Talk:Tōgaku

Japanese pronunciation of Chinese term?
If you're going to add that togaku is the Japanese pronunciation of a Chinese term, can you please add the kanji/hanzi? Badagnani 08:42, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I looked it up. Tōgaku (唐樂) comes from Tangyue (唐樂). I think it's more likely that Japanese came up with the term "Tang Dynasty music" (called "Dangak" in Korean) than that Chinese themselves actually called their own music "Tang Dynasty music." Comments? Badagnani 08:46, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

In William Malm's book Traditional Japanese Music and Musical Instruments (pp.99-100) he writes the following speaking of the retired emperor Saga in the years 833-850:

In ninth-century Japan it was Saga and his followers who created the standard gagaku orchestra. In addition to limiting the number of instruments, they also organized the repertoire into two main categories. Indian and Chinese music was combined under the classification of togaku (also known as "music of the left"), while the main styles of Korean music and Manchurian music were classified as komagaku (or as "music of the right").

That echoes the Malm passage which is in the article now, and I'm wondering if the opening line of the article shouldn't be changed slightly to include the fact that togaku also subsumes music of Indian origin, too? I think we would need other sources to confirm whether the Japanese coined (or borrowed from Korean) the term togaku or not: it isn't completely implausible that the Chinese would use such a term as "Tang Dynasty music" as a way of distinguishing it from, say, "Han Dynasty music", etc.Woo-or (talk) 16:28, 18 September 2009 (UTC)