Kugo (harp)

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A musician plays the kugo vertical angle harp . The scroll Shinzei-kokaku-zu by Fujiwara no Michinori (1106–1160) contains material from the 8th and 9th centuries.

Kugo ( Japanese 箜篌 , Hiragana く ご ), also tate-kugo ("standing harp") and kudara-goto ( 百 済 琴 / く だ ら ご と , string instrument introduced from Kudara , koto ) is a vertical angle harp with 23 strings, which may have been played in Japan from the first centuries AD to the Heian period (794–1185) and disappeared with the reforms of court music in the 10th century. Harps probably only existed in Japan between the 8th and 10th centuries. The kugo goes back to ancient angular harps in the Iranian highlands (Persian chang ) via the models konghu in Korea and konghou in China, which have also disappeared . The main evidence for the existence of Japanese angle harps are two harp fragments, probably from the 8th century. Numerous Japanese Buddhist manuscripts from that period also contain images of smaller bow harps that are similar to the Burmese saung gauk . At the end of the 20th century, a modern kugo was reconstructed based on historical models .

origin

The oldest known harps are bow harps, which appeared in Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt from the 4th millennium onwards and which are likely to have emerged from the curved stick of a musical bow . Beginning of the 2nd millennium BC In both regions the angle harp was introduced with a larger number of strings, consisting of two bars connected at a right or acute angle, and which gradually replaced the bow harp. Starting from Mesopotamia, the angle harp reached China almost two millennia later via Central Asia and Japan a few centuries later. The bow harp only survived far away from its regions of origin, Mesopotamia and the Iranian highlands. In ancient India, where the angle harp never arrived, the bow harp appeared for the first time in the 2nd century BC with a long time lag from early harp images of the Indus culture (around 2800 - around 1800 BC). On reliefs that belong to the Buddhist culture. In the second half of the 1st millennium AD (around 700) the bow harps disappeared from India (which are mentioned in Sanskrit texts as vina ), they only live on in Myanmar in the form of the saung gauk . They got there in the first centuries AD with the spread of Buddhism.

Vertical angle harp konghou . Painting from the Northern Wei Dynasty (385–535).

Harps made their way to Central Asia in the centuries before the turn of the ages, from where they spread to China with Buddhism during the Han Dynasty (207 BC - 220 AD). In the Xinjiang region in northwest China, which is mainly inhabited by Uyghurs , excavations in 1996 and 2003 revealed several horizontal angle harps (compact harps with a horizontally held sound box) from the 5th century BC. That correspond to the earlier Assyrian harps, as they were found in the southwest palace of Nineveh from the 7th century BC. Are depicted. From the 4th century BC The horizontal Pazyryk harp unearthed in the Altai comes from BC . This ancient Scythian type of harp was used ritually and possibly served as a magical aid at burials. This corresponds to the angular harp changi , which still occurs today in the mountains of northern Georgia , whose name is derived from the Persian angular harp chang . The waji is an Asian bow harp that is rarely found in its Nuristan retreat .

The soundboard of the waji consists of a stretched animal skin , like the bow harps unearthed in Kuqa , Xinjiang. In addition to the early bow harp, a second, later type of harp from the early 4th century wall paintings in the caves of Kizil is known from the vicinity of Kuqa . A vertical angle harp, a five-string lute (of the Sassanid barbat and Chinese pipa type ), a transverse flute and a panpipe are depicted there. According to Bo Lawergren (2016), bow harps were more common in areas where Theravada Buddhism prevailed and angle harps were more common in areas with Mahayana tradition. At the same time, Lawergren doubts, without giving a reason, that there were any harps in Japan, despite archaeological finds and numerous image sources.

