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)