2nd Kyoto University-Inamori Foundation Joint Kyoto Prize Symposium [Music] Masahiro Miwa

July 11-12, 2015
2nd Kyoto University-Inamori Foundation Joint Kyoto Prize Symposium
http://kuip.hq.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/archives/2015/about/

[Music]
Masahiro Miwa
Dean and Professor, IAMAS (Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences)
Composer

Title of Presentation
“New Religious Music –The Potential of the Arts in Electricity Civilization”

Religious music, which is frequently contrasted with secular music, has been also referred to as church music in the West and the concept of musical composition itself derives from the history of music for religious purposes. Although artistic music had evolved as an alternative to church music since the Baroque period and succeeded religious music, I feel that in fact the history of its composition has ended in modern society in the face of music transmitted by media. Under such circumstances, I am currently attempting to reinterpret my works as religious music in a broader sense. Although such an attempt of mine is not attributable to any particular religious belief, I wish to redefine the meaning of human arts, which have always existed throughout our history, as one form of religious pursuits in essence, and hopefully, to become a successor to such endeavours. In other words, the arts (music) for me no longer concern cultural issues but they are a losing "gamble" for the survival of our humanity.

In this regard, we must not forget that today we all live in unprecedented circumstances. This means the human world based on highly sophisticated technologies—an environment “which exists on the premise that electricity continues to be provided at all times without fail while thinking about our responsibilities and the future of our children directly leads to the efforts for ‘further development of technologies. *’” I decided to define such a world simply as “electricity civilization.”

In the lecture, I will try to explain my activities as pursuits for the potential of the arts in electricity civilization as defined above over composition/music. Specifically, I will talk about two scopes of my composition activities that seem completely different: those related to “reverse simulation music” and “the Formant Brothers” or my creative unit with Nobuyasu Sakonda. As an example of the former which is known as algorithmic composition, I would like to introduce a piano piece automatically generated by a self-feedback system. For the latter, I hope to present a religious piece by G.B. Pergolesi performed by artificial singing utilizing a MIDI accordion as a practical example of contemplation over synthesized voices and their subjects.

*From “Chubu Denryoku Geijutsu Sengen” (2009)
http://www.iamas.ac.jp/~mmiwa/ElectricArt.html

[Collaborators for Prof. Miwa's lecture]
Reisiu Sakai (Soprano singer)
Eugene Okano (Full-time Lecturer, Department of Piano, SHOBI College of Music)
Nobuyasu Sakonda(Professor, Department of Visual Media, School of Media and Design, Nagoya University of Arts and Sciences. / Musician / Media Artist)

You can find the other lectures on Kyoto University OCW:
https://ocw.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/opencourse-en/134/video