The Chinese word Konghou (linked to Uighur qungqau , Korean konghu and the Arab-Persian word environment chang including Sogdian cngry', čangaryā ) v since the end of the 2nd century. Known from written sources from the Han period. The origin of the word can be traced along the spread of the instrument across Central Asia. Konghou generally referred to various Chinese plucked instruments regardless of their shape and with an addition to their name special instruments: wo-konghou ("horizontal konghou "), images from the 5th / 6th centuries. According to the century, presumably a long vaulted board zither similar to the Japanese wagon , then shu-konghou ("vertical konghou ", also hu-konghou , "northern barbarian konghou "), a strange angle harp, and fengshou-konghou ("phoenix head harp"), probably one from Bow harp introduced in Central Asia. The introduced vertical angle harp was the most important Buddhist musical instrument in ancient China. In addition to Buddhist ritual music, the konghou was also used by poets for musical entertainment and as an accompanying instrument. Clay and porcelain figurines from the Sui Dynasty and Tang Dynasty (581–907) depict harp-playing musicians who came from Central Asia. Around the 14th century the konghou disappeared from Chinese music .

Style of play

A musician plays the Chinese angle harp konghou . Detail from a painting by Qiu Ying (1494–1552) from the Ming dynasty , early 16th century.

The curved board zither wagon is the only stringed instrument developed in Japan , the shape of which appears for the first time at the turn of the century. Until the Yayoi period (around 3rd century BC - 3rd century AD), Japan's cultural development was largely independent of the mainland. With the subsequent Kofun period (beginning of the 4th century - 710 AD), the import of commercial goods and cultural goods from Korea and only later from China began. This is expressed in the name shiragigoto for a form of the zither wagon , which contains the Japanese word for the Korean kingdom Silla (356-935) with the prefix shiragi before koto (“zither”) . On the death of the Japanese Emperor Ingyō in 453, the King of Silla sent an 80-member orchestra to play at the funeral ceremonies. Silla was one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea . According to this earliest communication about Korean music in Japan, there has been no evidence of music practice in Japan for about a century. However, there is evidence of other Korean musicians who came to Japan during this period. The harp could also have been introduced to Japan via Korea in the first half of the 1st millennium at the earliest. The "music of the three realms" ( sangkangaku ) is a form of music from Korea that has entered the courtly music style gagaku . At that sangkangaku were among the musical instruments shiragigoto (board zither wagon ), ōteki (bamboo flute), makumo (unknown wind instrument) and Kugo .

The introduction of Buddhism through Korea in the 6th century had a significant impact on Japanese music. This historic turning point is fixed to the year 552, when the king of the Korean kingdom of Baekje (Japanese Kudara) Japanese Emperor Kimmei (r. 539-571) a gilded Buddha statue presented. Through Chinese mediation, the Buddhist ritual song shōmyō, originally from India, came to Japan during the early Heian period (794–1185). The fact that the harp was used in Buddhist music in China is evident from Tantric commentaries on Ninno-kyō (" Sutra of the Benevolent King"). It says that Tang Emperor Tang Daizong (ruled 762-779) blew the snail horn ( hōragai ) at a festive event . The konghou is also mentioned. The most extensive work on Japanese shōmyō is the Gyosan Taigaishū by the Shingon monk Chōe (1457-1524) from Bushū ( Musashi Province ). It classifies Buddhist musical instruments - similar to the Chinese eight sounds - including those that had long since disappeared at the time. The kugo angle harp can be found in the “wood” category as a reminder of the past. In their place, log drums and other beats actually used should have been called idiophones .

Other musical instruments were introduced from China during the Chinese Tang Dynasty (617–907). In 701, the oldest court music tradition in Japan ( gagaku ) began to be established according to an analog system in China. The Japanese system ( gagakuryō ) also included the music style tōgaku , which originated from the Tang Dynasty China, and the Korean music sangkangaku . Kammu (r. 781-806), who converted to Buddhism shortly before his death as the first Japanese emperor, moved the capital to Heian-kyō in 794 . His reign led to an awakening national self-confidence and is considered to be the most glorious period in Japanese cultural history. Court culture included elaborate Shinto rituals with a magical meaning. The court orchestras were correspondingly extensive. In 809, the master musicians of the sangkangaku taught the instruments kugo , flute, makumo (wind instrument), wagon ( board zither ) and drum. During the so-called reform of the music system in the years 810 to 850, the court orchestra was given a standardized line-up, to which some old musical instruments no longer belonged, including the wagon , the kugo , the makumo and the large version of the double-reed hichiriki .

