Michael Gardiner AAWM Conference Paper Summary Chromatopes of Japanese Noh Drama Noh is an assemblage of disciplines involving theater, dance, music, costume and poetry. Each of these domains influences the others.1 For example, the time it takes for an actor to reach the stage during an entrance effects the duration and repetition of melodic and rhythmic cycles in the music. Conversely, the music plays more of a role in coordinating the pacing of the mai, or instrumental dance. The mask, part of the costume of the shite or principle actor, alters the acoustics of the voice,2 while changes in the poetry could effect numerous parameters including vocal range, instrumentation, accelerations and decelerations. While the modularity of this assemblage weaves an intertextual richness, it also gives rise to problems for the specialist who is responsible for such a vast territory—a circumstance that, understandably, calls for the borrowing of concepts from the other disciplines involved. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the investigation of musical form(s) in noh, where literary divisions tend to be given formal precedence over musical elements, limiting the perception of larger sonic designs.3 As a counter‐
1 William Malm describes noh as a “gestalt of equally contributing arts” (2001, 119); Bonnie Wade, citing Marco De Marinis, uses the term ‘intertextual effort’ to detail both the fusion of different arts and the substitutions of acting and musical performance schools that can take place in the staging of a play (2005, 79); Hoff and Flindt think of noh as “a performance event and not as a genre of literature” (Yokomichi 1973, 212); Bethe and Brazell link musical patterns with the “syntactic patterns” of dance movements (1978). 2 The author’s preliminary inquiry shows that noh masks serve both as a high frequency filter and a resonator of mid‐range frequencies, but more field recording samples need to be taken to substantiate this claim. 3 See Fujita Takanori’s comment, “Noh is an art form centered on verbal and literary text, to which music forms a background or an adjunct, a secondary dimension” (2008, 127). Additionally Mario 1
balance this tendency, the following paper provides a conception of form from the point of view of timbral designs, or what we term ‘chromatopes’ (chroma meaning color, and topos referring to a spatial motif or design). Chromatopes help to crystallize the sonic trends in noh by synthesizing and summarizing the music’s complex timbral progressions into a single name, or ‘conceptual character’. Once crystallized, the chromatopes can be overlaid with more traditional formal divisions, revealing both congruencies and differences.4 Spectrographs are used to analyze and reveal the chromatopes in the opening of the plays Funabenkei, Matsukaze, and Hagoromo (spectrographic images allow one to discuss in detail elements of the acoustic spectrum including overtones, non‐harmonic bands of noise, formants, and changes of intensity). The three plays were chosen because they exemplify standard, yet oppositional strategies of introduction (Minagawa 1956, 183); Funabenkei begins with a texturally dense shidai, the most common opening section in the noh repertoire (Bethe and Emmert 1993, 33), Matsukaze has a contrastingly sparse beginning, a nanori­bue,5 and Hagoromo, which exhibits a unique percussion texture, begins with an issei, the second most frequent opening in the repertoire. Yokomichi (Hoff and Flindt, 1973; Yokomichi, 1986; Yokomichi and Omote, 1961), whose model I will reference, does not include instrumental sections in his formal schemata. 4 My term ‘chromatope’ is itself a variant of literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin’s term chronotope, employed to isolate the spatio‐temporal functions of literary images. Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson define the chronotope as “a unit of analysis for studying texts according to the ratio and nature of temporal and spatial categories” (Bakhtin 1981, 425). The way in which Bakhtin interweaves space and time into his analyses of literature provides a conceptual framework that is particularly suitable for music, where the unfolding of timbral forms in musical space necessarily involve a temporal component. Even though the prefix choma of ‘chromatope’ replaces that of chrono from Bakhtin’s term ‘chronotope’ it is meant to retain a trace of Bakhtin’s temporal implication (as tone color designs necessarily unfold over time). 5 The performance I analyze is a variant of the Kita school and begins with a sparse solo flute piece, a nanori­bue. 2
