Photo by Bunsei Matsuura

HEIANGAKUSHA is the Ancient Court Music Ensemble aims to popularize and hand down Gagaku in the Heian period from generation to generation, and to fuse it with modern Gagaku, then perform contemporary Gagaku.
During Heian times, Gagaku had changed a lot as following. In the early Heian period, Gagaku in the Heian period originally had simple and rhythmical melody.
In the middle Heian period, the Gagaku music was japanized, then becameslower and a lot of ornaments was added in the music.
In the late Heian period, number of the ornaments were decreased, but the performance mode was stylized at each individual hereditary group.
And, at Gagaku in the Kamakura period which came to the foundation of modern Gagaku, number of beats had began to double. Now most Gagaku music slowered 3times and 4times.
Then, tempo and performances of the Gagaku music had incredibly changed since Meiji period.
HEIANGAKUSHA desires Gagaku in the middle Heian period as Heiancho gagaku.
So, the oldest flute tablature, "Shinsen gaku-fu (compiled by Minamoto no Hiromasa)" is the point on HEIANGAKUSHA's performance.
The music in five keys are still existing; Sojo, Oshikicho, Suicho, Banshikicho and Kakucho.
The music in Ichikotsucho, Hyojo and Taishikicho remain in obscurity.
For those unclear tablatures, HEIANGAKUSHA uses "Ryuteki ko-fu (compiled by Ohga no Motomasa in the late Heian period)".
In order to perform in HEIANGAKUSHA, Kagemitsu Hasegawa restored the particular way of playing Hichiriki and Hosho, which was called "HAKUGARYU" to perform them in HEIANGAKUSHA.
Moreover, Kagemitsu Hasegawa is carrying on the decipherment and the restoration of the Gakubiwa tablature "sango-yoroku", and the Gakusou tablature "Jinchi-youroku" by Fujiwara no Moronaga in the end of the Heian period.
Hasegawa Kagemitsu revives the performance of Gakubiwa and Gakusou in the manner of Fujiwara no Moronaga, called "The Myouon-inryu School of Gagaku Strings" to perform them in HEIANGAKUSHA.
Additionally, Kagemitsu Hasegagwa composed present gagaku music with his original theory ,"A relation between the odd number stability of the tonal scale and the music evolution" appies on the gagaku music theory. HEIANGAKUSHA performs them as well.

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