Shinohara, Makoto (EN)

Shinohara Makoto, *10 December 1931 Osaka, Japanese composer. In 1952–54, he studied composition with T. Ikenouchi, piano with K. Yasukawa and conducting with A. Watanabe at Geijutsu Daigaku (the university of fine arts and music) in Tokyo; in 1954–59, he studied composition with T. Aubin and philosophy of music with O. Messiaen at the Paris Conservatory; in 1959, he attended the Darmstadt Summer Course. In 1962–64, he continued studies at Hochschule für Musik in Munich, and then at Musikhochschule in Cologne (composition with B.A. Zimmermann and electronic music with G.M. Koenig); he also attended K. Stockhausen’s courses on modern music. He cooperated with the Sonology Institute in Utrecht in 1965–66, 1973, 1975–76 and 1978–80; he was in Western Berlin in 1966–77, Rome in 1969, worked in Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1971–72, and conducted research on electronic music in the Japanese radio (NHK) in 1974. Shinohara gives lectures and conducts seminars on Japanese music in many countries, including Japan, the United States, Canada (in 1978, he lectured at McGill University in Montreal as a guest professor) and European countries, including Poland (at the Academy of Music in Warsaw, international workshops in Bydgoszcz and summer courses in Kazimierz Dolny); he has also performed as an instrumentalist, playing the piano and koto. In 1958, he received the composition prize from the Paris Conservatory, and in 1968 the prize at the international composition competition in Rome. Since 1979, he has lived in Utrecht and Tokyo. In 2006, a concert was held at the Japanese Cultural Center in Cologne to celebrate the 75^th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

The initial period of Shinohara’s work includes references to the music of B. Bartók, O. Messiaen and I. Stravinsky. In works written after 1959, Shinohara used innovative compositional procedures (aleatorism, elements of serial technique), and also turned to electronic music. Starting from the 1970s, Shinohara’s work contains a combination of features typical of contemporary European music and traditional Japanese music.

Literature: L. Landy An Analysis of „Tayutai” for Koto (1972) Composed by M. Shinohara, “Interface: Journal of New Music Research” XVI, 1987; M. Shinohara Zusammenspiel westlicher und japanischer Instrumente, in: Komposition und Musikwissenschaft im Dialog. III (1999–2001), ed. I. Misch and Ch. von Blumröder, «Signale aus Köln» VI, Münster: 2003.