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Subject · in Music

Chant notation

The dbyangs yig: how the monasteries wrote the melody of chant as a curving line, and how to read one.

This page is a placeholder. It exists so that the structure does; the text will follow, and will be checked by a teacher of the field before it is called finished.

A page of chant notation shows the syllables of the text with a line drawn above them that rises and falls as the melody does, thickening where the voice swells, breaking where the breath breaks, with small marks for ornaments. Each monastery kept its own, and a chant master could sing from one he had never seen. This page will present the system with examples and show how a line is read.

This page

Status: Placeholder: the text is still to be written
Field: Arts

Sources

Melong Art, The Book of Ancient Tibetan Melodies: Flowing Like a River, Light Like Bird Song (2020) Translated by High Peaks Pure Earth. Reproduces leaves of the notation; the model for the writer sketched in the repository.
Walter Kaufmann, Tibetan Buddhist Chant (Indiana University Press, 1975) Notations and interpretations of a Kagyu and Sakya song book. Open access at Open Indiana.
Ter Ellingson, The Mandala of Sound (1979) and Buddhist Musical Notations (1986) The standard studies of the dbyangs yig and of the notations for the instruments.
Ricardo Canzio, Sakya Pandita's Treatise on Music The Rol mo'i bstan bcos, the thirteenth-century treatise, with Kunga Sonam's commentary.
Mireille Helffer, Mchod-rol (CNRS Éditions, 1994) The instruments of Tibetan ritual music, with their notations.
Buddhist Digital Resource Center, Musical Notation, Divine Invocation Notated leaves from Kamtsang Kagyu and Drepung scores, on Google Arts & Culture.