Composed in March/April 2010 for 2 koto, shamisen, biwa, piano and Japanese percussions. Live concert record from Czech concert tour in May 2010.
chamber work
Story behind the song
Nagaragawa is a name of one of big rivers in Gifu prefecture, Japan, where I've been living since 2003.
Structure of this work alternates solo instruments with a refrain where instruments are added one by one and music is more and more complicated by polyrhythm and polytempo. This refrains represents time flowing. Even important events in Japanese history are only small episodes for eternal river, full of movement but unchanged for thousands of years. River is also communication channel connecting different regions.
First koto has typical Japanese hemitonic pentatonics hirajoshi with dark atmosphere, second koto uses its intervallic inversion with bright atmosphere (scale is known in Okinawa, Indonesian gamelan music and Moravian folklore music as well).
I shifted both scales in such way they have no common tone. Together they create 10-tone modal terrain, and two missing notes makes tonal centre for piano part using Phrygian mode and Chinese anhemitonic pentatonics.
In the last refrain in piano part I have quoted a melody of buddhistic litany sung during Jodo shinshu ceremonies.