The neumatic notation - the Buddhist of smooth melodic movement

 Western music uses staff notation while Chinese music uses solfege or ideogram notation. These two notations have a common point one symbol represents a pitch. The player perceives the pitches block by block, one note or chord at a time and one after. However, some Buddhist chanting music uses curved lines to notate the music, and emphasise the contour of the voice. It is similar to the western glissando but not in a linear way. The connection between of each text is smooth and flowing.

Japanese Shōmyō

In Japanese Shōmyō, a type of Buddhist chant in Japan, they have a contrasting notation method to the West. The neumatic notation, generally known as hakase (-bakase). straight and curved lines (Tokita, 2008). Same with the Western neume, these notations lack any systematic way of indicating pitch. The lines appear to represent the up-and-down movement of the vocal melody in a simple visual manner. 

A Shōmyō hakase score (Tokita,2008)

The Shomyo notation also improved to ‘Five-tone’ notation:the lines indicating the five tones are arranged in clockwise order from low to high pitch around the model character, with the directions of the lines of adjacent tones differing from each other by 45-degree angles. 
A "Five- tone" notation excerpt. (Tokita,2008)

Tibetan Chod Dbyangs

Chod Dbyangs, is a genre of Tibetan Buddhist vocal music. The phet is the notation for the singer on how to sing the Chod text. Each phet symbol indicates a sound quality, dynamic, articulation and contour (Chong, 2011). Echoing the neumatic concept, pitches of the phets are not confined to any particular scale or range and performers have total freedom to pronounce the phet at any pitch. There are two major types of phet one is short and accented, one is soft and dragging.

A Chod Dbyangs score (Chong, 2011)



  Chong, L.-S. (2011) Tibetan Buddhist Vocal Music: Analysis of the Phet in Chod Dbyangs. Asian music. 42 (1), 54–84.


  Tokita, A. M. & Hughes, D. W. (2008) The Ashgate research companion to Japanese music. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Haba's field shifting - and the expansion of traditional functional harmony

Image
Hába characterizes the quarter-tone gamut as separated into two fields, one half comprising the twelve conventional pitches, and the other half, shifting all the twelve notes by a quarter-tone, the twelve quarter-tone pitches. In harmony, Passages occur in which chords composed purely of conventional pitches alternate with chords composed purely of quarter-tone pitches. Two fields are not always rejecting each other when he equally divided a perfect 4th (5 semitones)into 2 equal intervals, equal 2.5 for each, the 0.5 quartertones always step into the other field. Sometimes, this fourth interval can be further divided into 2.5+2+0.5 or other permutations. This kind of splitting a fourth can be traced to ancient greek tetrachord, a scale of four notes, bounded by the interval of a perfect fourth. A chord across both fields, the chord spell like a flatter dominant 7th chord. the 7th harmonic on harmonic series is quite flat (-31cents). This chord combines both fields sounds better accordi...
Read more

Alternative orchestra's commission -- Let's shake the earth

Recently, I received a commission from Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, the alternative orchestra. The instrumentation is:     2 Piccolos 3 Flutes 1 Soprano saxophone 1 Alto saxophone 1 Tenor saxophone 1 Baritone saxophone 3 B-flat trumpets 5 Tubas 1 Piano 1 Harp 1 Guitar 1 Timpani 1 Tam-tam I had a short interview before the concert and helped me rethink the process of composing this piece Qs - Tell us a little about your piece? It is about noise. The clusters are the main material of the music. The cluster in the bass low register creates a muddy and gritty sound; while the cluster in the high register sounds piercing and edgy. Throughout the whole piece, I gradually add the cluster materials layer by layer until the breaking point everything’s messed up and ends with everyone being shaken. Qs -What attracted you to the sound of the Dung Chen? Dungchen is an instrument used in Tibetan Buddhism. It is a long trumpet, it is very long and puts one end on the ground on the ground...
Read more

Timbre and the suitable tuning and temperament

Image
 People prefer piano to use equal temperament and string instruments to use just intonation. It can be understood that the mechanics of the instruments: the piano is hard to adjust during a performance and strings are good at their agility. It can have the same conclusion when we examine the timbre of the instruments. Here is the harmonic series comparison between a piano and a violin playing on the same note A2. In the piano, the harmonic strength is strong on the first 3 harmonics but decays rapidly after 1kHz; the violin carries a more spread of harmonic strength. It maintains strength even over 1kHz until 4kHz. In other words, the strings instruments have louder upper harmonic partials compared to the piano. In real practice, the string instruments are often played with vibrato, which generates even more complex harmonics compare to a piano. I use Pure Data to generate the purer sound for clearer comparison and easier to switch between different temperaments and tuning as well ...
Read more