Hugh Livingston

Music of Japan Today III: Tradition and Innovation


Abstract:
Cello Technique for Representation of Traditional Japanese Instruments
Contemporary music is increasingly defined by a broad array of cultural influences. Eastern composers have adapted their cultural heritage to a Western framework as a new mode of expression. Studying traditional Asian musics expands a performer's repertoire of expression and sound possibilities. Toshiro Mayuzumi's Bunraku is a unique adaptation of the cello to represent the vocalizations of the puppet theater's narrator, the struck sound of the shamisen, and the rhythm of the drums.

Chinary Ung's Khse Buon draws on instruments from Thai rebab and Cambodian tror, to Iranian oud. The expression includes varieties of slides, plucking and bowing, and abrupt color changes. Mr. Ung and I are working closely on an 'accurate' interpretation. This collaboration between composer and performer (which I have initiated also with Japanese composers Hiroko Ito and Atsushi Yoshinaka) brings elements of tradition and modernity's innovation and elements of East and West.

I have developed many techniques to realize the sounds of traditional Asian instruments on the modern cello, an instrument with infinite pitch flexibility, a wide range, a substantial relative volume, and the ability to be bowed, plucked, and played percussively. A shamisen sound may require a plectrum (Isang Yun Glissees), the thumb-nail (Chinary Ung Khse Buon), or a left-hand pizzicato (Toshiro Mayuzumi Bunraku). It is possible to characterize a dozen types of pizzicato for string players, which apply in realizing Asian music.

The sounds can originate in nature, from animals, to wind rushing through bamboo groves. Chou Wen-Chung notes the expressive nature of a tone in Asian music: to depict "the snorting of a pig, the cry of a pheasant;" tone qualities should achieve the "purity of a pond in autumn or the brightness of a clear moon."

Hugh Livingston
is a DMA candidate in twentieth-century cello performance practice at the University of California-San Diego, having completed his MFA at the California Institute of the Arts. He has studied cello with Fritz Magg and Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick, and has given over one-hundred performances of new works, with recitals in Washington, Boston, Chicago, New York, San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Hugh performs with the UC San Diego contemporary ensemble SIRIUS and the faculty ensemble SONOR, both conducted by Harvey Sollberger.

Hugh Livingston graduated cum laude from Yale College in 1990 with a BA in music, and was the recipient of the Yale Bach Society Prize for Excellence in Musicianship and Contribution to Musical Life at Yale. He is a member of UC Berkeley's Center for New Music and Audio Technologies Ensemble, Yale's Center for Studies in Music Technology, the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, KSDT radio San Diego, and is the United States editor of the international contemporary arts publication, The Paris New Music Review. Hugh's book and accompanying CD of musical examples, a composer's guide for contemporary cello technique with tools and etudes for performers, will be available in the summer of 1997. The CD Strings and Machines, featuring newly commissioned works for solo cello and electronics, will be released in March 1997.

Lecture: