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Five Pieces for Shakuhachi Chikurai

Five Pieces for Shakuhachi Chikurai

Mitsuhashi Kifu
Camerata Tokyo Inc. - 30CM-303
1997

Track Title Kanji Length Artist
1 Chikurai Gosho 1 - Funda 竹籟五章 第一章 芬陀 03'03 Shakuhachi: Mitsuhashi Kifu
Chikurai means the sound of bamboo. It also means the sound of wind across the bamboo forests and the sounds of shakuhachi and fue (Japanese flute). Makoto Moroi (1930-) started composing shortly after the Second World War. He introduced European avant garde music to Japan and composed many works in avant-garde style. In the 1960's he showed interest in Japanese traditional music.

Five Pieces for Shakuhachi Chikurai was inspired by traditional shakuhachi music. This work consists of five movements. Funda (fun means aroma), composed at Funda-io Sesshu-ji Temple, clearly shows a contrast between the traditional and the modern styles. Sochiku (fresh bamboo) is marked by its fresh tremolo technique Kyorai (sound of mental void) is a slow expressive movement. Hachiku (bamboo cutting) is characterized by staccato, a new technique in Japanese music. In this movement the individual character of the performer stands out remarkably. The grand finale of this work is Meian. This word means "light and darkness" hut it is also the name or a temple famous among shakuhachi players. This finale contains four main motifs of the other four movements.
2 Chikurai Gosho 2 - Sochiku 竹籟五章 第二章 夾竹 01'53 Shakuhachi: Mitsuhashi Kifu
3 Chikurai Gosho 3 - Kyorai 竹籟五章 第三章 虚籟 04'42 Shakuhachi: Mitsuhashi Kifu
4 Chikurai Gosho 4 - Hachiku 竹籟五章 第四章 破竹 01'00 Shakuhachi: Mitsuhashi Kifu
5 Chikurai Gosho 5 - Meian 竹籟五章 第五章 明暗 06'02 Shakuhachi: Mitsuhashi Kifu
6 Reibo (Shôganken) 霊慕 (松巌軒) 13'34 Shakuhachi: Mitsuhashi Kifu
Reibo is a typical classical shakuhachi solo however there are many variations of reibo, all with this title and interrelated in various ways. Some of them for example have the word reibo at the end or the title, such as "Koku reibo" (reibo of voidness).

One of these old classic solos, whose rendition by Kifu Mitsuhashi is notable, was preserved by the Shoganken Temple in the suburbs or Hanamaki City in Iwate Prefecture, and has spread throughout Japan's Tohoku (Northeast) region. This piece has a dynamic vibrato called Sokoyuri (literally "soul-shaking"). According to legend, in the Yoshiwara red light district of old Edo (Tokyo) some couples, deeply moved by this shakuhachi piece, have attempted double love suicide.
7 Shikyoku No 1 詩曲一番 14'21 Shakuhachi: Mitsuhashi Kifu
Poeme I by Teizo Matsumura (1929- ), was composed for a pavilion at the 1969 World Exposition in Osaka. The special feature of this pavilion was its bamboo construction, so the audience, while appreciating the bamboo all around, heard sounds suggestive of bamboo. But this piece, originally composed to create the atmosphere of bamboo, is now a well-known piece for performance on the stage.

Starting out with seemingly gentle mood music, it suddenly jolts us with a confrontation of sounds caused by the twenty string koto and the shakuhachi playing together. While the initial boom in modern composition for traditional instruments has waned, this piece is still often played, offering its fresh dialogue of these two instruments.

It had simply been called Poeme, but since Poeme II was composed it is called Poeme I. Poeme II was composed for shakuhachi solo, and Poeme III is subtitled "For Shinobue and Biwa". Poeme I is the first piece of its series, but is independent or those that follow. They are simple pieces without any allegory. Matsumura is an important composer of Western type music but he composed these pieces, his first in Japanese style, out of interest in the special possibilities of traditional Japanese instruments.
8 Uta Kyoku Ni Ban 詩曲二番 15'05 Shakuhachi: Mitsuhashi Kifu
9 Aki no Kyoku (Modern) 秋の曲 13'12 Shakuhachi: Mitsuhashi Kifu
Minoru Miki (1930- ) studied composition at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, he composed many works for chorus and for drama, but his most remarkable contributions are some compositions for Japanese traditional instruments. He is one of the founding members of the Pro Musica Nipponia (Japanese Music Group), and has been Music Director of this group for some time. The twenty-string koto was invented by him and the koto player Keiko Nosaka.

The style of Miki's compositions show two tendencies. The first is represented by Kurudando, which expresses the feelings of the laboring classes. The second tendency appears in Tatsuta and Saho, for twenty-strings koto; these two pieces deeply express Japanese nature. Autumn Fantasy shows this second tendency. The koto player on this disk, Nanae Yoshimura, wrote this about Autumn Fantasy in the brochure of her 1982 recital- "This piece consists of two parts, the Prologue and Autumn Fantasy. When I play the former, I imagine a quiet sunny afternoon; while I play the latter, I imagine an autumn evening in which the dark red sun is setting rapidly."

The tremolo in the first part and flowing theme in the second one are both charming. In Miki's early period he emphasized a certain roughness in his use of Japanese traditional instruments, but in Autumn Fantasy he gives them a fresh lyricism.