Gagaku

Gagaku is the ritual orchestral music of the Japanese imperial court. The instrumental core is three winds — the hichiriki (a piercing double-reed pipe), the ryūteki (transverse bamboo flute), and the shō (a seventeen-pipe mouth organ that sustains chord clusters of five or six pitches at once) — joined by biwa lute, koto zither, and a percussion battery led by the kakko, a small two-headed barrel drum. There is no tempered tuning and almost no metronomic pulse; phrases stretch and compress around ma, the felt interval between sounds. The shō's continuous tone-cloud, held through circular breathing, forms a slow-moving harmonic mist over which the hichiriki traces an undulating melody.

The repertoire traces to seventh- and eighth-century imports from Tang China and the Korean kingdoms of Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla. The Nara court established a music bureau, the Gagaku-ryō, to train resident musicians and integrate the imported material. Over the Heian period (794-1185) the foreign sources were absorbed and codified as Japan's own court music; even after the political center shifted to the samurai class the music persisted through shrine and temple performance and imperial ritual. The Music Department of the Imperial Household Agency (Kunaichō Gakubu) still trains hereditary musicians today, and UNESCO inscribed gagaku on its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2009.

Latch onto the shō's continuous chord cloud first — it never breathes between phrases, because the player inhales and exhales through the same pipes. Inside that mist, the hichiriki wavers in and out of tune with the western chromatic scale, sliding around a note rather than landing on it. The kakko drum's punctuating strokes act as the structural clock, marking the slow sections of the piece for any listener trying to follow the form.

Start with 'Etenraku,' the most-played piece in the repertoire — best heard on speakers in a quiet room so the shō's overtone spread can fill the air. Recordings by the Imperial Household Agency Music Department are the canonical reference; Hideki Togi's more accessible crossover albums work as a second step but should not be the first.

Each 'note' on the shō is actually a five- or six-note chord, voiced through different stacks of fifths and fourths than the western root-third-fifth — the source of gagaku's characteristic clouded, hovering quality. 'Etenraku' has been transmitted essentially unchanged since the late Heian period and is one of the longest continuously performed melodies anywhere in the world.