A blog about Shamisen and Myself, including performances, workshops, compositions for shamisen, random adventures in Japan, and the photographs I take along the way
私の三味線のための作曲、演奏、ワークショップなどについてお知らせ、また日本の生活や写真などもあります。
In Japan, every season has a reason to hanami (the custom of enjoying viewing flowers) but spring is particularly beautiful. Most people look forward to the sakura or cherry blossom trees, but they aren't the only flowers to look forward too. Here is a collection of photos I have taken this year while enjoying the blossoming of flowers. Enjoy~
Upon entering Northern Illinois University as a young freshman undergraduate I had high hopes of becoming a professional bassoonist and composer for one of the orchestras within the Chicago land area. During my first semester at NIU, I had somehow passed my ensemble audition with flying colors and was placed as the second bassoonist within our school’s orchestra, considered one of the highest level ensembles at the school for wind players. I become so overly confident in my abilities as a performer that I was sure that the same results would happen at my next ensemble audition during second semester.
It didn’t. Another better, older graduate student came along and I, just a little college freshman, was booted out to only play in the wind ensemble. I was devastated.
Luckily for me one of my dear friends from Asian studies, which I had been taking at the time purely out of my long love for Japan since childhood, convinced me that since I would now have my Tuesdays and Thursdays free due to no longer needing to attend orchestra rehearsals, it was time to branch out and try something musically new, different, and very challenging. And what better way to turn everything I knew and understood about western music and music theory upside down than spending the next 6 months learning gamelan, Indonesian traditional gongs, mallet and percussion instruments, all by rote only.
Learning circular musical structure and interlocking melodies/rhythms on pitches that vibrated at ever so slightly different hertz was not only inspiring, it was musically satisfying. Within a week I was completely addicted and even after I passed my audition and was placed back into the orchestra just the following year, I continued to set aside time to study gamelan music and improve my own performing skills. Furthermore, as a composer, it was only a matter of time before I started experimenting with writing new music for the ensemble.
To write the best music possible I read every book on gamelan I could get my hands on, mainly Canadian composer Colin McPhee’s own autobiography A House in Bali and ethnography Music in Bali: A Study in Form and Instrumental Organization in Balinese Orchestral Music. Furthermore I listened to a variety of recordings of new music both inspired by and composed for the gamelan ensemble including Colin McPhee’s Tabuh-Tabuhan: Toccata for Orchestra and Lou Harrison’s Double Concerto for Violin and Cello with Javanese Gamelan. Lastly I got council from and worked closely with the most experienced players at NIU during that time who also turned out to be my best friend.
最高の作品を作るため、ガムランに関する本を読み耽った。特に、カナダの作曲家であるコリン・マクフィーの「A House in Bali」と「Music in Bali: a study in form and instrumental organization in Balinese orchestral music」は愛読書となった。更に、色々なガムランのための新作品やガムランのアンサンブルから音楽的な影響受けた作品の録音を聴いた。特に、コリン・マクフィーの「Tabuh-Tabuhan: Toccata for Orchestra」とルー・ハリソンの「Double Concerto for Violin and Cello with Javanese Gamelan」は私の心を打った。また、当時の北イリノイ大学で最も経験豊富なガムラン奏者であり、その後の大親友となるジェンから多くを教わったのもこの頃のことである。
Two compositions for gamelan were composed and performed during this time. The first called Lament’s Lullaby for Javanese gamelan and solo bassoon. As the title would hint, this was a simple melodic piece that experimented with how to make the bassoon blend with a foreign ensemble. The next was the overly ambitious composition Semangka Asin for two pianos and Balanese gamelan ensemble.
Balanese Gamelan Notation (pg. 1) for Semangka Asin
Piano Notation (pg. 6) for Semangka Asin
Semangka Asin translates to salty watermelon in Indonesian. The concept of putting salt on a sweet refreshing watermelon not only seems odd, but is also repulsive for most people. However, when you try this strange combination you will find out it not only works, it also creates a whole new flavor you didn’t know was possible. That was the goal of this piece; pit two very different “flavors” (or timbers in this case) against each other in hopes to create something new and refreshing that isn’t normally heard. Though the concept of using pianos to mimic the gamelan sound was nothing new (as Colin Mcphee has experimented extensively on this idea within his own compositions) I hoped that I could also get the gamelan to begin to mimic the pianos (as well as harmonic motion) as the piece progressed and by the end have something that was neither gamelan nor western.
To accomplish this I set up the piece to be a sort of petty fight between the gamelan and piano ensemble. The piece opens with the gamelan playing around by themselves both introducing the traditional gamelan playing style while also setting up the first theme. The gamelan ensemble continue to play around with this theme, adding more layers on top until suddenly the pianos enter, both mimicking the theme and adding in new colors that gamelan couldn’t do before. To combat this the gamelan begins a new interlocking pattern that gets progressively harder as the pianos continue to try to both mimic and out-play the gamelan. This continues until the pianos finally break out in full western harmony which in turn the gamelan try to mimic until they fade out and the pianos finally have a chance to play something completely western that was inspired by all of the musical materials heard before this. After the pianos finish out their newly created theme the gamelan enters again, playing the original theme. From here the pianos and gamelans race to the end, the gamelan expanding on the interlocking theme and the pianos adding new harmonies to that theme that hasn’t been heard up to that point. The piece keeps building and building until a sudden crash from the gamelan gong, ending the entire composition. This is because the gong is the grandfather, protector and last voice in any gamelan piece. In other words, neither the gamelan ensemble or the pianos could ever beat out the gong.
Semangka Asin was performed in the Boutell Memorial Concert Hall at Northern Illinois University on March 23rd, 2008 as the final composition as my graduation recital. The performers included Linc Smelser and Nancy Staton on piano and members from the NIU percussion ensemble, who gave me a year of their life to learn how to not only play my composition by also train on the basics of Balinese gamelan itself. The group was led by my dear friend Jenn and myself (yes, I performed).
This comical piece is by no means a masterpiece, but did set the groundwork for later compositions for other non harmonic/tonal traditional instruments, especially those for shamisen. It was an incredibly fun piece to play and listen to, regardless of some of its more glaring musical flaws. I will also hold this piece, and the premier performance, dear to my heart and maybe someday I will have it performed again, just to show how far I have come as a composer.
