The musical and performing culture of Japan developed in two main directions with the opening of the country for contacts with the West in 1868 and the proclamation of the policy of modernization of Japanese society: as a traditional and European type of culture, since at the end of the XIX century, the reforms of music education began, especially noticeable in the period 1910-1925, when the perception of Western culture was growing in the country.

A. V. ZHUKOVA

Member of the European Association for Japanese Studies, choreographer

Studying European and North American music, ballet, modern dance, European opera and drama theater (both drama and performance skills), the Japanese began to create their own musical works that meet European standards.

In parallel with the carefully preserved traditional culture in Japan, a European-style musical and performing culture was formed. At the same time, modern Japanese musical and performing arts are an integral part of traditional culture and are based on a common philosophy and national traditions.

The concept of "traditional music and performance art of Japan" is syncretic, it includes such components as: dance ¹ and visual-

philosophical and symbolic characteristics of plastic movement (color and semitones, light and chiaroscuro, pictorial sound and costume, and later, with the emergence of the No - mask theater, Kabuki - make-up theater); vocals and melodious narration of the narrator ⁽and later - the narrator2); musical accompaniment (instrumental sound, registers, timbres,etc.). duration, dynamics, semantic significance of pauses); individual freedom of each performer (instrumentalist, reciter, actor-dancer, etc.).

Traditional performing arts, literature, and the visual arts of most countries in the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan, have all been influenced by Indian and Chinese Buddhism, and even Islam.

The transformation of Japanese musical and performing arts took place throughout Japanese history as a result of the dialogue of Japanese culture with China (from the fifth century), with European countries (late 19th - early 21st centuries; from the second third of the 17th century to the end of the 19th century, contacts were allowed only with the Dutch), and the United States (1920s- the beginning of the XXI century). Although traditional Japanese culture is still important in the system of artistic education, in the culture of Japan of the XX-XXI centuries, styles of different musical and performing cultures interact: Japanese, European and African-American. And in Europe and the USA since the 50s and 60s.

In the teaching and staging of classical ballet, modern dance styles, especially jazz-modern, modern and jazz dance, are influenced by the aesthetics and philosophy of Zen Buddhism*.

The philosophical law of balance of Zen Buddhism (opposites interpenetrate, not antagonize) assumes in classical music of India, China and Japan (where Zen Buddhism has taken deep roots) closed periodic structures of musical composition and structural symmetry (2 + 2; 4 + 4, etc.). part of the musical size, the duration of which is calculated by the performer and is sufficient to accumulate energy, which he is obliged to transmit to the audience. Accordingly, a pause in the dance is a figure during the contemplation of which the viewer can meditate.

This law is important for the entire traditional culture of Japan: music and performance, fencing techniques, the art of tea drinking and making bouquets of ikebana, etc. were formed on the basis of the philosophy of Zen Buddhism. Behind each gesture and manner of performance of the Japanese people is a centuries-old ritual, religious, heroic story, thanks to which the technique of achieving a certain emotional state was developed. ³

JAPANESE MUSIC REFORM

The reform of music education and upbringing in Japan began with compulsory universal training in European music. Its main task was to educate young generations adapted to European culture, to study the hitherto unknown 7-note European harmony for playing instruments new to Japan: the piano and organ.

Music schools were established even in the most remote corners of the country and were supplied with European instruments. The school music reform and its objectives generated a lot of controversy in understanding and introducing European music not only to young Japanese people, but also to their parents, musicians themselves and music theorists.

Describing Japanese traditional music, it should be noted that it is based on a free rhythm and one-beat melodies that can last or shorten. Traditional Japanese music before exploring Europe was based on the same capabilities of human hearing and voice, but it was and still is based on 5 notes, and not 7, as in Europeans.

Japanese traditional music cannot be played on European instruments, because the Japanese concept of rhythm differs from the European one, which has a metrical genesis (i.e., it is built on the principle of "strong" and "weak", but in words it exists

* The Japanese Buddhist movement that came from China in the 12th century .

power stress). The Japanese have a musical criterion - "high" and " low " sound, and the stress in the vocabulary is musical, not forceful. This is because Japanese music developed in close connection with literature. (Many Japanese lyrics are completely musical and created with specific musical instruments, as in folk dance accompanied by song and music, in the Noh Theater, Kabuki.)

The Japanese themselves divide traditional music into two categories:: katarimono (telling a story) and utaimono (singing). But in both cases, the pause between words or in music is very noticeable. If the voice is delayed or the music itself is delayed, then this is a ma-pause, which is very important in Japanese performing arts. Every musician should know exactly when and how to start and finish their part.

In a European symphony orchestra, all instruments must stop at a wave of the conductor's baton. In a Japanese traditional music orchestra, no one expects this, and the musician stops at his own discretion, guided by the principle "after tension, relaxation is mandatory."

Japanese traditional music does not have the usual "waltz" rhythm in 3/4 (in other words, "one-two-three"), so waltz melodies, as well as musical instruments such as the grand piano, piano and violin, aroused widespread interest among the Japanese.

The most active and productive period of experimentation with musical and vocal Japanese forms in their correspondence to European music occurred in 1910-1925, when European music was widely and actively introduced into musical school and higher education.

