Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Searching for I-forget-what, I stumbled across this page with a bunch of interesting pieces arranged for shakuhachi. The notation is in .pdf form and there's a recording of each piece in mp3 too.

http://www.musicon.co.jp/kouza.htm

The top half is "Japanese music", the bottom is "not Japanese music" (includes some classical stuff, some folk songs from around the world, etc.)

Here are the things that I think might be most interesting to people on the forum:

- 朗詠 東岸, Rōei: Tōgan
- 歌被講 君が代, Utai-kō: Kimi ga yo
- 雅楽 越天楽, Gagaku: Etenraku
- 琴古流本曲 鹿の遠音, Kinko-ryū honkyoku: Shika no tōne
- 本曲 鉢返し, Honkyoku: Hachigaeshi (no "Hi fu mi")
- 催馬楽 更衣, Saibara: Koromogae

Rōei was as I understand it a subset of "gagaku" originally, back when "gagaku" referred to a whole approach to music. Chinese poems read Japanese-style, with accompaniment from the usual gagaku instruments. Vocal style influenced by Buddhist traditions (yes, including shōmyō). Ancestor of modern shigin. "Tōgan" means "Eastern cliffs". The full poem is 東岸西岸之柳/ 遅速不同/ 南枝北枝之梅/ 開落已異, but in rōei only the first three lines are read (and each by a different person), followed by an instrumental coda.

Utai-kō: People getting together to perform contemporary => gagaku-style reading of Japanese poems. The poem read here (twice) is "Kimi ga yo", the same one that was set to music to become the national anthem. This is not the same music as the anthem though.

Saibara: Wikipedia has a good article on this, including the lyrics to Koromogae.

None of the MP3s for these pieces actually include singing, bummer.