Biwa - Biwa Style

Biwa Style

Generally speaking, biwa is considered one of Japan`s principal traditional instruments, and, as such, it has both influenced and been influenced by other traditional instruments and compositions throughout its long history in Japan. The following section will situate the biwa in the context of traditional Japanese music.

• General Background on Music in Japan

The general term used for music in Japan is 音楽 (ongaku). 音 means sound or tone, and 楽 means music or enjoyment. Both characters together technically refer to all forms of music but, more recently, evoke images of modern (post-Pacific War) ensembles and compositions. Traditional music styles have their own designations.

• 邦楽 Hōgaku - Japanese Traditional Music

Broken apart, 邦 means (home) country and, 楽 means music. The characters together are thought to be an abbreviation of the term 本邦音楽, which literally means “music of Japan.” The term Hogaku is also derived from 近世邦楽, which translates as “national music of modern times.” It is usually defined as traditional Japanese Music. Japan`s Ministry of Education classifies Hogaku as a category separate from other traditional forms of music, such as Gagaku (court music) or Shōmyō (Buddhist chanting), but most ethnomusicologists view Hogaku, in a broad sense, as the form from which the others were derived . Outside of ethnomusicology, however, Hogaku usually refers to Japanese music from around the 17th to mid 19th Centuries . In Hogaku, musical instruments usually serve as accompaniments to vocal performances. Song dominates hogaku, and the overwhelming majority of hogaku compositions are vocal. In this context, the biwa was one of the prominent instruments .

• 雅楽 Gagaku – Japanese Court Music

Since雅 means elegance, Gagaku literally means elegant music and generally refers to musical instruments and music theory imported to Japan from China and Korea from 500-600 CE. Gagaku is divided into two main categories: Old Music and New Music. Old Music refers to music and musical compositions from before the Chinese Tang Dynasty (618-906), and New Music refers to music and compositions produced during or after Tang, including music brought from various regions in China and Korea .

Old and New Music are further divided into 左楽 (Music of the Left) and 右楽 (Music of the Right) Categories. 左楽 is composed of 唐楽 (music from Tang) and 林邑楽 (music from Indo-China). 右楽 is composed of 高麗楽 (music from Korea).

Gagaku was usually patronized by the imperial court or the shrines and temples. Gagaku ensembles were composed of string, wind, and percussion instruments, where string and wind instruments were more respected and percussion instruments were considered lesser instruments. Among the string instruments, the biwa seems to have been the most important instrument in gagaku orchestral performances .

• 声明 Shōmyō – Buddhist Chanting

The two characters: 声 and 明 literally mean “voice” and “clear”. Shōmyō is a translation of the Sanskrit word, sabda-vidya, which means “the (linguistic) study of language”. Shōmyō is a kind of chanting of Buddhist scriptures syllabically or melismatically set to melodic phrasing, usually performed by a male chorus. It is said to have come to Japan in the early 9th Century .

While biwa was not used in shōmyō, the style of biwa singing is closely tied to shōmyō, especially mōsō and heike style biwa singing . Both shōmyō and mōsō are rooted in Buddhist rituals and traditions. Before arriving in Japan, shōmyō was used in Indian Buddhist. The mōsō-biwa was also rooted in Indian Buddhism, and the heike-biwa, as a predecessor to the mōsō-biwa, was the principle instrument of the biwa hōshi, who were blind Buddhist priests.

• Biwa Aesthetics

Generally speaking, biwas have four strings. That being said, modern satsuma and chikuzen biwas might have five strings. The first string is thickest and the fourth string is thinnest (the second string is the thickest on the chikuzen-biwa, and the fourth and fifth strings are the same thickness on five-stringed chikuzen and satsuma-biwas) . The varying string thickness creates different timbres when stroked from different directions.

In biwa, tuning is no fixed. General tones and pitches can fluctuate up or down entire steps or microtones . When singing in a chorus, biwa singers often stagger their entry and often sing through non-synchronized, heterophony accompaniment . In solo performances, a biwa performer sings monophonically, with melismatic emphasis throughout the performance. These monophonic do not follow a set harmony. Instead biwa singers tend to sing with a flexible pitch without distinguishing soprano, alto, tenor, or bass roles. This singing style is complemented by the biwa, which biwa players use to produce short glissandi throughout the performance . Biwa singing style tends to be nasal, particularly when singing vowels, the consonant ん, and notes containing “g” (e.g., が, ぎ, ぐ, げ, ご, ぎゃ, ぎゅ, ぎょ). Also, biwa performers vary the volume of their voice between barely audible to very loud (rarely deafening). Since biwa performances were generally for small groups, singers did not need to project their voices as do opera singers in the western tradition

Biwa music is based on a pentatonic scale (sometimes referred to as a five-ton or five-note scale), meaning that each octave contains five notes. This scale sometimes includes supplementary notes, but the core remains pentatonic. The rhythm in biwa performances allows for a broad flexibility of pulse. Songs are not always metered, although more modern collaborations are metered. Notes played on the biwa usually begin slow and thin and progress through gradual accelerations, increasing and decreasing tempo throughout the performance. The texture of biwa singing is often described as “sparse.”

The plectrum also contributes to the texture of biwa music. Different sized plectrums produced different textures; for example, the plectrum used on a moso-biwa was much larger than that used on a gaku-biwa, producing a harsher, more vigorous sound . The plectrum is also critical to creating the sawari sound, which is particularly utilized with satsuma-biwas . What the plectrum is made of also changes the texture, with ivory and plastic plectrums creating a more resilient texture to the wooden plectrum`s twangy hum .