Back to the first encounter with Satsumabiwa….
The following day, Sunday, the lessons began once more in the morning.
A secret code
At the start of the session, we revised the previous day's work. After this, I saw the notation for the first time. It looked so completely alien to anything I had seen before. I'd become lamely familiar with Kinko-ryu Shakuhachi notation since my arrival in Japan. This was written in text form vertically, going from right to left, a traditional direction of writing in Japan.
Fumon's notation for Satsumabiwa was very different. Written in his own hand, there were what appeared to be horizontal staves of four lines interrupted intermittently by barlines of some kind or another. These were filled with a mix of black 'filled-in' and white 'empty' triangles some with dots underneath.
Sound visually conceptualised
Up to this point in my life, I had only used staff notation, the normal way everyone expects music to be written. In fact, I was not able to conceive of music being expressed in a different format.
I've always found joy in the expressive possibilities of music. I conceived of all music as principally concerned with pitch and tempo, with meter and rhythm functioning as loose mathematical divisions of time. Embarrassingly, I pondered little about other elements of music, such as dynamic variation (getting louder or softer, accenting, etc.), tempo and timbre (the tone quality), except when specified in a score.
I guess learning the organ played a role in this. I never had to think about how pitch was produced. I played the key or pedal and the instrument produced the note. So music-making was like realizing the notes on the page.
Looking back, I can understand now that staff notation had formed my conception of what music was. I was soon to discover that pitch didn't need to be fixed but might be altered microtonally and expressed not as sharp or flat but possibly bright or dark. I was also to be thrown into a soundscape where meter didn't exist and rhythm was not a measure of time ratios but could be punctuated existence without any reference to an underlying fixed pulse.
Staff notation as an abstract representation of sound
Reflecting on Western staff notation, I think it’s safe to say its origins are found in song. However, the greatest driver for developments in staff notation has perhaps been the desire for making music in ensemble. As a result, pitch needed to be represented accurately. Rhythm and a steady pulse or beat had to be clearly defined.
In effect, Western staff notation records music as sound in an abstract format. This is detached from the way it is produced. Satsumabiwa, on the other hand, uses notation to communicate the practicalities of how to play the instrument and to serve as a memory aid to recall the pieces. It is not intended to serve as an accurate record of how the music sounds.
This form of notating how an instrument is played is called tablature. Tablature has also been used historically in Western music, too, notably for lute and organ.
In Japan, all traditional music is notated in tablature form. Each instrument has its unique form of tablature. In some cases, different schools using the same instrument may have a different way of representing music. As such, there is no standardised method for writing traditional music in Japan. Therefore, someone who played one traditional instrument would very likely find the tablature used on another instrument indecipherable.
Improvised rhythm
Returning to the sheet of Satsumabiwa notation I received from Fumon:
The piece we started to learn that day was called Kuzure. This is the piece most commonly taught to the novice. It has a steady even rhythm with repeated patterns, making it easier for the beginner to focus on the difficult task of holding the instrument and using the plectrum while actually making music.
The notation uses four lines. These lines represent the four strings. Gradually, I began to identify some aspects of the score based on what I had learned the previous day.
The direction of the triangles now made sense as they described whether the string was played from above or below. The numbers above the triangles I understood to indicate the pitch.
I could now get an idea of what the melodic contour of the piece was. I was interested to see that the pitch went quite high one place. I was wondering how this would be played.
I thought that the vertical lines might be barlines, but this is not the case. These are used by Fumon to indicate musical patterns, or the smallest musical thought or unit.
There are no indications for rhythm or pulse. In fact, Fumon explained to me later that rhythm is deliberately not indicated in Satsumabiwa. It is free in a random sense — not as a musician might understand rubato, for example. Rather, the player responds to the text by playing the instrumental part with improvised rhythm, and in some cases pitch without losing the character of the interlude. The ideal is to create an atmosphere suited to the theme of the sung recitation.
We did talk about pulse in Satsumabiwa music. He described three unrelated pulses happening simultaneously that one responded to as a player: a sense of pulse punctuating the silence between certain notes, a sense of strong and weak, and finally the measure of one's breath.
Surprising way of changing pitch!
As the lesson progressed, we began to play sections with some of the higher notes. On the first day, I had only pressed the third string with my index finger to play SOH, a fifth higher than the open string. In this new part, I had to produce a note an octave higher. To play it, Fumon told me to add my ring finger and middle finger to the third string as well. I pressed at the next fret. Try as I might, I didn’t manage to get nearly close to a pitch an octave higher. “Press harder!”, Fumon said, and placing his left hand over my hand he pressed my fingers onto the string. The string stung my fingers and the correct pitch rang out.
This really was a revelation to me. I had to put a considerable amount of pressure on the string get a note an octave higher. It left me with many questions and thoughts…. How was I to know how much to press? I had no way to visualise how much to press. I had no way to know if I had applied enough pressure unless I sounded the string….
Holding sound in your fingers
Until this point, I had only played keyboard instruments and the flute. Anyone who has played piano or organ will know that if you press the correct key, you get the correct note (assuming the instrument is in tune, of course). These instruments are constructed such that the production of notes is not an immediate concern for the player. Obviously, timbre and touch (how the note is sounded) has a huge bearing on the experience of sound particularly on the piano, but also on the organ. Nevertheless, you know what pitch you are going to hear.
With Satsumabiwa, on the other hand, I was proceeding from the elemental level of forming the sound and pitch to be produced. Moreover, after I had sounded the string with the plectrum, I couldn't just let go of the string with my left hand. I had to "hold the pitch in my fingers" until the next note. It demanded a level of concentration I had not experienced before, save perhaps trying to combine feet and hands when I first started playing the organ.
Six months later, when Fumon and I next met at the succeeding musical open weekend in Takasaki, I completed this piece with Fumon. What a surprise I got when I saw that not only was I playing an octave higher than the open string by applying this pressure, I had to play up to a fourth higher again. It was tremendously difficult to do. I needed to completely change the manner in which I use my body, in fact.
Infinite possibilities within
I wondered why such a difficult way of playing was involved with this. In Western musical instruments, technology has played a huge part in making instruments easier to play, as well as expanding the technical possibilities available to musicians. Why in this country which was so technologically advanced and so ready to explore new possibilities was this instrument deliberately preserved in this way.
Over a period of time studying with Fumon, I arrived at an understanding why. By keeping the instrument in this very simple form, in order to play it, the student was forced to change the way they used their whole self, body and mind. In other words, as Western instruments were adapted to create more possibilities and expand the horizon of musical expressiveness, the Satsumabiwa forced the person to change and to find an infinite richness of possibilities within themselves.
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