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Music open thread: Koto concertos [1]
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Date: 2025-07-07
With the so-called Big Beautiful Bill now signed into law by the so-called president, big cuts are coming to seemingly everything. It’s going to be a situation similar to what music departments in American high schools are quite familiar with.
Reading and math are considered essential, music and other things are not considered essential. But at pace we’re going, anything that does not directly put money into billionaires’ pockets will considered inessential. We must all sacrifice so that parasitic billionaires can live in comfort! So who cares if a few people die in a flood due to cuts at the National Weather Service...
I vaguely remember learning about the koto or its Chinese equivalent in middle school or high school. I think there was a concert in the school’s auditorium. It was so long ago I don’t remember exactly. That was probably a privilege compared to what that school’s students get these days as far as music education.
According to Grove Music Online, the koto is
A Japanese long zither, one of the family of East Asian zithers that includes the Chinese zheng, the Korean Kayagŭm and the Vietnamese Đàn tranh. The koto probably originated in China and was introduced to Japan around the start of the Nara period (710–84) or somewhat earlier. ... The modern instrument has 13 silk or nylon strings of equal length and thickness, stretched with equal tension over 13 movable bridges. The tuning of the strings, while always pentatonic, depends on the mode of the piece. ... In modern Japan it is most important as a household instrument and is considered a valuable adjunct to a refined upbringing and education, although this role is rapidly being usurped by the piano.
Or maybe I’m remembering the koto from the General MIDI standard, which I studied in college. That standard assigns the numbers 1 to 128 to represent specific instruments. To give just a few examples, the piano is assigned 1, the violin is assigned 41, the horn (cor à pistons, as the French call it) is assigned 61, the flute is assigned 74.
The General MIDI standard has a category of “ethnic” instruments in the range 105 to 112. The koto is assigned 108, after the sitar, banjo and shamisen.
The General MIDI standard does not dictate how close a compliant implementation must sound like the real instrument. In the case of the timpani (48, puzzlingly shoved in the solo strings category), for example, the sound you get in MIDI might be anywhere from a spoon banging a cardboard box to something close to actual timpani.
In the case of the koto, I don’t really remember hearing it in MIDI. It’s much easier now to hear the real thing in YouTube videos like this one
x YouTube Video
or this one of the concerto by Daron Aric Hagen performed by Yumi Kurosawa accompanied by the Orchestra of the Swan conducted by David Curtis. There’s an encore after the concerto.
x YouTube Video
The open thread question: What is your favorite music with solos for the koto?
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