Pipa

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14-fret pipa

Pipa ( Chinese  琵琶 , pinyin pípá ) is a plucked bowl neck loud of classical Chinese music .

Design and style of play

The pipa has a pear-shaped body that is flatter than the western lute . Usually it is made of mahogany , red sandalwood , narrabree or other precious woods; however, cheaper materials are also used. After changing developments, the pipa now usually has four steel strings that are AEDA tuned and run over 24 to 30 frets .

The pipa is played in two different techniques, the Chinese names of which together give the name of the instrument: With the "pí" (琵) the index finger of the right hand is pushed from right to left over the strings, with the "pá" (琶) the thumb in the opposite direction. You play with your own or artificial fingernails, less often with a pick .

origin

Chinese lutes have been known for about 2000 years. Over time, the shape and style of play have undergone numerous changes:

  • In the Qin and Han times , the body of the lute was still circular. As early as the Tang Dynasty , however, continued under the influence of out in the 4th century Persia import barbat - sounds that still in use today and for the instrument to be characteristic pear shape respected by.
  • The pipa used to have five strings, but over time there have been four.
  • Originally the instrument only had 5 or 6 frets, later the number increased to 14, 16, 17, 24, 29 and in the 20th century even to 30. Pipas with 14 or 16 frets arrange these roughly in accordance with the western scale / semitone scale : Seen from the saddle , the order is: THHHTHHHTT-3 / 4-3 / 4-TT-3 / 4-3 / 4, (some frets produce a ¾ or “neutral” tone). In the 1920s and 1930s, the number of frets was increased to 24 in accordance with the Western tone system, resulting in semitone spacings comparable to a modern guitar. After that, the number of frets has increased to up to 30 in some cases. The traditional 16-fret pipa is increasingly being forgotten and only survives in some regional musical traditions such as the Nanguan / Nanyin style that is widespread in the south .
  • In the past, the strings were plucked with a pick , later the fingernails prevailed. Since steel strings became common in addition to traditional silk strings in the 20th century, players have increasingly used more stable artificial fingernails.
  • In ancient times the pipa was played in a horizontal position, today a vertical or almost vertical orientation is common.
Pipa player, Tang Dynasty

Their heyday saw the pipa -music during the Tang period , as the instrument great popularity in the court music enjoyed. It owed this rise not least to the then relatively high Persian population in the capital Chang'an . Many Persians worked at the imperial court as musicians or music teachers and helped the instrument, which was once imported from their homeland, to become extremely popular. During this time, numerous richly carved pipas with valuable inlays were created; Buddhist demigods playing on the pipa can be seen on the murals of the Mogao Grottoes near Dunhuang . On the back of three of the scrolls discovered around 1900 in one of the Mogao caves, some pieces of music are noted that come from the Tang period and were apparently still popular during the Five Dynasties in the 10th century. They probably contain a notation for the four-string pipa with four frets ( pipa pu ).

In the poems of the Tang period, the instrument is often extolled for its exquisite and refined sound. Bai Juyi's famous pipa song describes a chance encounter with a pipa player on the yangzi :

大 絃 嘈嘈 如 急雨: The thick strings pounded like rain showers,
小 絃 切切 如 私語: The thin strings sighed like whispers of love,
嘈嘈 切切 錯雜 彈: patter and chatter, chatter and patter,
大 珠 小 珠 落 玉盤: Like pearls, large and small, that fall on jade plates.

Some lute instruments in East and Southeast Asia originate from the pipa , such as the Japanese biwa , the Vietnamese đàn tỳ bà and the Korean bipa, which is no longer in use today . Other Chinese sounds are the yueqin with a round body and the sanxian with a long thin neck.

Ling Ling Yu plays a 30-fret pipa .

repertoire

The numerous pieces of the classical repertoire written for the pipa can be roughly divided into four styles: Wen (文; civil), Wu (武; warlike), Da (大; suite) and Xiao (小; solo).

