Yannick Paget will conduct an original concert “Voice of 風水” for La Nuit Blanche at Kyoto Art Center on October 1st from 16.00 – 17.30.
Here’s Yannick with some background to the piece:
“It was an exciting challenge to start the new KAC’s cycle “listening to the voice of Feng shui”, especially in a town like Kyoto that had a minister of Feng Sui for so many years and that incarnate the rules of Feng Sui. I tried in my piece “Vent et Eau” to catch the spirit of this science. Feng shui regulates our environment to produce balance and harmony; it allies poetry and science, spirituality and rationality, using many different tools.
I didn’t explore in this piece all of them but I choose to highlight the feng shui compass Which organize elements, direction and seasons and the magic square that forms the foundation of many feng shui tools and calculations.
The 5th elements:
“Vent et eau” is the French translation of the kanjis風and 水, the two main element of the feng shui. They appear first in this piece introduction because the wind and the water disperse and stop all energies on earth. Then, I worked with the 5th elements as such dissimilar musical substances that have to find a unity and an harmony.
Each element is associated to a group of instruments and succeeds in the cycle of birth order, each one giving birth and nourishing the following one: Earth (strings), Metal (brass), Water (harp, piano), Wood (clarinet, flute), Fire (percussions)
The final evokes, the « shi » or the « ki », with fusion and harmony
Direction:
To associate each element to a direction, all instruments are spatialized;
Earth (strings): CENTER, Metal (brass): WEST, Water (harp, piano): NORTH Wood (clarinet, flute): EST, Fire (percussions): SOUTH
Seasons
Seasons are interposed as a link connecting each element.
That way, ruff non-human & mineral material also alternates with human life and the rhythms of seasons. The singers, to express the season and this human life sing text extract from the timelessness haikus from Basho.
The magic square in which all numbers add to 15 in all directions
I used It for the rhythms with cycle of 15 bits and combination like 7 /5 /3: (3/2/2) (3/2) (3).
I worked with Modes of limited transposition compiled by the French composer Olivier Messiaen. They are musical modes or scales that fulfill specific criteria relating to their symmetry and the repetition of their interval groups.
In the final, I choose the Mode of limited transposition number 3. It includes 9 notes each of them being assigned to a number. Then I could generate chords of 3 notes using the magic square.”
– Yannick Paget September 2016
For more information please visit the Kyoto Art Center website at http://www.kac.or.jp/events/19346/.
Fantastic! Another artist with an interest in the elements in Japan and in particular the importance of feng shui (fusui in Japanese as I understand it). I would love to see the concert and will definitely refer to it in my book ‘Elemental Japan’. The performance is on the second day I am back in Japan. The plan was to be in Tokyo. I may change that now and make the trip to Kyoto. Better check that concert tickets and accommodation are available first. 🙂 Thanks for the post Michael.