Toshio Hosokawa

Biography

Toshio Hosokawa (細川 俊夫, Hosokawa Toshio; born 23 October 1955) is a Japanese composer of contemporary classical music. He studied in Germany but returned to Japan, finding a personal style inspired by classical Japanese music and culture. He has composed operas, the oratorio Voiceless Voice in Hiroshima, and instrumental music.
He was the cofounder and artistic director of a Japanese festival for contemporary music and has been a composer in residence at international festivals such as the Venice Biennale, Lucerne Festival, Warsaw Autumn and Rheingau Musik Festival. His operas premiered at the Munich Biennale and La Monnaie, among others.

Career

Hosokawa was born in Hiroshima on 23 October 1955. He became motivated to make music his profession when he heard a record of Tōru Takemitsu's November Steps at age 15. He first studied piano and composition in Tokyo, then from 1976 with Yun Isang at the Berlin University of the Arts. From 1983 to 1986, he studied with Klaus Huber and Brian Ferneyhough at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. In 1980, he first took part in the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, including the performance of his compositions. He lectured there regularly beginning in 1990. In the following years, he became known internationally and received several commissions.
On Huber's recommendation, he stayed in Tokyo for six months to study traditional Japanese music. In 1989, he cofounded the annual Akiyoshidai International Contemporary Music Seminar and Festival in Yamaguchi and was its artistic director until 1998. From 1998 to 2007 he served as Composer-in-Residence at the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. He was also the artistic director of the Japanese Takefu International Music Festival in Fukui starting in 2001. The festivals are meeting places for musicians from Asian and Western music traditions in concerts and seminars. In 2004, Hosokawa was appointed a guest professor at the Tokyo College of Music. He was a member of the Academy of Arts, Berlin from 2001. He was influenced by Japanese aesthetic and spiritual elements, such as calligraphy, court music and Noh theatre, giving "musical expression to the notion of a beauty that has grown from transience". He said: "We hear the individual notes and appreciate at the same time the process of how the notes are born and die: a sound landscape of continual 'becoming' that is animated in itself."
Hosokawa's first opera, the Shakespeare adaptation Vision of Lear, premiered at the Munich Biennale in 1998. It includes elements from the traditional Japanese Noh theatre. His second opera was Hanjo, which premiered at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2004, staged by the choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Co-commissioned with La Monnaie in Brussels, it was also performed in Bielefeld, Hamburg, Lisbon, Lyon, Milan and Tokyo. Hosokawa won the fifth Roche Commission with Woven Dreams for orchestra, which was first played by the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Franz Welser-Möst at the Lucerne Festival in 2010. His third opera was Matsukaze, again inspired by Noh theatre, which was staged by Sasha Waltz at La Monnaie in Brussels in 2011, with additional performances at the Berlin State Opera and in Luxembourg and Warsaw. His works were premiered by conductors such as Kazushi Ono, Kent Nagano, Simon Rattle, Alexander Liebreich and Robin Ticciati. Several of them became part of contemporary repertoire.
Hosokawa did research in 2006/07 and 2008/09 at the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) in Berlin. He was invited to be composer in residence at festivals such as the Venice Biennale, in both 1995 and 2001; the Lucerne Festival in 2000; musica viva in Munich in 2001; Musica nova in Helsinki in 2003; and the Warsaw Autumn in 2005 and 2007. Since 2012, he has served as artistic director of the Suntory Hall International Program for Music Composition.
Invited by Walter Fink, he was the 18th composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 2008. In a concert of chamber music played by the Arditti Quartet and Mayumi Miyata (Shō), works such as "Silent Flowers" and "Blossoming" were presented, in which the composer tried to give nature a voice (der Natur ... eine Stimme zu geben). and his oratorio Voiceless Voice in Hiroshima was performed at Eberbach Abbey by the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne and the WDR Rundfunkchor Köln, conducted by Rupert Huber, with soloist Gerhild Romberger. The oratorio was conceived in 1989 as a requiem for the victims of the nuclear bomb of 6 August 1945, but was expanded to a suite in five movements in 2001 in response to ecological problems due to economic growth. Among the texts is a poem "Heimkehr" (Returning home) by Paul Celan, and a haiku by Matsuo Bashō. The music uses wind sounds, tone clusters, and percussion close to natural sounds, while the choral writing seems to align with European models. In 2010, he composed a chamber music work for his friend Walter Fink, Für Walter (For Walter), for soprano saxophone and piano, with percussion ad libitum, and attended its premiere in a concert on Fink's 80th birthday.

Compositions

IRCAM has a detailed list of Hosokawa's works, also Schott Music, and several works are held by the German National Library:

Oratorio

Voiceless Voice in Hiroshima for soloists, narrators, chorus, tape (ad lib.) and orchestra (1989/2001) after Matsuo Bashō, Paul Celan and the film Genbaku no Ko

Orchestral

Ferne Landschaft I (1987)
Ferne Landschaft II (1996)
Ferne Landschaft III – Seascapes of Fukuyama (1996)
Memory of the Sea – Hiroshima Symphony (1998)
Seascapes – Daybreak (1998)
Seascapes – Oita (1998)
Circulating Ocean (2005)
Wind from the Ocean (2006)
Skyscape (2006–07)
Danses imaginaires (2007)
Woven Dreams (2009–10)
Blossoming II (2011)
Singing Garden in Venice for baroque orchestra (2011)
Meditation – to the Victims of Tsunami 3.11 (2012)
Uzu (2019)
Sakura (2021)

