Ru
EnM. Poryadina
Musical landscape painting in the art of Yamada Kosaku
This article is devoted the music of Yamada Kosaku, one of the first professional composers of Japan. The article focuses on the theme of the musical landscape in his chamber vocal compositions. In this genre composer established the basic principles of this theme in a musical composition. The genre choice was due to the general popularity of chamber vocal music at that time, as well as the ways to embody images of nature established in Japanese literature that used special techniques of associations. Among them the most important ones are "makura-kotoba" and "kake-kotoba", which, due to their metaphorical properties, simultaneously convey the symbolism and the special mood of the Japanese landscape embedded in their culture and philosophy. This artistic conciseness was also reflected in the classical forms of Japanese poetry, most importantly in the genre of Tanka – the alternation of syllables in a line according to the principle of 5-7-5-7-7, 5-7-6-7-7, 5-7-5-7-8. Yamada Kosaku, like other composers of his generations, finds musical equivalents to these poetic means, relying on the traditions of Japanese literature and Japanese music, as well as applying the European experience. The analysis focuses on the questions of the modes and intonational structure, which include hemitonic and аnhemitonic varieties of pentatonic scale, the features of melody and rhythm, that are based on the nature of Japanese speech, and some performing techniques that play an essential role in the implementation of water images. In the future, they will contribute to the development of the principles of musical visualization in the next generation of Japanese composers, such as Toru Takemitsu.
Key words
Yamada Kosaku, Japanese music, Japanese literature, chamber vocal music, musical landscape.
For citation
Poryadina M. Musical landscape painting in the art of Yamada Kosaku // South-Russian Musical Anthology. 2024. No. 1. Pp. 92-99.
