, which premiered in New York City in 1967. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. to the present. Heike-biwa is an accompaniment instrument specifically used to chant the Tale of Heike stories () in the traditional way dating from the medieval era. 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. The encounter also inspired a poem by Yuan Zhen, Song of Pipa (). [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. The fish is an auspicious symbol of Buddhism signifying wakeful attention since most fish lack eyelids and remain alert. 89.4.2088. [1][2] Modern researchers such as Laurence Picken, Shigeo Kishibe, and John Myers suggested a non-Chinese origin. Its size and construction influences the sound of the instrument as the curved body is often struck percussively with the plectrum during play. 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 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. [62] From the Ming dynasty, famous pipa players include Zhong Xiuzhi (), Zhang Xiong (, known for his playing of "Eagle Seizing Swan"), the blind Li Jinlou (), and Tang Yingzeng () who was known to have played a piece that may be an early version of "Ambushed from Ten Sides".[63]. New York, 1903, vol. Lin Shicheng (; 19222006), born in Shanghai, began learning music under his father and was taught by Shen Haochu (; 18991953), a leading player in the Pudong school style of pipa playing. 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. Biwa (Japanese instrument) - MIT Global Shakespeares Biwa (Japanese instrument) The Biwa is a Japanese teardrop lute, similar to the lute and the oud, with a short neck and frets. 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. ) Although no longer as popular as it once was, several chikuzen biwa schools have survived to the present day in Japan and to a lesser extent in Japanese communities abroad (such as in Hawaii). The artist Yang Jing plays pipa with a variety of groups. 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. This music was cherished and protected by the authorities and particularly flourished in the 14th-15th centuries. Of the remaining post-war biwa traditions, only higo-biwa remains a style almost solely performed by blind persons. Four or five frets are attached to the body, and it is played with a large wooden plectrum (bachi). [21] For example, masses of pipa-playing Buddhist semi-deities are depicted in the wall paintings of the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang. The scores were written in tablature form with no information on tuning given, there are therefore uncertainties in the reconstruction of the music as well as deciphering other symbols in the score. As one of the modern types of biwa that flourished in the late 19th to early 20th centuries, Satsuma-biwa is widely played today in various settings, including popular media. It was those blind monks who fell outside of governmental protection who, during the 17th century, creatively modified the biwa to introduce a shamisen flavor, such as making frets higher to play in-between notes. This type of biwa is used for court music called gagaku (), which has been protected by the government until today. It is an instrument in China, its mouth-blown free reed instrument consisting of vertical pipes. The 4 wedge-shaped frets on the neck became 6 during the 20th century. This 5-stringed lute with a powerful. Biwa Description The biwa is a four stringed lute and it is approximately 106 cm long (42 inches). 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. Rubbing the strings: The plectrum is used to rub an open string. The gogen-biwa (, lit. Because of this bending technique oshikan (), one can make two or three notes for each fret and also in-between notes. Since the revolutions in Chinese instrument-making during the 20thcentury, the softer twisted silk strings of earlier times have been exchanged for nylon-wound steel strings, which are far too strong for human fingernails, so false nails are now used, constructed of plastic or tortoise-shell, and affixed to the fingertips with the player's choice of elastic tape. There are three small soundholes on the soundboard: two visible ones (hangetsu) partially covered with moon-shaped caps made of ivory and a hidden one (ingetsu) beneath the string holder. Although shaped like a Western lute, the Biwa's back is flat and it has a shallower body. 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 . Thought to be of Persian origin, the biwa was brought to Japan in the 8th century via Central Asia, China and the Korean Peninsula. The short neck has four raised frets, each one specifically assigned to one of the left hand fingers. 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. 5-string: biwa (gallery #2): 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". Player - Instrument Interface and Sound Production. The Kyushu biwa traditions, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music, edited by Alison McQueen Tokita and David W. Hughes. 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 Satsuma-biwa classical pieces, the thickest string (the first) is in principle. Biwa players no longer enjoyed special privileges and were forced to support themselves. It is the most widely used system for classifying musical instruments by ethnomusicologists and organologists . Further important collections were published in the 20th century. Formation: Japanese. This seeming shortcoming is compensated for by the frets height and the low tension of the strings. An English translation was published in the Galpin Society Journal in 1961. Options are limited when considering that a fingered string between two open strings must be fingered on the 4th fret to avoid damping. Description. It is however possible to produce the tremolo with just one or more fingers. 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. The chikuzen biwa is played with the performer in the seiza position (on the knees, legs folded under) on the floor. Chikuzen Biwa. An early depiction of pipa player in a group of musicians. [6] Another Han dynasty text, Fengsu Tongyi, also indicates that, at that time, pipa was a recent arrival,[7] although later 3rd-century texts from the Jin dynasty suggest that pipa existed in China as early as the Qin dynasty (221206 BC). [8][9] Liu Xi also stated that the instrument called pipa, though written differently (; pp or ; pb) in the earliest texts, originated from amongst the Hu people (a general term for non-Han people living to the north and west of ancient China). 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. Figure 6 shows a spectral analysis of the arpeggio read at the attack and one second later. The Koto came from the Chinese zither "Gu Zheng" during the Nara period in Japan. 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).

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