The series of volumes of Music from the Tang Court considers a repertory of music at least 1400 years old. During the two centuries before 841 the Japanese Court borrowed a large amount of secular entertainment music from China. This 'Tang Music' (Togaku) survives in Japan in a substantial body of manuscripts, but is transformed in character in contemporary performance. This edition transcribes and comments on the music as it survives in its earliest sources. This process has revealed surprising evidence for ancient interconnections in Asian musics, and the essays in this seventh volume present aspects of this research to date. They provide evidence, for example, of music in a scale of four notes only from Bali and from Ancient China, as well as, most significantly, for the transportation from the Tang capital to Japan of 'several tens of scrolls of music in tablature'.

畢鏗（Laurence Ernest Rowland Picken，1909-2007.3.16），二戰末作為生物學傢參加英國議會科學使團來華，在聽過一場古琴大師徐元白（1893-1957）先生的現場演奏後，對中國古代音樂産生極大興趣。迴國後，遂轉嚮研究中國古代音樂，為劍橋大學教授、東方音樂研究部副主任。自50年代起，陸續發錶瞭許多有關中國古代音樂研究的著述，特彆是對唐傳日本古譜的研究，並著有七捲本《來自唐代宮廷的音樂》（Music from the Tang Court，Cambridge University Press，2006）。對於畢先生的成就，參見：

高興：《勞倫斯·畢鏗及其唐代音樂研究》，《中國音樂學》，2005年第2期。

宮宏宇：《畢鏗和他的中國音樂研究：紀念畢鏗先生逝世》，《中央音樂學院學報》，2007年第4期。