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Score title
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Somakusha
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Composer
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Akira Nishimura
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Date
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2009
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Instrumentation
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Orchestra
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Program note
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Bugaku and gagaku, Japanese classical music which has been inherited over a thousand year, are one of essential bases for my music creation. They have dignified beautiful forms and make a distinctive world of refined sounds. I have been fascinated by them and learned a number of compositional techniques especially from the acoustic structure of gagaku. Both bugaku and gagaku are, however, still enigmatic and mysterious for me. The mystery never stops attracting me beyond a thousand years. I have been thinking that I would like to write a work whose subject is directly from the forms and sounds of bugaku and gagaku. This orchestral work is one of the attempts.
The title Somakusha derives from a traditional bugaku which I have been interested in for long time. I have been attracted to not only its implied enigmatic drama but also the beautiful yet passionate melodies and the acoustic world.
This composition, however, is not an arrangement of bugaku Somakusha for orchestra. Although I utilize the direct inspiration from the traditional work in terms of the content and sound, I abstracted the mystery of the drama and extended its acoustic world further referring to the original work. Consequently, this orchestral work became a symphonic fantasy or a dance suite based on bugaku Somakusha. As for the compositional technique, I employed my heterophonic procedures in various ways. Therefore the work may have the subtitle of Heterophony for Orchestra. I intended my work to retain the classical style of movements in bugaku so that it became a dance music as well as an independent orchestral work.
Akira Nishimura
Akira Nishimura
