Word: koto
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Miki's score uses nine Western instruments plus the koto (a kind of harp), samisen (a Japanese lute) and the tsuzumi drum. The composer manipulates a few simple musical motifs to achieve great emotional resonance as the themes recur; a sensitive, fragile hybrid that combines traditional Japanese elements with contemporary Western compositional practices, it must be heard in the theater to make its effect. Director Colin Graham, who commissioned the work for London's English Music Theater in 1979, staged the sometimes violent action subtly and with formal grace...
...culturally hip American or European what ongaku means, and he will reply that it is the Japanese word for music. He will no doubt be thinking of the silken flutter of the 13-stringed koto or the modal mysteries of the pentatonic scale. Ask a Japanese, and he will tell you that ongaku means Beethoven, Mozart, Western-style symphony orchestras and, last week most of all, the Metropolitan Opera of New York...
...very international. The people may go to bed in a Japanese fashion, but the question when they get up is: Do they consider themselves Asiatics?" Aurally at least, the answer seems to be no. In the elevators of Tokyo's hotels, the canned music is not the koto, but usually Chopin or Bach. Traditional Japanese music survives in the Kabuki and No theaters but in few other places. To Composer Toshiro Mayuzumi, Western music has become a symbol of Japanese learning and culture. "The visit of the Met is another step in their education," he says. The Met seems...
...verify the identity of the man with the scarred face who was returning from 20 years in Soviet slave labor camps to claim the throne of Spain. Or the time he went to Japan on his own and wound up in "a wild round of I Spy, featuring Koto-playing geishas, Chi-Com masters, and a beautiful Nipponese belle who's simply murder in the bath." Hazardous Duty's burglary scene is of special interest, however, to readers who know that Author David St. John is really E. Howard Hunt, the convicted Watergate conspirator...
DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (MGM). A 110-piece symphony orchestra, reinforced with 24 balalaika players and a section of Japanese instruments including a samisen, a koto and a 6-ft. gong (valued at $3,000), plus organ, novachord, electric sonovox, harpsichord, electric piano, tack piano and zither, plays Maurice Jarre's Oscar-winning score. The variety of instruments would be more interesting if the listener could pick them out, but they all seem to play at once. One haunting tune, Lara's Theme, emerges-but just barely...