ABSTRACT
Institutions devoted to the administration, transmission, and scholarly study of music have been documented in East Asia for more than two thousand years. As each form of government and polity has bequeathed its own ways of managing the often prominent role accorded to music, the region displays innumerable types of musical organization, large and small, many of which are discussed in more narrowly focused articles in this volume. The present overview will confine itself to a few important types of institution distinctive to the region: the offices of music attached to royal and imperial courts, the “schools” and lineages maintained within particular performance traditions, and various twentieth-century initiatives aimed at preserving traditional music in the face of rapid cultural westernization.
