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Introduction to Japanese Music
Week 6 – Koto and Sokyoku
Timeline
The Edo Period
• Tokugawa Ieyasu became Shogun in 1603
• Country fully reunited under one ruler
• Policy of isolation
• Samurai class began to wane; merchant class began to rise
Edo Period Music
• New audiences
• Urban music centres encouraged the development of popular music
• Instruments such as shamisen and koto
• Nanae Yoshimura, The Art of the Koto (Vols. 1 and 2) (Celestial Harmonies, 2000/2002)
• Tadao Sawai, Historic Concert: Koto Music Japan (Karonte, 2003)
• Yamato Ensemble, Art of the Japanese Bamboo Flute and Koto (Arc Music, 1994)
• David Loeb, ‘An Analytic Study of Japanese Koto Music,’ The Music Forum, vol.4 (Columbia University Press, 2013)
The Instrument
• Hollow two-piece body
•Thirteen silk strings
•Six feet long
•Movable wood or ivory bridges
Origins
• ‘So’ was the old name for the koto
• ‘Gaku-so’ - part of the gagaku ensemble since 8th
century
• Used to accompany shomyo chanting
• Used for imayo songs, as shoga were replaced with proper lyrics
Tsukushi-goto
• Kenjun – late 16th century
• Started in Kyushu
• Organized the existing koto tradition into a new set of pieces for voice and koto
Kumiuta
• Hosui – a tsukushi-goto player – taught Yatsuhashi Kengyo – a blind shamisen player
• Pieces were re-arranged in to the kumiutarepertoire
• Shichiku Shoshinshu (1664)
Kumiuta
• Like tsukushi-goto, several short poems played in succession
• Build from dan of one poem each, with regular length (54 beats)
• Divisions marked by standard patterns
Composition and Transmission
• Schools of Koto music established through the Todo…
• Ikuta-ryu:
Arrangements of shamisen music (jiuta)
Played on both instruments
• Yamada-ryu:
Based pieces on narrative genres
Primacy of vocal lines
Koto and Shamisen
• Regularly paired in performance
• Large repertoire for both instruments
• Sokyoku and jiuta intertwined
• Kumiuta played only on original instrument
Tuning, Scales
• Yatsuhashi introduced two tuning systems:
Sokyoku
• Two types: with or without singing
• Kumiuta and Shirabe-mono
• Rokudan no shirabe
Danmono
• Used interchangeably with shirabe-mono
• Often played as duets, with shamisen or ensemble – sometimes even without koto
• Danawase – the simultaneous performance of different dan sections
Sankyoku
Sankyoku
• Developed from Ikuda-ryu
• ‘Music for three’ – koto, shamisen, shakuhachi(or kokyu)
• Main melody played by koto – other parts heterophonically, adding variation or elaboration
Tegoto-mono
• A hybrid of kumiuta and shirabemono
• Developed from jiuta
• Kumiuta poems are interspersed with lengthy instrumental passages
Tegoto-mono
• Three parts at the simplest:
– Maeuta
– Tegoto
– Atouta
• Often up to six parts
• No thematic links between tegoto
The Todo
• Moved away from religious work
• Attained higher social status as entertainers and teachers
• The abolition of the Todo saw sokyokuadvance from music of the pleasure quarters to music of refined society
Modern koto works…
• Miyagi Michio (1894-1956)
• New types of koto; new musical works
• Haru no Umi (1929)