Densokugaku : Shakuhachi, Composition, Electronics

Densokugaku: Shakuhachi, Composition, Electronics charts the trajectory of Australian-born musician Jim Franklin along a tangled path between the roles of composer, master performer and teacher of the shakuhachi (the Japanese end-blown bamboo flute), and exponent of live-electronic music. Through autobiographical detail, musical analysis and philosophical discussion, Franklin examines how this unlikely combination of activities arose over the course of several decades. He provides analyses of traditional pieces for the shakuhachi, and of his own works (particularly his CD Songs from the Lake), revealing how he has melded (without appropriation) the compositional and performative thought of the shakuhachi with a technological medium which is, in a sense, its opposite. Central to this integration is Franklin’s ongoing search for an ‘embodied’, and in essence spiritual, music. © Vision Edition