Voyages [航海記]
Notes by Michael-Thomas Foumai
HIDEAKI HAGINOMORI [萩森英明] (b.1981)
Voyages [航海記] (2016, rev. 2017)
I. Whale Vocalization [鯨の歌]
II. Southern Cross [南十字星]
III. Ship Wakes [航跡]
IV. Return Voyage [帰航]
2016-17: FRAMING "VOYAGES"
Composed in 2016, Hideaki Haginomori's Voyages was composed for Naoto Otomo and the Ryukyu Symphony Orchestra's 15th Anniversary. When it premiered at Urasoe City Tedako Hall in Okinawa on November 18, 2016, the Polynesian voyaging canoe, Hōkūleʻa was Miami-bound and in its 25th leg of the Mālama Honua voyage, traveling through chilly North Carolina waters. The worldwide voyage concluded with Hōkūleʻa's historic homecoming at Magic Island on June 17, 2017. Several months later, on September 17, Otomo re-introduced Haginomori's revised Voyages with the Gunma Symphony Orchestra in Japan.
FROM J-POP TO CLASSICAL
Japanese composer, arranger, and pianist Hideaki Haginomori (b.1981) comes from a musical childhood. Born and raised in Tokyo, Haginomori grew up in the sonic company of his father on the violin and his mother's piano and recalled playing under the keyboard as a child. Then, in 1995, while in the eighth grade, Japanese Pop music took the nation by storm and the 14-year-old composer with it. "At the time, CDs were selling very well, and it was a glamorous era for J-Pop," recalls Haginomori. "I used to compose J-Pop songs and have my piano teacher listen to them, but eventually, I began to compose classical songs, and my teacher said, ʻWhy don't you study composition?' So, in the early fall of my third year of junior high school, I did. I still remember how nervous I was," says Haginomori. "When I was asked what I wanted to do in the future, the best I could do was: what if I could make background music for television and radio."
Haginomori studied composition with Makoto Sato and Norio Fukushi and graduated from the Tokyo University of the Arts. His music has been performed by the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gunma Symphony Orchestra, the Central Aichi Symphony Orchestra, and the Ryukyu Symphony Orchestra. His six-movement Okinawa Symphony Chronicles was recently recorded by Naoto Otomo and the Ryukyu Symphony Orchestra and released in 2020 by Respect Record.
Active as an orchestral arranger scoring over 200 songs for professional orchestras across Japan, Haginomori's extensive credits include the "Sailor Moon 25th Anniversary Classic Concert", "Sword Rampage Dance" Banquet Concert, music for Asahi, TV Tokyo's "100 Years of Music," and NHK's "Red and White Song Contest" and "SONGS." In addition, he has arranged music for artists including Koji Tamaki, Junko Yagami, Tatsuya Ishii, Fumiya Fujii, Mari Hamada, Misato Watanabe, and Mikiji Ishimaru. Furthermore, he is on the board of directors of the Japan Composers Association and lectures at Senzoku Gakuen College of Music in Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan.
MUSIC OF THE SEA
Covering 71 percent of the planet and comprising nearly as much of our human body, this powerful connection to water is continuously manifested by the imagination of composers. The proof is scattered across time, from Vivaldi's La tempesta di mare [The Storm at Sea] (1725), Debussy's French impressions of Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa in La Mer [The Sea] (1903-05), John Luther Adams's perspectives of the Northwest Pacific Ocean in Become Ocean (2013), to Toru Takemitsu's Greenpeace-commissioned Toward the Sea (1981). Haginomori's Voyages is no exception. The 19-minute work is a sea journal; each movement conjures a course, bearing, and heading; a postcard from the symphonic seas.
I. WHALE VOCALIZATION [鯨の歌]
Marked at a still and becalmed Largamente, the delicate orchestration and soft dynamics paint dawn at sea. The doldrum quickly breaks with a rippling in the strings. There is a song in these recurrent string ripples, Whale song, that emanates from beneath a wine-dark sonic sea; it becomes progressively defined and rhythmically agitated. String glissandos (sliding between two notes) is the gentle giant's first sign. If a whale is sighted, its fortissimo appearance is hard to miss. The voice of the whale then recedes into the vastness of the deep.
II. SOUTHERN CROSS [南十字星]
Marked Andantino semplice, the voyage continues with pulsing currents and gentle winds. The music is whisper delicate; dynamics hardly breach mezzo-forte. Winds take a leading melodic role, and the strings offer ambient starlight. The Southern Cross is a star constellation known as Hānaiakamālama, a navigational constellation that has guided ancient voyagers across the Pacific on their journey from Tahiti to Hawaiʻi. Hōkūleʻa master navigator Nainoa Thompson explains, "in Tahiti, the Southern Cross is about 45 degrees above the horizon. Each time you keep sailing closer north, it gets lower [to the horizon] until the distance between the top and bottom stars of the Cross are equidistant to the bottom star to the ocean, your home." Of the 50 states, the Southern Cross is only visible in Hawaiʻi. It can be seen close to the horizon and upright during nautical twilight off South Point, Hawaiʻi Island, off Maunalua Bay on Oʻahu's south shore, and off Nāwiliwili, Kauaʻi. Two solo violins and viola emerge at the horizon-like ending, emphasizing a divine trinity before disappearing into the abyss.
III. SHIP WAKES [航跡]
When a boat moves through the water, its motion generates waves and currents on its surface; this trace-like activity or "footprint in the water" is called the ship's wake. The sound of a motor in the snare drum and ride cymbal propels the work along with three bursts of energy in the winds. Horns, the main melodic vessel, hints at music reminiscent of the first movement. In its wake, the trill-like oscillating figurations of the strings are present but fleeting, vanishing into an amorphous symphonic sea.
IV. RETURN VOYAGE [帰航]
Returning home from the sea is a bittersweet moment, a return to the comforts of civilization but a departure from the peace of the natural world. Marked Adagietto, the return voyage begins intimately with strings. No instrument has the melody entirely; violins take a note, then the violas, then the flutes, and so on. The effect is a harmonic melody of tone color, a crew working together for one vision. Finally, horns and trombones take a moment to state the melody more directly. The moment of homecoming is unmistakable. Hōkūleʻa's return was celebrated by "a sea of people who densely lined the harbor's Ewa edge and spread throughout the rest of the park with beach chairs, mats, folding tables, pop-up tents, coolers, wagons, and umbrellas" (Star-Advertiser). Haginomori captures that same warmth and welcome of a homecoming reception.
The score calls for a crew of two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, various percussion instruments, and strings.
