Daxiangguo Temple

The temple's music is the part of Daxiangguo that survives in a formal record. Kaifeng's municipal government describes the tradition as originating in the Tang and Northern Song periods and fusing court, monastic and folk music into a repertoire of more than 200 pieces, with the chanting syllable and the instrumental sections treated differently. A temple orchestra was formally founded in July 2002 and has since arranged more than forty programmes, among them the White Horse Carrying the Sutra and the Frost Bell of the Prime Minister. The music was added to the first provincial list of intangible cultural heritage in 2007 and to the second national list in 2008.