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Kiyoshige Koyama is one of the Japanese composers of contemporary music. Because of his background, he has a strong feeling of cultural identity in traditional Japanese music more than other Japanese composers. He contributed to the education, the compositions, and the research of traditional Japanese music during the rest of his life. Moreover, the materials of motive he used are relative with traditional Japanese music such as Kagura, a specific type of Shinto theatrical dance with muisc, and Matsuri-bayashi, a kind of Japanese traditional festival music. He gathered the Japanese modes and harmonies with his friend, Satoru Nakanishi, which can help audiences to be more receptive to traditional music. Thus, these constituent parts of materials can be observed in his works.
Nowadays, his works are rarely to be found. Only are three pieces that I have had in this research so far. Even if, we can figure out what the differences between Warabeuta(Nursery rhyme) and Douyou(Children’s song), Japanese modes and harmonies, and how they demonstrate the theories into these works through the history of Japanese child’s songs.
Two of three pieces by Koyama, “Kagome-Variation”, and “Echigojishi”, were composed the period after the second world war. The other one, “Variations on Karikari-Watare”, was composed in his later years.
In addition, we can see these materials are the ideas from him who wants to imitate the acoustics of these traditional Japanese instruments on piano. However, the techniques of them are not difficult, the performers need to understand the right sounds, the emotions, and the background of these pieces before playing the music. It is why I do the research to clear the concepts of Koyama’s music.
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