Electroacoustic Music in East Asia

Marc Battier, Kenneth Fields, Marc Battier, Kenneth Fields

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000458664
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

This book illuminates the development of electronic and computer music in East Asia, presented by authors from these countries and territories (China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan).

The scholars bring forward the cultural complexities and conflicts involved in their diverse encounters with new music technology and modern aesthetics. How electronic music attracted the interest of composers from East Asia is quite varied – while composers and artists in Japan delved into new sounds and music techniques and fostered electronic music quite early on; political, sociological, and artistic conditions pre-empted the adoption of electronic music techniques in China until the last two decades of the twentieth century. Korean and Taiwanese perspectives contribute to this rare opportunity to re-examine, under a radically different set of cultural preconditions, the sweeping musical transformation that similarly consumed the West. Special light is shed on prominent composers, such as Sukhi Kang, Toshiro Mayuzumi, Toru Takemitsu, and Xiaofu Zhang. Recent trends and new directions which are observed in these countries are also addressed, and the volume shows how the modern fusion of music and technology is triangulated by a depth of culture and other social forces.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Music Review.

1 Twenty Years of Japanese Electroacoustic Music

Trends in 1990s and JSEM

Mikako Mizuno

This paper surveys the general trends of Japanese electroacoustic music since 1990 and describes the history of Japanese Society of Electronic Music (JSEM), the JSEM which was founded in 1992 and describes not only the activities and the conceptual background of the society but also some the technical changes that influenced composers’ artistic vision. The JSEM is a social group for Japanese composers and musicologists whose aim is to activate communication and research with the common thought of creating new electronic music. JSEM is now composed of 40 members, most of whom are composers. JSEM has several concerts each year besides their annual concerts.

1. General Situation

1.1. Outline of Japanese Electroacoustic Music Since 1990

In the 1990s, with the pervasion of personal computers on the creative music scene, composers started to seek their own way of sound computing and an original performance style. Kazuo Uehara (上 原和夫 1949–), who has continued to create electroacoustic music from the 1970s (ex. Buchla, ATARI) to today, said in an interview that the importance of Pierre Schaeffer in the 1990s had drastically changed the methods and aesthetics of music.¹

If particular events can symbolize the whole atmosphere of the period, we can pick three important international events in Japan in the 1990s: ICMC1993, which was held at Waseda University in Tokyo, was certainly the first big international event for the Society of Japanese electroacoustic music; the Boulez Festival in Japan in 1995, in which Répons and Dialogue de l’ombre double were performed; and the festival of the 50th anniversary of musique concrète in Kobe in 1998, in which the Acousmonium diffusion system and the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) Tools plugins were presented. During these events, Japanese society had the opportunity for fruitful communication with foreign composers of digital music. Afterwards, the Japanese composers of electroacoustic music proceeded to the next active step of creation and international communication.

Regarding the activities of Japanese composers, ELEM ’91² and Tokyo Contemporary Music Festival Dengaku—Computer Music Today and in the Future (電楽)³ were emblematic concerts which testified to the beginning of a new period. As for the educational scene, we should mention the installation of an Ircam Signal Processing Workstation (ISPW) on a NeXT computer at Kunitachi College of Music. Takayuki Rai (莱孝之 1954–) was the head of the Sonology Department at the Kunitachi College of Music and the first generation of his students included Shintaro Imai (今井慎太郎 1974–), Syu Matsuda (松田周 1974–), Daichi Ando (安藤大地 1978–), and Chikashi Miyama (美山千香士 1980–).

I dare to say that the next step of change in Japanese electroacoustic music was heralded by the publication of a book, Trans MAX express (2001), written by Neumanpiano, a pseudonym of the creators Masayuki Akamatsu (赤松正行 1960–) and Nobuyasu Sakonnda (佐近田展康 1960–). This reference book for Max⁴ programming was their second book. The publication signalled that music algorithms for digital signal processing (DSP) for sound can be personally obtained without any large-scale equipment like the ISPW, thanks to the high speed of personal computer processing. The publication also indicated a shift of aesthetic value in contemporary music; from music as a sounding art, with or without performance, to music as algorithmic thinking through sound. We should recall Ordering pizza or Reverse-simulation music by the Formant Brothers (the pseudonym of Nobuyasu Sakonnda and Masahiro Miwa (三輪真宏 1958–), who had a strong effect on today’s Japanese algorithmic music.

Neumanpiano had actively made workshops at the Kobe Xebec Hall since 1995. The two had graduated from Kobe University and majored in literature, so neither had a background in music or in computer science, yet even to this day, their important books, Magical Max Tour, Trans Max Express, 2061—Max Odyssey, and Textbook of Max have been accepted as standard textbooks or manuals for Max beginners. Thanks to the activism of their workshops, Max users in the Kansai area have increased.

