Bang on a Can

Years ago, along with extensive studies in Western music, I studied Gagaku at UCLA. Later I went to Tokyo and studied with the lead bamboo flute player in the Emperor's Orchestra. Gagaku is Japanese court music. Its sound is massive and strong but at the same time graceful and elegant. The word literally means "elegant music." The graceful crescendos and decrescendos and the slow, unfolding melody spoke to me immediately. Before they ever pick up instruments, musicians in this tradition learn to sing the melodies, memorizing by rote. Then they are given lessons in dance. They breathe together. They know the art form from the inside out, how all the parts fit together. As a Westerner, I got the crash course, but I learned to love the slow, unhurried melodies and how each slide in pitch, instead of being merely decoration, functions to move the phrase forward. The slides to me are just so beautiful. They are a very natural sound. If you hear the sound of the wind or water, if you listen to birds, to animals howling, even to the human voice, there are all sorts of gradations and slides in pitch. Red shift refers to the way astronomers and physicists measure movement and distances of far away celestial bodies. When I wrote this work, I had the feeling of something of great mass and motion, far away, like a comet, first seeming to move slowly, then gradually accelerating towards us, faster and faster, until finally at great speed it swoops by us and through us, back out into space. --Lois V Vierk