One court music, four countries

Music for Heaven and the ancestors

In China, yayue was the music of the great state rituals: sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, to the imperial ancestors and to Confucius. It was slow and solemn, played on the bells, stone chimes and other instruments of the "eight sounds" you met in step 1, with rows of dancers. Confucius held it up as the right kind of music, against the popular songs of his day.

Court ritual music faded with the last dynasty. Confucian ceremonies kept their music into the 20th century, and since the 1990s they have been revived on the mainland, sometimes for visitors. Taiwan began reviving them earlier, in the late 1960s.

A temple in Tainan

The first recording you heard briefly in step 1. It is a class at the Confucius Temple in Tainan, Taiwan, learning shísānyīn, "thirteen sounds", the ensemble music played for the temple's ceremonies, recorded in 2014. Its instruments are chosen to cover the old "eight sounds". This is not a full rite, only a short lesson, but it is the music Tainan still plays for Confucius, though scholars debate where its tunes first came from.

Japan: the same name, a different music

Music from the Korean kingdoms reached Japan by the 5th century, and in 701 the court set up a music bureau, the first time the word gagaku appears. But the word had come to mean something else: not Chinese ritual music but the court and banquet music of Tang China, and over the next decades it took in music from Korea, India and what is now Vietnam. Over the next centuries it was sorted into music "of the left", from China, and "of the right", from Korea, and by about the 10th century it had settled into the form still played.

That form is played today by the Music Department of the Imperial Household Agency in Tokyo, at court ceremonies and banquets and in public recitals at the palace. UNESCO calls gagaku the oldest of Japan's traditional performing arts. Its sound is unmistakable: the reedy hichiriki carrying the melody, the ryūteki flute weaving around it, and the shō, a mouth organ of seventeen bamboo pipes, holding long shimmering chords.

Kotone does not yet have a gagaku recording, but gagaku instruments are heard most often today at Shinto shrines, where they accompany rites and weddings. The second and third recordings are shrine ceremonies: at Tsurugaoka Hachimangū, the great shrine of Kamakura, and at Fushimi Inari in Kyoto, with drums and flute. Listen to them as the setting rather than as gagaku itself; the links below lead to the court orchestra.

Korea: a gift of 428 instruments

Korea is where the name and the music really did travel together. In 1116 the Song emperor Huizong sent the Korean king a gift of 428 ritual instruments, with costumes and instructions for their use. Much of it was later lost, and in the 15th century King Sejong rebuilt the ritual music. Today aak survives in the ceremony for Confucius at the Munmyo shrine in Seoul, held each spring and autumn.

The grandest Korean court rite tells a subtler story. At Jongmyo, the shrine of the royal ancestors, a ceremony is still held every May. The rite is Chinese in form, but its music was largely composed in Korea, under Sejong. UNESCO notes that such a ritual is no longer celebrated in China.

Vietnam: the court of Huế

In Vietnam, nhã nhạc grew under the Lê dynasty and was codified at the court of the Nguyễn emperors in Huế, from 1802 until the monarchy ended in 1945: large ensembles with a strong section of drums, for coronations, funerals and receptions. After the court fell it lost its place, and it is now kept alive in Huế. UNESCO proclaimed it a masterpiece of intangible heritage in 2003.

So one word, four countries: a Confucian temple class in Taiwan, a Tang banquet orchestra in Tokyo, a Korean king's music for his ancestors, a court band in Huế. Each kept the name and made the music its own.

Words to know

雅樂 yǎyuè / gagaku / aak / nhã nhạc

“elegant music”: one name, read four ways in China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam

十三音 shísānyīn

“thirteen sounds”, the ensemble of the Confucius Temple in Tainan

宗廟 Jongmyo

the shrine of the Korean royal ancestors in Seoul, where a court rite is still held each May

Hear it elsewhere

• UNESCO: Gagaku, with photographs of the Imperial Household Agency's musicians and a film
• UNESCO: Royal ancestral ritual in the Jongmyo shrine and its music, with a film
• UNESCO: Nha Nhac, Vietnamese court music, with a film