Photograph of Britten sitting in an arm chair playing the sho (a bamboo wind instrument from Japan).
The sho, one of the principal instruments of the Gagaku ensemble, is a free-reed mouth organ comprising seventeen bamboo pipes mounted symmetrically according to height on a wooden cup-shaped wind-chest.
Photographer: unidentified
1 photograph
Black and white; 6.5 x 7.5 cm [iinserted in album: Japan 1956, p,11]
Orphan work (photographer unidentified)
2 enlargements
The instrument itself is in the collections of the Britten-Pears Library.
Britten purchased this sho from the Japanese Old Musical Instrument Company while in Kyoto, 1956 and learnt to play it with the aid of a manual by Leo Traynor entitled a Young Britten's Guide to the Sho.
Archive
https://www.bpacatalogue.org/archive/PH-4-214
