An analysis on yoshihisa taïra’s piano works: The example of sonomorphie i

Yoshihisa Taïra, a Japanese composer based in France, studied with André Jolivet and Henri Dutilleux after arriving Paris in 1966. Professor Jolivet and Pierre-Yves Artaud, a renown flautist, played important roles in the development of Taïra’s career. He settled in France and became an active composer and composition professor on the European musical stage. Taïra’s music style demonstrated a fusion of traditional Japanese culture and contemporary French music with vocal shouting and intermittent silence constantly interwoven in his works. These two features find their origins from “Kiaï” in Japanese martial art and “Ma”, a philosophical concept. Abandoning the use of concrete musical motives, Taïra chose to create an impression of fluidity and multiplicity through the transfiguration of sonic elements into his piano piece of Sonomorphie I. In addition, he concocted multiple levels of music colors with the use of piano pedals and overtones while at the same time highlighted the contrast and commonality between different movements.