RINNE TEN-SHO I: KODAI NO IBUKI

for violin, shakuhachi, traditional Japanese instruments from the Gagaku tradition and shomyo by René Staar

The title RINNE TEN-SHO has two meanings: it can be freely translated as "Changing Times" or mean "Wandering Souls" and so incorporate a buddhist-religious aspect. Change, mutation, therefore, determine the character and content of a work for an ensemble sound completely new to the composer.

KODAI NO IBUKI can be freely translated as "Breath from ancient Times". Interest in the Japanese music tradition foreign to René Staar influences the conception of the piece in this first part of RINNE TEN-SHO. The musical language,therefore shows close similarities to traditional Japanese Gagaku and Shomyo performances.

History of the work:

Since their first meeting in Tokyo in 1989 a long-standing friendship has developed between the two composers, Toshi Ichiyanage and René Staar, that has led also to mutual projects and ideas. An avid interest in traditional Japanese music was awakened in Staar seeing the masterly way in which Ichiyanagi creates it anew in his works. The constantly escalating fascination with the material and the invitation from Ichiyanagi to Staar to write a work for the Tokyo International Music Ensemble (TIME) led to the common endeavour to win support for this idea.

The festival Wien Modern's invitation to TIME for two concerts in 1996 made it possible to carry out this project. In order to reflect on the conception and content of the planned work in permanent contact with the instrumentalists and the Shomyo singers the composer needed a period of study leave. Between his many other obligations René Staar was able to complete the draft of the first part - the 'epically disposed' KODAI NO IBUKI - of the devised three-part conception in July 1996 on Lake Kololomook in New Hampshire and in Salzburg. Preparation of the score followed in August and September 1996. Further work on the two other planned parts, a dramatic second part and a satirical third part, of this increasingly voluminous work complex is reserved for future collaboration with the TIME ensemble.

Japan - traditional and modern.
There exists not just one single Japanese musical tradition but several.
Some are more than 1400 years old while others emerged only in the 17th and 18th centuries.
In order better to understand the growth of these traditions one has to consider the polarity between two extremes of Japanese culture that virtually pulsates through Japanese history. On the one hand the receptivity to foreign cultures is so extreme that it seems to absorb completely all foreign elements while, on the other hand , the country's almost vacuum-packed isolation from foreign influence is manifest. The historical period in which this happens can extend over hundreds of years during which assimilated foreign cultural wealth gradually becomes something completely Japanese.

In the past, because the development of these traditions was so divergent but also because music making was connected to different social classes in specific ways, one shied away from bringing the traditons together.

Shomyo, the buddhist monks ritual singing, handed down both from India and from China, has developed in several waves in various sects. This process took more than a century and came about through the contact of Japanese monks with the chinese mainland. The traditions can differ considerably from one another.

As Shomyo was regarded in former times as an occult science, these traditions were screened off from the outside world and only rarely was there any contact with Japan's other major developments in music.

Gagaku is the music of the Japanese royal court and was largely confined to this. The overthrow of the shogunate and the restoration of Gagaku music in the 19th century as a counterweight to the invasion of European music could do nothing to harm music tradition of more than 1000 years. Further Japanese music traditions have established themselves in the world of the theatre, NO dancing or Kabuki theatre being notable examples.

The apparently irresistible incursionof European classical music into Japan since the Meiji restoration in 1869 has, since the 1950's set in motion a counter reaction. More and more Japanese composers have tried to find new meaning in their own traditions, write new works for their traditional instruments and establish links with the European avant.garde. In so doing the historical and social limits of the traditions have become obsolete and more and more daring combinations are risked. For the last 40 years in Japan something resembling a "cross-over" of all Japanese traditions - and European too - has taken place.

TIME acts like a chalice in which many of these tendencies collect and build new formulations. In Japan today works for traditional Japanese instruments and European orchestras are part of Japanese composers' standard repertoire.

In KODAI NO IBUKI by René Staar various levels combine together in an epic time-journey through diverse Japanese traditions. Alonside a duo of shakuhachi (Japanese-end-blown flute) and violin stands a gagaku ensemble with 3 ryuteki (Japanese transverse flute), 3 hichiriki (Japanese double-reed instrument with at times alarming intensity), 3 sheng (mouth-organ), 2 so-no-koto, 1 satsuma-biwa and 2 percussionists who, as well as a range of traditional instruments such as taiko, kakko and shoko, also employ a range of modern instruments. These are joined in due course by a shomyo choir and voices reciting old Japanese seasonal poems and also singing Haiku.

