Pipa

 

 

“In ancient times, the term “pipa” referred to any string instrument which a person held in his/her arms and whose strings he/she plucked with his/her fingers or with a plectrum. The word “pi”琵 meant at that time plucking a string downward and “pa” 琶meant plucking a string by upward. These two movements constitute the basic technique in playing most plucked instruments.

 

The earliest instrument that was called “pipa” was the qinpipa , or qinhanzi , of the late Qin Dynasty (221 B.C. - 206 B.C.), the sound box of which was mounted with animal hide. This instrument was developed from a plucked instrument called xiantao 弦 , or a (handled) drum with stretched strings. Later, in the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. - 25 A.D.), there was the hanpipa 漢琵琶, a wooden instrument the shape of which was similar to that of the qinpipa. The hanpipa developed into the ruanxian 阮咸 in the Jin Dynasty (晉代 265-420). Both the qinpipa and the ruanxian originated from the indigenous type of the zhixiang pipa 直項琵琶, or straight-neck pipa, while the ancestor of today’s pipa stemmed from the imported type of the quxiang pipa 曲項琵琶, or bent-neck pipa. Xiang, or neck, refers to the peg-box of the instrument. The lute in the Renaissance period, which shares the same ancestor with today’s pipa, serves as a good example to illustrate a bent neck pipa. Moreover, the indigenous zhixiang pipa has a round and flat sound box, while the imported quxiang pipa has a halved-pear sound box.”  (So Hon To)