Tibetan Musical Notation Is Lovely

Reli­gions take the solid and hue of the cul­tures wherein they discover root. This was cer­tain­ly true in Tibet when Bud­dhism arrived within the seventh cen­tu­ry. It trans­shaped and was trans­shaped by the native reli­gion of Bon. Of the various cre­ative prac­tices that arose from this syn­the­sis, Tibetan Bud­dhist music ranks very excessive­ly in impor­tance.

As in sacred music within the West, Tibetan music has com­plex sys­tems of musi­cal nota­tion and a protracted his­to­ry of writ­ten reli­gious music. “A significant com­po­nent of Tibetan Bud­dhist expe­ri­ence,” explains Google Arts & Cul­tures Bud­dhist Dig­i­tal Useful resource Cen­ter, “musi­cal nota­tion permits for the trans­fer­ence of sacred sound and cer­e­mo­ny throughout gen­er­a­tions. A method to mem­o­rize sacred textual content, categorical devo­tion, chase away fer­al spir­its, and invoke deities.”

A few of these fea­tures could also be alien to sec­u­lar West­ern Bud­dhists targeted on thoughts­ful­ness and silent med­i­ta­tion, however to differ­ing levels, Tibetan colleges place con­sid­er­in a position val­ue on the aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ence of extra-human realms. As Uni­ver­si­ty of Tul­sa musi­col­o­gist John Pow­ell writes, “using sacred sound” in Tibetan Bud­dhism, a “Mantrayana” tra­di­tion, acts “as a for­mu­la for the trans­for­ma­tion of human con­scious­ness.”

Tibetan musi­cal nota­tions, Google factors out, “sym­bol­i­cal­ly rep­re­despatched the melodies, rhythm pat­terns, and instru­males­tal organize­ments. In har­mo­ny with chant­i­ng, visu­al­iza­tions, and hand ges­tures, [Tibetan] music cru­cial­ly guides rit­u­al per­for­mance.” It’s char­ac­ter­ized not solely by its inte­gra­tion of rit­u­al dance, but in addition by a big col­lec­tion of rit­u­al devices—together with the lengthy, Swiss-like horns swimsuit­ed to a moun­tain atmosphere—and distinctive types of poly­phon­ic over­tone singing.

The examination­ples of musi­cal nota­tion you see right here got here from the appro­pri­ate­ly-named Twit­ter account Musi­cal Nota­tion is Beau­ti­ful and kind­face design­er and researcher Jo De Baerde­maek­er. On the high is a nineteenth cen­tu­ry man­u­script belong­ing to the “Yang” tra­di­tion, “essentially the most excessive­ly concerned and regard­ed chant tra­di­tion in Tibetan music,” notes the Schoyen Col­lec­tion, “and the one one to depend on a sys­tem of nota­tion (Yang-Yig).”

The curved strains rep­re­despatched “easy­ly impact­ed ris­es and falls in into­na­tion.” The nota­tion additionally “fre­quent­ly con­tains detailed instruc­tions con­cern­ing in what spir­it the music ought to be sung (e.g. movement­ing like a riv­er, gentle like chicken music) and the small­est mod­i­fi­ca­tions to be made to the voice within the utter­ance of a vow­el.” The Yang-Yig goes all the best way again to the sixth cen­tu­ry, pre­dat­ing Tibetan Bud­dhism, and “doesn’t file nei­ther the rhyth­mic pat­tern nor dura­tion of notes.” Oth­er sorts of music have their very own forms of nota­tion, comparable to that within the piece above for voice, drums, trum­pets, horns, and cym­bals.

Although they artic­u­late and elab­o­charge on reli­gious concepts from India, Tibet’s musi­cal tra­di­tions are whole­ly its personal. “It’s essen­tial to rethink all the con­cept of melody and rhythm” to below­stand Tibetan Bud­dhist chant, writes Pow­ell in an in depth overview of Tibetan music’s vocal and instru­males­tal qual­i­ties. “Many out­aspect Tibetan cul­ture are accus­tomed to think about melody as a sequence of ris­ing or falling pitch­es,” he says. “In Tibetan Tantric chant­i­ng, how­ev­er, the melod­ic con­tent happens when it comes to vow­el mod­i­fi­ca­tion and the care­ful con­tour­ing of tones.”  Hear an examination­ple of tra­di­tion­al Tibetan Bud­dhist chant simply above, and study extra about Tibetan musi­cal nota­tion at Google Arts & Cul­ture.

Observe: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this submit appeared on our web site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Breath­tak­ing­ly-Detailed Tibetan E-book Print­ed 40 Years Earlier than the Guten­berg Bible

The World’s Largest Col­lec­tion of Tibetan Bud­dhist Lit­er­a­ture Now On-line

Free On-line Course: Robert Thurman’s Intro­duc­tion to Tibetan Bud­dhism (File­ed at Colum­bia U)

Leonard Cohen Nar­charges Movie on The Tibetan E-book of the Useless, Fea­tur­ing the Dalai Lama (1994)

The Previous­est E-book Print­ed with Mov­in a position Sort is Not The Guten­berg Bible: Jikji, a Col­lec­tion of Kore­an Bud­dhist Train­ings, Pre­dat­ed It By 78 Years and It’s Now Dig­i­tized On-line

Josh Jones is a author and musi­cian primarily based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness