Kölner Gagaku Ensemble

The Kölner Gagaku Ensemble from Cologne, Germany and Japan represents three religions: Buddhism, Shinto, and Tenri. Prof. Robert Günther founded Europe’s first gagaku ensemble in 2000 together with Rev. Masatoshi Shamoto and Yoshiro Shimizu. Günther played a decisive role in not only promoting Japanese music and culture in Germany, but also actively practicing it. He is therefore considered a pioneer of gagaku in Europe and the ethnomusicological method of bi-musicality.

Gagaku, court music, is one of the oldest forms of ensemble music in the world and has a history dating back over 1,200 years. In the playing of gagaku, a discrepancy with other musical genres can be observed due to a different musical theory, and this style of playing has been systematically handed down to this day without major changes. Japanese gagaku dates back to the Chinese ritual music ya-yue from the Tang dynasty. The music was introduced to Japan from China about 1200 years ago. Since this musical genre has long been lost in other Asian countries such as China and Korea, and its original playing style is now only preserved in Japan, gagaku is called traditional Japanese court music.