Wutai Mountain Buddhist music

Name of China's national intangible cultural heritage: Wutai Mountain Buddha music

Applicant: Wutai County, Shanxi Province

Item No.: 97

Project No.: Ⅱ - 66

Time of publication: 2006 (the first batch)

Category: Traditional Music

Region: Shanxi Province

Type: new item

Applicant: Wutai County, Shanxi Province

Protection unit: Wutai people's Cultural Center

Introduction to Wutai Mountain Buddha music

Applicant: Wutai County, Shanxi Province

Wutai Mountain, located in the northeast of Shanxi Province, is a branch of Taihang Mountain. It is named for its five peaks with a platform like top. It is the only Buddhist holy land in China with both Chinese Buddhism (called "Qingmiao") and Tibetan Buddhism (called "huangmiao"). Wutai Mountain Buddhist music includes vocal music and instrumental music. "Vocal music" is the singing of all kinds of scriptures in the ritual ceremony, mainly in the form of "he Nian", "Ling Diao", "recitation" and "Zhi Shu". Instrumental music is composed of a number of musical instruments and magic instruments, which accompanies some tunes in Scripture chanting or performs instrumental music alone. Instrumental music is called "ditty".

The pedigree of Buddhist music in Wutai Mountain is gongchi music, which is handed down by the way of oral and psychological instruction of master and apprentice. Wutai Mountain monks have unique technical means and tuning methods in point Sheng (tuning).

In the development of Buddhist music in Wutai Mountain in the past two thousand years, it has not only been used in the forms of "singing praise", "transferring reading" and "singing guidance" that came into China with Buddhism, but also preserved the popular songs and music in various periods since Tang and Song dynasties. Among them, the common early class repertoire includes "Lengyan mantra", "Dabei mantra", "Shixiao mantra" and so on, while the late class repertoire includes "Mitha Sutra", "Confession text", "Mengshan text" and so on.

Buddhist music in Wutai Mountain is the product of the combination of music art and religion. It is a special cultural phenomenon in the social development and an important part of Buddhist culture in Wutai Mountain. It is considered to be the representative of Buddhist music in the north, and has a great influence in the whole North and the whole country, except for the region of Wutai Mountain.