Ryuichi Sakamoto

Ryuichi Sakamoto is one of the composers I've wanted to learn more about for a very long time. It's finally now that I'm getting the chance to listen to more of his music.

If you've got ten minutes, you should do yourself a favor and listen to this performance:


Ryuichi Sakamoto - Bibo No Aozora

(That's him on the piano, by the way).

It's simple. Piano, cello, violin. A nice little slow piece played by classical instruments. Boooring (to a lot of people). BUT.


It's possibly one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. Here's why:
(Bear with me here!)

The strings start it off with a pretty repetitive harmony. It isn't until the piano comes in that you feel any depth.

As you keep listening, yeah, it's a nice little slow piece with classical instruments, but listen a little closer and notice how cold the strings keep sounding. They're playing the same repetitive lines, using relatively little or no vibrato (the wavering of volume to add expression). In contrast, the piano is playing a very warm, comforting part, using thick, jazzy chords and hitting some relatively low, resonating notes.

This "nice little slow piece" is meant to sound like it's barely hanging on by a thread. The interaction between the piano and strings sounds distanced, strained.

Hit the 3:36 mark:

Sudden change. The strings are doing something else now, with more motion and vibrato, not the cold and timid notes they were playing before. The key has changed. The piano is seemingly adding emotion as well, louder now, changing the progression...

But the violin and cello's lines, going up and down together, just repeat verbatim over and over, albeit with more emotion. They are completely unaffected by the piano's part. The piano part continues to plead with its emotional, soulful chords, but the strings will not listen, repeating what they've been saying since the key change.

The composition at this point is made to look like it's maintaining a fake smile, a facade, while it actually nears the edge of collapse.

Hit the 4:33 mark:
(This part is very brief).

The strings are screaming. Not only are they completely unaffected by the piano's part, they're not even playing in the same key as him (or each other). The composition has shattered into pieces. The piano continues to simply reiterate what it was saying in the beginning, pretending it doesn't hear the strings shouting.

The 5:03 mark:

After the harsh argument, there seems to be a return to normalcy. Like in the beginning, we hear the piano's moving story again, with deep soulful chords, as the strings resume their cold, repetitive, unsympathetic harmony. They're not screaming anymore, but things are hardly any better.

At 5:52:

A brief swell in emotion, while it almost seems like both piano and strings are finally listening to each other, but the tension builds...

Hit 6:14:

The swell peaks anticlimactically: the violin and cello return yet again to their repetitive, unfeeling drone. The piano, however, finally cracks; it begins playing dissonant, clashing chords, wrong notes. Instead of the warm, coherent, and heartfelt message it's been pleading to communicate all along, it has finally given up and is now sobbing incoherently. The facade of strength and willpower proved too heavy to uphold.

As the strings continue their same drone, like someone who's afraid to look, the piano never really returns to its original self. It's all out in the open, the damage has been done. The piece ends in a devastatingly frigid lack of resolution, a hideous chord, but worst of all, it ends softly, ambiguously, like a hazily-defined compromise.

The piece as a whole, you realize, was falling apart from the beginning, but it was doing so in an almost imperceptible way, hidings its feelings from the world. Underneath a "nice little slow piece" lay an emotional wreck, a jumble of conflicting thoughts, a lump in the throat, an embarrassing emotional breakdown set to a hair trigger, pretending that nothing was wrong.

* * *

This is why I believe that even the most subtle compositional gestures, when deliberately and skillfully written, can be infinitely more expressive than words and lyrics ever will.

Such an incredibly gorgeous song.

-Juan