Korean Classical Music

Korean classical music is the court and aristocratic tradition of Korea, preserved today by the National Gugak Center in Seoul. Its core is jeongak, 'proper music', refined chamber and orchestral repertoire of slow, spacious melody carried by bamboo flutes, zithers and strings, and aak, the Confucian ritual music performed at the Jongmyo royal ancestral shrine and the Munmyo shrine to Confucius — a lineage UNESCO-listed in 2001. Codified under King Sejong in the fifteenth century, when the jeongganbo notation was devised, it is Korea's oldest continuously performed orchestral music.