[3][4][5], The earliest mention of pipa in Chinese texts appeared late in the Han dynasty around the 2nd century AD. Yo-sen has 2 tones regarded as auxiliary tones. 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. Biwa. NGDMI v.1: 234-237. The biwa arrived in Japan in the 7th century, having evolved from the Chinese bent-neck pipa (; quxiang pipa),[1] while the pipa itself was derived from similar instruments in West Asia. The . The instrument is played with a large wedge-shaped plectrum called a bachi. And thanks to the low tension of the strings, it is easy to bend the strings by adding pressure. The biwa player with whom we worked, NAKAMURA Kahoru, improvised ten different versions of this rhythm. Title: Satsuma Biwa () Date: ca. During the 1950s, the use of metal strings in place of the traditional silk ones also resulted in a change in the sound of the pipa which became brighter and stronger. 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 first and second strings are generally tuned to the same note, with the 4th (or doubled 4th) string is tuned one octave higher. The pipa pieces in the common repertoire can be categorized as wen (, civil) or wu (, martial), and da (, large or suite) or xiao (, small). Reflecting its history as an instrument for samurai, its music is often described as dynamic and heroic. The rhythm in biwa performances allows for a broad flexibility of pulse. [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. Finally, measure 5 shows a rare instance where a melodic tone (F# in this case) is doubled on the second beat of the biwa's pattern. The biwa is a relative of Western lutes and guitars, as well as of the Chinese pipa. We speculate that being half-way in the section, the purpose of this clash may be to avoid a too strong feeling of cadence on the 'tonic E,' since there is one more phrase to come before completing this section. 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. Koizumi, Fumio. (92.7 20 12.7 cm), The Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments, 1889. 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. Though formerly popular, little was written about the performance and practice of the biwa from roughly the 16th century to the mid-19th century. The instrument initially used for this practice was the four-stringed chikuzen biwa (gallery #1), which was produced and sold cheaply--a fact attested to by the numbers of such instruments taken overseas by working-class emigrants. (de Ferranti, p. 122) [The instrument pictured in gallery #1 is very likely one of those many biwas taken overseas--it was purchased in a Honolulu shop specializing in Japanese antiques many of which were brought to Hawaii by Japanese immigrants in the early 20th century.] The fourth and fifth strings, if 5-stringed, are tuned to the same note. The sound can be totally different depending on where the instrument is hit, how the plectrum is held, and which part of the plectrum hits the surface. 11.7 in. 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 strings are tuned in fourths, and the melody is played almost exclusively on the highest pitched string. Tachibana sought to create a new narrative style that would appeal to a contemporary urban audience (de Ferranti p. 120) and that would be performed by sighted musicians. Four or five frets are attached to the body, and it is played with a large wooden plectrum (bachi). There are more than seven types of biwa, characterised by number of strings, sounds it could produce, the type of plectrum, and their use. 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. The biwa is a pear-shaped instrument with four or five strings. Malm, William P. 1959. It is one of the more popular Chinese folk music, often paired with singing. 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. The biwa has a shallow, rounded back and silk strings (usually four or five) attached to slender lateral pegs. The gogen-biwa (, lit. (80 30 3.4 cm), The Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments, 1889, "Musical Instruments in the Metropolitan Museum": The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 35, no. The number of frets is considerably fewer than other fretted instruments. Depictions of the pear-shaped pipas appeared in abundance from the Southern and Northern dynasties onwards, and pipas from this time to the Tang dynasty were given various names, such as Hu pipa (), bent-neck pipa (, quxiang pipa), some of these terms however may refer to the same pipa. In the 13th century, the story The Tale of Heike ()was created and told by them. Its classification is a type of an Aerophone. The satsuma-biwa (), a biwa with four strings and four frets, was popularized during the Edo period in Satsuma Province (present-day Kagoshima) by Shimazu Tadayoshi. However, the biwas cultural significance is due to its evolution during the medieval era into a narrative musical instrument. This seeming shortcoming is compensated for by the frets height and the low tension of the strings. Example 4 shows the basic melody of Etenraku's section B and C, and its rhythmic accompaniment. Several related instruments are derived from the pipa, including the Japanese biwa and Korean bipa in East Asia, and the Vietnamese n t b in Southeast Asia. 1. Western performers of pipa include French musician Djang San, who integrated jazz and rock concepts to the instrument such as power chords and walking bass.[70]. The body is narrower and smaller than the other types of biwa. 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 biwa is a stringed instrument used in Japan as a sort of story telling method. During the Song dynasty, many of the literati and poets wrote ci verses, a form of poetry meant to be sung and accompanied by instruments such as pipa. 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). Each group can include either two open strings or one open and one fingered string. Ueda Junko and Tanaka Yukio, two of Tsuruta's students, continue the tradition of the modern satsuma-biwa. 2. The strings are numbered from the lowest (first string) to the highest (fourth string). [22] Some delicately carved pipas with beautiful inlaid patterns date from this period, with particularly fine examples preserved in the Shosoin Museum in Japan. This minute design detail gives rise to sawari, the distinctive raspy tone of a vibrating string. However, false nails made of horn existed as early as the Ming period when finger-picking became the popular technique for playing pipa.[24]. 