Music

Music plays an important part in Tibetan life and has three aspects:

1. Sacred chant and instrumental music of the Buddhist Liturgy and other rites: centered on the monasteries. The Lamas claimed "Religion is sound". The recitation of mantras, chanting and the playing of instrumental music are fundamental in their worship. The red-robed monks intone their prayers, sitting cross-legged under the soft light of butter-lamps. The chants are sometimes free but more usually metrical, in both symmetrical and asymmetrical measures. The voice-style, which is close-throated or constricted and usually very deep in pitch, is unnatural. Instead, it is deliberately cultivated style.
   

   rGaling

   Dung

   
   Tonally speaking, the chanting varies from an inflected monotone to a melodic pattern, and is decorated in a variety of ways, especially by glottal slides up to or down to a note, or down from a note. A traditional notation exits for the chants.
   
   

   Dung-dkar Ting-ting Drilbu

   Chanting is sometimes unaccompanied, but is more usually accompanied by an ensemble, amounting to an orchestra (passim). This orchestra consists exclusively of wind instruments - always played in pairs - and percussion instruments of indefinite pitch. There are no stringed instruments, which are found only in the secular music.
   
   
2. Folk-music: found in the daily lives of the people
   
   
3. Art music: cultivated especially by professional minstrels

Wind Instruments and their sounds

1. rGaling
2. Dung
3. Dung-dkar
4. rKangling

Percussion Instruments of Indefinite Pitch and their sounds

1. Drilbu
2. Damaru
3. Rolmo
4. Silnyen
5. rGna

Percussion Instruments of Definite Pitch and their sounds

1. mkar-rnga
2. Ting-ting

The Ensemble and its sound
Voices and instruments occur together