Pipa
The pipa is a traditional Chinese musical instrument belonging to the plucked category of instruments. Sometimes called the "Chinese lute", the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body with a varying number of frets ranging from 12 to 31. Another Chinese four-string plucked lute is the liuqin, which looks like a smaller version of the pipa. The pear-shaped instrument may have existed in China as early as the Han dynasty, and although historically the term pipa was once used to refer to a variety of plucked chordophones, its usage since the Song dynasty refers exclusively to the pear-shaped instrument.
The pipa is one of the most popular Chinese instruments and has been played for almost two thousand years in China. Several related instruments are derived from the pipa, including the Japanese biwa and Korean bipa in East Asia, and the Vietnamese đàn tỳ bà in Southeast Asia. The Korean instrument is the only one of the three that is no longer widely used.
History
There are some confusions and disagreements about the origin of pipa. This may be due to the fact that the word pipa was used in ancient texts to describe a variety of plucked chordophones of the period from the Qin to the Tang dynasty, including the long-necked spiked lute and the short-necked lute, as well as the differing accounts given in these ancient texts. Traditional Chinese narrative prefers the story of the Han Chinese Princess Liu Xijun sent to marry a barbarian Wusun king during the Han dynasty, with the pipa being invented so she could play music on horseback to soothe her longings. Modern researchers such as Laurence Picken, Shigeo Kishibe, and John Myers suggested a non-Chinese origin.The earliest mention of pipa in Chinese texts appeared late in the Han dynasty around the 2nd century AD. According to Liu Xi's Eastern Han dynasty Dictionary of Names, the word pipa may have an onomatopoeic origin, although modern scholarship suggests a possible derivation from the Persian word "barbat", the two theories however are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Liu Xi also stated that the instrument called pipa, though written differently in the earliest texts, originated from amongst the Hu people.
Another Han dynasty text, Fengsu Tongyi, also indicates that, at that time, pipa was a recent arrival, although later 3rd-century texts from the Jin dynasty suggest that pipa existed in China as early as the Qin dynasty. An instrument called xiantao, made by stretching strings over a small drum with handle, was said to have been played by labourers who constructed the Great Wall of China during the late Qin dynasty. This may have given rise to the Qin pipa, an instrument with a straight neck and a round sound box, and evolved into ruan, an instrument named after Ruan Xian, one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove and known for playing similar instrument. Yet another term used in ancient text was Qinhanzi, perhaps similar to Qin pipa with a straight neck and a round body, but modern opinions differ on its precise form.
File:Musician dunhuang.jpg|thumb|left|Musicians in a scene from paradise, Yulin Cave 25, Tang dynastyThe pear-shaped pipa is likely to have been introduced to China from Central Asia, Gandhara, and/or India. As people traveled along the Silk Road, the "oval" or oval-shaped pipa traveled through Central Asia and was introduced to China, where it became known as the "pipa."
Pear-shaped lutes have been depicted in Kusana sculptures from the 1st century AD. The pear-shaped pipa may have been introduced during the Han dynasty and was referred to as Han pipa. However, depictions of the pear-shaped pipas in China only appeared after the Han dynasty during the Jin dynasty in the late 4th to early 5th century. Pipa acquired a number of Chinese symbolisms during the Han dynasty - the instrument length of three feet five inches represents the three realms and the five elements, while the four strings represent the four seasons.
Depictions of the pear-shaped pipas appeared in abundance from the Southern and Northern dynasties onwards, and pipas from this time to the Tang dynasty were given various names, such as Hu pipa, bent-neck pipa, some of these terms however may refer to the same pipa. Apart from the four-stringed pipa, other pear-shaped instruments introduced include the five-stringed, straight-necked, wuxian pipa, a six-stringed version, as well as the two-stringed hulei. From the 3rd century onwards, through the Sui and Tang dynasty, the pear-shaped pipas became increasingly popular in China. By the Song dynasty, the word pipa was used to refer exclusively to the four-stringed pear-shaped instrument.
