Organ landscape Japan

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The beginning of an organ landscape Japan , an organ landscape with historically determined regional organ properties, can be seen in 1597, when the first pipe organ was brought to Japan by Christian missionaries . Between 1606 and 1613, several pipe organs were made from bamboo in Japan under the guidance of an Italian priest . During the ban on Christianity in Japan from 1613 to 1873, however, the use of organs was no longer an option.

When Japan opened up in the 1860s, the harmonium was the first aerophonic keyboard instrument to arrive in Japan. Bach's organ music first became known to the Japanese when it was arranged for harmonium. The Japanese company Yamaha produced harmonies until the 1990s.

In the last quarter of the 19th century the import of organs to Japan started again. The Japanese organ landscape took off again in the 1960s, when mainly German (and to a lesser extent Dutch and French) organ building companies exported numerous organs to Japan. Since then, several local organ builders have established themselves in Japan.

Today there are an estimated 1,100 pipe organs in Japan, around 700 of which are in churches, schools, and concert halls. This means that just under 10% of the approximately 6,900 Christian churches in Japan are equipped with pipe organs; in most other cases an electronic instrument or piano is used. The first of around 30 Japanese concert hall organs was built in 1961 by the Bonn company Klais (4 manuals, 55 registers) in the Beethoven Hall at Musashino University on the outskirts of Tokyo .

The most important Japanese concert organ today is the organ in the Grand Hall of the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space with a total of 126 registers and over 9000 pipes, built in 1991 by the French organ builder Marc Garnier . The organ can be rotated 180 ° and has a double front : one side shows a classic organ front with a three-manual console , from which two organ works can be played, one in the Dutch Renaissance style of the 17th century or optionally one in the German Baroque style of the 18th century Century. The other side shows a modern organ front, from which a five-manual organ work in the French romantic-symphonic style of the 19th century can be played. The organ basically consists of three independent instruments with their characteristic historical peculiarities and moods . The old problem of the universal organ ("on which you can play everything, just nothing authentic") has therefore been solved here in a new and original way.

Another original instrument is the Klais organ built in 1995 in the Kyoto concert hall (4 manuals, 90 registers): this organ has four registers, which imitate traditional Japanese musical instruments. The labial registers Shakuhachi 8 ′ (in the Récit expressif) and Shinobue 4 ′ (in the swell system ) are inspired by the Japanese bamboo flutes of the same name (see Shakuhachi ), while the Shō 8 ′ (in the Grand Chœur) and Hichiriki 8 ′ (in the swell system) registers are striking Tongue registers are, which imitate the full- reed mouth organ Shō and the double-reed instrument Hichiriki . To develop these registers, the sound spectra of the corresponding Japanese instruments were carefully analyzed in order to match their sound characteristics as well as possible.

literature

  • Christian Ahrens, Jonas Braasch: The "Japanese" registers of the Klais organ in the Kyōto Concert Hall, Japan , in: Acta Organologica 27, 2001, pp. 147–178.

Web links

Commons : Organs in Japan  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files