Exciting new blog

Hi, Criterion Improvisations fans.

You might want to check out a new blog I'm doing called "Music Appreciation at Saint Josephs." I'll be teaching Music Appreciation at St. Joseph's College in Windham, Maine this Spring. This is some free open course ware that is an interactive blog looking at the history of music from Gregorian Chant to modern day Rock. I think you'll like it. Just click below:

Music Appreciation at Saint Josephs

Toshiru Mayuzumi Continued...Finally!

Finally a blog about film scores! I'm sorry I've had to use this blog space as a place to do homework assignments but I'm finally back, continuing my exploration of the concert career of Japanese film composer Toshiru Mayuzumi.

I did actually buy a CD with some of Mayuzumi's orchestral concert music on NAXOS (8.557693) conducted by Takuo Yuasa. The earliest piece of music I was able to hear so far was from 1948. It is a short orchestral piece called Rumba Rhapsody. A rumba is the slowest of five Afro-Cuban ballroom dances. The other dances are the paso double, cha cha cha, samba and the jive. The dance comes from Cuba before the revolution.

Here is a rather sexy video of the rumba:

Why, you ask, would a Japanese composer be interested in a Cuban dance? As we will see, Mayuzumi was very interested in exotic things. His dad was a sea-captain and inspired his interest in foreign parts of the world. We will see this interest in exotic things throughout his career, even in the movies he would score for in the future. Because his dad was away from home a lot, a a child, Mayuzumi would dream of the places his father might be traveling to. Later in life, he would explore exotic subjects as a way to feel a connection with hid dad.

Rumba Rhapsody starts off sounding a lot like Rite of Spring Stravinsky. This is no surprise because Mayazumi was introduced to the music of Stravinsky, Debussy and Ravel when he attended the Tokyo Music School in 1945 and studied under Qunihico Hashimoto. Hashimoto became a role model for Mayuzumi in many ways, influencing his politics as well as the way he dressed. Perhaps Hashimoto became a bit of a father figure for Mayazumi.

Hashimoto had Mayuzumi compose in every style, from pop music to more progressive pieces. This helps explain the scores Mayazumi wrote for Koreyoshi Kurahara in the sixties (from the Eclipse set The Warped World of Koreyoshi Kurahara that we will be looking at soon) with their wide variety of musical styles. Mayuzumi's love for exoticism would give his music a richness and variety that made it unique.

I don't know if he was quite there yet with Rumba Rhapsody but the piece is certainly delightful and accesable to any open minded listener. If you have a taste for the Exotica movement in the late 50's and early 60's you will really enjoy the piece. (Think Martin Denny, Arthur Lyman Dick Schory and RCA Living Stereo) After the Stravinsky-esque opening, you can imagine you're sitting in your art deco living room with some colorful cocktail in hand enjoying the "hi-fi".

The only difference is that there is nothing corny or substandard about this music. The music is expertly orchestrated, and the Stravinsky influence shows Mayuzumi was not just a lounge lizard. I like that he wasn't afraid to let all his influences show here.

You can buy the whole CD or download it from amazon for less than seven bucks and I would suggest you do.

Join me next time when we continue to explore the life and music of Toshiru Mayuzumi by taking a look at his next orchestral piece Symphonic Mood.

Criterion Improvisations - Understanding 12-tone Music

After hearing from several people regarding Criterion Improvisations, one thing seemed to be a recurring comment. Many of you reading this blog felt I went over your heads with unfamiliar music lingo.

One of things I mentioned was 12-tone composition. I had mentioned that Toshiru Mayuzumi had composed in this style in the mid-fifties. In this edition of Criterion Improvisations I will attempt to give you a fairly simple explanation of what I meant by this with the aid of some video links you can check out to illustrate my point.

Let’s begin with a musical example. The person who really developed the idea of 12-tone composition was Arnold Schoenberg, who eventually codified it into a new method of composing. He didn’t just have students, he had disciples who included Anton Webern, Alban Berg and Pierre Boulez, to name just a few. Here is Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra Op. 34, written in 1934:






After hearing that, you are probably either convinced to never listen to Schoenberg’s music again or you are at least intrigued about a type of music you may not understand but may want to learn more about. This is music without a tonal center. Did you sense an over-all important note here? Most typical Classical or Romantic music has a tonal center. There is one note the music seems to resolve to. Click here to listen to an excerpt from Mozart:




Did you sense that there was one particular note that seemed to be most important? You don’t even have to know the name of the note to sense this. Usually the last note in a tonal composition is this note or the compositions’ tonal center. In tonal compositions, notes are not part of a democracy but notes are ranked in order of importance. That’s why most symphonies will tell you the key in their title. This was important to understanding the music.

Schoenberg wanted to break away from the idea of a tonal center. He sought to free music from what he saw as a system of the past that was stifling his creativity. Here is a little video bio about Schoenberg’s life that includes some excellent samples of his music.



