Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Nagauta Ensemble, Shamisen Ensemble, Hayashi Ensemble conducted by Takuo Yuasa. Tetsuo Miyata (voice), Toru Ajimi (shamisen).
The Nagauta Symphony ‘Tsurukame’, written in 1934, is a work in which Japanese traditional vocal music is combined with the Western-style orchestra. Nagauta is one of the major fields of Japanese traditional music, having developed from the seventeenth century in close relationship with Kabuki, an amusement for the urban bourgeoisie. The Nagauta Symphony had its première in 1934, with Yamada himself conducting the Nippon Broadcast Symphony Orchestra (today’s NHK Symphony Orchestra) and Nagauta musicians, including Kosanzo Yoshizumi and Bunji Kineya.
In Kabuki, where operatic singing of text, mime and dancing are integrated, Nagauta is responsible for dance music, and can be heard even today in Kabuki theatres, as accompaniment. Naga – means “long” and – uta means “song”, so that Nagauta is literally a “long song” with ballade-like long text, lasting fifteen to thirty minutes.
Its standard instrumentation consists of singers, shamisens (Japanese three-string lute), fues (Japanese flute) and percussion. In Nagauta, various elements from Japanese traditional music are integrated, music for Noh, Jiuta and Joruri. Noh is an ascetic and solemn form of music drama perfected in the medieval period, prior to Kabuki, and was loved by the samurai class. Its music is written for vocalist, fue player (flautist) and percussionist. Jiuta is a chamber-song created in Kyoto in the seventeenth century. Accompanied by the shamisen, it is music for the bourgeoisie. Joruri is a long musical story with songs and narrative, performed by an actor with accompaniment by the shamisen. Originating from street performance in the sixteenth century, it had shown diverse development. In this sense, Nagauta is a kind of composite art and has a comprehensive character. It was natural that Yamada paid attention to Nagauta, as he was eager to explore the relations between the Japanese language and music in traditional arts.
Yamada’s Nagauta Symphony ‘Tsurukame’ makes us of the classic piece ‘Tsurukame’, composed by Rokuzaemon Kineya X in 1851, which is played by traditional musicians of Nagauta. Yamada made no alteration to this part. Nagauta ‘Tsurukame’ is based on a Noh piece of the same title; tsuru means “crane” and kame means “tortoise”. These two creatures are thought in Japan to symbolize long life. Its text is festive, relating how, at the festival of New Year in ancient China, a crane and a tortoise gave eternal life to the Emperor. Both in Noh and Nagauta, ‘Turukame’ is for New Year festivity or a wedding. To this Yamada added music for symphony orchestra with double winds and harp, to compete contrapuntally with ‘Tsurukame’, like a concerto, and he called the work Nagauta Symphony. In Nagauta, the variety of colours and inflection are often produced by changing tuning of the strings in the course of the work, giving an effect equivalent to modulation in Western music.
(Lyrics in the comment section)
Picture: A staged photograph from the Meiji Period of three women dressed as geishas and girl in an outdoors setting.
Sources from the booklet of the recording: https://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurbs_reviews.asp?item_code=8.557971&catNum=557971&filetype=About%20this%20Recording&language=English#