To figure out how the pipa may have been tuned (and thus what scales were used in the twenty-five compositions), Hayashi Kenzo was given access to an eighth-century pipa in the Shosoin Repository at Nara.

In 1955 (with revisions in 1969) the Japanese music scholar Hayashi Kenzo published photographs of the original notation and his own transcriptions in Western staff notation. Symbols describe which strings should be pressed and where, which should be plucked and how, and in what sequence. The music is notated as tablature for the pipa (Chinese lute). These music compositions came in two types: those titled simply by tempo and form, such as “fast” and “repeat slow,” and those with programmatic names, such as the Changsha Maiden, Scatter the Golden Sand, Seeking Wealth, the Barbarian Asks, Involvement of the Heart, Emptying the Cup, and Water Drum Melody. In addition to Buddhist canonical works, the library contained Buddhist commentaries, apocryphal works, prayers, Confucian and Taoist tracts, Nestorian Christian writings, government documents, anthologies, glossaries, dictionaries, calligraphy exercises, and a compilation of twenty-five musical works. It was among approximately fifty thousand manuscripts that Buddhist monks had sealed in a cave library in the eleventh century, apparently to avoid capture by an invading army. In 1900 a Tang dynasty music manuscript titled Dunhuang Qu Pu (Dunhuang Music Notation) was discovered in a cave temple at Dunhuang in northwestern China. This concert was made possible, in part, through support to Music From China from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music and was presented in conjunction with the exhibition Resound: Ancient Bells of China. Hundred Antiques was co-commissioned by the Freer and Sackler Galleries and Music From China through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Ye Dong, transcription Zhou Long, arrangementįor pipa, dizi, zhongruan, cello, and bianzhong (replica set of ancient Chinese bells)įor erhu, pipa, violin, cello, and bianzhong (replica set of ancient Chinese bells)

Frank Cassara, bianzhong (replica set of ancient Chinese bells) and other percussion Dunhuang Music (1989)

Chinese traditional music youtube