Tradition

Pinpeat

ពិណពាទ្យ


Pinpeat (ពិណពាទ្យ, pĭnpéaty) is the largest traditional Khmer musical ensemble, the ceremonial orchestra of Cambodia's royal courts and temples.[1] Built mainly from gong circles, xylophones, drums, cymbals and the sralai oboe, it accompanies Cambodian classical dance, Lakhon Khol masked theater, Sbek Thom shadow theater, Buddhist ceremonies, funerals and festivals, and it provides the live music of Kun Khmer bouts.[1][2][3]

Names

The ensemble is also called phleng pinpeat (ភ្លេងពិណពាទ្យ).[2] The Khmer dictionary of the Supreme Patriarch Chuon Nath derives the name from the Sanskrit vīṇā and vādya, that is, the pin harp and an ensemble of instruments, and explains Pinpeat as an ensemble led by the pin.[1][4][5] Another Cambodian explanation joins the pin with kong peat, a kind of bossed gong carved on the walls of Angkor Wat.[1][6][5] The pin traditionally opened the music, which is why the ensemble kept the name after the harp itself disappeared.[5][7]

Cambodians familiar with Thai also use the term piphat, a usage traced to the former annexation of Cambodia's northern provinces.[4] In Thai usage the ensemble is called piphat because the pi, or sralai, leads the music.[6] Related ensembles are the Lao pinphat and the Thai piphat.[1][4]

Instruments

A pinpeat orchestra has about nine or ten instruments, mainly wind and percussion.[1][8] Instruments and tuning vary by occasion, place and ensemble.[9][2]

  • Sralai (ស្រឡៃ), a quadruple-reed oboe in large and small sizes, whose penetrating tone carries the main melody above the percussion and cues changes of section and tempo.[1][3][10] The bamboo flute khloy was once used in its place.[1]
  • Roneat (រនាត), xylophones with bars over a boat-shaped resonator. The roneat ek is the high, bright lead xylophone, played with two mallets in rapid patterns; the roneat thung plays lower lines; the roneat dek has metal bars.[4][9][3]
  • Kong vong thom and kong vong toch (គងធំ and គងតូច), circular frames of tuned bronze gongs, the large set lower and the small set higher, each played by a musician seated inside the circle.[9][3]
  • Samphor (សម្ផោ), a double-headed barrel drum played with the hands, which sets the tempo and leads the rhythm.[9][3]
  • Skor thom (ស្គរធំ), a pair of large drums played with sticks or padded mallets, which punctuate the action on stage.[3][2]
  • Chhing, small finger cymbals that mark the metric cycle, sometimes with the larger chap cymbals for accent.[4][10]

The roneat and kong vong can be tuned, whereas the sralai, roneat dek and chhing generally cannot. Tuning differs among ensembles, although teaching at the Royal University of Fine Arts has brought more standardization in recent years.[2]

Small and large ensembles

Pinpeat comes in a small and a large form.[11] The smallest working ensemble has five instruments and five musicians: roneat ek, large kong, large sralai, samphor and skor thom.[11][2] Another list gives the small ensemble seven instruments, adding the roneat thung and the small gong circle.[5] A fully extended ensemble has ten to eleven musicians playing ten to twelve instruments, adding the roneat thung, roneat dek, the small gong circle, the small sralai and the chhing.[2][11] The ensemble adapts to the musicians and instruments at hand and can keep playing when some players are absent.[2] The ensemble that plays at Kun Khmer fights usually has five to seven instruments.[3]

The Royal Palace also keeps a related ensemble, the mahori, of as many as 16 mixed instruments.[6]

Music

Pinpeat music is learned by heart, not written down.[2] Each piece rests on a melodic skeleton, and each melodic instrument plays the same material in its own way, at its own density, over memorized variations.[2][10] Gong cycles and chhing patterns organize musical time, and cadences fall on dramatic or choreographic moments.[10] Its modes do not use equal temperament, and a performance may build through controlled acceleration from slow to fast, with the drums cueing each change.[10] The suites are led by the roneat ek player.[2] Pinpeat is louder than other Khmer ensembles.[11]

Many pieces are action or drum tunes whose patterns go with particular movements on stage.[11][5] Among them:

  • Sathukar (សាធុការ), which honors the teachers and opens Khmer festivities, rituals and performances[11][1][2]
  • Phlit for birds, Bathom for monkeys and Pnya Daer for walking[11][5]
  • Krao Nei for monkey troops and Krao Nok for ogre troops[11]
  • Ot for sorrow[11]

A performance may also include a solo singer or a choir alternating with the instruments.[4] More than 250 pinpeat songs are known from a document found in Phnom Penh after 1979, with themes of love, nature, Khmer daily life and neighboring peoples, as well as pieces for dance and theater.[1] Recordings include Echoes From the Palace: Court Music From Cambodia by the Sam-Ang Sam Ensemble, Homrong by musicians of the National Dance Company of Cambodia, and Cambodge: Musiques de l'exil by the orchestra of the Troupe de Danse Classique Khmère.[10]