Design

Angle harp

The harp disappeared in Japan around the 10th century. How the harps looked can be seen from a number of images and fragments of two instruments that date from around the 8th century and are kept in the old Shōsōin treasury, which belongs to the Tōdai-ji temple in Nara . Both found objects were angular harps, in which the upper halves of the resonance bodies, which rise almost vertically in the playing position, are missing. Their original length is estimated at 170 to 185 centimeters. They were made from the hard wood of paulownia (Japanese kiri ) and had 23 strings. The sound boxes were painted and one of them had the signature "Tōdai-ji". The harps were probably used in music with a Chinese tradition. In their shape they corresponded to vertical angle harps in Mesopotamia from the 7th or 6th century BC. Chr. With a short string bar that protrudes at a right angle from the sound box. According to the partially hypothetical reconstruction, the strings were knotted on a hanging bar, which was fastened with several pegs at a small distance above the soundboard. A rod (tail) protruded over the lower end of the resonance body, with which the harp was supported on the floor. A circular tailpiece protruding at right angles was mortised on this rod. In one of the Shōsōin harps, the strings were tuned to string rings (tuning knobs) and the other to pegs.

In the Shōsōin Buddhist cult objects and personal belongings of the Emperor Shōmu (ruled 724-749) are also kept. The most precise pictorial references to secular music are provided by a wooden hunting bow ( dankyū ) dated to the year 730 , which is painted over its entire length with small figures, the scenes of gigaku (Chinese mask dances ) and sangaku (acrobatics and pantomime of Chinese origin with musical accompaniment) represent. The figures on the lower half of the arch include eight musicians crouching on the floor, a kettle drum , a tubular drum taiko , a transverse flute yokobuye , a longitudinal flute shakuhachi , a short-necked biwa , a vertical angle harp kugo , an unidentifiable string instrument and a hand-struck one Playing the hourglass drum tsuzumi . A ninth musician plays a large lying taiko with two mallets while standing . Long cords that serve as tuning loops hang down from the horizontal tailpiece of the kugo .

The same shape of a vertical angle harp is shown in the Shinzei-kokaku-zu . “Shinzei's illustrations of ancient music”, written by Fujiwara no Michinori (1106–1160), a Buddhist monk whose religious name was Shinzei, is the oldest and most complete collection of illustrations of musical instruments, courtly dance music ( bugaku ) and folk theater ( sarugaku , with acrobatics Demonstrations), which covers the 8th and 9th centuries (Nara period and early Heian period). The original scroll has disappeared, several copies have been preserved, some of them late. The kugo player pictured kneels behind his instrument and plucks the strings with both hands. One copy shows 15 strings and 9 tuning loops, another copy shows 12 strings and 8 tuning loops. The last-named copy also contains an explanatory comment, which probably comes from Fujiwara Teikan (1732–1797): “The Bunken-tsu-kō says: The standing kugo is a foreign instrument. The shape is curved and long. The number of strings is 22. You press it against your chest. It is called tate-kugo (standing harp) or stranger's harp ”.

Bow harp

Burmese bow harp saung gauk with a horizontal resonance box. Photo from 1894. Harp type of the Vajradhatu mandalas .

Apart from a few vertical angle harps, Japanese manuscripts mainly contain images of bow harps. Original bow harps have not survived, however, and it is questionable whether bow harps were ever played in Japan. The curved kugo is sometimes called hōshukugo (“ hōō- neck kugo ”, Japanese hōō corresponds to Chinese fenghuang ) and it appears in the illustrations with a sound box in a horizontal playing position like the Burmese saung gauk .

The oldest known representation of a Japanese bow harp is a detail of the Vajradhatu mandala (a Buddhist diagram; vajra , thunderbolt, a spiritual symbol) from the 9th century. The models for the mandala paintings of the Shingon schools ( mikkyō ) of Tantric Buddhism in Japan were the Chinese mandalas of the Tang Dynasty. From the 9th to the 14th century ( Kamakura period ), bow harps with certain variations appear in Japanese mandalas. The harp images were also introduced into the iconography of raigōzu painting in the 9th century , in which Buddha Amitabha appears in a glowing cloud. The scenes often illustrate the poem "Ode to the 25 Bodhisattvas" by the Buddhist scholar Genshin (942-1017), in which the twelve musical instruments listed symbolize certain Buddhist ideas. With the raigōzu , the kugo representations were passed down through constant copying and variation until their last occurrence in the Muromachi period and Edo period (1615-1867). In the paintings that were created in the centuries after its disappearance, the kugo is rarely presented as a musical instrument, but rather as a ritual object. This is illustrated by the depiction of a mid-14th century bodhisattva holding a harp while standing on a lotus flower. The instrument has no resonance body and in this form would be able to produce barely audible tones.

