2012-2-19

“A Theory of Western Music”: Yukimasa Morimoto — From Page 23 of the February 19 Issue of the Nikkei Shimbun
Yukimasa Morimoto was born in Tokyo in 1953. He is a composer, conductor, and professor at Ariake College of Education and the Arts. He works mainly in Vienna and Japan and has also served as a judge at a composition competition in Poland.

Examining Japanese “Misunderstandings” Through Evidence

While working internationally as a musician, he has continued to reflect on the sense of unease he has felt since childhood about classical music in Japan. Having “finally been able to systematize” what lay behind it, he waited until he was fully prepared to bring his thoughts together.

The key point is that “classical music swings on the afterbeat.” He realized this about 20 years ago. Invited to work with the rock band Pink Floyd, he used a computer to examine the waveforms showing the dynamics of their music.

He found an afterbeat, with the accent falling on the “two” of “one, two.” Classical music is actually the same, he says. When he compared the waveforms of several violinists playing the same piece by Bach, the European and American performers used an afterbeat, while the Japanese performers emphasized the first beat.

“Have Japanese people been misunderstanding Western music all along?” he asks. Take, for example, the opening of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, known in Japan as Fate. Many Japanese people probably think it goes “ta-ta-ta-TAA,” but correctly it begins with a rest: “‘mm’ ta-ta-ta-TAA.”

An afterbeat like this gives the music a better “swing.” “Classical music is, by nature, extremely stylish music.” But that is difficult for Japanese people. “To begin with, the Japanese language itself is not based on an afterbeat.”

He also thinks that Western music “spread in Japan precisely because it was deliberately misunderstood when it was received.” And now there are misunderstandings in Europe and America, too. Since the French Revolution, the method of reading musical scores has not necessarily been passed down correctly. In this book, he sets out these misconceptions about classical music through evidence. How, then, should Japanese people listen to Western music?

“I would like each person to find works and performers they love, rather than choosing music simply because it is by someone famous.” He has also found a subject for his next work about a “misunderstanding”: that Schubert, regarded as the king of German song, “actually never went to Germany even once.”

Kobunsha Shinsho, 740 yen.