If you are at all familiar with the piano, you know there are 12 notes: Ab, A, Bb, B, C, C#, D, Eb, E, F, F# and G. Schoenberg sought to make all 12 of these notes equal. No “big cheese” of notes, everybody equal. This may be why when you listened to the above piece by Schoenberg that it may have seemed a bit directionless to you. To try to create a discernable pattern to the ear, Schoenberg arranged the 12 notes in a certain order. Say, A, Eb, D, C#, Bb, F, Ab, F#, B, E, C, C for example. As these notes are repeated in the same sequence over and over you can hopefully begin to recognize the pattern they make. Here is a video tutorial on 12-tone composition for you to look at:



I hope you will begin to give this music a chance and try to listen with open ears. It could be the beginning of a whole new musical adventure for you. As we explore the different film score composers in the Criterion Collection, I may present a tutorial like this from time to time to help everyone feel included in what I'm writing about. The purpose of this blog is not to talk over your heads and display my musical knowledge (not all that impressive, really) but to join you in an exploration of new musical directions. I hope this blog entry helped me to start achieve that ultimate goal. Let me know what you think. Maybe next time we'll look at electronic music in the 50's.

Thanks for reading.

The Warped Ones Part One: Enter Mayuzumi

The Warped Ones (1960)
Part One: Enter Toshiru Mayuzumi

Get ready for this one, folks. The Warped Ones, the second film in the Eclipse Series The Warped World of Koreyoshi Kurahara, is where things start to get a little more interesting. This Japanese New Wave film features a score by Toshiru Mayuzumi that will take your breath away with its free jazz score. The film itself is a wild ride from start to finish and the music reflects that fact.

One of the things I would like to accomplish through this blog would be to introduce you to some new music you might not be aware of in a variety of styles of music. I would like to show how looking closely at movie scores and soundtracks can be a gateway into new worlds of music. This has certainly been the case for me. Hearing the music of Frank Zappa and seeing films like 200 Motels, which satirized a lot of 20th Century classical music, was certainly a gateway for me which lead to my interest in all kinds of music and ultimately lead me to compose my own symphonic, “classical” and art music. I hope this blog might do its own part in expanding your musical horizons. Looking into Mayuzumi certainly expanded mine.

In this installment of Criterion Improvisations, I would like to take a look at Mayuzumi who would also score the next three films in this Eclipse set. Even though Masaru Sato did a great job scoring Intimidation (1960) for Kurahara (see my last column), I believe Mayuzumi and Kurahara are a match made in heaven, as the director starts to get more and more bizarre throughout the 60’s.

Mayuzumi was an adventurous composer and unlike Sato (who only wrote film scores)wrote a lot of music for the concert stage. With the piece X,Y ,Z (1955), he was the first Japanese composer to work with musique concrète. That same year also he became the first Japanese composer to write an electronic music piece, Shūsaku I. Around this same period he also wrote 12-tone pieces, aleatory pieces and compositions for prepared piano as well as an orchestral piece called Elektoplasm that featured electric guitar. (I’d like to see, hear and possibly play that score someday – I am a concert guitarist myself. Check out www.donpride.com to find out more.)

Near the end of the 50’s, his music started to reflect his interest Buddhist chants. He wrote the “Nirvana Symphony” in 1958. The symphony is very colorfully orchestrated and is should be very accessible to most listeners. The symphony is in six movements:
1. Campanology I – orchestra
2. Suramaganah – Buddhist chant
3. Campanology II – orchestra
4. Mahaprajnaparamita – Buddhist chant
5. Campanology III – orchestra
6. Finale – chant and orchestra combined

It is quite a musical journey for the adventurous listener and I recommend it highly. The whole piece is around 35 minutes long and combines Eastern and Western music in a way that is highly original and not “cheesy” or “new agey” in any way. If you like Bright Sheng then I bet you would like this music. Of course, if you haven’t heard Bright Sheng yet, then you should definitely check out his music as well to see what exciting things are going on in contemporary classical composition today. You can download the “Nirvana Symphony” on itunes or amazon in a performance by the Tokyo Metropolitan symphony that is quite nice.

I think I’m going to end this “improvisation” right there. I have ordered Mayuzumi’s Mandala Symphony from anmazon and it should be here on Wednesday. This piece was written in 1960, the same year The Warped Ones was released, and will make an excellent companion as we continue to follow Mayazumi’s career in both film and on the concert stage together next time. In the meantime, please check out the “Nirvana Symphony” and let me know what you think.

Next time: Mayazumi’s Mandala Symphony and The Warped Ones

Intimidation (1960)

Intimidation (1960)

I would like to begin Criterion Improvisations with a look at the 28th Eclipse set, The Warped World of Koreyoshi Kurahara. This week we look at the soundtrack to the first film in the set Intimidation, released in 1960.

