Raymond Luedeke

flute (or violin), guitar

Glosses on a Japanese Theme

In the Eye of the Cat was composed on a grant from the Toronto Arts Council. It is constructed around a famous Japanese koto piece called Rokudan No Shirabe. The premiere performance was given by Jack Sanders, guitar, and Rachel Rudich, flute, on Sept. 24, 1999 at Balch Auditorium, Scripps College, Claremont, California.

Koto music is divided into two distinct types. There is a kind which accompanies singing and another which is solely instrumental. The oldest known form of vocal koto music was called Kumiata, which was a group of short poems set to music to be sung in a given order. In the later koto music that developed from this, each poem was called a step or dan. Rokudan refers to six musical steps.

There is reason to believe that Rokudan No Shirabe (meaning six sections of 52 beats) is of very ancient Chinese origin. However, Tatsuhashi Kengyo, who began the Yatsuhashi school of popular koto music in Kyoto in the seventeenth century is credited with its composition.

In the Eye of the Cat freely borrows from a number of different versions of Rokudan. The five sections labeled "Rokudan" should be taken as re-compositions rather than as transcriptions or  arrangements.

In between these will be found four sections, each with a Japanese Haiku as its title. Quite in the spirit of classical Japanese music, these are meant to be evocative of the poems. All four Haiku are by Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), the best known writer in Haiku history.