East Asian Classical Music

East Asian classical music comprises the court, ceremonial and literati art musics of China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam: traditions maintained for over a millennium by state institutions and hereditary specialists. They include Chinese yayue and the solo guqin repertoire, Japanese gagaku, Korean aak and jeongak, and Vietnamese nhã nhạc, each with its own modal systems, notation and ensembles of winds, strings and percussion. Against the literati ideal of music as self-cultivation and the court ideal of music as cosmic order, these traditions prize timbre, restraint and slow formal unfolding.