Gagaku and Beyond: Frozen Time?

Finally I find some time to post something again - so I better make it special: Great music from Japan in an excellent production. Enjoy. 

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Gagaku is the oldest of Japan's performing arts, with a history of more than 1000 years, and is the oldest living ensemble music in the world. In its contemporary sense, the term gagaku signifies the whole body of classical Japanese music and dance performed by the musicians of the Kunaicho Gakubu (Music Department of the Imperial Household Agency, Tokyo).

Tokyo Gakuso is a relatively young group, founded in 1978 in response for the need for a group of expert gagaku musicians able to deal not only with traditional repertoire, but also with the challenges of contemporary pieces for the gagaku ensemble. Its founding music director was the sho specialist and Imperial Palace musician, Tadamaro Ohno. After his death in 1994, his place was taken by his nephew Tadaaki Ohno. Like other members of the Imperial Palace group, Tadaaki Ohno has spent a good deal of his life studying and performing on several of the instruments, the dance, and the vocal music of gagaku. 

Since its formation, Tokyo Gakuso has been very active in the performance of new compositions, as well as long and rarely heard pieces from the classical repertoire. This CD marks the first time that the musicians of the Imperial Court of Tokyo have recorded for a non–Japanese record label.

The pieces on this CD, performed by a full gagaku orchestra of up to 16 musicians and over 20 instruments, are set out in an order that reflects the typical structure of the regular spring and autumn concerts given by the Palace musicians, which are open to the public. The first half is made up of a kangen performance, the second half is composed of a bugaku performance, with two dances as a rule: a togaku (or 'Left') dance followed by a komagaku (or 'Right') dance (on the CD we have the togaku dance Ryoo and the komagaku dance Hassen). The program finishes with the rhythmic togaku piece Chogeishi, which is traditionally played at the conclusion of a dance performance. 

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"This court music is a block of sound; it does not move but allows other things to move through it." 

William P. Malm, "Traditional Japanese Music and Musical Instruments", Kodansha International

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Toshio Hosokawa: Sounds of Silence

This is my own compilation of two pieces by Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa. His works often feature Japanese instruments or ensembles and are oriented towards traditional Japanese musical concepts. Of course, these compositions are always "contemporary" or "New" music regarding their conceptions, properties and techniques; yet many of them equally represent a direct continuation of musical traditions of Hosokawa's native Japanese culture. This seems to be a quality unique to Eastern cultures; most Western traditions are dreadfully immune to any kind of renewal or development.

In the 1980s, under the influence of his teacher Klaus Huber, Hosokawa began to focus on traditional Japanese music (even learned to play the mouth organ Shô). As a kind of "New Wave Takemitsu", his work centers around the idea of the sound-silence continuum and concepts inherent in Japanese calligraphy, concentrating on the energy before and after the brushstroke - the hand moving towards or away from the paper.
The shortish "Koto-Uta" ("Koto Song") from 1999, for voice and koto (one performer), seems like an elaborate study on calligraphy. The sounds attain a very graphic quality here, especially in the silences.
"Koto-Uta" sets the listener's mood perfectly for the nearly 50 minutes of "New Seeds of Contemplation" (1986/95), a Mandala for Shomyo and Gagaku.

Ensemble Yusei performing "New Seeds of Contemplation"

Shomyo is used as a general term for different schools of traditional Buddhist chants and prayers. For "New Seeds", Hosokawa introduces a group of four singers from the Tendai sect with their unique style of chanting. Gagaku is Japan's traditional orchestral court music, one of the oldest forms of (notated) orchestral music in the world. Hosokawa's Gagaku ensemble uses two Ryûteki (traverse bamboo flute), one Shô, one Hichiriki (oboe), and one kugo (harp). 

BTW, the Shô is played by Miyata Mayumi, who worked with Western musicians like Björk, John Cage, accordionist Stefan Hussong, and many more. If you come across a contemporary Western composition featuring the Shô, most likely it was written for Miyata.

"New Seeds of Contemplation" was premiered on July 31, 1998 in Donaueschingen. The title was borrowed from Trappist monk Thomas Merton's book "New Seeds of Contemplation" from 1961. The sequence of the composition's seven parts is:

1. Preludio - Pneuma (Atem) / (Breath)

2. Werden - Frühling / Genesis - Spring

3. Ausstrahlung - Sommer / Emanation - Summer 

4. Meditation - Herbst / Meditation - Fall

5. Tiefe Versunkenheit - Winter / Deep Absorption - Winter

6. Drehung im Kreis - Gebet / Rotation in circles - Prayer 

7. Letzter Satz - Abgang / Last movement - Departure

"New Seeds of Contemplation" doesn't sound as otherwordly static as most Gagaku music, but employs basic principles like circling around a center or radiating outward from a center, which literally pull the listener INTO the music, Silence and Sounds. Energies interchanging between Silence and Sounds, increasing perception and the degree of concentration. Hearing and seeing like never before. Here's a piece that actually delivers what the title promises. 

Cover by H.C. Earwicker

[maybe reposted soon]