Yuki-Onna, an orchestral ghost story

Scoring: Full Orchestra (10 minutes)

Revised version: 2022 (edited August 2023)

This short orchestral ballad arose from incidental music scored for solo piano (also on this website) to accompany the Japanese folk tale/ghost story "Yuki-Onna" (meaning "Snow Woman"), as part of a melodrama project initiated at Morley College, London, 2019.
The orchestration is somewhat cinematic and it aims to paint a vivid picture of the drama unfolding in the story. See below for the synopsis.

The premiere of this work took place on Sunday 6th November 2022 in the Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, UK, performed by the Royal Tunbridge Wells Symphony Orchestra conducted by George Vass.

It was also performed by the Maidstone Symphony Orchestra conducted by Brian Wright at Mote Hall, Maidstone Leisure Centre, on 18th May 2024.

For an informal audio recording of this performance listen here.

Links: pdf (score) - pdf (parts) - mp3 - midi - mxl - sib - sib 6

To see a video score on YouTube see: https://youtu.be/0b85C8TDtkk

For a 60 second taster see: https://youtu.be/DQWBEyqG7Fs

Original version: 2019/2020

Links: pdf (score) - pdf (parts) - mp3 - midi - mxl - sib - sib 6

See https://plbmusic.blogspot.com/2019/02/yuki-onna.html for the earlier piano version.

Synopsis of the tale of "Yuki-Onna" ("Snow-Woman")

Two wood-cutters, Mosaku and his apprentice Minokichi, encounter a terrible snowstorm and take shelter in an empty hut by a river. The storm gets worse and worse, but they both finally fall asleep. When Minokichi wakes, he sees a woman in white bending over Mosaku breathing bright white smoke onto his face. She then approaches Minokichi. She is very beautiful, but her eyes make him afraid. Eventually she says, “I intended to do the same to you as I did to the old man, but I feel pity for you because you are a handsome young man. If you ever tell anybody what you have seen, however, I will kill you too.” And she vanishes into the snowstorm. It is then that Minokichi discovers his master dead on the floor of the hut. 

Years later Minokichi meets a beautiful girl, who calls herself O-Yuki. He falls in love with her and they live together in his house along with his mother, who fortunately takes a liking to her new “honourable daughter-in-law.” Over the years O-Yuki gives birth to ten children and the villagers all agree that she is a wonderful person. But she is somehow different from them, as she continues to look young and fresh, despite the passing years. Minokichi often thinks of telling O-Yuki about the events of years ago, and eventually, as he is gazing at her beauty one night, he can resist it no more. He begins to tell her about the snowstorm and the terrifying snow-woman. To his horror O-Yuki becomes more and more angry, and she finally screams: “It was me, it was me… and I said I would kill you if you ever told anyone! But for these children asleep here, I would do so this very moment! You had better take very good care of them; if ever they have reason to complain of you, I will treat you as you deserve!” While she screams at him her voice becomes thin, like the crying of the wind, and she melts into a bright white mist spiralling into the roof-beams. At that moment it starts to snow, but O-Yuki is never seen again.

The orchestral score developed out of a cross-cultural project initiated at Morley College, London, in early 2019, aiming to create a melodrama for piano solo and spoken voice to be performed in northern Japan later in the year. It is based on the ghost-story above, which is widely known in Japan. The tale was transcribed and published by Lafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo) in 1904 as part of his book “Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things”, a collection that has been highly influential in expressing popular Japanese culture over the past century.