Yamada Kosaku (1886 - 1965; he also spelled his first name "Kôsçak") was the first important composer of Western classical music in Japan (including symphonies, symphonic poems, ballet and opera), the first composer to study in Europe, the first to be played internationally, and he also set up the first symphony orchestra in Japan.
Born in Tokyo, shortly afterwards his parents moved to Yokosuka in Kanagawa Prefecture. As this town was (and is) an important naval base, as a boy Yamada heard the marches played by the Japanese military orchestras. Furthermore, his mother was Protestant and as she took him with her to church, he also became acquainted with Christian hymns. Military marches and Christian hymns were the only Western music that could be heard in Japan at that time, and they greatly impressed the young Yamada. After a short time the family left again for Tokyo and Yamada received his first music lessons from his brother-in-law, an Englishman and Orientalist, who was an English language teacher in the school and organist in the Anglican church. Naturally, he also learned the English language from him (his later extensive international contacts and activities were made possible by his language abilities).
In 1904, Yamada entered the Tokyo Music School, studying there under German composers August Junker and Heinrich Werkmeister who were then teaching in Japan. In this period, Yamada wrote songs to German and English texts which he submitted under foreign pseudonym to have them performed. He also wrote chamber music: his string quartet No 1 remained unfinished (the finale is missing); his Second String Quartet in G major (only in one movement and in ABA serenade form - playing for just over 4 minutes) is a fresh little work in the style of Mendelssohn. It is the work of a talented musician who had made a thorough study of the quartets of Haydn.
In 1910 Yamada Kosaku was recommended to Iwasaki Koyata, the fourth president of the Mitsubishi Zaibatsu, who was also an amateur-cellist. Through Iwasaki, he was lucky to receive a scholarship to study composition in Berlin. Yamada thus became one of the first Japanese composers who studied western music and instrumentation in Europe. From 1910 he was in Berlin for three years, studying at the Royal Academy of the Arts as a pupil of Max Bruch and Karl Leopold Wolf, among others. At this time, he composed short piano pieces and Lieder for voice and piano on texts by Japanese composers. A collection of songs he wrote on German texts by Goethe and Morike were actually published in Germany.
While in Berlin, after writing a very short (3 min) Overture in D in which we again hear Mendelssohn (the piece is historically noteworthy as this was the first-ever orchestral piece written by a Japanese), Yamada composed the first Japanese symphony "Triumph and Peace" in F major, completed on 8 November 1912 to gain his composition diploma. This was a substantial symphony in four movements, playing for in total 35 minutes. The title "Triumph and Peace" was given after the outbreak of WWI in 1914, but fits the work as the symphony contains both a triumphant hymn to victory and a calm prayer for peace. The first and last movement are in sonata form. The work is happy and lively, and full of a dance-like energy. But it was still a case of a composer in search of an identity: this is pure Mendelssohn-Schumann, with in the middle movements a small dash of Richard Strauss.
Late-Romantic elements increased in the two symphonic poems Yamada wrote in 1913, Kurai To (The Dark Gate) and Mandara No Hana (Flowers of the Mandala), both based on modern Japanese poems which deal with death. Here he found more his own Straussian style (Richard Strauss would remain an important influence for his whole life), and especially Mandara no Hana is an interesting work, full of a sense of foreboding. When writing these works, Yamada studied Richard Strauss' symphonic poem "Death and Transfiguration" to learn how the master he admired expressed the same "death" theme.
As if that was not enough, Yamada also wrote a full-scale opera while in Berlin, Ochitaru tennyo (Heavenly Maiden fallen to Earth) on a libretto by Tsubouchi Shoyo. This could however not be performed, because WWI broke out and Yamada had to return to Japan. His first duty was now to establish a good orchestra in Tokyo to compete with major European
orchestras - in Japan there were no professional orchestras that were able to perform
the music he had written in Berlin. Starting from nothing, Yamada set up orchestras and opera companies. He
worked at the same time as composer, conductor, educator and producer.
He ran into debt and repeatedly met with failure, but nevertheless
persisted and eventually laid the foundations of the leading orchestra
in Japan, known today under the name of the NHK Symphony Orchestra.
In 1916 he composed (among other works, such as piano music inspired by Scriabin) a "cheoreographic-symphonic" poem, Maria Magdalena, based on Maeterlinck's play of the same title, of which the music of the second act was recast as a symphony and premiered at Carnegie Hall in October 1918, when Yamada was visiting New York for two years. The short symphony was played under Yamada's baton by a temporarily-organized
orchestra composed of members of the New York Philharmonic and New York
Symphony, short before their fusion. During this busy trip to the US, Yamada never stopped composing.
