Japanese composer Minoru Miki (b. 1930) uses his music as a vehicle to promote cross-cultural awareness and world peace, while displaying a self-proclaimed preoccupation with ethnic mixture, which he calls konketsu. This document intends to be a performance guide to Miki’s Sohmon III: for Soprano, Marimba and Piano (1988). The first chapter provides an introduction to the composer and his work. It also introduces methods of intercultural and artistic borrowing in the Japanese arts, and it defines the four basic principles of Japanese aesthetics.
The second chapter focuses on the interpretation and pronunciation of Sohmon III’s song text. The first part of Chapter 2 introduces and analyzes source poetry taken from the Man’yōshū, giving special consideration to topics of intercultural and artistic borrowing, as well as identifying and explaining the use of Japanese poetic devises, such as makurakotoba and kakekotoba [epithets and homonyms]. The remainder of Chapter 2 provides general rules of Japanese diction, focusing on their application in Sohmon III.
The third chapter provides musical examples of influence from traditional Japanese music upon Sohmon III. Similarities arise between the formal structure of Sohmon III and that of the instrumental ensemble genre of gagaku. The vocal and instrumental parts of Sohmon III also show influence from jiuta and nagauta traditional song styles, as well as from the folk song styles of warabeuta and shōka. The latter portion of Chapter 3 discusses Miki’s compositional desire for konketsu and compares it with the terms “synthesis” and “fusion,” which have appeared in contemporary musicological studies of cultural hybridity.
Additional materials include three appendices: Appendix A: An IPA Transcription of Sohmon III, Appendix B: A Glossary of Japanese Terms, and Appendix C: A Compilation of Miki’s Vocal Works.