On a misty moonlit lake, a woman in a waterside pavilion plays a pipa held upright while several people inside listen. Willow branches hang low, and a small covered boat is moored below the pavilion.
Bone Flutes and Clay Ocarinas
Gong-and-Drum Music
The Art of the Guqin
Shengguan Ensembles
Dizi and Xiao
Guzheng
Pipa
Ruan and Sanxian
Erhu
Suona and Drum-and-Wind Bands
Chaozhou Music
Jiangnan Sizhu
Nanyin
Shifan Ensembles
Xiansuo String Ensembles
Yangqin
Xi'an Wind and Percussion Ensemble
Cantonese Music
Instrumental Traditions of China's Ethnic Minorities
Modern Chinese OrchestraPipa
Pearls large and small falling on a jade plate
Introduction
The pear-shaped, bent-neck lute, once played flat with a plectrum and now upright with the fingers
The pipa is a four-string plucked lute with a pear-shaped body and a bent-back pegbox. The name appears in Eastern Han texts, and from the Qin and Han to the Sui and Tang it covered several plucked lutes; the bent-neck pipa arrived from the Western Regions in the Northern and Southern dynasties, was mostly held flat and played with a plectrum in the Tang, and was later held upright and played with the fingers. Large suites multiplied in the Ming and Qing, and Qing schools formed at Wuxi, Pinghu, Pudong and Chongming, with Hua Qiuping's collection (1819) as a key source. In the Republican era Liu Tianhua refretted it with six frets on the neck and thirteen on the face, and its signature pieces include Ambush from Ten Sides and Flute and Drum at Sunset.
Timeline
- 100OriginEastern Han texts such as Xu Shen's Shuowen jiezi already use the name pipa, taken from two plucking strokes, pi and pa; it then covered several kinds of plucked lute.
- 551EvolutionThe Annals of Emperor Jianwen in the Book of Liang record that in 551 Hou Jing's men brought wine and a 'bent-neck pipa' to the emperor, showing the bent-neck pipa was in use in the south by then.
Literature › Book of Liang: Annals of Emperor Jianwen - 1819EvolutionThe pipa collection edited by Hua Qiuping of Wuxi and others was printed in 1819, including the large suites Ambush from Ten Sides and The Warlord Takes Off His Armour, a key source for the Qing schools.
- 2008ImpactIn 2008 Pipa art (the Yingzhou gudiao, Pudong and Pinghu schools) entered the second national list (II-119).
Heritage Listings
- 2008National List of Representative Items of Intangible Cultural Heritage2nd batch · II-119 Pipa art [Yingzhou gudiao · Pudong and Pinghu schools] · no. 618 · nominated by Chongming and Nanhui · Shanghai · and Pinghu · Zhejiang