# Eastern Classical Music - Where is it?



## SyphiliSSchubert (Sep 21, 2020)

I'm not sure if this is the right forum section to post this, but how about Eastern Classical Music? Do we have a string of famous composers' from the East having their works well catalogued and performed? 
I did some quick research, and little information can be found. We have, of course, a lot of information about the Hindustani and Carnatic musicians from India, however these are musicians from recent times. Do we have, for example, information about Indian musicians from past centuries? I only found a couple of composers, a couple of youtube videos, there's nowhere as much information as Western classical music. That's a bit sad, because I love Hindustani musicians as Ravi Shankar, for example, and I believe this music has an origin, so where are the performances of the oldest works which gave rise to this music?
I put an emphasys on classical music from India music here, but those remarks can also be applied to, for example, arab, persian and japanese classical music for example. I struggle to find classical music from the East, in a detailed and complete way as western music, and I'm really curious to hear it.
Meanwhile, more Bach!


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## Ravn (Jan 6, 2020)

From Japan, Toru Takemitsu is a great example.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Tan Dun, probably most famous for Crouching Tiger soundtrack.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

I presume that you mean Eastern music that is not overtly westernized. There was a series of CDs on Marco Polo (presumably also on Naxos) of Westernized music, like the Yellow River Piano Concerto and the Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto, and similar works.


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## Chilham (Jun 18, 2020)

I suspect that traditional, and rearrangements of traditional music, continue to dominate, since there was no Renaissance in the East.

Educate me if I'm misguided.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Indian classical music is primarily improvised, and the ragas ("themes") are handed down, so there's nothing written down like Western CM. If you like Ravi Shankar, you should seek out some recordings by Vlayut Khan, who's better.


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## eljr (Aug 8, 2015)

MarkW said:


> Indian classical music is primarily improvised, and the ragas ("themes") are handed down, so there's nothing written down like Western CM. If you like Ravi Shankar, you should seek out some recordings by Vlayut Khan, who's better.


Can you define better?

Thanks


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

This is just uninformed conjecture on my part, but I don't think there actually is a classic music tradition in non-Western cultures that replicate Western Art Music in the way OP is looking for. Like MarkW said, Indian classic music is improvised off of ragas, and I can't speak definitively for the Far East but I don't think their older music is extensively notated and neatly catalogued into opus numbers and so on. Which I think is partly why all non-Western music gets dumped under the condescending umbrella term "World Music", besides the obvious reason being westerncentric ingorance.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

eljr said:


> Can you define better?
> 
> Thanks


Actually, no.  (But, I suspect if you ask real music appreciators in India, Shankar would not be at the top.)


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

MarkW said:


> (But, I suspect if you ask real music appreciators in India, Shankar would not be at the top.)


Shujaat Khan has said that any time one of his father's admirers would say or suggest negative things about Ravi Shankar's playing, his father would cut them short and say: "Are you sitting around me to criticize Ravi Shankarji? Then please don't sit here. Besides, you are not qualified to talk about a person of his stature."


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

I would add Nikhil Banerjee to the list of sitar players to check out. If you want to explore on your own, Music Today's vast _Maestro's Choice_ series is a good place to start.


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## Oscar South (Aug 6, 2020)

I went to watch a Gamalan orchestra perform live a few years ago and it absolutely blew me away. Powerful and moving.


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

A while ago I became really interested in a question that I think is almost-but-not-quite the same as what OP is asking - historically-informed performances of non-Western classical music. I think ultimately Western music is the only tradition right now that has such an absurdly massive apparatus of scholars combing old documents for clues, interest from both the academy and the record-buying public in HIP recordings, and conservatory training that can make room for someone trying to achieve virtuosity on archaic instruments... with the overall effect that at first glance it can look like Indian or Chinese or Indonesian classical musics are more 'static'/unchanging-over-time than Western music, which of course is plainly not true. So overall it's kind of sad. The other thing is that, as others here have said, many traditions simply don't put that much emphasis on a string of individual composers over time - Japanese music, for example, was historically dominated by secretive guilds which had their own playing styles and associated works, but individual peoples' names were almost never attached to anything. So framing it as 'where is [insert non-Western tradition]'s Bach' is already kind of besides the point in a way. Those caveats aside, though:

I recommend looking into the Trinity of Carnatic music if you haven't already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_of_Carnatic_music

And here is an example of a rather speculative recreation of Tang-dynasty classical music:





And, for comparison, here is the Japanese gagaku orchestra, a currently surviving offshoot of the above, which has recently been my absolute favorite world classical music tradition:


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