The most famous pieces include Shimian Maifu (十面埋伏, encircled on ten sides), Xiyang Xiaogu (夕陽 簫 鼓, flute and drum in the dusk), Yangchun Baixue (陽春 白雪, white snow in the spring sun), Long Chuan (龍船, Das Dragon boat), Yizu Wuqu (彝族 舞曲, dance of the Yi people), Dalang Taosha (大浪淘沙, big waves hit the sandbar), Zhaojun Chusai (昭君 出塞, Zhaojun travels across the border) and Bawang Xiejia (霸王 卸甲, king Ba takes off the armor).

At the end of the 20th century, under the influence of Yang Jing (楊靜, Switzerland), Wu Man (* 1963, USA), Min Xiao-Fen, Miki Minoru and other contemporary composers, new solo and orchestral works were written for the pipa . The pipa was sometimes even used in rock music , for example by the guitarist of the Californian band Incubus , Mike Einziger , in the song Aqueous Transmission .

player

Sun Yude (孙裕德; 1904–1981) and Li Tingsong (李庭松; 1906–1976) were among the most important pipa players of the 20th century . Both were students of Wang Yuting (1872–1951) and were committed to the Guoyue style (国 乐), a combination of Chinese musical traditions and Western style. Sun performed in the United States, Asia and Europe and in 1956 became the deputy director of the Shanghai minzu yuetuan (上海 民族 乐团; Shanghai People's Orchestra ). In addition to his work as a pipa player, Li held a number of academic positions and also did theoretical research on the instrument. Wei Zhongle (卫 仲 乐; 1908–1997) played a number of other instruments in addition to the pipa and founded the department for traditional instruments at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in the early 1950s .

Other pipa players known beyond China are Shen Haochu (沈浩 初; 1899–1953), his student Lin Shicheng (林 石城; 1922–2006), his student Liu Dehai (刘德海, * 1937) and Wu Man, who received a master’s degree for the first time in the pipa game and won the Beijing National Competition for Chinese Instruments.

Wei Zhongle and Ye Xuran (叶 绪 然 * 1935) taught pipa at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music . In the early 1980s, Ye Xuran premiered the first pipa pieces of the Dunhuang manuscript arranged by Ye Dong . In particular, Min Xiao-Fen (USA), Tang Liangxing (USA), Jiang Ting , Gao Hong , Qiu Xia He , Liu Fang (刘芳), Yang Jing, Ting Ting have promoted the spread of the instrument in North America, Europe and Japan (Zong Tingting), Zhang Jingyu and Zhou Yi deservedly. In China, however, Yu Jia (俞 嘉), Yang Wei (杨 惟) and Fan Wei (樊 薇) work.

Trivia

In Chinese, the fruit of the Japanese loquat is called "pipa" () because of its shape, which is reminiscent of the instrument.

literature

  • Martin Gimm : Pipa. In: Music in the past and present , part 7, Bärenreiter / Metzler Kassel 1997, Sp. 1601–1608
  • Shigeo Kishibe: The origin of the p'ip'a with particular reference to the five-stringed p'ip'a preserved in the Shosôin . In: The transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan / 2. Series , Vol. 19 (1940), Issue 3, pp. 262-307, ISSN  0913-4271
  • John E. Myers: The way of the pipa. Structure and imagery in Chinese lute music . University Press, Kent, Ohio 1992, ISBN 0-87338-455-5 (also dissertation, University of Baltimore 1987).
  • Tsun-Yuen Lui, Wu Ben, Robert C. Provine: Pipa. In: Stanley Sadie , John Tyrrell (Eds.): New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . 2nd edition Macmillan, London 2001.
  • Pei Ju Tsai: The Pipa. History, playing techniques and music interpretation . VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, Saarbrücken 2010, ISBN 978-3-639-22607-2 .

Web links

Commons : Pipa  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chen Yingshi: A report on Chinese research into the Dunhuang music manuscripts. In: Allan Marett (Ed.): Musica Asiatica . Vol. 6. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1991, pp. 61-72