Tuesday Tones

I’d love to visit Japan. But that’s not going to happen any time soon, so for now, I’ll just listen to Japanese music. We’ll start with one of Japan’s first major composers of the 20th century, Kosaku Yamada.

Yamada lived 1886-1965, during some of Japan’s most tumultuous history. In that time he saw his country open up to the west, go to war multiple times with just about everybody, suffer the horror of the atomic bomb twice, and have to rebuild from the total rubble of defeat in World War II. Yamada studied music in both Japan and Germany, and thus he had his feet firmly planted in the musical traditions of both countries. His music therefore reflects that fusion. He took this role, this “musical ambassadorship”, very seriously; in addition to prolifically composing almost 1600 works that reflect the fusion of Japanese and Western musical traditions, he also worked hard to introduce Western works to Japanese audiences. Yamada conducted the Japanese premieres of many important Western works.

This piece is an early work of Yamada’s. It is a symphonic poem called The Dark Gate, and it casts Japanese modalities in a brooding and impressionistic work that evokes Debussy and Ravel while still being something of its own.