Concept
Biwa
Related concepts (5)
History of lute-family instruments
Lutes are stringed musical instruments that include a body and "a neck which serves both as a handle and as a means of stretching the strings beyond the body". The lute family includes not only short-necked plucked lutes such as the lute, oud, pipa, guitar, citole, gittern, mandore, rubab, and gambus and long-necked plucked lutes such as banjo, tanbura, bağlama, bouzouki, veena, theorbo, archlute, pandura, sitar, tanbur, setar, but also bowed instruments such as the yaylı tambur, rebab, erhu, and the entire family of viols and violins.
Music of Japan
In Japan, music includes a wide array of distinct genres, both traditional and modern. The word for "music" in Japanese is 音楽 (ongaku), combining the kanji 音 on (sound) with the kanji 楽 gaku (music, comfort). Japan is the world's largest market for music on physical media and the second-largest overall music market, with a retail value of US$2.7 billion in 2017. Traditional Japanese music The oldest forms of traditional Japanese music are: shōmyō, or Buddhist chanting gagaku, or orchestral court music both of which date to the Nara (710–794) and Heian (794–1185) periods.
Benzaiten
Benzaiten (shinjitai: 弁才天 or 弁財天; kyūjitai: 辯才天, 辨才天, or 辨財天, lit. "goddess of eloquence"), also simply known as Benten (shinjitai: 弁天; kyūjitai: 辯天 / 辨天), is a Japanese Buddhist goddess who originated mainly from Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of speech, the arts, and learning, with certain traits deriving from the warrior goddess Durga. Worship of Benzaiten arrived in Japan during the sixth through eighth centuries, mainly via Classical Chinese translations of the Golden Light Sutra (Sanskrit: Suvarṇaprabhāsa Sūtra), which has a section devoted to her.
Lute
A lute (ljuːt or luːt) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lute" commonly refers to an instrument from the family of European lutes. The term also refers generally to any necked string instrument having the strings running in a plane parallel to the sound table (in the Hornbostel–Sachs system).
String instrument
String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner. Musicians play some string instruments by plucking the strings with their fingers or a plectrum—and others by hitting the strings with a light wooden hammer or by rubbing the strings with a bow. In some keyboard instruments, such as the harpsichord, the musician presses a key that plucks the string.