Introduction

I,Innovation in ContemporaryJapanese Composition,the compact disc accompanying this volume of Leonardo MusicJournal, we present a selection of recent contemporary music fromJapan , a genre seldom heard in the West, albeit much wondered about. Each of the seven composers presented on this recording represents a particular approach to music. In this sense, the CD can be seen as ajourney, not unlike the tradition of Ukiyo-e, the woodblock prints popularized in the nineteenth century by Hokusai and Hiroshige that depict various sceneriesand encounters one can experience on ajourney. The pieces of music gathered here are like seven stationson theJapanese road to new music. Leonardo MusicJournal asked three composers to play a double role: they were to choose from among their own recent productions a piece thatwould represent their approachesto musictechnology .At the same time, each was asked to propose the name of a composer whose work displaysyet another way of thinking about music. The first three composers are Mamoru Fujieda, Hinoharu Matsumoto and Kazuo Uehara. They in turn contacted Yuji Takahashi, Shigenobu Nakamura and MasahiroMiwa. In addition,as a curator of the project,I directlyinvitedIchiro Nodaira,whom I knew would introduce yet another view on composingwith technology. TheJapanese contribution to musical technologyhas been major, at leastoverthe past two decades. The amount of research devoted to music technology has been enormous, and the musical instrument industryinJapan displays remarkable inventiveness.Yet,Japan’s contribution to experimental music is far too little known outsideJapan. Only a handful ofJapanese composers’ names are mentioned , for instance,in music historybooks published in the West. Despite this,Japan has maintained a discreetbut resolute attitude toward music research. All throughout the 1950s, among the artists gathered in the ExperimentalWorkshop,TBru Takemitsu,himself a founding member,developed an inquisitive approach to expanding the gamut of expressive means in music through reflection on Japanese tradition and Western contribution, while at the same time pioneering the use of technology . Later,one of the musicianson this CD,Yuji Takahashi,alongwith Toshi Ichiyanagi,founded New Directions, a group dedicated to the active performance of music on the edge of the avant-garde, both from the West and fromJapan. Takahashi’s contribution on this CD, Kumo-Rinzetsu, is a reflection on the relationship between a composer and musical means. Sitting at his desk, he interacts with his computer, which is itself controlling some digital sound-production devices.There is no score, no public-only a strong and articulate intention. In fact, all contributions on this CD represent, in a way, a testimony of the depth of thought involved in the act of making music and the use of technological means, whether they be softwarealgorithms or syntheticsound sources. Thisiswhy the pieces gathered here run the gamutfrom pure instrumentalmusic to pure musique concrete: from the piece for viola da gamba and cembalo, My Favorite Few of Coltrane’sby Masahiro Miwa, to Walk,a piece realized by ShigenobuNakamura by processing the sound of footsteps. The piece by Ichiro Nodaira, Neuf icarts urns le d@, represents a growingtendency to link the act of performing (here, on a piano equipped with MIDI captors) to a computer that reacts to the performer and processes the piano sounds or synthesizessounds in real time. Although it is only a brief excerpt from a longer piece, Nodaira’s contribution gives us an idea of the considerable effort he takes in transformingthis kind of interaction into art. Although stylistically very different, the piece by Kazuo Uehara, Sohgu IZ (Encounter 2), is an example of music created with a hyper-instrument,in which the composeracts as an agent in the interaction chain while playing his sensor ear harp, a sensored sound sculpture. Hinoharu Matsumoto, a composerwho has a large catalogue of instrumental and electronicworks, has chosen an excerptfrom a live performance of Dawn Bird, in which he uses a graphic program that creates dynamic patterns, always in evolution, to control sound synthesisactivity in real time. It is another sort of observationof movement that Mamoru Fujieda has chosen for his composition, EcologicalPlantron, in which the interaction of an orchid with its environment is captured and analyzed , the data being used as the source of the music. Once matching sounds have been produced, the ecological process is...