Tang Dynasty music 唐代音乐 from China: "Qian Qiu Yue"《千秋乐》, arr. Laurence Picken

A historic recording of two performances of an arrangement of "Qian Qiu Yue"《千秋乐》(Music of a Thousand Autumns), an instrumental piece in the Dorian mode on B, called Banshe diao (盘渉调) in Chinese and Banshiki-chō in Japanese, comprising eight measures of 8/4, which dates back to China's Tang Dynasty, and which is preserved in several Sino-Japanese score collections, the oldest dating back to the 12th century. It is arranged here for an ensemble of Western wind and percussion instruments by the late Tang music specialist Dr. Laurence Picken (1909-2007) and Kenneth Pont. In this arrangement, the melody is repeated six times, at a tempo of ♩=104. As performed by today's gagaku musicians, the same piece is played approximately ten times more slowly, at ♩=10. Recorded in the Great Hall of Jonathan Edwards College, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA, April 4, 1973. The performing group, a student ensemble of Western wind and percussion instruments, was directed by ethnomusicology professor Dr. Sotirios "Sam" Chianis (1926-2022). From Side B of a cassette recording in the archive of the late ethnomusicologist Dr. Rulan Chao Pian (1922-2013), which is housed at the Chinese University of Hong Kong Library. The A side of this cassette features a lecture on music of the Tang Dynasty by Laurence Picken, of which this performance was the concluding portion. For the first of the two performances of this piece (starting at 01:23), the score pages in this video come from the following source: ● Picken, Laurence, and Kenneth Pont, arr. Ancient Chinese Tunes: Nine Pieces for Recorders, Tuned Percussion, Rhythmic Percussion, Plucked Strings, Guitar, and Optional Clarinets in B Flat (Oxford University Press, 1973, pp. 13-17). For the second performance (starting at 07:17), which was presumably added due to popular demand, the score pages come from the following sources: ● Garfias, Robert. Music of a Thousand Autumns: The Tōgaku Style of Japanese Court Music (University of California Press, 1975, pp. 247-250) - a transcription of the contemporary gagaku version of this piece, with the gaku-biwa [lute] part highlighted in purple ● Wolpert, Rembrandt. "Tang-Music (Tōgaku) Manuscripts for Lute and Their Interrelationships." In Music and Tradition: Essays on Asian and Other Musics Presented to Laurence Picken, ed. D. R. Widdess and R. F. Wolpert (Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 118) - features three versions of this melody from Sino-Japanese collections of gaku-biwa scores including 1) "Sango Yōroku"『三五要録』(c. 1180), 2) "Biwa-fu"『琵琶譜』(1566), and 3) "Meiji Biwa-fu"『明治琵琶譜』(1876). "Qian Qiu Yue" is listed as a court yanyue (燕乐, banquet/entertainment music) piece in "Jiaofang Ji"《教坊记》(The Conservatory Records), a collection of short essays by the Tang scholar Cui Lingqin (崔令钦, fl. 749). According to Picken, "'Music for a Thousand Autumns' – a birthday wish for the Taizong Emperor, [was] first played on the 5th day of the 8th month in the year 728..." As preserved in Sino-Japanese sources, this piece is called "Senshūraku"『千秋樂（せんしゅうらく）』, and it appears in several important Sino-Japanese score collections, including "Sango Yōroku"『三五要録』and "Jinchi Yōroku"『仁智要録』(c. 1180); and "Rosei Yōroku"『蘆聲要録』(c. 1661). Picken first proposed the idea that the tempos of the Tang-era pieces in Japan's gagaku tradition may have slowed down considerably since their adoption by Japanese court musicians in the 8th and 9th centuries in his 1967 article "Central Asian Tunes in the Gagaku Tradition." As of 2026, this concept has only gradually been accepted by a small number of Japanese musicians and ensembles, although the "faster" tempos such performers have adopted in their performances and recordings are still generally too slow to reasonably be said to represent Tang-era standards. In their preface to Music from the Tang Court, vol. 7: Some Ancient Connections Explored (Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. xii), Picken and Noël J. Nickson set out their aims as follows: "Thanks to the generous sponsorship of the Library of Congress, a set of Compact Discs to accompany earlier facsicles, Volumes 6 and 7, and future volumes, is now in preparation. Soon it will be possible to hear this music in performance for the first time after a lapse of 1,400 years. Performing materials for Western instruments, as well as for original instruments, are in preparation so that musicians worldwide may participate. "From the beginning it has been our wish that the repertory be brought to life as living music. Its quality as music has been beyond doubt for us, since the very first transcriptions were made. We both transcribed and performed the works ourselves, playing from original notations, on Chinese and Japanese, or equivalent European, instruments." Thanks to Robin Zhang for assistance with this video. More information: https://earlychinesemusic.blogspot.co...