The musical reform in Japan paved the way for the penetration and comprehension of classical European and American music by the Japanese at the beginning of the XX century. In the 30s, Japanese composers Ujo Noguchi, Nakayama Simpei, Kawamura Koyo, Kiyomi Fuji, returning to their homeland after studying in the West, recorded their works at the domestic record company Kinno hoshi ("Golden Star"). At about the same time, European and American dance art began to enter Japan, both classical ballet and modern dance (modern dance, jazz dance).

THE ORIGINS OF JAPANESE JAZZ

In the 20s of the XX century, not only classical music of the European type, but also national jazz music and jazz dance developed fruitfully in Japan.

Modern Japanese jazz and jazz dance are unusual phenomena, since their visual and musical means illustrate a completely different culture - traditional African-American music and plastics.

The combination of three different musical cultures (traditional Japanese, European, and African-American) in the Japanese musical and performing arts during the XX - early XXI centuries formed a new artistic worldview among Japanese musicians, composers, and choreographers.

Jazz that appeared in the 10s of the XX century. first in the southern United States (in New Orleans), and after the First World War, it spread to major cities around the world, integrating folk blues and ragtime music. The rhythm in jazz is multi-faceted, based on a continuous alternation of feelings of stability and instability, which corresponds to the Japanese principle of "tension - relaxation" in traditional musical and performing arts.

Japanese jazz is not only the performance of American masterpieces, but also the original music that developed in Japan in the 20s and 30s of the XX century, when George Gershwin's popularity around the world was extraordinary. It was then that two young Japanese students, Mitsuhiko Shimoda, a pianist, and Kanai Hideta, a saxophonist and trumpeter, studied in Washington and JAD-

but those who absorbed new things that were not typical of Japanese music at that time took lessons from Gershwin. Upon their return to their homeland, they became married and started the Japanese professional jazz movement and contributed to its development. "Listening to Gershwin, Kern or Berlin was a pleasure for us, who wanted to become real musicians," they recalled. - We were particularly captivated by solo music for instruments played with an orchestra, such as Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F Major, which we heard in 1928 (the first performance of this concerto took place in the United States in 1925 - A. J.).

Gershwin's music for the musicals "Gossip" and "Palace" and in his other works was unusual for the Japanese, fresh and temperamental, calling for a test of his compositional pen. Therefore, when they returned to Japan, they soon organized their own jazz group Furu bando (furu-dosl. "old", i.e. "Old jazz group", although its founders meant "experienced group" and, as time has shown, turned out to be right. - A. J.), in which K. Hideta was active in the 1960s and 1970s. His fame in the world was reinforced by the Kings Roa jazz Orchestra ("Cry of the Kings"), which he created in parallel. Since about the mid-1950s, King's Roa has regularly performed twice a month in Tokyo at KinPari ("Golden Paris") jazz concerts. His orchestra remained popular in Japan until the early 1980s.

Maestro Hidata has worked with composers such as Kanda, Kawamura, Yamada, Nakayama, and Ieda. By the early 1980s, the King's Roa Jazz Orchestra's repertoire included not only his own compositions, but also jazz adaptations of Japanese folk music, popular European hits by Adamo, McCartney, Lennon, Louis, etc., music by Roth and Legrand for movies. A special passion of the maestro and his musicians was the rhythms of Spain, its folklore.

To. Hidata laid the foundations of Japanese jazz in composition and genre performance. He was glad that, in addition to their orchestra, other musicians who performed world classics, folk melodies of Japan and other countries, while maintaining their own style, gained great fame in Japan and abroad.

Japanese jazz-modern dance is woven from pictures-poses, each of which is an independent "frozen" picturesque bright canvas. His choreography often resembles a hieroglyph that is close and understandable to the Japanese people; it is a compressed, but meaningful plastic picture.

The peculiarity of Japanese jazz and jazz dance is its melody with a clear distinction between rhythm and accents in it. All Japanese modern choreography tends towards jazz-modern dance (which explains the frequent tours of the Maurice Béjard troupe and its warm welcome in Japan), which has fundamental principles that bring it closer to traditional Japanese dance.

* * *

The formation of a European-style performing culture in Japan led, first of all, to the emergence of separate directions: music, dance, opera and drama, as well as to a change in the ethnic temperament of the Japanese, and enriched their artistic worldview.

¹ Among the terms denoting Japanese dance, the following are particularly important: buyo - Japanese traditional dance, which the Japanese consider "classical"; odori-folk dance, dance; mai - Japanese theater dance.

² In the origin of Japanese military oral narratives, for example, two lines can be traced: 1. In Japan, from time immemorial, there were special corporations of storytellers - kataribe, whose members told the audience myths, legends, and ancient traditions from memory; 2. In Buddhist temples, there was a tradition of sermons, instructive stories, and legends to the assembled believers. By the beginning of the 12th century, these two lines were combined into a new genre of oral lute narration - katarimono. See: Goreglyad V. N. Diaries and Essays in Japanese literature of the X-XIII centuries. Moscow, Nauka, 1975.

^{Nyozekan H.} 3 The Japanese Character. A Cultural Profile. Greenwood Press, 1965, p. 58, 85.

^{Zhukova I. V., Zhukova A.V.} 4 Pin-epo, pin-epo. On the musical culture of Japan in the XX century, Moscow, Moscow State University, 2005, pp. 45-51.

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