Hayasaka Fumio (1914-1955) was a nationalistic composer of symphonic music and film scores. Born in Sendai, he spent his youth in Hokkaido where he became friends with Ifukube Akira. Together they organized the New Music League which held concerts in Sapporo. Like Ifukube, Hayasaka was an autodidact in music and both composers never studied abroad.
Hayasaka's official debut was in 1936, when his orchestral Prelude for Two Hymns won an award in the NHK competition for orchestral works, and his small piece for piano, Nocturne, was published in Europe and in the United States by Alexander Tcherepnin. Hayasaka's early works won a number of prizes, such as Ancient Dance, which won the Weingartner Prize in a competition for orchestral works by Japanese composers in 1938. This established Hayasaka's reputation in Japan and the next year he moved to Tokyo, where he was invited to write music for films by Toho, one of the leading Japanese film companies.
Ancient Dance amalgamates melodic cells and sonorities of Gagaku (Japanese palace music) with structures and timbres from European music, especially Stravinsky - he almost quotes literally from the Rite of Spring. The assertive rhythms are taken from Japanese folk music and remind of Matsuri (Shinto festivals). It consists of two parts: a gentle first half and a lively second half. The flute quietly begins to play a Japanese melody, and the oboe and other wind instruments join in one after another. The melody is passed to the strings, which repeat it over and over again until the music is interrupted by the striking of a few chords. At the apex of the build-up again, the tempo speeds up and the second half of the piece begins.
Strings punctuate the chords, and brass instruments strike chords somewhat erratically. The woodwinds begin to play a melody like a kagura dance, which eventually intertwines with the counter-melody of the brass instruments. The percussion instruments are mobilized to build up the apex of the melody, and then, under the pretense of fading away to leave a lingering aftertaste, it suddenly ends with the entire ensemble striking chords.
From then on, Hayasaka published many concert works, while making a living with his film music. During the next 15 years, Hayasaka would compose almost 50 scores for the biggest names in Japanese cinema, including Mizuguchi Kenji (Ugetsu, Sansho The Bailiff etc) and Kurosawa Akira, all whose films he scored from Drunken Angel in 1948 until his untimely death of tuberculosis in 1955. The collaboration with Kurosawa was especially close and also made Hayasaka's name known abroad via the music for Rashomon which won the 1950 Venice Film festival. His score for Seven Samurai is also famous. Hayasaka also introduced his friend and colleague Ifukube to the Toho studios (leading to the Godzilla scores for Honda Ishiro's films).
In these years Hayasaka also continued writing symphonic orchestral and chamber music. In contrast to Ifukube, Hayasaka's style was more late-Romantic. But he, too, sought to build a Japanese-style symphonic music, for example by the use of a pentatonic scale or open fifths. His music generally has a solemn and hieratic quality and is always of a high aesthetic level. Hayasaka's wish to create a new national music was shared by Ifukube.
Here are some of the major works by Hayasaka:
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Ancient Dance amalgamates melodic cells and sonorities of Gagaku (Japanese palace music) with structures and timbres from European music, especially Stravinsky - he almost quotes literally from the Rite of Spring. The assertive rhythms are taken from Japanese folk music and remind of Matsuri (Shinto festivals). It consists of two parts: a gentle first half and a lively second half. The flute quietly begins to play a Japanese melody, and the oboe and other wind instruments join in one after another. The melody is passed to the strings, which repeat it over and over again until the music is interrupted by the striking of a few chords. At the apex of the build-up again, the tempo speeds up and the second half of the piece begins.
Strings punctuate the chords, and brass instruments strike chords somewhat erratically. The woodwinds begin to play a melody like a kagura dance, which eventually intertwines with the counter-melody of the brass instruments. The percussion instruments are mobilized to build up the apex of the melody, and then, under the pretense of fading away to leave a lingering aftertaste, it suddenly ends with the entire ensemble striking chords.
From then on, Hayasaka published many concert works, while making a living with his film music. During the next 15 years, Hayasaka would compose almost 50 scores for the biggest names in Japanese cinema, including Mizuguchi Kenji (Ugetsu, Sansho The Bailiff etc) and Kurosawa Akira, all whose films he scored from Drunken Angel in 1948 until his untimely death of tuberculosis in 1955. The collaboration with Kurosawa was especially close and also made Hayasaka's name known abroad via the music for Rashomon which won the 1950 Venice Film festival. His score for Seven Samurai is also famous. Hayasaka also introduced his friend and colleague Ifukube to the Toho studios (leading to the Godzilla scores for Honda Ishiro's films).
