Scoring: Piano 4-hands duet (with spoken voice)
Date: 2020
"Oshidori" is a well-known Japanese ghost story recorded 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. The composition presented here forms part of a short melodrama, retelling the story with the help of incidental music for 4-hands piano duet (or for piano solo - see below.)
It resulted from a challenge to composition students at Morley College in 2019, and I have interpreted the brief as an opportunity to express not only the principal events of the story, but also to give a sense of the thoughts and feelings of the characters involved (a hunter called Sonjo and two mandarin ducks!) See below for the full text in English.
Links: pdf (score) - pdf (double page) - mp3 - midi - mxl - sib - sib 6
Scoring: Piano solo (with spoken voice)
Date: 2020
Links: pdf (score) - mp3 - midi - mxl - sib - sib 6
1. The hunter (00:00) {There was a falconer and hunter, named Sonjo, who lived in the district of Tamura-no-Go, of the province of Mutsu. One day he went out hunting...} 2. The oshidori pair (00:39) {All that day Sonjo hunted, but he found nothing at all to catch. Dispirited and hungry, he set off home. But on the way back, at a place called Akanuma (a name which means "the time of our inseparable union"), he spied a pair of mandarin ducks, known as "oshidori", swimming together in a broad river that he was about to cross...} 3. The catch (01:40) {Now, to kill oshidori is not good, because from ancient times they were considered symbols of conjugal affection. But Sonjo was so hungry that he straight away crept into a good shooting position, took aim, and fired his arrow towards them. It struck the male and killed it instantly, while the female escaped into the rushes of the far shore and disappeared from sight.} 4. The dream (02:22) {Sonjo was very pleased with his catch. He took the dead duck home and cooked it to make a delicious evening meal for himself. However, that night he had an unsettling dream... } 5. The weeping woman (03:18) {In his dream Sonjo saw a beautiful woman come into his room, stand by his pillow and weep bitterly. "Why, oh why did you kill him?", she said. "At Akanuma we were so happy together. What harm did he do you? Do you even know what a wicked thing you have done? Me too you have killed, for I will not live without my husband. And she sobbed the words of this lament: "At the coming of twilight, I invited him to return with me. Now to sleep alone, in the shadow of the rushes of Akanuma. Ah, what misery unspeakable!"} 6. Return to Akanuma (04:55) {As the woman in Sonjo's dream departed, she said to him in a fierce whisper: "You cannot know what you have done. But tomorrow, when you go to Akanuma, you will see..." In the morning Sonjo was still troubled by the dream, so he set off at once to go back to the river, to learn if this was anything more than a dream. When he arrived at the river bank, he spotted the female oshidori swimming alone. The duck also perceived Sonjo and started swimming towards him, looking at him strangely all the while...} 7. The oshidori's despair (5:40) {When the duck reached the point where Sonjo was standing, she stopped moving for a moment. Then using her beak she suddenly tore open her own body and died before his very eyes. Sonjo was appalled... Never again would he go hunting. He shaved his head later that day and became a priest for the rest of his life.} Original text: see http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/lh/oshi.html
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