The Japanese Bodhisattvas are usually depicted with an upturned head of hair, a jeweled crown and a wide dress with ornamented breast plates. The kugo bow harp is iconographically linked to the Vajragiti Bodhisattva, who sings as a heavenly nymph with a soft voice. Her attribute is a kugo that she holds with her left hand. She plucks the strings with her right hand. At the upper end of the arched harps shown is a curved three-pointed structure that embodies one half of the sankosho . This is a Japanese variant of the Indian vajra and represents a divine weapon. Such a combination should not have existed in reality. The bow harp functions as a symbol of the Vajragiti bodhisattva in the Vajradhatu mandala . The Bodhisattvas welcome the Amitabha with dance and music, who brings the atmosphere of the Pure Land with him when he appears .

Modern harp

From 1975 until after the turn of the millennium, the National Theater in Tokyo carried out a project to reconstruct old Japanese musical instruments. Its director Toshirō Kido commissioned the reconstruction of angle harps based on the model of the found objects in the Shōsōin. Furthermore, the five-string lute decorated with mother-of-pearl inlays and the long-necked lute genkan were recreated. Comparable efforts to revive historical instruments began in Korea in the late 1930s, when three forms of the Korean harp ( konghu ) that presumably existed earlier were made: a vertical 21-string sugonghu angle harp , a 13-string bow harp wagonghu and one smaller harp without resonance body sogonghu with 13 strings.

In 1991 the Japanese harpist Tomoko Sugawara, who had been trained on the concert harp and the Celtic harp , began to play the kugo . The harp used by Sugawara is based on an illustration from the 6th or 7th century that was found on a box in Xinjiang . Some details were copied from the two harp fragments kept in the Shōsōin. The replicas have 23 strings, a voluminous resonance body and a thin stick (tail). As with the Shōsōin models, the modern kugo has an inserted peg between the lower end of the sound box and the tailpiece, which was already present in harps in Iran, Central Asia and China in the 7th century. It supports the cantilevered tailpiece. In one example, the almost straight sound box measures 73 centimeters, the pole is 35 centimeters long and the tailpiece is 49 centimeters. A larger specimen has a curved resonance body that is 133 centimeters long, a 70 centimeter long pole and a 73 centimeter long string support.

literature

  • Eta Harich-Schneider : A History of Japanese Music. Oxford University Press, London 1973
  • David W. Hughes: Kugo. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 3, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 222
  • Susumu Kashima, Seishiro Niwa: Depictions of “Kugo” Harps in Japanese Buddhist Paintings. In: Music in Art , Vol. 24, No. 1/2, Spring – Autumn 1999, pp. 56–67
  • Bo Lawergren: Angular Harps Through the Ages. A causal history. In: Arnd Adje Both, Ricardo Eichmann, Ellen Hickmann, Lars-Christian Koch (eds.) Challenges and goals of music archeology. Papers from the 5th Symposium of the International Study Group on Music Archeology at the Ethnological Museum, State Museums Berlin, September 19–23, 2006. (Orient-Archeology 22nd Studies in Music Archeology 6). Rahden / Westfalen 2008, pp. 261–281
  • Sibyl Marcuse : Musical Instruments: A Comprehensive Dictionary. A complete, authoritative encyclopedia of instruments throughout the world. Country Life Limited, London 1966, p. 302, sv "Kugo"

