This recording issued in the late Eighties by Lyrichord Discs was recorded by the Imperial Court Music Orchestra in Kyoto and represents the traditions of gagaku, or elegant/refined/correct, music accompanying dance dating back nearly 1,500 years ago with origins from China, India and Korea and which, then, is the oldest orchestral music existing on the planet. Notably, this music was not played publicly until the mid-1950s and there are occasional new pieces composed for such events as a royal wedding, with about a hundred pieces and over fifty dances in the repertoire.
Instruments include the koto, a well-known Japanese zither, the taiko drum, which is also recognizable to many, other percussion pieces including bells, a bamboo flute called the hichiriki, and the sho, which is a group of seventeen bamboo pipes in a wind chest shaped like a cup. While most of the eight pieces accompanied dances and the visual impact of both must be spectacular, the music is striking, being majestic, solemn, stately and otherworldly. It has an ethereal beauty that is redolent of ancient history retaining its power in the modern world.
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