Concertante

Piano
Piano Concerto Ans Meer (1999)
Lotus under the Moonlight (Hommage à Mozart) for piano and orchestra (2006)
Violin
Landscape III for violin and orchestra (1993)
Voyage I for violin and ensemble (1997)
Violin Concerto Genesis (2020)
Viola
Voyage VI for viola and strings (2002)
Cello
In die Tiefe der Zeit for cello, accordion and strings (1994)
Cello Concerto (1997)
Chant for cello and orchestra (2009)
Sublimation for cello and orchestra (2016)
Woodwinds
Flute Concerto Per Sonare (1988)
Voyage II for bassoon and ensemble (1997)
Saxophone Concerto (1998)
Clarinet Concerto Metamorphosis (2000)
Voyage V for flute and chamber orchestra (2001)
Sorrow River for recorder and strings (2016)
Ceremony for flute and orchestra (2021–2022)
Brass
Voyage III for trombone and ensemble (1997)
Voyage VII for trumpet and strings with percussion (2005)
Voyage VIII for tuba and ensemble (2006)
Horn Concerto Moment of Blossoming (2010)
Trumpet Concerto Im Nebel (2013)
Traditional Japanese Instruments
Shō Concerto Cloud and Light (2008)
Voyage X for shakuhachi and ensemble (2009)
Autumn Wind for shakuhachi and orchestra (2011)
Others
Voyage IV – Extasis for accordion and ensemble (2000)
Percussion Concerto Tabi-bito (2000)
Harp Concerto Re-turning (2001)
Voyage IX – Awakening for guitar and strings with percussion (2007)

Chamber

for strings
String Quartet No. 2 Urbilder (1980)
Landscape I for string quartet (1992)
Landscape IV for string quintet (1993)
Duo for violin and cello (1998)
Silent Flowers for string quartet (1998)
Blossoming for string quartet (2007)
Kalligraphie for string quartet (2007)
Distant Voices for string quartet (2013)
Weaving Song for string quartet (2020)
Dan-sô for piano trio (1984)
Fragmente II for alto flute and string quartet (1989)
Birds Fragments III for sho and bass flute (1990)
Landscape II for harp and string quartet (1992)
Vertical Time Study I for clarinet, cello and piano (1992)
Landscape V for shō and string quartet (1993)
Vertical Time Study II for tenor saxophone, piano and percussion (1993–94)
Memory for piano trio (1996)
Deep Silence (2002) for shō and accordion in Gagaku style
Stunden-Blumen (Toki no Hana) for clarinet, violin, cello and piano (2008)
Für Walter for soprano saxophone, piano and percussion ad libitum (2010)
Piano Trio (2013)
Ancient Voices – In memory of Wolfgang Schulz for wind quintet (2013)
Water of Lethe for piano quartet (2016)

Instrumental

Sen series
Sen I for flute (1986)
Sen II for cello (1986)
Sen III for sangen (1988)
Sen IV for organ (1990)
Sen V for accordion (1992)
Sen VI for percussion (1993)
Sen VII for bassoon (1995)
Melodia for accordion (1979)
Vertical Time Study III for violin and piano (1994)
Vertical Song I for flute (1995)
Atem-Lied for bass flute (1997)
Slow Motion for accordion (2002)
Reminiscence for marimba (2002)
Serenade for guitar (2003)
Lied for flute and piano (2007)
Lied II for viola and piano (2008)
Lied III for cello and piano (2007)
Spell for violin (2010)
Lullaby of Itsuki: from Japanese Folk Songs for violin and piano (2011)
Threnody: To the victims of the Tōhoku 3.11 earthquake for viola (2011)
Im Nebel for trumpet and piano (2016)
Voice for trombone (2020)

Vocal

Renka I for soprano and guitar (1986)
Koto-uta for voice and koto (1999)
Three Love Songs for voice and alto saxophone (2005)
Klage for soprano and orchestra (2013)
Drei Engel-Lieder for soprano and harp (2014)
Nach dem Sturm for two sopranos and orchestra (2015)

Choral

"Ave Maria for 16-part mixed choir a cappella" (1991)

Literature

Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer: Toshio Hosokawa. in Komponisten der Gegenwart. Ed. Text + Kritik, Munich. pp. 1992ff.
Toshio Hosokawa, Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer: Stille und Klang, Schatten und Licht. Gespräche. Wolke-Verlag, Hofheim 2012. ISBN 978-3-936000-47-4
Luciana Galliano (ed.): Lotus. La Musica di Toshio Hosokawa. Auditorium Edizioni, Milano 2013. ISBN 978-88-86784-84-9
Reinhart Meyer-Kalkus: Auskomponierte Stimmen. Toshio Hosokawas Vokalkompositionen. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 169.2008, Issue 1, pp. 62–65.
Basil Rogger (ed.): Roche Commissions Toshio Hosokawa, im Auftrag von Roche und der Carnegie Hall New York, dem Cleveland Orchestra sowie dem Lucerne Festival, Luzern 2010. Program book in English and German.
Sparrer: Toshio Hosokawas Musik in ihrem Verhältnis zu japanischen Tradition. in: Jörn Peter Hiekel (ed.): Ins Offene? Neue Musik und Natur. Darmstädter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik. Schott, Mainz 2014, pp. 132–157.