Occasions

Pinpeat accompanies court dance, including Robam Tep Apsara, and the Royal Ballet of Cambodia, with which it remains closely linked.[8][2] It plays for Lakhon Khol, the large and small shadow theaters, Sbek Thom and Sbek Touch, puppet shows and Reamker drama, and it is used especially for scenes of battle.[1][11] In performance it sets rhythm, atmosphere and transitions. In Lakhon Khol it works alongside the masked performers and the recitation, and in classical dance it helps shape the dramatic structure as well as the movement.[9] Musicians follow dancers and puppeteers so that tempo matches choreography and action.[10]

The small ensemble plays for national festivals, Buddhist celebrations, dance, drama and funerals. The large ensemble plays for royal ceremonies such as the Royal Boat Racing and the Royal Ploughing Ceremony, and for Buddhist rites including Pchum Ben, Kathina, Bon Pkar, Bonchos Seima and funerals.[1] It is also heard at ordinations, Visak Bochea, vow-making and vow-fulfilling rituals, and ceremonies that raise ritual structures and make offerings to sacred objects.[5][6] At Khmer New Year, Pchum Ben, Kathina and funerals, the ensemble welcomes devotees and plays during breaks and meals.[2] Monks recite or chant without accompaniment, but the music counts as an audible offering to the deities.[2] At a temple, a pinpeat performance often has a ceremonial function rather than being a concert in the Western sense.[9] In Battambang Province especially, it accompanies every religious festival at the pagodas.[4]

Ensembles play weekly in front of the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh.[2] At the Preah Ang Chek Ang Chorm shrine in Siem Reap, the most active ensemble in the country plays every day of the year, from morning to evening, with several teams taking turns, as devotees offer music to the site's two deities.[2]

In Kun Khmer

At Kun Khmer fights, pinpeat plays live throughout the bout.[3] During the wai kru the music is steady and ceremonial, with the gongs to the fore. With each round it turns more energetic, speeding up and growing louder in hard exchanges and clinches, peaking after a knockdown and settling between rounds.[3] The samphor player acts as conductor, watching the fighters and changing the tempo in real time, and experienced fighters time their attacks to the rhythm.[3] The Thai sarama serves the same purpose in Muay Thai, and the two differ in their reeds, xylophones and modes.[3]

Customs

Indoors the instruments sit on the floor and outdoors on mats, and the musicians sit with their legs to one side, since the cross-legged position is kept for monks.[2] No one may step over the instruments.[2] Before any ceremony, musicians perform the sampeah kru, a homage to the supernatural masters.[2]

Origins

The legend of Indra's chariot tells that the god ordered his architect, Braḥ Vessakam, to build an orchestra that would reproduce the sounds of his carriage.[2] In one telling, the two gong circles are the wheels, the samphor the axle and the skor thom the wheel hubs; the sralai is the friction of the moving parts, the roneat ek the yoke, the roneat dek the drawbar, the roneat thung the driver's seat, and the chhing the carriage bells.[2] Another traditional riddle matches two oxen with the two large drums, a cart part with the sralai, an ash-covered buffalo with the samphor and bamboo with the roneat.[11][5]

The pin harp was known in India as early as the Gupta period and may have reached Cambodia under the Funan kingdom, when an ensemble called pin bang used it.[1][5] In 236 CE Funan musicians visited China, and an emperor, after hearing them, ordered a Funanese music institute set up near Nanking.[1] The earliest known ensemble was the pin, khloy flute, samphor drum and chhing cymbals, and other instruments were later added or replaced, forming a distinctly Khmer ensemble.[1][6] The ensemble took shape in Cambodia before the Angkor era; another account dates it to the 1100s.[1][10]

The earliest surviving Cambodian image of the pin is from the seventh century at Sambor Prei Kuk, a temple of the Chenla period, and the instrument appears in Khmer temple art from the seventh through the thirteenth centuries, at Banteay Chhmar, the Bayon, the Baphuon, the Elephant Terrace and Angkor Wat.[1][11][6] Nearly all the instruments of the modern large ensemble, except the roneat, are carved on the north gallery of Angkor Wat.[11] In the Angkor period, organized music centered on royal and religious institutions, and separate ensembles served Brahmin and Buddhist communities.[1][5] Gong circles date back at least to that period.[1] By the height of Angkor, the sralai led the melody, the roneat and kong vong elaborated it, and the drums and chhing controlled the pace.[10] In 2014 more than 200 paintings were revealed at Angkor, among them two hidden images of pinpeat, one showing an ensemble like the modern orchestra but without the pin.[1] The earliest known picture of a full pinpeat is in two frescoes in Bakan, the central sanctuary of Angkor Wat, which may date to the sixteenth century, though the date has not been confirmed.[2]