The chromatopes are named ‘compact‐scanning’, ‘aerated’, and ‘plicated’, referring to Funabenkei, Matsukaze and Hagoromo respectively. The chromatope for Funabenkei is named ‘compact’ given its dense rotation of textures within a brief duration, while ‘scanning’ refers to the registral space it traverses. I call Matsukaze ‘aerated’ following its sparse orchestration and expansive durations. Hagoromo is called ‘plicated’ due to the unmatched relationship between the drums and voices at the opening. This allows for elastic fluctuations of tempi in the percussion, resulting in textures of expanding and contracting, accordion‐like, or ‘plicated’ attack intensities. The analyses are divided into two parts in order to differentiate the individual opening sections, or shōdan, from those that follow (hereafter I will refer to the sections of noh play using the term shōdan). The first part of each analysis considers the introductory shōdan pairs in isolation; the instrumental shidai with the shidai song in Funabenkei; the instrumental nanori­bue and vocal nanori declamation in Matsukaze; and the instrumental issei and issei song in Hagoromo. These shōdan pairs describe three distinct forms of entrance and first utterance of, in the case of the plays examined here, the secondary actor, or waki. Since the shōdan pairs are relatively brief in duration, the second part of each analysis describes how these opening sections combine with the succession of sections that follow. Each analysis will trace a path from individual shōdan to the progression or chain of shōdan, detailing the emergence of the chromatopes along 3
the way.6 Before discussing the chromatopes as wholes the first part of the paper will examine the sonic traits of the individual instruments revealing never before discussed timbral profiles while the second half moves to consider the interactions between the instruments and the voices in the generation of the larger chromatopic shapes. Performance Analysis of Noh The analysis of noh performance is challenging due to the numerous schools or guilds of actors and musicians that exist. Currently, there are five schools of principle actors (shite­kata),7 three schools of secondary actors (waki­kata),8 three nohkan flute schools,9 four kotsuzumi (shoulder drum) schools,10 five ōtsuzumi (hip drum) schools,11 and two taiko schools12 resulting in an extraordinary array of possible combinations and alternate renderings available for a performance. Rather than attempt to posit a stable version of the work from which the different schools produce individual variants, I believe it makes more sense to state that each performance actively assembles a possible model of the work (for which no original exists), a stance that perhaps inverts the expectations of how a model typically functions, resulting in a ‘metastable’ work—a work in a constant state of tension 6 Even though there are similarities in the patterns of progression of shōdan between plays, the second part of each analysis is specific to the plays examined. 7 Kanze, Hōshō, Komparu, Kongō and Kita. 8 Takayasu, Fukuō and Shimogakari Hōsho. 9 Issō, Morita, and Fujita. 10 Kanze, Ōkura, Kō, and Kōsei. 11 Kadono, Takayasu, Ōkura, Ishii, and Kanze. 12 Kanze and Komparu. 4
between its potential states.13 Thus, each chromatope is an image of a particular performance and does not claim to be a complete representation of the play at hand. Timbral analysis of individual noh performances opens up a world of coloristic detail and a degree of granularity not otherwise available. For example, in his discussion of rhythm in noh, Japanese composer Yoji Yuasa describes how “each beat has its own sense of ma which shapes the substance of its continuity. It could be said that such time can only be brought into being by a subjective rendering” (Yuasa 1993, 216).14 Ma, as an aesthetic concept, touches every facet of noh (not only its rhythm). This includes the temporal arrangements of its timbral space, which also requires a ‘subjective rendering’, that is to say a performance, in order to come to life. Therefore, even though one has to make some concessions when discussing an individual performance, I believe it remains the best way of describing the arrangement of timbral space in noh. The recorded performances for this paper were chosen from the author’s own school of shite training, the Kita school, along with the various assembled musicians and secondary actors.15 13 For a detailed account of this position see the author’s argument in Latartara and Gardiner (2007), in which they argue that models exist in a cyclic and non‐hierarchical relationship with the musical work. 14 Ma is a Japanese artistic aesthetic typically translated as the ‘space’ or ‘interval’ between parts. In music ma could refer to phrasing, placement or sense of silence, the space created by breathing, by echoes and repetitions, to name only a few. For further examples see Yoshioka (2002). 15 The recordings used for this paper are not commercial releases and were collected from various teachers and friends. The performers, role and school of training (when known) are listed below; Funabenkei; Omura Sadamu (shite, Kita school), Keisuke Shiotsu (kokata, Kita school), Kan Hōshō (waki, Hōshō school), Asataro Fujita (nohkan, Issō school), Akihiro Ko (kotsuzumi, Kō school), Yoshikatsu Tsukuda (ōtsuzumi, Takayasu school). Hagoromo; Roppeita Kita (shite, Kita school), Mineo Kaburaki (waki, Hōshō school), Mitsumasa Nomiyama (waki­tsure, Hōshō school), Masamitsu Takahashi (waki­tsure, Hōshō school), Yukimasa
Issō (nohkan, Issō school), Hayao Uzawa (kotsuzumi, Ōkura school), Takashi Kakihara (ōtsuzumi, Takayasu school). 5
Matsukaze; Goto Tokuzo (shite, Kita school), Awaya Shintaro (shite­tsure, Kita school), Hōshō Yaichi
(waki, Hōshō school), Fujita Daigoro (nohkan), kō enjiro (kotsuzumi), Yasufuku Haruo (ōtsuzumi). 6