JAPANESE MUSIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 901, 9 November 1956, Page 34

JAPANESE MUSIC

ORIENTAL music is not often heard by Westerners, and on the recent visit of the Chinese Opera Company many people must have heard non-Euro-pean music for the first time. An opportunity now presents itself to hear many different kinds of Japanese music in programmes to be presented in the current series, Music from Overseas. These tapes have been made available to the NZBS through the courtesy of the Japanese Legation. Japanese music falls into two main groups, the traditional and the modern, or occidental, Much of the classical or traditional music is derived from China, but the occidental music has set out on paths of development of its own. In the first programme (YCs, Saturday, November 17, 10.0 p.m.), traditional music is presented, some of it composed by modern composers. The instruments used are the koto, a thirteen-stringed instrument, the kokyu, or four-stringed fiddle, pan-pipes and vertical bamboo flutes. The works to be heard include some by Michio Miyagi, Japan’s foremost player of the koto, who became sightless at the age of seven and since then has devoted himself to the study of the koto. He performs classical works and has composed many pieces in new styles. One of his works, "Furin" (Wind-bells), played by the composer on the koto, expresses the sound of Japanese wind-bells suddenly starting clinking in the wind, and depicts different notes of those bells ringing after one another, This piece is reputed to show the highest technical achievement of koto music. Other themes touched on in this programme are New Year’s Day celebration music, music composed for the spring, folk songs of the rouge flower pickers, and of boatmen. The programmes of occidental music will include the Symphony by Yashushi Akutagawa, a thirty-year-old composer who, while a student at the Tokyo Academy of Music, had his "Three Movement Symphony" included in the repertoire of the top-ranking NHK Symphony Orchestra.