The Yayue Ensemble of Nanhua University is performing a program from the Warring States Period (476 BC - 221 BC). The band is the world's only troupe dedicated to an extinct genre of music - Chinese yayue, or elegant music.

In a studio at Nanhua University in Dalin, Chiayi county, Chou Chun-yi listens carefully to a band practicing an ancient musical form.

The band uses instruments that are not Western and are also not the usual Chinese instruments seen in Chinese ensembles. The music the band produces is so marvelous that it awes those who hear it for the first time.

The band, called the Yayue Ensemble, is the world's only troupe dedicated to an extinct genre of music - Chinese yayue, or elegant music.

Chou, the chief of the ensemble and chairman of Nanhua's Department of Ethnomusicology, is preparing the band for a performance in Beijing in October. It will be its most important performance ever.

Yayue originated in the court of the Zhou Dynasty and is attributed to Zhou Gong, the regent of King Wu, around 1100 BC.

Yayue is set to Chinese classical Shi Jing, or poetry, which is the earliest existing collection of Chinese songs, believed to have been written around 1000 BC.

It comprises three kinds of songs - feng, which means air and refers to folk songs; ya, which means elegance and refers to songs sung at court festivities or solemn ceremonies; and song, which refers to eulogies sung at sacrifices to the gods and the ancestral spirits of the royal house.

Ya and song constitute yayue, which was usually played by professional musicians at court and was accompanied by solemn dance.

Because it was music for royal festivals or to please the gods or ancestors, yayue usually was played by a band much larger than regular ensembles and used large and complicated instruments which were too costly for ordinary musicians.

Typical bands usually use stringed instruments such as qin, se and zheng, and woodwinds - mainly bamboo flutes, which are known in Chinese as instruments of silk and bamboo.

In addition to silk and bamboo instruments, the band of the court used more sophisticated instruments, including the zhong, or bell, and the qing, which are made of slate and are therefore called instruments of metal and stone in Chinese.

Zhong and qing were used in sets called bian zhong and bian qing. A set would consist of bells or slates of different sizes, which produce sounds of different pitches, with the number of bells and stones in a band often reflecting the status and wealth of its owner.

One set of bian zhong cast in 433 BC and unearthed in a tomb in Hubei province, central China in 1978 comprises 65 bells ranging in weight from 203 kg to 2.4 kg, while a set of bian qing found in the same tomb consists of 32 slates.

Yayue musicians were professionals sponsored by the emperors and generally better than regular musicians at playing and composing.

The music thrived during the Tang Dynasty with Emperor Xuanzong (685-762), himself a composer, retaining more than 30,000 musicians at his court. It reached its climax during the reign of Emperor Huizong (1082-1135) during the Song Dynasty.

The eighth emperor of that dynasty, Huizong was a famous artist and an expert in music who ordered the compilation of the entire yayue canon, titled Da Sheng Yue, or the Most Glorious of Music.

However, the development of the music ended when Kaifeng, the capital of the Song Dynasty, was conquered by the Jin Empire in 1126.

Huizong and his son Qinzong, as well as the whole imperial court, harem, craftsmen and musicians, numbering more than 100,000 people, were captured and taken to the Jin capital of Shangjing near today's Harbin in northeastern China.

This overthrow dealt a fatal blow to yayue. Ensuing dynasties tried to reinstate the music but to no avail.

However, in 1114, at the request of Emperor Yejong of the Korean court of Goryeo, Huizong sent a set of instruments to the palace in the Goryeo capital at Gaeseon to be played at royal banquets.

Two years later, he sent another, even larger gift of musical instruments, numbering 428 in total, as well as the Da Cheng Yue, to the Korean court, beginning that nation's tradition of royal court music, known as aak.

Nanhua University's Yayue Ensemble was set up in 1996 as a means of helping the school's founder, Buddhist Master Hsing Yun, to realize his goal of reviving Chinese etiquette and music that were considered the basic principles of social order in ancient China.

Hsing Yun believed that by instilling students with ancient Chinese ideas of etiquette and music, they would become renaissance men.

The ensemble learned yayue from the Da Chen Yue preserved in Korea, and ancient Chinese musical scores collected from all over the world, but mainly from China.

According to Chou, the job of reinstating extinct music is more difficult than creating a new genre of music because one must find not only the scores but also the instruments that produced the sounds.

"We not only have to reproduce these instruments according to ancient paintings and books, but also figure out how to play them correctly," he said.

There is also more to yayue than just music. It was accompanied by dances that varied from ritual to ritual, making the work of reviving the music all the more difficult.

Fourteen years after its establishment, Chou said, the ensemble has gathered more than 2,000 Chinese instruments and 1,000 costumes for the musicians and dancers.

Among these instruments are seven sets of bian zhong, each of which require seven people to play, and two sets of bian qing.

The ensemble consists of about 40 Nanhua students divided into four sections - strings, drums, other instruments and dancers. They practice only after school.

Their efforts were confirmed early this month when the group was invited to give two concerts at the First Chinese Traditional Music Festival in Beijing Oct 12-13.

"This was greatly encouraging for us and we are looking forward to introducing this elegant music to Chinese audiences," Chou said.

The ensemble has prepared a program of 15 opuses spanning a period from the Chinese Spring and Autumn period (700 BC) to the Ming Dynasty (15th Century).

"We have condensed Chinese music composed over thousands of years into a one-hour program to give our audiences a glimpse into the marvelous world of yayue," Chou said.

"After almost 1,000 years, yayue will finally go back to its birthplace. I am glad to be able to close the gap and complete the full circle," said Chou.

China Daily/CNA

Se is a stringed instrument used in a typical yayue band.

A type of dance in yayue performed at sacrifices to the gods. Photos by CNA

(HK Edition 08/01/2009 page4)