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bo Lawergren, 2008, p. 262
  2. ↑ Vladimir Lisovoi: The Meeting with the Scythians Idiophones and Chordophones. The Ancient Altai and Black Sea Region's Cultures . In: International Conference on Arts, Design and Contemporary Education (ICADCE), 2016, pp. 24–30, here p. 27
  3. ↑ Bo Lawergren: Ancient Angular Harps, after 2008, pp. 447–458, here p. 448
  4. ↑ Samantha Li: The Kuchean Harp: Konghous in the Chinese Oasis Kingdom of Kuqa . Buddhist Door Global, August 4, 2017
  5. ↑ Shigeo Kishibe: The Origin of the K'ung-Hou (Chinese Harp) . In: Journal of the Society for Research in Asiatic Music, No. 14/15, December 1958, pp. 1–51, here p. 20
  6. ↑ Bo Lawergren: Harps. A. Antiquity. 6. East and Central Asia. In: MGG Online, November 2016. In contrast, Lawergren explains in Angular Harps Through the Ages, 2008, p. 265, that there were harps in Japan between the 8th and 10th centuries.
  7. ^ B. Gharib: Sogdian Dictionary. Sogdian-Persian-English. Farhangan Publications, Tehran 1995, p. 127
  8. ↑ Martin Gimm : China. V. Qin and Han dynasties (249 BC - 220 AD). 5. Musical instruments. In: MGG Online, July 2018 ( Music in the past and present , 1995)
  9. ↑ Bo Lawergren: Harps on the Ancient Silk Road. In: Neville Agnew (Ed.): Conservation of Ancient Sites on the Silk Road. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Conservation of Grotto Sites, Mogao Grottoes, Dunhuang, People's Republic of China, June 28 - July 3, 2004. Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles 2010, pp. 117–124, here p. 120
  10. ↑ Francis Piggott ( The Music and Musical Instruments of Japan. 2nd edition, Kelly & Walsh, Shanghai / Hong Kong / Singapore 1909, p. 122, archive.org ) refers to the name shiragi-koto on the drawing of an old angle harp.
  11. ^ Hans Eckardt: Japanese Music . In: Friedrich Blume : Music in the past and present. 1st edition, Volume 6, Bärenreiter, Kassel 1957, Sp. 1723
  12. ↑ Eta Harich-Schneider, 1973, p. 38
  13. ↑ Shigeo Kishibe: Japan. I. General. 1. History. (ii) Continental Asian music. In: Grove Music Online, 2001
  14. ↑ Eta Harich-Schneider, 1973, p. 310
  15. ↑ Eta Harich-Schneider, 1973, pp. 340f
  16. ↑ Eta Harich-Schneider, 1973, pp. 92, 96
  17. ^ Hans Eckardt: Japanese Music . In: Friedrich Blume: Music in the past and present. 1st edition, Volume 6, Bärenreiter, Kassel 1957, Sp. 1727
  18. ↑ Eta Harich-Schneider, 1973, p. 66
  19. ↑ Bo Lawergren: Harps. A. Antiquity. I. Construction and types . In: MGG Online , November 2016
  20. ↑ Eta Harich-Schneider, 1973, pp. 55, 57
  21. ↑ Ezyklopädie Wenxian Tongkao , 1317 written by Ma Duanlin
  22. ↑ Eta Harich-Schneider, 1973, pp. 147f
  23. ^ Vajradhatu Mandala. Kongokai Mandala / Diamond-Realm Mandala. Dharmapala Thangka Center
  24. ↑ Bo Lawergren: Buddhism. III. The Golden Age (300-1000 AD): Music is incorporated into Eastern Buddhism. 2. Japan. In: MGG Online, November 2016
  25. ↑ Susumu Kashima, Seishiro Niwa, 1999, p. 57
  26. ↑ Susumu Kashima, Seishiro Niwa, 1999, pp. 58-60
  27. ^ Toshie Kakinuma: Composing for an Ancient Instrument That Has Lost Its “Tradition”: Lou Harrison '... In: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 49, No. 2, Summer 2011, pp. 232–263, here pp. 233
  28. ^ Andrew P. Killick: Musical Instruments of Korea. In: Robert C. Provine, Yosihiko Tokumaru, J. Lawrence Witzleben (Eds.): Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Volume 7: East Asia: China, Japan, and Korea. Routledge, London 2001, p. 830
  29. ↑ Bo Lawergren, 2008, pp. 261, 268, 281