[About the musical composition]

1. Exhibition Room 1

When I visited the Watanuki Kannon-yama-kofun Ancient Tomb for the first time in the spring of 2022, the field horsetail that was covering the ground appeared to me like the people that used to live here ages ago. From the name “horsetail,” I though that string music would be appropriate. I could also see the characteristic sound of a stringed instrument connect to the outlines of a kofun.

The Japanese word for horsetail is “tsukushi.” As one Japanese word can usually be written using several different Chinese characters with different meanings, characters for “tsuku” include ”築” (build, construct), “着/付” (attach), “尽” (exhaust), “継” (connect, succeed), “告” (inform, notify) and “漬” (soak, immerse). Similar sounding words would be “tsuka,” which can be written using the characters “塚” (mound) or “遣” (dispatch) for example, and “tsuki,” characters for which include “月” (moon) and “坏” (cup, bowl). There is also the character “津” (harbor, port) for the word/syllable “tsu.” In the Chinese language, there appears to be the principle that “similar pronunciation means similar meaning,” and as a matter of fact, these are all expressions that are in one way or another related to kofun. So as it seems, the words that come out of my own mouth today sound similar to the words that people were uttering in ancient times. The music for this work I composed while bridging this temporal difference between ancient and modern times.

“Sol” for 8 strings and electronics, 18min. (4.1ch version)

I: Dawn
II: Renge Farah
III: Somnium
IV: Before Dark

The piece “Sol” that I wrote for this exhibition is based on a string octet (four violins, two violas and two cellos). Its four parts are respectively titled “Dawn,” “Renge Farah,” “Somnium” and “Before Dark.”

The piece mainly revolves around the note G, and as the display in Exhibition Room 1 is themed around the time of day between morning and evening, I chose “Sol,” the Latin word for “sun,” as a title.

The piece begins with several continuous sounds of open strings overlapping one by one (according to notes that together form the gently curved shape of a kofun on the sheet), whereas each performer plays the assigned four notes in an impromptu fashion and at arbitrary speed. The sounds of each instrument behave like a herd of horses.

The piece includes a passage from “Renge Farah” from the times of Sassanian Persia (named after the Sassanian empire in the Iran highlands), which corresponds to the Japanese Kofun period. Around the time the Japanese kofun were made, this was sung by people far away in Persia, yet moving under the same sun. Glass vessels from Sassanian Persia have been excavated at various places, and these songs were probably “excavated” together with them.

In the exhibition room, I set up four full-range speakers and one subwoofer. Each of these speakers was a new model that was specially developed for this exhibition, with the cooperation of two companies that normally take charge of sound systems at movie theaters. These companies provided equipment as well as acoustic fine-tuning. This was a rather exceptional case of new speaker models being introduced along with an exhibit at an art museum.

Composition and arrangement: Marihiko Hara

Violin: Anzu Suhara, Sena Oshima, Asano Mekaru, Yoshiaki Kato
Viola: Naoko Kakutani, Yuichi Nakada
Cello: Masabumi Sekiguchi, Yoshie Furukawa

Recording: Masato Hara
Cooperation: Kazune Iwasaki, Masumi Muranaka

Speakers made by:
EASTERN SOUND FACTORY Co., Ltd. Hiroyasu Sato, Hideaki Ito, Toshikazu Seki, Hidemi Kadosawa

Technical support and installation:
XEBEX Inc. Tsunehisa Kawahara, Tatsuya Saito, Shuhei Takeda

2. Slope

“In our living memory”

It is said that the clay figurines (haniwa) of horses that can be found at kofun, were modeled after Kiso horses and other native species. Mr. Tsuda visited the Kisouma-no-sato (Kiso horse village) at Kaidakogen in Kiso, Nagano, to make audio recordings of the barking, snorting, and the footsteps of Kiso horses. For this part, four small vibration speakers were installed by the windows.

Production and arrangement: Marihiko Hara
Field recording: Nao Tsuda
Cooperation: Kisouma-no-sato

3. Exhibition Room 2

The sound concept for Exhibition Room 2, which is generally themed on night time, is “transformation.” At night, a scenery, even at exactly the same location, looks different from how it appeared at daytime. People in ancient times must have perceived the night as an entirely different world. The darkness of the night back then was deeper and quieter than it is today.

“Niht Wave” for 6 speakers

Wondering how the night may sound in the stone chamber of a kofun, I made an audio recording using a mobile recorder that I set up during the night inside the Watanuki Kannon-yama-kofun’s stone chamber. In the mostly silent recording, all that one can hear are distant noises of cars and motorbikes, and toward the morning, the sounds of turtledoves.

These “sounds of silence” are played from six speakers that are suspended from the ceiling. By focusing on a specific band frequency, and regulating the volume and the way the audio moves within the space, I created a soundscape that sounds like waves or wind. The people and the horses that came to Japan from the continent must have stored the sounds of the distant waves and wind in their memories.

“Sol variation” monaural version

This version was made using a sound conversion software that is based on an artificial intelligence (AI) technology called “Neutone.” When fed with audio information, the software converts those sounds into sounds memorized through deep learning. Having the software memorize sounds of various bells from places around the world, and feeding it with the sounds of the string piece “Sol” in Exhibition Room 1, produced a hard sound comparable to that of pieces of ancient earthenware colliding. The result is a soundscape that unintentionally makes the visitor sense the presence of people.

Set up in the center of the exhibition room is a tunnel (1.2 meters wide, 2 meters long, 2 meters high) made from sound absorbing panels. While the space around it is filled with sound, when walking through this tunnel, the sound is blocked from the sides, so that one can only hear the sounds of waves coming from the photographs of the sea that are displayed at the wall ahead.

Production and arrangement: Marihiko Hara
Field recording: Marihiko Hara
AI technology supplied by Nao Tokui (Qosmo)
Technical support: SHIZUKA Inc.

Upon leaving the Exhibition Room 1 and walking up the slope, visitors hear the footsteps of horses overtaking them. As they approach Exhibition Room 2, wave-like sounds become audible, while those of stringed instruments gradually fade out. In the distance, one can hear the sounds of barking horses. The soundscapes of the respective exhibition rooms loosely mingle, and transform the entire museum into one single acoustic space.