In December 1920, Yamada gave the first performance in Japan of parts
of Richard Wagner's "Tannhäuser" at the Imperial Theater. As a conductor, he performed a wide range of Western music for the first time in Japan including Jean Sibelius' Finlandia, Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 "From the New World," Dmitri Shostakovitch's Symphony No. 1, Richard Wagner's Siegfried Idyll and Johann Strauss Jr.'s An der schönen blauen Donau. In the 1920s he started magazines and societies, was responsible for theater and orchestral productions, took part in new musical institutions, helped with the programming of a new national radio station and wrote his first score for a film (Reimei, Dawn, by Mizoguchi Kenji).
Especially in the 1920s, Yamada
also composed a very large number of school songs and nursery rhymes that appealed
to the public, earning the nick-name the
"Japanese Schubert". Popular songs and nursery rhymes were easier to
understand for a public not yet used to western-style music and sold well, and he produced many songs that remain popular
today.
Yamada also wrote some of his best symphonic music in this period in the form of the Sinfonia "Meiji Shoka" ("Ode to the Meiji-period, Inno Meiji" (1921), a symphony about the Meiji restoration in 1868 when Japan had successfully started to modernize. The work was often performed in Japan until World War II, as well as in Berlin, London and Moscow, as one of Yamada's masterpieces; he even made a recording of the work with the Berlin Philharmonic. It is a single movement epic work depicting Japan's recent history in music, in fact more a symphonic poem than a symphony, although it is also in sonata form with two themes, one expressing Western civilization, and one Japanese civilization. In this symphony Yamada used several Japanese instruments as the hichiriki to fuse classical music and Japanese music. The later Tsurukame would become the culmination of this line of work.
In 1929 Yamada composed Kurobune, "The black ships," an opera about a love story between Townsend Harris, the first American ambassador to Japan, and a Japanese girl, a sort of Madame Butterfly from the Japanese perspective. In 1931, it was performed in St. Petersburg.
In 1934 Yamada composed the Nagauta Symphony "Tsurukame" for voice, shamisen and orchestra, combining Japanese traditional vocal music with the Western-style orchestra. "Tsurukame" means "crane and tortoise," two creatures thought in Japan to symbolize long life. With its festive text, the Nagauta is a piece for the New Year festivities or for a wedding. To this Yamada added music for symphony orchestra with double winds and harp, to compete contrapuntally with "Tsurukame," like a concerto. See my blog article "Best Symphonies from the Twentieth Century Part Two" for more information about this symphony.
In 1937 Yamada gave concerts in several cities in Germany, while he also recorded his own works, conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. In 1940 he gave the world premiere of Ibert's "Ouverture de fête," commissioned by the Japanese Government for the 2600th Anniversary of the Founding of Japan, in Tokyo.
In 1940, when the wartime regime took hold, Yamada founded the Musicians' Association and became its president. He was also appointed vice president of the Japan Music Culture Association, which was established under the jurisdiction of the Information Bureau. He also formed the Music Volunteer Corps and was often involved in music instruction in the occupied territories. In 1942, he was elected a member of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, and in 1944 he became president of the Japan Music Culture Association.
So even during the war years Yamada continued his frantic organizational and conducting activities (after the war, he was in fact criticized for having been too close to the war regime). But in 1948 his busy life came to a tragic end when he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. After that, his work load, also as a composer, decreased and he mainly composed small songs, although he would still live until 1965.
Characteristic of Yamada's music:
- German school, trained in traditional classical music, such as the sonata form.
- Tried to find his own, "Japanese" voice, but as he was a pioneer, he was not very successful yet in finding such a voice.
- Experimented with the combination of Japanese traditional instruments with the Western symphony orchestra.
- Rather than in his own music, although he wrote profusely, his greatest achievements were as an educator, conductor and organizer - he started the keen interest in Western classical music that still continues in Japan, and laid the organizational foundations.
- The music for which he is remembered by the Japanese, are his beautiful children's songs, which are a treasured heritage, such as Akatombo
(Red Dragon Fly), Kono michi (This Road) and Karatachi no hana (Blossom
of a Trifoliate Orange). These are also sung by professional performers
as the soprano Samejima Yumiko, besides existing in countless
adaptations. It are melodies that will stick in your head!
Japanese Music: Akutagawa Yasushi - Hayasaka Fumio - Ifukube Akira - Matsudaira Yoritsune - Mayazumi Toshiro - Miyoshi Akira - Moroi Saburo - Takemitsu Toru - Yamada Kosaku - Yashiro Akio
Classical Music