MUS 206 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Art Music, Noh, Homophony
Document Summary
Japanese music life in the past 100 years. More involved with non-traditional music: western art music taught at schools, western popular music part of everyday life, yoshida brothers sounded like dueling banjos. Traditional arts well supported: noh, kabuki, and bunraku, shakuhachi, koto, and shamisen. Diversity of scales based on pythagorean rather than equal temperament models. Pythagorean = different set of keys: japanese music is tuned differently from western music. Sets of pitches vary according to type of music and instruments. Unpitched sounds any kind of drum. Diversity of melodies: folk/ shakuhachi/ koto, elaborated ornaments in vocal music. Heterophony common in traditional music: vocals of different sounding melodies. Noh: actors wear masks that convey certain emotions. There are two forms of music recognized to be the oldest forms of traditional japanese music. Both date to the nara and heian periods. Watch 3 part youtube video: the tradition of performing arts in japan.
