Appreciate
72nd Gagaku Concert, Small Hall, National Theatre, Tokyo
Performance by musicians of the Music Department of the Department of Ceremonies, Imperial Household Agency
Outline
The piece Ringa (literally ‘Forest Song’) is a komagaku (‘Korean music’) piece in the mode koma-hyōjō (on F#), and also exists in transposed form in the tōgaku (‘Tang music’) repertoire in the mode hyōjō (on E).
Its origins are not clear; some have pointed out a possible connection with a piece transmitted in Korean court music. Its name is written with characters read Imha in Korean, and Ringa in Japanese, and these characters form one of the alternative names of the piece, which means ‘Above the River.’
There may be a connection between this piece and what we commonly regard as pests: mice or rats. The outer robe (hō) of the costume for the Dance of the Right Ringa is embroidered with more than 30 mice, in gold, silver, and white thread. Furthermore, a now lost piece of the saibara court song repertoire, Oi-nezumi (‘Old Rat’), is known to have shared its melody with Ringa.
Form of the piece
The tōgaku version of Ringa has the metrical structure haya-yahyōshi hyōshi-jūni (12 repetitions of a cycle of 8 measures of 4/4).
Points for appreciation
The part for the zither sō in Ringa makes much use of a descending glissando performance technique called ren, which adds an effective degree of shading to the ensemble as a whole.
