A Time of Afterglow (1983)

Basic Information
Japanese 残照の時
German A Time of Afterglow
Opus 052
Year 1983
Category Chamber
Duration 10 min.
Instruments vn, koto
Score information

This work has not been published.

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About this Work

The violin is a western instrument that was "perfected" more than three centuries ago. And the violin had already reached its brilliant zenith both in terms of creativity and in terms of its exhaustion of performance techniques by the nineteenth century. From this perspective, violin music in the late twentieth century might even be said to be in its twilight period. Nevertheless, after its sunset, when only a faint evening glow remains, it continues to possess a unique beauty.

The title "A Time of Afterglow" is not intended to indicate that the work depicts this sunset glow in sound but to express the creative conditions of violin music in the contemporary world. Further, the work tries to project onto these conditions another afterglow, that of the traditional Japanese thirteen-stringed koto, and thus create a unique image world.

It was first performed in Tokyo in 1983 with Isako Shinozaki on violin and Tadao Sawai on koto.

One version of this work is performed by violin and piano.

Maki Ishii