The origin of the ensemble is disputed. Many Khmer regard it as Siamese in origin, and some trace it to the Mon of Burma; the instruments themselves have diverse origins.[2] Cambodian writers, among them Sam-Ang Sam, hold that pinpeat is purely Khmer, pointing to the Angkor Wat carvings, and Oknha Chem Krasem held that Khmer music and instruments spread to Siam in the Ayutthaya period.[11][5] The Khmer civilization specialist Rat Sannap has linked the confusion to long wars after Angkor, Siam's strong influence over Cambodia and the loss of knowledgeable people.[6] Over several centuries, exchange among Khmer, Siamese, Lao and Mon courts produced shared gong-chime styles, related ensembles and overlapping repertoires.[10]

History

After Angkor, pinpeat remained a royal ensemble, accompanying Khmer traditional and royal festivities to the present.[1] In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, colonial-era writers and early recordings documented its structure and functions, and national conservatories in Phnom Penh formalized its training.[10]

The pin itself fell out of the ensemble around the thirteenth century and was missing for about 800 years, though the ensemble kept its name.[8][1] It was revived by the French ethnomusicologist Patrick Kersalé and the Cambodian musician and instrument maker Keo Sonan Kavei, whose workshop made the first reconstructed harps in 2013.[12][13][14] Modern musicians have begun bringing the pin back into pinpeat.[1]

During and after Democratic Kampuchea (1975 to 1979), 80 to 90 percent of Cambodia's scholars and artists died or disappeared.[15] Under the Khmer Rouge, pinpeat musicians, teachers and instruments were lost, and the ways of passing on the music were broken.[10][9] After 1979, surviving masters, cultural institutions and diaspora communities rebuilt ensembles, retrained players, documented the music and restored it to the Royal Ballet, Lakhon Khol and shadow theater.[10][9]

Community

In Cambodia

Village, monastery, court, temple, theater and Royal Ballet musicians keep pinpeat alive.[1][2] Most orchestras belong to monasteries, and village musicians usually belong to the local community. Most combine music with another job, most often farming.[2] Some ensembles are paid for by village communities or wealthy Cambodians.[1][2]

Knowledge passes from master to student.[2] Students learn by listening and watching, repeating short melodic fragments, and having their hands guided on the harder instruments; except for oboe students, few have an instrument to practice on at home.[2] At Wat Trach in Siem Reap Province, in 2021, two teachers from Siem Reap city took turns teaching village students aged about ten to 15, five days a week for two to three hours.[2] Pinpeat is now performed at court and state ceremonies, pagoda festivals, and in state ensembles and schools, with renewed instrument making and international touring.[10] Cambodian Living Arts has supported musicians and traditional music education.[9]

In the United States

Cambodian Americans have worked to keep pinpeat and its court music and dance traditions alive in the United States since the Khmer Rouge years.[15]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 1.24 Wikipedia, Pinpeat
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 2.19 2.20 2.21 2.22 2.23 2.24 2.25 2.26 2.27 2.28 2.29 Sounds of Angkor, Pin peat ensemble
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 Kun Khmer Bible, Pinpeat Music (2024)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Wikipédia (French), Pinpeat (2018-11-04)
  5. ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 VAYO FM Radio, កូនខ្មែរគួរឈប់យល់ច្រឡំហៅភ្លេង«ពិណពាទ្យ»ថាជា«ភ្លេងសៀម»ហើយ! (August 6, 2020)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 SR Digital Media, ភ្លេង«ពិណពាទ្យ» វង់ភ្លេងខ្មែរដ៏ចំណាស់ មិនមែន ភ្លេង«សៀម» (November 12, 2024)
  7. ↑ Khmer Civilization, ឧបករណ៍តន្ត្រីខ្មែរ "ពិណ" (February 17, 2021)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Wikipedia, Music of Cambodia
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 9.8 Wonders of Cambodia, Pinpeat Orchestra: The Sound of Khmer Tradition (August 17, 2026)
  10. ↑ 10.00 10.01 10.02 10.03 10.04 10.05 10.06 10.07 10.08 10.09 10.10 10.11 10.12 10.13 Melodigging, Pinpeat
  11. ↑ 11.00 11.01 11.02 11.03 11.04 11.05 11.06 11.07 11.08 11.09 11.10 11.11 11.12 11.13 Khmer Civilization, វង់ភ្លេងពិណពាទ្យ (August 20, 2021)
  12. ↑ Sounds of Angkor, The true story of the Khmer harp's revival
  13. ↑ The World (October 29, 2013)
  14. ↑ Khmer Harp, Manufacturers
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Smithsonian Folkways, Lesson 8 teacher guide: Cambodian pinpeat (PDF)
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This page was last edited on 2 October 2026, at 01:35.