Wiktionary
n. the ancient court ritual music of Japan, of Chinese and Korean origin
Wikipedia
is a type of Japanese classical music that has been performed at the Imperial Court in Kyoto for several centuries. This kind of music was first imported into Japan from China, however artistically it differs from the music of the corresponding Chinese form yayue which is a term reserved for ceremonial music. Gagaku consists of three primary repertoires:
- Native Shinto religious music and folk songs and dance, called kuniburi no utamai
- A Goguryeo and Manchurian form, called komagaku (named after Koma, one of the Three Kingdoms)
- A Chinese and South Asian form (specifically Tang Dynasty), called Tōgaku.1
Gagaku, like shōmyō, employs the yo scale, a pentatonic scale with ascending intervals of two, three, two, two, and three semitones between the five scale tones.
is the debut solo album by Miyavi. It was released on October 31, 2002.
Usage examples of "gagaku".
By the time of the period she’s talking about, Japanese musicians were abandoning gagaku music in favor of Mozart string quartets, committees of Chinese composers were writing piano concertos in the western romantic idiom, and India was contributing symphony conductors to the Inglex-speaking world.