Orchestral works

Hayasaka (1942b, 53) commended Kiyose’s orchestral works by stating that they echo the “timelessness and lyricism” of gagaku and represent the

“eternity” of Japanese aesthetic concepts.²²⁰ These characterizations are so unfit to describe Kiyose’s miniature piano and vocal works that they suggest significant differences. In this context, it hardly seems a coincidence that the year 1937—which marked a turning point of Kiyose’s compositional style—is also when he seriously began to compose for the orchestra (Togashi 1956, 142).²²¹

The contrast is not yet that apparent in Kiyose’s first orchestral composition of this period: Elegy—Dedicated to My Deceased Mother (Banka—Naki haha ni sasagu, 1937), written to commemorate the memory of Kiyose’s mother, who had passed away in 1936. The work in ABA’ form evokes a dark and ponderous atmosphere in a neo-romantic idiom. While this is different from most of Kiyose’s earlier works, the context of Elegy as a requiem obviously explains this; a similarly tranquil and dark mood is encountered already in the piano piece Sorrow (Aishū, 1931). The A and A’ sections in Elegy adopt a pentatonic scale (B-C♯-D-F♯-G♯-B), but rather than a Japanese scale, it is the “Dorian yonanuki” discussed with The Youths by the Sea. The mood changes with the beginning of the brief B section, which adopts the pitch organization and melodic rules of the ritsu scale (F♯-G♯-B-C♯-D♯-F♯) and makes use of syncopations reminiscent of those in Kiyose’s dance-like works for the piano. By this, it presents a more “Japanese” mood than the A section.

After a brief section in a minor key developing the A theme, the work returns to material of the A section in A’ section. Stylistically, Elegy is not radically

220 These include concepts such as wabi-sabi and mono no aware. According to Galliano (2002, 133–134), Hayasaka was one of the very few composers to refer to concepts such as these in the prewar period.

221 Apparently, Kiyose had already written some orchestral works before this (Komiya 1999, 153). Narazaki’s (1994, 288–289) list of orchestral performances, however, does not list these works but begins with To Ancient Times (Kodai ni yosu, 1937).

different from Kiyose’s works for smaller ensembles. The use of the orchestra, however, brings a fullness to the musical language in place of the sparse use of tonal material encountered in the works for smaller ensembles. Elegy suggests that Kiyose was an experienced orchestrator and had also composed for the orchestra prior to this work—possibly during his lessons with Pringsheim.

The three-movement composition To Ancient Times (Kodai ni yosu, 1937) takes the differences further: it is written in a style that shares only a few attributes with Kiyose’s previous works. The word kodai (ancient times) was used in titles of many other works of the period; for example, in Hirao Kishio’s Adagio Mood on an Ancient Melody (Kodai no senritsu ni yoru kanjochō, 1935)²²² and Hayasaka’s Ancient Dances (Kodai no bukyoku, 1937) (Omura 2011b, 4). Kiyose’s aim was to portray a “primitive and energetic Japan prior to the adoption of Buddhism” (see ibid.). Buddhism arrived in Japan in the year 538 along with other influences from the mainland, gagaku among them.

As all genres of traditional Japanese music mentioned in Chapter 3.4 originated after this, alluding to them would unavoidably present an “incorrect”

historical view. Possibly because of this, the work does not adopt pentatonic scales, nor does it express the simplicity of Kiyose’s piano pieces and songs.

To Ancient Times comprises three movements: Introduction (jokyoku), Dance (bukyoku), and Finale (shūkyoku). Introduction makes use of atonality and crisp dissonances not met in Kiyose’s previous work, and the mood is overall anxious and intense, with only little stability or repetition. Dance, the middle movement, presents aggressive rhythms by utilizing the brass and percussion sections, whereas Finale is more tranquil, lyrical, and melancholic than the preceding movements, and makes use of harmonies reminiscent of those in Elegy. Above all, To Ancient Times demonstrates how significant the

“simple” quality and the use of pentatonic scales are in Kiyose’s works; their absence makes his work appear as a composition by an altogether different composer.

