乐 (yuè): music

Meanings

1 music

Characters

乐

yuè

music

Examples

我很喜欢古典音乐。

Wǒ hěn xǐhuān gǔdiǎn yīnyuè.

I love classical music.

乐团开始排练了。

Yuètuán kāishǐ páiliàn le.

The orchestra has started rehearsing.

你会演奏什么乐器？

Nǐ huì yǎnzòu shénme yuèqì?

What instrument do you play?

Tips

history

Music came first historically: the oracle-bone graph showed silk strings stretched on a wooden frame — a stringed instrument. The 'happy' meaning is a borrowed extension (you feel joy when music plays), and over time the two readings split. In classical thought 礼乐 ('rites and music') were paired pillars of Confucian social order: ritual ordered conduct, music ordered emotion.

memory

If the compound is about SOUND coming from an instrument or speaker, read yuè: 音乐, 乐器, 乐队, 乐谱. If it's about a FEELING in your chest, read lè: 快乐, 乐趣, 乐意.

Components

ideograph

乐 yuè

music (whole character)

Same five-stroke shape as the lè reading — the character did not split visually when the pronunciations diverged. Originally depicted a wooden frame with silk strings tied across it (a zither or drum-rack); the modern simplified silhouette preserves none of that pictorial detail. Indexed under Kangxi #4 丿.

Filed under radical 丿 (piě, #4) by convention. 丿 is not a separate component in 乐, so no strokes are highlighted.