Gagaku, the court music of the Imperial Household of Japan, has a long and august tradition. It has been played by musicians from the same hereditary families, or guilds, for more than one thousand years. During the course of that time, the interpretation of this ancient music has without doubt been subject to change.

The earliest surviving examples of the written notation, which date from the 11th and 12th centuries, do not should vast or substantial differences from that notation used for the music in the Imperial Court and elsewhere in Japan today. Nevertheless, the potential for substantial changes in the interpretation of the music is great.

Gagaku was introduced to Japan from China and Korea. The Word Gagaku is written with two Chinese characters that mean “elegant music”. The term is in fact a misnomer, not to imply that this music is not elegant, but only that the term, in Chinese, Ya-Yueh, refers to the ancient music for the propiation of the ancestral spirits and the ensuring of the continued balance of the elements of nature. This was not the music introduced into Japan.

The music that the Japanese imported into the court during the 6th and 7th centuries, was of the type known as yen yueh, or engaku, in Japanese, meaning court banquet music. Ya-yueh, proper, sometimes called Confucian Ceremonial music, was never introduced into Japan, perhaps because the Japanese already had their own sacred ritual music, kagura, which was associated with the way of the gods, or Shintoism.

An extensive collection of musical styles was transmitted to Japan from the Asian continent during the Nara period (710?794). In the Heian period (794?1185), these were ordered into the two divisions, togaku and komagaku, and performed at court by nobles and by professional musicians belonging to hereditary guilds. With the rise of the military rulers in the Kamakura period (1185?1333), gagaku performances at court languished but the tradition was preserved in the mansions of the aristocracy and by three guilds of musicians situated in Kyoto, Nara and Osaka.

Following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the guild musicians were assembled in the new capital of Tokyo. The musicians who serve today in the Imperial Palace Music Department are, for the most part, direct descendants of members of the guilds formed in the eighth century.

Nevertheless, the term, Gagaku, or ya-yueh in Chinese, was retained by the Japanese perhaps because of the loftier associations carried by that word.

Tag: Gagaku