In order to weld together homogenously east-asian and European tonal elements, the composer has constructed an eight-tone row comprising all the necessary intervals for a selected tetrachord, pentatonic, chromatic and whole-tone scale. This acts as a overriding framework that predetermines the course of individual harmonic currents. The individual components can, however, make themselves independant of this framework and then go their own ways as a form of contrast, as does the pentatonic of the Haiku part, for example, that advances into far-distant regions.

As host, the Japanese end-blown flute, the shakuhachi, introduces the European violin into the Japanese tradition. The tetrachord determines the two introductory parts, a duo for shakuhachi and violin and a part for the gagaku ensemble. In this the tetrachord develops gradually into an all-interval row (that means a row in which all the necessary intervals for the material are to be found) that contains all the intervals. In Japanese gagaku pieces there is an introductory part (netori), a compositional ritualized tuning not only with reagard to the tonality but also to the character and form of the piece. These were also the model for the beginning of KODAI NO IBUKI, which, however, receive an additional structural element in the form of a rhythmic device to be played by the two soloists at the outset. Moreover, the choice of large-scale metres (6/4, 8/4) give the performers an artistic license not dissimilar to the Japanese tradition, that does not exclude a certain blurring of the points of reference.

The first beat on the "taiko", the big Japanese bass drum from the gagaku sphere, signals the beginning of the first main section. Here the fusion of the tetrachord with the all-interval row is the mainstay of the composition. This part belongs exclusively to the gagaku ensemble, violin and shakuhachi appearing only sporadically. The form consists of:

1) 12 bars of a sort of pedal point on rhythmns from the gagaku repertoire.
2) 10 bars of heterophonic pseudo counterpoint in two completely different two-part forms between ryuteki and hichiriki during which the all-interval row is finally reached.
3) 8 transitional bars that transform the attained all-tone row into a purely diatonic pentatonic.
4) A very large developmental section in which the arrived-at pentatonic, in principle two-part despite the misleading counterpoint, gradually intensifies into six parts, whereby changes in mode and disposition complement each other and overlap.
The second main part brings the buddhist Hymnus Sange (the hymn of the falling petals) that is in purely diatonic pentatonic modi accompanied by gongs and high glockenspiel. The slow alteration of a keynote and thus of the entire tonality is a major characteristic of Japanese music traditions that is employed here as a sort of addition to the overall structure of the piece. In "Sange" a generally upward moving development is achieved by means of a vocal line slowly rising step by step; throughout the piece glissando effects are used.

In the last main part, Japanese Gardens, various harmonic tonalities are formed from the combination of two different pentatonic modi, settings for two different Japanese seasonal poems. Finally, a short coda hints at a flowing development from the pentatonic to the whole-tone scale and chromatic.

All in all KODAI NO IBUKI can be regarded as an expansive exposition of RINNE TEN-SHO:

Notes on the texts
SANGE Is the buddhist hymn of the falling petals. In the original this has a performance time of more than 40 minutes. Only the first line of the famous ritual texts is used for RINNE TEN-SHO. It is performed by the shomyo singers in chorus.

This version of the melody derives from the Japanese Tendai sect.

TOGAN is one of the oldest Japanese vocal settings of seasonal poems. It is from the pen of Yoshishige no Ysutanes, the poem has chinese origins and and it comes from the collection of Wakan Roei-shu. The melody has not been used, the words are spoken here and repeated echo-like in blocks.

VIER HAIKUS are the concluding texts of KODAI NO IBUKI. They are some of the most famous Japanese short poems and are written by four of Japan's most significant Haiku poets: Basho, Taigo, Shiki and Buson. One of the most important bilingual classical Haikus, HAIKUS by R.H. Blyth, provided the composer with access to the poems. In contrast to Togan, the 4 haihm are sung. The singers can come from the ranks of the in instrumentalists of the gagaku ensembles or the singers of the shomyo ensemble.

WIEN MODERN: Konzerthaus, 11th November 1996
Tokyo International Music Ensemble