In these years Hayasaka also continued writing symphonic orchestral and chamber music. In contrast to Ifukube, Hayasaka's style was more late-Romantic. But he, too, sought to build a Japanese-style symphonic music, for example by the use of a pentatonic scale or open fifths. His music generally has a solemn and hieratic quality and is always of a high aesthetic level. Hayasaka's wish to create a new national music was shared by Ifukube.
Here are some of the major works by Hayasaka:
- Festive Overture in D (1939) - already starts in marching rhythm, and grows into a full-grown, solemn march in a sort of Bolero-form. The piece was written for the nationalistic celebration of the "Imperial Year 2600" in 1940. This is the nearest to Ifukube and Stravinsky that Hayasaka came in his orchestral works.
- Ancient Dances on the Left and on the Right (1941) - further develops the direction Hayasaka took in his Ancient Dance. Starts and ends pp, as if forming part of the endless flow of natural time. Said to be Hayasaka Fumio's masterpiece. The work is based on Japanese gagaku (court music), but there are no direct quotations. "Dances on the Left" were Gagaku dances introduced via the Tang Dynasty (China), and those "On the Right" reached Japan via the Goryeo Dynasty (Korea). Hayasaka stated in a recital of this work by the Japan Symphony Orchestra conducted by Josef Rosenstock, "...I combined these two types of dance music and created this work in a rondo form, so to speak, in which the left and right themes appear alternately."
The music begins with an introduction by woodwinds. This is followed by a slow "left dance" in which the melody is passed from the woodwinds to the strings. The melody culminates with the unison of the trumpet and the violin, and the "right dance" begins with the accompaniment of the col legno of the strings. After the melody is presented to the woodwinds, the introduction is reproduced and the development begins. Then, a new melody with trombone glissando suddenly appears, mainly in the brass instruments, which leads to the theme of the "Left Dance" being played in a high pitch. The piece ends quietly and fades away, while the rhythms of castanets, small drums, and wood blocks linger in the background. - Piano Concerto in D minor (1948) - Hayasaka's most sumptuous "late Romantic" composition, and also a sort of personal war Requiem, as the first of the two movements is dedicated to his fallen brother - a long and broodingly contemplative movement. The second movement is a light-hearted rondo, a singular amalgam of French-style melodies and American jazz. It is very attractive, a bit like the piano concertos of Nino Rota, and indeed there is also a cinematic element in Hayasaka's concerto. But there are no typical Japanese elements this time.
- Movement in Metamorphosis for orchestra (1953) - good example of
the "endless form structure" Hayasaka pursued. A series of motifs in the
brass introduce a long recitative played by the strings. The harmony is
dissonant and the use of rhythm is free. Hayasaka believed that it was impossible to express the oriental
metaphysical world with tonal music, and found a breakthrough in atonal
music based on oriental sensibilities
- Yukara (1955) - symphonic suite in six movements, with
texts taken from an epic Ainu saga. Not program music, but rather
Hayasaka's musical reactions to the ancient saga. With this work,
Hayasaka also wanted to reaffirm oriental values in a time if rising
Westernization. The suite is noted for its sparse textures, a contrast
with Hayasaka's more lush other compositions. The work approaches atonalism and is written in complex rhythms (although Hayasaka rejected the Western rationalist twelve-tone technique). Yukara influenced Akutagawa's Ellora Symphony and Mayuzumi's Nirvana Symphony.
- Hayasaka advocated "Pan-Orientalism" and attempted to apply Japanese and Oriental aesthetics to his works. He tried to open up the musical framework from the Western to the Eastern one, and his methodology had a great influence on later generations of composers.
- Hayasaka's music is characterized by the free combination of the tritonic or tetratonic scales found in Japanese children's songs, of diverse pentatonic scales in Japanese folk-songs, and of Gagaku, Kabuki and Chinese music, and even of heptatonic scales such as the Dorian, Phrygian or Lydian modes used in Gregorian chant.
- Although equally a nationalist in music, Hayasaka's musical style is in my view more sophisticated than that of his friend and colleague Ifukube Akira. Hayasaka's early musical style was late-Romantic with influences of traditional Japanese music. In the years before his death his style moved towards atonality and modernism, so he was developing and growing - it is regrettable he died so young (age 41).
- Perhaps because he was in the first place busy as composer of film music, we find cinematic elements in most of his scores. Keeping within tradition and the demands of film makers, while scoring for films his music was closely related to (and often borrowed from) western orchestral music (such as the "bolero music" in Rashomon!). When Hayasaka died, his pupil Sato Masaru would continue to write music for Kurosawa's films.
- Hayasaka had a great influence on Akutagawa Yasushi, Mayuzumi Toshiro, and Takemitsu Toru, three other composers who also frequently wrote film music.
- Takemitsu Toru commemorated his death with his Requiem for Strings (1957).
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