By Robert Garfias

Gagaku, the court music of the Imperial Household of Japan, has a long and august tradition. It has been played by musicians from the same hereditary families, or guilds, for more than one thousand years. During the course of that time, the interpretation of this ancient music has without doubt been subject to change. The earliest surviving examples of the written notation, which date from the 11th and 12th centuries, do not should vast or substantial differences from that notation used for the music in the Imperial Court and elsewhere in Japan today. Nevertheless, the potential for substantial changes in the interpretation of the music is great.
Gagaku was introduced to Japan from China and Korea. The Word Gagaku is written with two Chinese characters that mean "elegant music". The term is in fact a misnomer, not to imply that this music is not elegant, but only that the term, in Chinese, Ya-Yueh, refers to the ancient music for the propiation of the ancestral spirits and the ensuring of the continued balance of the elements of nature. This was not the music introduced into Japan. The music that the Japanese imported into the court during the 6th and 7th centuries, was of the type known as yen yueh, or engaku, in Japanese, meaning court banquet music. Ya-yueh, proper, sometimes called Confucian Ceremonial music, was never introduced into Japan, perhaps because the Japanese already had their own sacred ritual music, kagura, which was associated with the way of the gods, or Shintoism. Nevertheless, the term, Gagaku, or ya-yueh in Chinese, was retained by the Japanese perhaps because of the loftier associations carried by that word.
During the years, 1958 through 1960, I studied Gagaku with the musicians of the Japanese Imperial Household Music Department. Then, as today, these were the strongest carriers of this ancient tradition. Although, clearly the music as well as its style of performance has been subjected to natural change during the more than one thousand years during which it has been practiced in Japan, it is also clear that the tradtion is one of the strongest surviving music traditions in Asia. Although various subtle changes, which are today difficult to document, have taken place, the teacher to pupil lineage is clear and unbroken.