Even though Japan has undergone a profound metamorphosis since World War II, as a result of a massive influx of Western influence at every level, Japanese society has for the most part remained uniquely "Japanese." In the world of contemporary Western art music, this same quality of "Japaneseness" can be attributed to the works of composers on this CD. Concerned with reflecting philosophical and musical elements from their own culture, this music represents a powerful cross-fertilization of aesthetics and musical characteristics from both East and West. These Japanese musical characteristics reflect more of a way of thinking (treatment and importance of color, time, and space) than of specific surface elements (i.e. folksongs with Western harmonies).
Joji Yuasa (b.1929) is an internationally renowned composer who has earned a variety of prizes (Italia; ISCM; Berlin Cinema Festival; Japanese Government Art Festival), commissions (including NHK, and Koussevizky Foundation), and residencies (West Germany DAAD; NY Japan Society; New South Wales Academy - Sydney; IRCAM). In 1949, he joined a contemporary music research group organized by Kuniharu Akiyama (who eventually became a leading music critic in Japan). Both were undergraduate students at this time - Yuasa a medical student at Keio University, and Akiyama at Waseda University. This was the beginning of a friendship that eventually led in 1951 to the formation of a group that was to profoundly affect the future course of Japanese music. This group (Jikken Kobo - "experimental workshop") included composers Takemitsu, Suzuki, Fukushima, and poet Tanikawa, among others, and experimented with intermedia. They also began questioning in their interactions and in their art the most basic principles of what is human, what is music, and the relationship of the cosmos to humans.
Yuasa also became interested in the music of Jolivet and Messiaen at this time; studied Bartok and Bach; and Zen in 1953. Even though he began composing with 12-tone techniques around 1954, he felt questions about his relationship to these techniques that "grasp the European world. At that point (when I wrote Cosmos Haptic - 1958), I felt I had to return to the origin of my own self. I felt like I needed to be free from 12-tone composition and anything connected to it, and to write a more natural form for me. In Cosmos Haptic, my cosmos is an inner sense; it is not scientific, or a cosmos that we can analyse logically - I always think of the cosmos that was existing at the birth of primitive religion. I tried to express a sort of religious impression caused by what I felt to be the most primitive and yet vitalistic aspects of the unity of man and the universe. The work is based on several modes and consists of five sections which are placed in sequence in a non-European way, rather like a traditional Japanese picture scroll. There is also some reflection of Noh music in respect to the spacing and timing of the sounds. The word 'Haptic' is taken from a passage in the book Icon and Idea by Sir Herbert Read, where he uses it to describe a certain type of art which depicts forms not by outer observation, but through one's internal and systemic senses."
Cosmos Haptic II - Transfiguration (1989), written for Aki Takahashi, extends Yuasa's ideas taken from Japanese traditional music (especially Noh) of the elasticity of time (relating to concepts of Zen "time-being"), sectional and through-composed form, and the importance of timbre, texture and voicing. Clarinet Solitude (1980) was written as a memorial for Yoshiro Irino, one of the pioneer composers of Japanese contemporary music, and was premiered in Tokyo by Toshiaki Morita in May 1980. The piece employs various extended techniques for clarinet such as multiphonics, double flageolet tones, double trills, etc. The motif of the beginning section is based on a twelve-tone series in reference to Mr. Irino, who first introduced the twelve tone technique right after the second world war, and practiced it in Japan until his death. A series of double flageolet tones appearing in the middle section signifies, for the composer, a "Chorale" for the dead.
Toru Takemitsu (1930-96) assigns a highly important role to timbre in Piano Distance, as well as space/time ideas found in traditional Japanese arts - negative space (imaginary sound) is the musical focal point. In the work (written for pianist/composer Yuji Takahashi in 1961), "Piano" refers to dynamics - the music consists of gradations of color changes within a soft dynamic range. "Distance" refers to space - a space that is shaped by voicings and the timbres created through various harmonics, clusters, and pedal techniques. One can think of this, in the Zen sense, as an imaginary (inward, not outward) time and sound world created by variation of acoustics.
Masao Honma (b.1930), born in Aomori Prefecture, is a graduate of Nihon University. He was awarded first prize in the 23rd National Music Competition, and recently retired (1994) as Professor of Music at Miyagi University of Education (Sendai). Honma completed Junction III in August, 1990 for the Tanosaki-Richards Duo - it was premiered by them in Tokyo the following month. The work uses multi-linear structures whose lines contain multiple, changing nuclear pitch centers which create forward motion and tension in the absence of harmony (these lines are based on folk melodies and Tsugaru dialect from Aomori prefecture). Honma describes these concepts, used in many of his works, as: "Cross-mode -- crosses different modes of traditional Japanese music; Sound Shift -- utilizes shifting and fixation of sound; Poly-ostinato -- combines several ostinati of different length." His juxtapositions remind one of Charles Ives, although the melodic material is generally more fragmented and not diatonic.
Isao Matsushita (b.1951) received his musical training at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music, and as a composition student of Isang Yun in Berlin. He has participated in several international music festivals, such as the World Music Days of ISCM Festival in Graz '82; European Music Days Copenhagen '85; Invention Festival Berlin '86 etc. Matsushita's works have won first prizes at the Moenchengladbach International Composition Competition and 7th Annual Irino Competition (Japan). Kochi II [East Wind] (1989), for solo clarinet, contains references to the Japanese shakuhachi through subtle color transformations and pitch bends. "As the meaning of the title suggests, sounds are spun out of the wind and drawn into a stream where they interact and interfere with one another. By employing the systematic temporal calculation of 1:2:3 throughout the whole of the piece, I have attempted to convert the concept of optical time into structural terms." The work is in four sections - a slow introductory section that gradually builds from single notes to a longer line; a section in the middle register that builds in intensity (both volume and register); a section in the low register that builds in intensity and register; a closing section that includes multiphonic sounds and a return to single notes.
Mamoru Fujieda (b.1955), a graduate of the Tokyo Conservatory and University of California, San Diego (Ph.D.), studied music composition with Joji Yuasa, Morton Feldman, and Gordon Mumma. He received the 5th Irino Prize (1985) in Japan, and was selected by ISCM-Toronto (1984). Fujieda is Director of the INTERLINK concert series (Tokyo American Center), and Art Vivant concert/lecture series (Tokyo), and has performed live computer music with Yuji Takahashi and Haruna Miyake. Kyrie Resounded (1987) was written for the Tanosaki-Richards Duo. In five short movements, it explores variations of a plainchant subject. The work reflects Fujieda's interest in musical post-modernism - neo-tonal music of clear, simple textures with melodic and rhythmic repetition within both symmetric and asymmetric phrases.
Masataka Matsuo (b.1959) graduated from the Tokyo University of Fine Arts in 1984 and was immediately recognized by a number of awards for contemporary composition including the Special Prize at the Japan/France Competition for Contemporary Music (1985). A recital of his works was given in Tokyo in 1986, and since this time his music has received performances in the Far East, Europe, Australia, and America. Distraction (1987) for clarinet and piano (commissioned by the Tanosaki-Richards Duo) was given its world premiere at the CMS-AMS Conference in New Orleans in 1987 - the work subsequently won him First Prize at the Asian Composers League (ACL) Young Composers Awards at the ISCM-ACL World Music Days in Hong Kong (1988). Distraction explores new color possibilities (microtones, multiphonics) of the clarinet, along with non-chordal piano writing. The work makes special use of piano resonances during its closing section, when the clarinet plays into the strings.
-about the Tanosaki-Richards Duo
-order form for Music for Clarinet and Piano By Japanese Composers
-more information about Nine Winds Records
-return to E & K Publishers home page