Both Elegy and To Ancient Times, however, introduce extra-musical themes that—at least partly—explain the choice for a compositional idiom different from most of Kiyose’s earlier work. To demonstrate that Kiyose’s compositional style indeed changed in orchestral works, let us finally examine a work that clearly connects with a Japanese theme: Japanese Festival Dances (Nihon sairei bukyoku, 1940/42), composed to celebrate the 2600^th anniversary of the founding of the Japanese empire in 1940.²²³Japanese Festival Dances do not refer to any extra-musical phenomena in their titles, but are accompanied with the tempo markings Moderato, Lento tranquillo, and Allegro. Considering the title of the whole work, however, it is not surprising that each movement alludes to Japanese dance traditions musically.

222Kanjo (緩徐), although used very seldom today, is the Japanese translation for adagio. The work was later retitled as Ancient Hymn (Kodai sanka).

223 Kiyose wrote the work originally as Suite of Japanese Dances (Nihon buyō kumikyoku), but separated the first three movements of this five-movement work as in 1942. This is the version most commonly known today, and the one discussed here.

The first and third movements resemble each other notably in this aspect. The first movement uses the tambourine and high-pitched flutes in a manner resembling music performed in Japanese village festivals with the taiko drum and the yokobue traverse flute. The same sonic landscape of folk festivals is evoked in the third movement, with its dance-like mood.²²⁴ Both the first and third movements adopt pentatonic scales and are repetitive in nature, which makes them stylistically similar to Kiyose’s earlier work—including his several

“dance” compositions for the piano—even with the orchestra introducing more fullness to the material than the works for smaller ensembles.

The second movement, however, is very curious. It not only introduces distinctive elements from traditional music—a device seldom met in Kiyose’s previous compositions—but also uses materials from gagaku, and more precisely, bugaku, or dance accompanied with gagaku music. The opening passage with clusters by the strings are reminiscent of the aitake chords (ex.

3.4), whereas the three-note patterns by the harp imitate the plucked strings in gagaku, and the percussions occasionally adopt patterns with gradually quickening tempo, reminiscent of the jo-ha-kyū rhythms (see Chapter 3.4) in gagaku. The middle section of the movement imitates rhythms in bugaku. In this aspect, the second movement resembles the gagaku-like harmonies and aesthetics in Hayasaka’s works.²²⁵ Even with the direct allusions to gagaku, however, the second movement is not an imitation: the work evokes a bugaku-like mood that has undergone a transformation into Kiyose’s musical language.

This aspect also resembles the approach in the first and third movements.

Still, the genre of inspiration is entirely different and even surprising—not least because Kiyose (1936a, 13) originally did not even consider gagaku Japanese, because of its Chinese roots, and often emphasized his love for folk traditions (1932c, 14) rather than court nobility. The choice is, however, explained by the compositional context. As Japanese Festival Dances was written to celebrate the founding of the Japanese empire, and gagaku is the music associated with the imperial court, it is not surprising that he adopted influences from that genre. This functioned, without a doubt, as a method of underlining the long tradition of Japanese culture, which was an important aspect of the festivities of 1940.

Kiyose’s orchestral works provide an interesting and complementary viewpoint on his work, but their different nature compared with his earlier compositions is puzzling: it is almost as if they were written by a different composer. The orchestral works are, in this sense, his metamorphosis: they finally exercise the modern compositional techniques—such as atonality—that he claimed to advocate already in his earliest writings. At the same time, however, there are also other fundamental differences. Japanese Festival Dances, for example, adopts a classical structure of Western art music—that

224 The mood in both movements is similar to the second movement Fête (Matsuri) of Ifukube Akira’s Japanese Rhapsody (Nihon kyōshikyoku, 1935).

225 By comparison, listen to Hayasaka’s Ancient Dances, composed three years before Kiyose’s work.

of fast, slow, and fast movements, and moreover, the second movement alludes directly to gagaku. The changes that took place in Kiyose’s work are best understood by examining the nature of all of his work as a whole.

5.2.4 The Japanese idiom of composition as an expression of