• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.95-110
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• 2010

Poem plays an important role in Ca trù. Many music researchers say that singing Ca trù is singing poem. Of 46 tunes of Ca trù, there are more than 10 tunes expressed in available poems or styles of poetry; for example: in the tune Tỳ bà, the performer could sing Tỳ bà hành by Bạch Cư Dị being converted into seven-seven-six-eight-word-meter; in the reciting poem tunes, just reciting 5 Thien thai poems by Tào Đường or 3 Thanh Bình tune poems by Lý Bạch; in the reciting poetic essay (phú), reciting Tien Xich Bich and Hau Xich Bich by Tô Đông Pha. Others like bắc phản, cung bắc sometimes used six-eight word meters. Structurally, those are available for familiar types and beyond the scope of particular creativity because they do not originate from Ca trù's activity environment like recitative. Recitative is the main tune of Ca trù and has become an independent poem type. In terms of literature, recitative has a particular form structure and special type content. Unlike other tunes of Ca trù that only stop at some fixed works, recitative has increased to thousands of works in quantity and has been composed for many centuries. For those reasons, we confined ourselves the research to the creation which is the most typical of Ca tru: The recitative.