'five-stringed biwa'), a Tang variant of biwa, can be seen in paintings of court orchestras and was used in the context of gagaku; however, it was removed with the reforms and standardization made to the court orchestra during the late 10th century. greatest width of resonator Upon its arrival, the biwa was used in purely instrumental music in the court culture the instrument appears in various works of literature and art in the 10th -12th centuries, depicting nobles enjoying it in rituals as well as in their private lives. Nation: Japan. 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. The biwa, originally an instrument of high society, gradually spread among wandering blind monks who used this instrument to tell stories. often-used technique is rubbing the long side of the bachi on the strings to get wind-like sounds. 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. Outside influence, internal pressures, and socio-political turmoil redefined biwa patronage and the image of the biwa; for example, the nin War of the Muromachi period (13381573) and the subsequent Warring States period (15th17th centuries) disrupted the cycle of tutelage for heikyoku[citation needed][a] performers. 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). [53] The introduction of pipa from Central Asia also brought with it virtuoso performers from that region, for example Sujiva (, Sujipo) from the Kingdom of Kucha during the Northern Zhou dynasty, Kang Kunlun () from Kangju, and Pei Luoer () from Shule. A player holds it horizontally, and mostly plays rhythmic arpeggios in orchestra or ensemble. [39] The plectrum has now been largely replaced by the fingernails of the right hand. These players had considerable influence on the development of pipa playing in China. The instrument has seen a great decline . [14], Biwa usage in Japan has declined greatly since the Heian period. The instrument is also held vertically while playing. Typically, the lower strings of the arpeggio are open, as indicated with the '0' in Example 4, while the last string hit may either be open or fingered (numbers 1 to 4 refers to the left hand's fingers from the index to the 4th finger, respectively). Region: East Asia. [1][2] Modern researchers such as Laurence Picken, Shigeo Kishibe, and John Myers suggested a non-Chinese origin. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are as essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. These tunings are relative, the actual pitches a given biwa is tuned to being determined by the vocal range of the singer/player. By the Song dynasty, the word pipa was used to refer exclusively to the four-stringed pear-shaped instrument. An English translation was published in the Galpin Society Journal in 1961. The plectrum also contributes to the texture of biwa music. This scale sometimes includes supplementary notes, but the core remains pentatonic. Other early known players of pipa include General Xie Shang from the Jin dynasty who was described to have performed it with his leg raised. This type of biwa music has been preserved until now in gagaku (), or the court orchestra. [43] The collection was edited by Hua Qiuping (, 17841859) and published in 1819 in three volumes. Its tuning is A, c, e, a or A, c-sharp, e, a. In the early 20th century, twenty-five pieces were found amongst 10th-century manuscripts in the Mogao caves near Dunhuang, most of these pieces however may have originated from the Tang dynasty. Because of this bending technique oshikan (), one can make two or three notes for each fret and also in-between notes. Another often-used technique is rubbing the long side of the bachi on the strings to get wind-like sounds. [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). This music called heikyoku () was cherished and protected by the authorities and particularly flourished in the 14-15th centuries. [9] When singing in a chorus, biwa singers often stagger their entry and often sing through non-synchronized, heterophony accompaniment. 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. Ms Biwa (), Dimensions: While the modern satsuma-biwa and chikuzen-biwa both originated from the ms-biwa, the satsuma-biwa was used for moral and mental training by samurai of the Satsuma Domain during the Warring States period, and later for general performances. Like with the shamisen, a distinctive raspy tone quality called sawari is associated with the chikuzen biwa. As part of the Met's Open Access policy, you can freely copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes. Kishibe, Shigeo. [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. The Korean instrument is the only one of the three that is no longer widely used. Players hold the instrument vertically. Exploiting the sound of the open strings increases the overall sounds volume. Yoko Hiraoka, a member of the Yamato Komyoji ryu, presents a lecture/recital of Japanese Biwa music. 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. It is not used to accompany singing. The instrument is tuned to match the key of the singer. Generally speaking, biwa have four strings, though modern satsuma- and chikuzen-biwa may have five strings. 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. In the late 20th century, largely through the efforts of Wu Man (in USA), Min Xiao-Fen (in USA), composer Yang Jing (in Europe) and other performers, Chinese and Western contemporary composers began to create new works for the pipa (both solo and in combination with chamber ensembles and orchestra). The six fret type is tuned to B, E, B and b. Modern biwa music is based on that medieval narrative biwa music. [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. And thanks to the low tension of the strings, it is easy to bend the strings by adding pressure. In spite of its popularity, the nin War and subsequent Warring States Period disrupted biwa teaching and decreased the number of proficient users. [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]. Multiple strings are often played in one pluck like an arpeggio. Each school is associated with one or more collections of pipa music and named after its place of origin: These schools of the solo tradition emerged by students learning playing the pipa from a master, and each school has its own style, performance aesthetics, notation system, and may differ in their playing techniques. 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 most eminent 20th century satsuma-biwa performer was Tsuruta Kinshi, who developed her own version of the instrument, which she called the tsuruta-biwa. 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].

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