A collection of "Classical Japanese Poetry Set To Original Music" by Ayuo

Matsukaze

Matsukaze was the third composition Ayuo worked on based on Zeami's Noh plays. The other two were "Izutsu" and "Aoi no Ue". Both are available from Tzadik Records from New York City.

I wish some of the balance in these concert recordings were better, but these were the only recordings made of these compositions at this time. The first part of "Matsukaze" was also performed with a Japanese Koto playing the harp part. The entire composition of “Matsukaze” can be performed in an ensemble featuring the koto as the central instrument.

Matsukaze/松風
Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

The summary of the play, Matsukaze (Wind in the Pines):

The two main characters are the lingering spirits of the sisters Matsukaze (Wind in the Pines) and Murasame (Autumn Rain), who in the 9th Century lived on the Bay of Suma in Settsu Province, where they ladled brine in order to make salt. A courtier, Middle Counsellor Ariwara no Yukihira, dallied with them during his exile to Suma for three years. Shortly after his departure, word of his death came and they died of grief. They linger on as spirits or ghosts, attached to the mortal world by their emotional attachment to mortal desires.
One autumn evening, a traveling monk visits Suma Bay (near Suma Ward in present-day Kobe City). He notices on the shore a pine tree which seems to have a mysterious story. When he asks a villager about the story, the villager tells him that it is a grave marker for two young diver sisters, Matsukaze and Murasame. After the monk recites a sutra and prays for the comfort of their souls, he decides to ask for lodging at a salt-making hut and waits for the return of the owner. Then, two young beautiful women, who have finished working under the moon, taking water from the sea, come back to the hut with a cart.

The monk asks them for accommodation for one night. After they enter the hut, the monk recites the poems of Ariwara no Yukihira, who had some tie with the place, and explains that he has just consoled the souls of Matsukaze and Murasame at the old pine tree. The women suddenly begin to sob. Asked the reason, the two women reveal their identity: they are the ghosts of Matsukaze and Murasame, who were loved by Yukihira. They tell their memories of Yukihira and their love with Yukihira which was ended by his death.

The older sister, Matsukaze, wears Yukihira’s kariginu-style kimono and eboshi headdress because she misses him so much. Indulging herself in the memory of her love, she eventually becomes partly mad, takes the pine to be Yukihira, and tries to embrace the tree. Although Murasame tries to calm her sister, Matsukaze burning with love passionately dances and continues as if expressing the passion of her love in dance. When day dawns, Matsukaze asks the monk to offer a memorial service for one who is suffering from the obsession. The two divers then disappear in the monk’s dream. Only the wind traveling in the pine trees is left, singing like the sound of a passing shower (Murasame).