The pipa reached a height of popularity during the Tang dynasty, and was a principal musical instrument in the imperial court. It may be played as a solo instrument or as part of the imperial orchestra for use in productions such as daqu, an elaborate music and dance performance. During this time, Persian and Kuchan performers and teachers were in demand in the capital, Chang'an. Some delicately carved pipas with beautiful inlaid patterns date from this period, with particularly fine examples preserved in the Shosoin Museum in Japan. It had close association with Buddhism and often appeared in mural and sculptural representations of musicians in Buddhist contexts. One of the Buddhist Four Heavenly Kings, the Eastern Dhṛtarāṣṭra, is often depicted with a pipa. Additionally, masses of pipa-playing Buddhist semi-deities are depicted in the wall paintings of the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang. The four and five-stringed pipas were especially popular during the Tang dynasty, and these instruments were introduced into Japan during the Tang dynasty as well as into other regions such as Korea and Vietnam. The five-stringed pipa however had fallen from use by the Song dynasty, although attempts have been made to revive this instrument in the early 21st century with a modernized five-string pipa modeled on the Tang dynasty instrument.
During the Song dynasty, pipa fell from favour at the imperial court, perhaps a result of the influence of neo-Confucian nativism as pipa had foreign associations. However, it continued to be played as a folk instrument that also gained the interest of the literati. The pipa underwent a number of changes over the centuries.
By the Ming dynasty, fingers replaced plectrum as the popular technique for playing pipa, although finger-playing techniques existed as early as Tang. Extra frets were added; the early instrument had 4 frets on the neck, but during the early Ming dynasty extra bamboo frets were affixed onto the soundboard, increasing the number of frets to around 10 and therefore the range of the instrument. The short neck of the Tang pipa also became more elongated.
In the subsequent periods, the number of frets gradually increased, from around 10 to 14 or 16 during the Qing dynasty, then to 19, 24, 29, and 30 in the 20th century. The 4 wedge-shaped frets on the neck became 6 during the 20th century.
The 14- or 16-fret pipa had frets arranged in approximately equivalent to the western tone and semitone, starting at the nut, the intervals were T-S-S-S-T-S-S-S-T-T-3/4-3/4-T-T-3/4-3/4. Some frets produced a 3/4 tone or "neutral tone". In the 1920s and 1930s, the number of frets was increased to 24, based on the 12 tone equal temperament scale, with all the intervals being semitones. The traditional 16-fret pipa became less common, although it is still used in some regional styles such as the pipa in the southern genre of nanguan/nanyin. The horizontal playing position became the vertical position by the Qing dynasty, although in some regional genres such as nanguan the pipa is still held guitar fashion.
During the 1950s, the use of metal strings in place of the traditional silk ones also resulted in a change in the sound of the pipa which became brighter and stronger.
In Chinese literature
Early literary tradition in China, for example in a 3rd-century description by Fu Xuan, Ode to Pipa, associates the Han pipa with the northern frontier, Wang Zhaojun and other princesses who were married to nomad rulers of the Wusun and Xiongnu peoples in what is now Mongolia, northern Xinjiang and Kazakhstan. Wang Zhaojun in particular is frequently referenced with pipa in later literary works and lyrics, for example Ma Zhiyuan's play Autumn in the Palace of Han, especially since the Song dynasty, as well as in music pieces such as Zhaojun's Lament, and in paintings where she is often depicted holding a pipa.There are many references to pipa in Tang literary works, for example, in A Music Conservatory Miscellany Duan Anjie related many anecdotes associated with pipa. The pipa is mentioned frequently in the Tang dynasty poetry, where it is often praised for its expressiveness, refinement and delicacy of tone, with poems dedicated to well-known players describing their performances. A famous poem by Bai Juyi, "Pipa xing", contains a description of a pipa performance during a chance encounter with a female pipa player on the Yangtze River:
The encounter also inspired a poem by Yuan Zhen, Song of Pipa. Another excerpt of figurative descriptions of a pipa music may be found in a eulogy for a pipa player, Lament for Shancai by Li Shen:
During the Song dynasty, many of the literati and poets wrote ci verses, a form of poetry meant to be sung and accompanied by instruments such as pipa. They included Ouyang Xiu, Wang Anshi, and Su Shi. During the Yuan dynasty, the playwright Gao Ming wrote a play for nanxi opera called Pipa ji, a tale about an abandoned wife who set out to find her husband, surviving by playing the pipa. It is one of the most enduring works in Chinese theatre, and one that became a model for Ming dynasty drama as it was the favorite opera of the first Ming emperor. The Ming collection of supernatural tales Fengshen Yanyi tells the story of Pipa Jing, a pipa spirit, but ghost stories involving pipa existed as early as the Jin dynasty, for example in the 4th century collection of tales Soushen Ji. Novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties such as Jin Ping Mei showed pipa performance to be a normal aspect of life in these periods at home as well as outside on the street or in pleasure houses.