Mike's Oud Forums

The oud's relationship with the chinese pipa

Chris_Stephens - 8-5-2014 at 09:49 AM

I've heard that the pipa is related to the oud through the silk road cultural exchanges. I can see it a little in the 'pear' shape and the way pipa was held back then was similar to the oud, not upright like today. I'm wondering why the Chinese musical tradition doesn't have a concept related to maqam/dastgah/raga like other silk road musics do. Most of their 'classical' music is written or memorized. Is there a Chinese equivalent of an improvised musical form?

abc123xyz - 8-5-2014 at 12:58 PM

Quote: Originally posted by Chris_Stephens  
I've heard that the pipa is related to the oud through the silk road cultural exchanges.

Yes, they both descend from the barbat. The name pipa is even supposed to derive etymologically from barbat.

Quote: Originally posted by Chris_Stephens  
I'm wondering why the Chinese musical tradition doesn't have a concept related to maqam/dastgah/raga like other silk road musics do.

Persia's was one the first great world empires, with influence well beyond its borders, and so it's dastgah system, which underlies the maqam system as well, was likely the first exposure to an organized system of art music for many of the ethnic groups that later came to use it. The same would not have been true for the Chinese, who had their own history of music study and theory, system of scales and tunings, etc. Moreover China was never actually subjugated by the Persians, Arabs, or the Ottomans, as so many of the groups that use the maqam system today were.

There's also the fact that most east-asian music is pentatonic, whereas maqam and dastgah music is largely heptatonic, and so wouldn't readily supplant the indigenous taste and musical system.

Athough, if that serves to explain why they don't use the specifically Perso-Arabic maqam system, it doesn't explain why they don't use their own comparable system of melody formulas, which is your real question.

I can't say for sure, but my own guess would be that the Chinese did originally have some sort of melody formulas (almost every pre-modern culture studied did), judging from their early interest in scales and modes, but that it's merely gone out of practice.

Quote: Originally posted by Chris_Stephens  
Most of their 'classical' music is written or memorized. Is there a Chinese equivalent of an improvised musical form?

Sadly, the Chinese classical music of today seems to be somewhat stilted, much like Western classical music, the focus being on faithfully reproducing old precomposed pieces rather than on improvisation, innovation, or invention.

That's likely due to a shift in the majority of the population's interest to modern music, as is true in the West, as well as to the Communist party's deliberate campaign to destroy much of traditional culture.

David

Jody Stecher - 8-5-2014 at 01:14 PM

Yeah, the shape suggests kinship, especially with Persian prototypes like barabat, sehrud, etc. It has been been said and written that the words pipa(China) and biwa(Japan) are cognate with the Indian word "vina/ veena/been/. It should be remembered that in old times "vina" did not denote today's rudra vina or saraswati vina or the recent vicitra vina. Vina was a genus, a classification, a category. Every plucked string instrument was a vina of some sort. I am no kind of etymologist so I can't say if "barbat" and vina/bina are related words.

At least one of the schools of zheng playing today does use microtonal pitches. At least one of the schools of qin playing today does include spontaneous composition ("improvisation"). Li Xianting is very good at this.

And while improvisation is not a major part of Chinese classical music(s), composition does take place. And a major part of maqam music is composing and the performance of compositions.

Also, don't forget the non-Han maqam music within the borders of China today. I'm thinking of the Uighers of Xinjiang who have a maqam tradition, related to, but distinct from Tajik and Uzbek shashmaqam music across the western border. This is a stab in the dark but could it be that at least part of the nature of Han Chinese music can be attributed to differentiating itself from the maqam music to its west?

Chris_Stephens - 8-5-2014 at 02:23 PM

Interesting and informative discussion guys, thanks. I've heard some of this 'ancient' style on the qin, which i think has a reputation of preserving the old way of Chinese music. I'll have to look into the Uyghur maqam system, it makes sense geographically that it would be practiced there. Its a shame if it was deliberately destroyed, the pipa seems equally capable of beautiful improvised musical exploration. It just seems like there would be a similar system there since they were one of the most distinct cultural powers of the day along with the middle east, persia, and south asia. So their system of improvised music was either purposefully removed by the Communists, phased out by a paradigm shift in the musical tastes of the people, forgotten in an effort to remain distinct/modern, or never really developed at all it seems. When I first started listening to solo pipa music I assumed it was improvised like the rest of the music of the 'old world'- maqam/dastgah/raga since it has that "flow", but then i started hearing the same song twice. :shrug:

I'm familiar with the term 'veena', my main instrument is sitar (once called tritantri veena), but i've heard that pipa means 'up, down' because of the plucking technique.

Jono Oud N.Z - 8-5-2014 at 05:47 PM

A couple of old posts:

http://www.mikeouds.com/messageboard/viewthread.php?tid=13987#pid95...

http://www.mikeouds.com/messageboard/viewthread.php?tid=13484#pid92...

I have a series of books by Laurence Picken called 'Music of the Tang Court'.
The music survived in notation in Japan and seems to have been imported into the court at Changan from Central Asia.
Most of the pieces are in heptatonic modes, Dorian, Lydian, Mixolydian but also often revert to a pentatonic scale similar to the 'gapped scale' of Celtic music.

One relative of this music is the Nanyin music of Fujian province:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0EXIrADaIU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBQCvu2FWkc

Fujian also preserves the old pipa - called the Nanyin pipa.

Jono Oud N.Z - 8-5-2014 at 06:25 PM

Uyghur Muqam of Xinjiang

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-KM037IHiY