Appreciate
With its origins in ancient Japan and far-off parts of Asia, gagaku includes a great variety of different types of music, dance, and song.
Let’s take a look at several pieces that reveal distinctive aspects of this variety.
In its traditional format, bugaku is performed in pairs of dances, a Dance of the Left with tōgaku (‘Tang music’) accompaniment followed by a Dance of the Right with komagaku (‘Korean music’) accompaniment. Let’s take a look at the music, dance, and beautiful costumes of some of these pairs.
The varied instruments of the kangen ensemble retain a sonority that has echoed for a thousand years. Playing the same piece in different modes produces surprisingly different results.
Many of the pieces in this repertoire of indigenous song and dance are only performed at ceremonies at the imperial palace and Shinto shrines, so that the public rarely sees them.
Saibara court songs were sung as part of the program at court concerts between pieces of instrumental music. Based on ancient folk and popular songs of the provinces, they have texts with much local color.
Rōei feature Chinese texts sung in literary Japanese in free rhythm, accompanied only by wind instruments. Poetic couplets are set in three sections, and the opening solo of the second section is sung in a surprisingly high register.
