A composer who had a great knowledge of fine arts and music and was important as a standard-bearer of French music in Japan was Meirou Sugahara.
Sugahara was born on March 20 in 1897 in Akashi (Hyōgō prefecture). He was enrolled in a kindergarten managed by a Protestant church and was thereby close to Christian hymns and Western music from an early age. He loved listening to music at live performances conducted by private orchestras (jinta) as well as through grammaphone records. In 1908, at the age of 11, he was baptized at Akashi Methodist Church. He stayed in Hyōgo until the second year of junior high school in 1912 where he was transferred to Kyōto Prefectural Second Junior High School. Kenpachirō Kobatake, who was a member of a military band, guided a brass band at the junior high school and Sugahara studied instrumentation, solfege, and the laws of harmony from him. The music critic, Kōichi Nomura, was a friend of Sugahara from the junior high school days and upon his invitation Sugahara joined the private classes of Satoru Ōnuma as well as a salon managed by Motoo Ōtaguro. From 1914, Sugahara studied Western painting under Takeji Fujishima at Kawabata Gagakkō (Kawabata Painting School). He participated in the Sinfonia Mandolini Orchestra (later changed to Orchestra Sinfonica Takei, OST) in 1918, and began thereafter to perform, conduct, arrange and compose mandolin music.
In 1919, Sugahara moved to Takabatake in Nara prefecture. While he continued to compose music and translate music books, he also began to work in connection with Buddhist art and gained a cordial relationship with various people such as the novelist Naoya Shiga, the painter Ichinen Somiya, Tōdaiji temple’s administrator Kōshō Shimizu, and the photographer Seiyō Ogawa. Sugahara moreover served as a lecturer of the mandolin club at Dōshisha University for 3 years from 1922. He moved to Tokyo in 1926, and in 1930 he became the professor of Teikoku Ongaku Gakkō (Imperial Music School). In the same year, Sugahara became one the founders of ‘Shinkō Sakkyokuka Renmei (New Composer’s Confederation)’. Sugahara also took part in the organization of ‘Gakudan Sōsei (Formation of Musical World)’ in 1935. From 1935-1942, Sugahara furthermore worked as an adviser for the record company Victor, and he was in charge of composing the music for the Tōho movie “Tōjūrō no Koi (Tōjūrō’s Love)”, directed by Kajirō Yamamoto and with Kazuo Hasegawa starring as the lead actor, in 1938.
After the Pacific War, Sugahara continued to compose and taught classes aimed for elementary school, junior high school, and high school music teachers. In 1963, he converted from Protestantism to Catholicism. Sugahara’s first visit to Europe was in 1967, and he would often return to Italy after this initial trip. He composed the piece “Requiem for Martyrs in Japan” which was presented as a gift for the Pope J. Paul II in 1980. Sugahara continued to compose and conduct until he was more than 90 years old, but on April 2 in 1988 he passed away at the age of 91.
There are several books written, co-authored, and translated by Sugahara. These include “Kangengaku-hō (Orchestration)” (1933), “Gakki Zusetsu (Illustration of Musical Instruments)” (1933) as a co-author, and “Waseigaku-yōgi (The Essence of Harmonics)” (1931) as a translator, all of which have been read and used by many Japanese composers. Sugahara also published “Piano no tame no Wasei (Harmony for the Piano)” (1964) which teaches the laws of harmony to pianists.
The important pieces composed by Meirou Sugahara are as follows: the piano solo “Hakuhō no Uta (Song of the Hakuhō)” (1933), which consists of three pieces, ‘Rōkechi’, ‘Wagon’, and ‘Suien’, the operas “Katsushika Jōwa (Katsushika Affection)” (1938) and “Akashi-kaikyō (Akashi Cannel)” (1939) as well as the symphonic piece “Italy” (1968). Another key work is “Shinsen-chō Kyōsōkyoku (Concerto in Shinsen)” which is based on a collaboration with Michio Miyagi. Generally speaking, it is possible to detect a current of modern French Impressionism in Sugahara’s work. Although he refused to theorize about Japanese harmony, the scales of Japanese traditional music can also be found employed across his compositions.
