Matsudaira, Yoriaki : GALA
Work Overview
Instrumentation:Piano Solo
Genre:Various works
Total Playing Time:10 min 10 sec
Commentary (2)
Author : Hirano, Takatoshi
Last Updated: April 24, 2018
[Open]
Author : Hirano, Takatoshi
From the late 1980s to the 1990s, Matsudaira composed numerous piano pieces not only for Kayako Matsunaga and Akemi Satomi, but also for winners of the Japan Contemporary Music Piano Competition such as Kazue Nakamura and Yoshiko Shibuya, and for pianists who studied in the "Contemporary Music Performance Course" at the JML Seminar Yoshiro Irino Music Research Institute, taught by Haruna Hirao. GALA was dedicated to Kazue Nakamura, the first-prize winner of the 3rd aforementioned competition (1989), and premiered by her the following year at Matsudaira's solo exhibition organized by the JML Seminar. It consists of citations from the works of 27 composers, and its pairing of composers resembles Blending. However, it differs in that mathematical procedures are not employed, and instructions such as "sadly" and "gaily" are intuitively inserted. The composers dealt with also range widely, from Monteverdi to The Beatles. The piece is divided by a cluster glissando into a first half dealing with love, and a second half dealing with death and farewell. These themes are expressed through the titles of the referenced pieces, and by converting words related to love and death (e.g., "Venus," "Aphrodite" for love) into Morse code and replacing them with rhythms. Elements other than citations and rhythms are based on pitch-interval techniques. Published by Sonic Arts.
Author : Hirano, Takatoshi
Last Updated: April 24, 2018
[Open]
Author : Hirano, Takatoshi
From the latter half of the 1980s to the 1990s, Yori-Aki Matsudaira was often commissioned to write piano pieces not only by Kayako Matsunaga and Akemi Satomi, but also by winners of the Japan Contemporary Music Piano Competition such as Yoshiko Shibuya and Kazue Nakamura, and pianists who had participated in Haruna Hirao’s ‘Masterclass on Performance of Contemporary Piano Music’, organized by the JML Seminar Yoshirō Irino Music Institute. GALA was dedicated to Kazue Nakamura, the 1st prize winner of the 3rd Japan Contemporary Music Piano Competition (1989), and premiered by her at a portrait concert of Matsudaira, organized by the JML Seminar in 1990. This piece is similar to Blending in that it consists of fragments cited from the music of 27 composers, many of which are paired as in Blending, while the composition of GALA is not based on mathematical procedures, even indications such as sadly or gaily being freely inserted. The variety of styles of the composers, including Monteverdi and The Beatles, should also be noted. A glissando divides the piece into two halves, the first treating love and the latter death or parting. These themes are reflected in the titles of the music chosen and the words such as ‘Venus’ or ‘Aphrodite’ in the first half, which, transformed in Morse code, determine rhythms. Elements other than citations and rhythms are determined by pitch interval technique. The score was published by Sonic Arts.