The music in this film is composed by Masuro Sato, who may not ring a bell at first but is actually very important in the world of Japanese film. He attended school at National Music Academy where he studied with Fumio Hayasaka. Hayasaka did the scores to many of Akira Kurosawa’s films including Rashomon (1950) and Seven Samurai (1954). When Hyasaka died unexpectedly in 1955, Sato took over for him and worked with Kurosawa for the next ten years, scoring such classics as Throne of Blood(1957), The Bad Sleep Well (1960) , High and Low(1963) and Yojimbo (1961). Sato also composed scores for Kenji Miziguchi and did several of the Godzilla movies as well. In all, he wrote the film scores to over 300 films before he died in 1999.

Eclipse collectors have had a chance to see one of Kurohara’s films before in the set Eclipse Series 17: Nikatsu Noir (another great box set), which contained the film I Am Waiting, an earlier film from 1957 starring Yujiro Ishihara.

Before you read any further, go watch the film, especially if you are sensitive about “spoilers.

The score to this film is probably the least adventurous of all the films in this Eclipse set but nonetheless expertly done. One thing all of Kurahara’s films have in common in this set is the way they only use music very sparingly at very specific points in the film. Most of this film, the only soundtrack is the dialog and effects track.

The film starts and ends with a train whistle and the same music. The first train begins the downfall of Japanese business man Kyosuke and the train at the end seals his fate (I won’t give that away). One underlying sonic theme I noticed was the sounds of loud whistles, buzzers, phones and alarms throughout the film. The very dissonant score reflects this as well. During the credits we have strings playing aggressive chords in a rhythm that recalls Psycho (which was released later the same year) accompanied by a chromatic and angular melody in the brass. Most of the musical ideas within the film are presented over the credits. The rest of the film simply recasts these ideas with different orchestration and variations. When the opening music is brought back at the end of the film it gives the film a musical continuity that is probably only subconsciously felt the first time through.

When the protagonist starts to formulate a plan to rob his own bank, we hear pizzicato violins playing minor seconds quarter notes in counterpoint to a trombone playing the melody from the beginning of the film. The use of dissonant harmony throughout the film seems to reflect the sound effects, creating a recurring feeling of unease throughout the film. The same music returns again as he begins his robbery of the bank, giving the viewer a hint that this robbery will not go as planned. Most of the robbery itself has no music at all, effectively increasing the sense of tension with sound effects brought up loudly in the mix and with no dialogue. The opening melody played by the trombone is taken up by an unaccompanied muted trumpet later in the film when the protagonist meets his blackmailer and ultimately kills him.

The orchestration of the score reminds me of Kurosawa films, with the use of marimba wood blocks, strings and brass instruments. I am reminded of the staccato use of the marimba in the soundtrack to Yojimbo, which I recently listened to. This wasn’t apparent to me until I listened to the score without the picture, which I would suggest doing, especially over the opening credits.

Overall, the score to Intimidation is pretty conventional. You might never notice the subtle use of music and sound effects as you watch the film. However, I guarantee to you will notice the music in the next film in the series which I will look at next time. Until then, I would recommend you take a second look at Intimidation and note the effective use of sound and silence throughout the film.

NEXT TIME: The Warped Ones

Welcome to Criterion Improvisations

Welcome to my new project. I will be taking a look at a subject I haven't seen addressed before on the various Criterion blog sites: the soundtracks to the films in the Criterion Collection and the equally exciting Eclipse Series.

I can thank Criterion for introducing me to a whole new world of film I never knew about before I started collecting Criterion films way back in the laserdisc days. As a musician, these films are what I watch when I'm not composing, practicing, playing gigs or spending time with my family. They have been a guilty pleasure for a long time. This blog is a way for me to do something creative with all the film knowledge I've accrued over the years. This will be a learning experience for me as a writer who is dipping his feet in the film blogging world. Hopefully I can contribute something useful and unique.

I had thought of going through the Criterion Collection by spine number, which has been done before but instead, I am going to write about each film as I either acquire or re-watch them. I am currently working my way through the excellent Eclipse set The Warped World of Koreyoshi Kurahara. The music on these films is fabulous and inspiring for me to write about. I will tackle each of these films, one by one. After that, I will be re-watching The Orphic Trilogy, featuring the films of Jean Cocteau (himself a composer) featuring the music of les six composer Georges Auric. Heck, maybe we'll also look at Beauty and the Beast as well while we're at it. If this sounds like an interesting start to you, then you are in the right place.

But first, in fulfilment of a homework assignment for a Music Technology class at USM: Alexander Street Publishing: Is It Worth $5000? This will only be posted for a limited time so read it quick if you are interested.

After that, it's on to the soundtrack to Intimidation, the Japanese film noir from 1960 directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara.