The Modal Acoustic Archetype of Japanese Palace-Ceremonial Music Togaku-Kangen

Abstract

The composite character of the Japanese ethnogenesis manifests itself at the level of culture of social strata including the canonised royal ceremonial complex gagaku (elegant music). Along with sankangaku, the music of the three Korean kingdoms, its essential component is togaku-kangen, the music for string and brass instruments of the Chinese Tang Empire, which is a fusion of intonational forms of China and many peoples of the East including the patterns of the musical thinking and language of the peoples, who had active contacts with the bearers of Greco-Roman culture. Since the musical intonation is a form process aimed to introduce meaning in the acoustic phenomenon making the latter a phenomenon or noumenon both explicitly and implicitly containing the components of comprehending existence in mythological and religious way as well as scientifi c and philosophic one (including terminology tools) and, which is naturally, the notion of the three-pronged-severalty of cosmogenesis/ethnogenesis/culturogenesis/, the systematic structural analysis of the modal acoustic of the intonational canon of the aforementioned Japanese culture makes it possible to identify the archetypical components of the worldconception characteristic not only of the peoples of the Far East, whose handbook was Book of Changes (Yi Jing) popular, in particular, among the scientists of today.