Lineage: music lives in people

Until quite recently, almost none of this music was learned from paper. You learned it by sitting in front of a teacher, hearing a phrase and playing it back, for years. So every piece carries the hands it passed through. A teacher's habits become a student's, and a great player's way becomes a "school". This step plays the same pieces in different hands, and follows lines from teacher to student.

Learning by heart

Chinese has a phrase for it, kǒuchuán xīnshòu: "passed on by mouth, taught heart to heart". Japanese says kuden, oral teaching. Scores existed, as step 3 showed, but they were memory aids. The rhythm, the ornaments and the feeling came from the teacher, and so did the small habits that make one player's version sound like theirs.

One piece, two lines

Step 2 hinted at this; now hear the two side by side. The first two recordings are the same qin piece, Wild Geese Descending on the Sandbank. Charlie Huang plays it from a handbook printed in 1868 by a player of the Guangling school, named after the old city of Yangzhou. Lo Ka Ping, recorded in Hong Kong around 1970, learned the qin first from his father and then from a teacher in Guangzhou, in a Cantonese line of players.

Qin "schools" are often named after places, but the map is a simplification. Really they are family trees of teachers and their students, and qin playing is very personal. Listen to how differently the two players shape the same title: the geese circle longer in one version than in the other.

Tan and his heir

The other two recordings come from Peking opera. Tan Xinpei (1847–1917) was the leading singer of older men's roles of the late Qing, and these are among the very few recordings of his voice. His style became known as the Tan school. His heir, Yu Shuyan (1890–1943), had lost his voice as a boy singer; while he recovered he studied Tan's performances closely, became his disciple, and founded a school of his own, the Yu school.

Here they sing the same scene, Battle at Taiping: first Yu, on a record of 1925, then Tan, a generation earlier. Yu recorded very little, a few dozen sides in all, and that small body of records became the model for later singers in his line. Another branch from Tan is the Ma school of Ma Lianliang, who recorded in 1922. Line by line, the family resemblance runs on.

Names and licences

In Japan the line from teacher to student is formal. Many arts are organised in schools, each headed by an iemoto, who holds the school's teachings and alone grants the licences to teach. A student who reaches a certain level may be given a professional name, often built from the teacher's: natori, "taking a name". Higher ranks follow, such as shihan, teacher.

You met two shakuhachi players in step 5 who share a teacher, Yokoyama Katsuya. Riley Lee received his shakuhachi name in 1975 and became a grand master in 1980; he also studied with Sakai Chikuhō II, and plays some pieces in each teacher's version. Kakizakai Kaoru's Sokkan is a piece his teacher Yokoyama also recorded.

A club keeps it

Lineage is not only for professionals. In Changhua, in Taiwan, the amateur music club Lichunyuan has played beiguan, a loud and joyful music for temple festivals, since the early 19th century. The old clubs of the town split long ago into two rival camps, partly over whose teachers they followed. Hear the club's teacher, Chen Zhulin, who joined at fourteen, singing and playing at a practice around 2000: a piece being passed on, caught in the act.

覚えておきたい言葉

流派 liúpài / ryūha: a school or style passed down a line of teachers (in Japanese often just ryū, as in Kinko-ryū)
口傳心授 kǒuchuán xīnshòu: “passed on by mouth, taught heart to heart”: learning by direct example
家元 iemoto: the head of a Japanese school of an art, who holds its teachings and grants licences
名取 natori: “taking a name”: a student licensed by a school and given a professional name

ほかで聴く

UNESCO: Peking opera, with a film of teaching and performance