Database preserves Hue's royal music

The Hue Royal Arts Theatre has established a database of royal music, theatre director Truong Tuan Hai has said.
Beside its regular performance activities, the research team of the theatre had completed files of two old pieces of nha nhac (royal music): Bai Ban Tam Thien and part of Ban Cung Ai, Hai said.
They also made files of masks used in Hue’s tuong (classical drama).
The theatre had restaged an old tuong play on General Tran Binh Trong (1259-85), and organised two training courses on royal music and dances.
It had also completed a draft plan for doing research on establishing a database of royal music, Hai said.
The initial database stock had been gathered, based on royal documents of the Nguyen dynasty (1802-1945). It also contained interviews with live artists, plus audio and visual records of music pieces and acting gestures, he said.
The theatre’s research team had met with 20 old artists of royal music, classical drama and dance, who were living in Hue city and its vicinity. As many as 250 pages of written documents were completed on the artists’ profiles, plus music notes of their performance and 67 CDs and VCDs on their performing techniques.
For example, Tran Kich, before he passed away in December 2010, helped record 30 old lyrics of royal music. Old brothers Lu Huu Thi and Lu Huu Cu of Huong Tra District, who were both over 100 years old, had spared no effort to teach young artists.
They were among a few people who could remember old music pieces performed at the Nam Giao worship ceremony. The two brothers were among living artisans of the royal music band of Bao Dai reign (1926-45), who could play various traditional instruments like the dan nhi (two-stringed fiddle), tam am (three-tone percussion), phach tien (castanets) and mo (bells).