It was 1993 in Germany that Masahiro Miwa first used Max with the ISPW, and he was welcomed in Kansai when he came back to Japan. The method of algorithmic thinking permitted by Max attracted the Japanese younger generation. It is significant that both the first workshop of Max and the 50th anniversary of musique concrète were held in the Kansai area, not in Tokyo.

During the first few years of the new millennium, no major trends could be discerned, as composers were searching for their own way. In other words, there were several directions that were conflicting with each other and some genres were blurring borders. Algorithmic thinking and the activities of Ho-ho machine (方法マシン Method Machine)⁵ existed in the same epoch as live-electronics with DSP, Sound Art,⁶ and Japanoise.⁷ When the EMSAN⁸ research project started in 2008, the alternative methods that emerged were diverse.

1.2. Passing from the 1980s to 1992

The Japanese composers born in the 1950s and 1960s became prominently active in the 1990s. Some of them were previously enrolled in European and American institutions before they presented their first electroacoustic pieces in Japan. They left Japan in the latter half of the 1970s or 1980s to study directly the advanced concepts and technology of computer music in Europe and the United States: Takayuki Rai (莱孝之 1954–) in Utrecht, Karen Tanaka (田中カレン 1961–) and Suguru Goto (後藤英 1966) in Paris, Kiyoshi Furukawa (古川聖 1959–) and Masahiro Miwa in Berlin, Akemi Ishijima (石島明実 1960–) in London, Naotoshi Osaka (小坂直敏 1953–), Mamoru Fujieda (藤枝守 1955–), Atau Tanaka (田中能 1963–), and Mari Kimura (木村まり1960;–) in California and New York.

In the 1980s, computer music did not yet attract the Japanese composers of avant-garde music, even though there had been a great pervasion of digital instruments since the Yamaha DX7, especially in the area of popular music. In the 1980s, the young Japanese composers described above found critical differences between Euro-American computer music culture and that of Japan. Contrary to the active exhibition of sound art or sound design in the West, Japan did not produce so many concerts of electroacoustic pieces during that period. Furthermore, the eminent producer of the Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai electronic music studio Wataru Uenami (上浪渡) retired in 1982. There was no society of digital music composers when Pre-ICMC93 concerts were held in Tokyo in September 1992.⁹ It was in November 1992 that the first concert of Japanese Society of Electronic Music (JSEM) was held in Tokyo Ginza.

Pre-ICMC93, held in the autumn of 1992, featuring two concerts and several paper sessions of ICMC1993, was activated by Onjyoken (音楽情報科学研究会, Ongakujyoho-kagaku kenkyukai), which is a society of computer researchers who contribute to the creation of new concepts and systems of computer music. The name Onjyoken is an abbreviation of Japanese words like its English counterpart, the acronym SIGMUS (Special Interest Group on Music and Computer).¹⁰ Onjyoken hosted ICMC1993, organized all the concerts and paper sessions and contributed to mediation between computer music researchers and Japanese music creators.

The paper sessions of Pre-ICMC93 included topics about automatic transcription, musical syntax analysis, retrieval, and so on. The first concert was held on 1 September at Waseda University, which was the main venue of ICMC93. Fourteen acousmatic pieces were presented, including foreign pieces like those of Chris Chafe, Trevor Wishart, and Zack Settel.

On 2 September, six live-electronic pieces by Japanese composers were performed. Three pieces had their own original interactive systems. Sigenobu Nakamura (中村滋延 1950–) Interface Concerto for keyboard and computer was realized with the system Hyper N-5 which had been developed by Yoichi Nagashima (長島洋一 1958–). Takehito Shimazu (嶋津武仁 1949–) Void Main for shakuhachi and computer was performed by two computers, each of which had an original system. Kazuo Uehara Chaos alpha II realized a multimedia system for musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) piano, computer graphics, and sound objects.

Yoriaki Matsudaira (松平頼暁 1931–), a pioneer of Japanese systemati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Twenty Years of Japanese Electroacoustic Music: Trends in 1990s and JSEM
• 2 Sneezing Toward the Sun: The Human Voice in the Musique concrète of Toru Takemitsu
• 3 The Creative Quest into Temple Bell Sonorities: Works of Musique Concrète by Toshiro Mayuzumi
• 4 Japanese Electroacoustic and Japanese Instruments
• 5 Electroacoustic Music Linked with Information Processing Research in Japan
• 6 Mayuzumi’s Electronic Studies
• 7 The Principles of Electronic Music (1956)
• 8 Electronic Music 7 Variations (1957)
• 9 The Power of Arterial Language in Constructing a Musical Vocabulary of One’s Own: Inheriting the Inspiration and Gene of Innovation in Electroacoustic Music from Chinese Culture
• 10 Characteristics of Early Electronic Music Composition in China’s Mainland
• 11 Exploration and Innovation, the Chinese Model of the Musicacoustica-Beijing Festival
• 12 Taiwanese Women Composers of Mixed Music with Their Cultural Heritage
• 13 Excavating the History of Electroacoustic Music in Korea, 1966-2016
• Index