Ajaeng

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Ajaeng in playing position with wooden bow, behind it several instruments
Korean spelling
Korean alphabet : 아쟁
Hanja : 牙 箏
Revised Romanization : ajaeng
McCune-Reischauer : ajaeng

Ajaeng is a seven-string zither vaulted board painted with a wooden stick , which is played in traditional Korean court music. In this ceremonial music, determined in its structure and the use of the instruments, she and the Fidel haegeum provide the melody framework. The smaller version sanjo ajaeng developed in the 20th century is used as a soloist in the folk music style sanjo .

Design and style of play

Characteristic of the family of East Asian vaulted board zithers such as the Chinese guzheng , the Japanese wagon and the Japanese koto is a long rectangular body made of a block of wood, between the ends of which parallel strings are stretched over individual bridges set up in a diagonal line . The traditional form of the ajaeng is 160 centimeters long and 24 centimeters wide, with a height of just under 10 centimeters. The body is made of a piece of paulownia wood, the seven, rather thick strings are made of twisted silk. Each leads from the edge of the underside over a narrow web in the middle to a common rounded web at the top. Shortly before this bridge, the strings are coated with a 65 centimeter long, straight branch of a forsythia , the rough surface of which is rubbed with resin. Occasionally, recently, musicians have also used a slightly curved bow .

The seven-string ajaeng has the narrowest range of all Korean string instruments. For the local court music hyangak , the ambitus is a ninth and the mood is A ♭  - B ♭  - c - e ♭  - f - a ♭  - b ♭ , a duodecime for the Chinese music style dangak, both in pentatonic mood. The bars can be moved to change your mind. With a newly developed nine-string instrument, the pitch range expands upwards by c 'and e ♭ '. The sanjo ajaeng used in folk music is shorter at 120 centimeters, its eight strings are tuned an octave higher to G - C - d - g - c '- d' - c ''.

The six-string, plucked Korean zither geomungo (kŏmun'go) and the twelve-string gayageum rest in the playing position across the thighs of the musician sitting on the floor, in contrast to this, the ajaeng player sits in front of his, through a wooden frame pushed under on the right side in a sloping position Positioned instrument. The string spacing is relatively large, so that the ajaeng is not suitable for fast playing with short individual notes.Instead, tones are connected to each other by playing legato over adjacent strings. At the same time, the strings can be pressed down below the bridges with the left hand, which gradually increases the tones by several note values ​​and leads to a howling sound result.

A Korean peculiarity of some musical forms are yonŭm (“connecting tones”), melodic transitions between two compositional units. A yonŭm is interposed when leading instruments such as the cone oboe piri and the drum janggu pause. In their place, the flute daegeum and the fidel haegeum or the smaller flute dangjeok together with the ajaeng .

Origin and Distribution

The ajaeng player Shin Hyeon-sik

The Chinese vaulted board zither yazheng , which was bowed with a stick, came together with the 15-string "large zither" taejang during the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392) on the Korean peninsula, where the string zither was named ajaeng and initially according to its origin in the Tang dynasty called dangak (tang-akgi), later also played in the indigenous hyangak music. In dangak music, the ajaeng is one of 13 instruments, the other stringed instruments include the fidel haegeum , the four-string lute tang pipa , the four-string lute wolgum with a circular body, the zither taejang and the wind instruments taepyeongso and tang piri and the hourglass-shaped janggu as a drum .

For hyangak , gayageum, geomungo, pipa, the long flute daegeum and the double reed instrument piri were typical of the ceremonial court music . Both slow tempo music styles belong together and are called a-ak ("elegant music"). In general, the wind instruments dominate; the high-pitched piri plays the melody, ajaeng and haegeum contribute the melody framework and the bamboo flute daegum ornamented. Ajaeng and the higher-sounding haegeum play the same melody sequence. In the 15th century, five state institutions were responsible for the preservation and maintenance of courtly a-ak music. For the more private court music, young dancers were trained in playing instruments. According to the court chronicle of King Sejong (r. 1418–1450), Sejong sillok , the girls learned to play the vaulted board zithers including the ajaeng , the common wind instruments and the drum janggu in 1443 .

In the Korean classification of musical instruments according to the material, the ajeng is one of the eleven silk instruments . In the treatise Akhak Kwebom from 1493, the various moods and modes of an ajaeng are listed and their role in the various musical ensembles is described. According to the typological classification, the ajaeng and the haegeum do not belong to the string instruments, but to the wind instruments. With stringed instruments like the other vaulted board zithers, the strings are plucked or struck and produce a brief sound. Decisive for the classification is the continuity of the bowed tone, which corresponds to the tone of the wind instruments produced by flowing air.

The smaller sanjo ajaeng plays in folk music ensembles of the minsogak style, to accompany shaman dances and in the solo style sanjo , which is counted as minsogak . With the sanjo , different, virtuoso melodic instruments are subtly accompanied by the janggu hourglass drum . The sanjo style emerged at the end of the 19th century, initially for the curved board zither gayageum, later supplemented by practically all Korean melodic instruments. After 1945 versions for ajaeng and the bowling oboe soenap (in China suona ) were added. Han Ilseop (1929–1973) had a decisive influence on the ajaeng sanjo style , which was probably first performed in 1948. A well-known today's ajaeng player is Pak Jongseon (* 1941). Sanjo has been taught at music colleges since the 1960s .

Sinawi is another instrumental style of music that has its origins in shamanistic rituals. If the shaman or one of his companions occasionally starts singing, the style is called gueum ("mouth music"). Later, professional musicians in the cities developed another, concertante form of sinawi from this . A well-known ajaeng and piri player in the shamanic music tradition was Kang Hansu (1930–1987). Chae Gyeman (1915–2002) played ajaeng for 40 years as musical accompaniment in a women's theater group.

The ajaeng is also used in the works of modern Korean composers, many of whom refer to the traditional instruments and musical forms. Bak Jongseon (* 1941), a student of Han Ilseop, plays ajaeng sanjo as well as taepyeongso, daegeyum, gayageum, janggu and the barrel drum buk .

literature

  • Wolfgang Burde (Ed.): Korea. Introduction to Korean Music Tradition. International Institute for Comparative Music Studies and Documentation Berlin. Schott, Mainz 1985
  • Robert C. Provine: Ajaeng. In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . Vol. 1. Macmillan Publishers, London 2001, pp. 260f

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Burde, p. 183
  2. ^ A Study of Musical Instruments in Korean Traditional Music 2. Daum Communications, July 4, 2006
  3. ^ Provine, p. 261
  4. ↑ Burde, pp. 58, 67
  5. ↑ Hee-sun Kim: Chapter II. Music of Sanjo. (PDF; 774 kB) p. 13
  6. ^ Keith Howard: Professional Music: Instrumental. (PDF; 591 kB) pp. 128f, 139
  7. ↑ Aaron Francis Drinking Straws and Shaman Melodies. A Historical and Analytical Study of the Taepyeongso. (MA Thesis) University of British Columbia, Vancouver 2008, p. 36