Performance duration
ca. 25’
Premiere
This is an unpremiered work.
Year of composition
2024
Instrumentation
flute, clarinet, percussion (bass drum, triangle, tubular bells), piano, violin, viola and violoncello
Score (View Only)
Commentary (japanese version)
声なき声、そして消えゆく声が、確かに存在しています。
この作品を主に構成するのは、歌や言葉になる以前の「息」の音や、触れるとすぐに消えてしまうような儚い音の粒です。今「わたしたち」が生きる社会には、あからさまに歴史を修正し、あるいは否認することで、加害の歴史やその被害者の声を存在そのものから抹消しようとする動きが後を絶ちません。また一方で、社会はしばしば、その声に対し同情しやすい画一的な物語を求め、その型にはまらない複雑な現実を生きた人々の声を沈黙させ、忘却の彼方へと追いやります。己を語る声を持たない人はどうすればいいのでしょうか。
加害の歴史を持つ側に属する者として、その複雑な声を持つ者、また持てない者から、常にこちら側がまなざされていることは意識しています。本作は日本の帝国主義・植民地主義の歴史の中で名もなき存在とされた人々、そして今なお社会の中で沈黙を強いられる人々の記憶が消去されることに抗う試みです。（わたし自身も、加害の歴史と並走する中にあった、複雑であろう声なき声を、わたしの家族史の中に見出します。）これはその人たちの声を代弁するものではありません。むしろ、「わたし（たち）」が聴くことのできなかった声、聴こうとしなかった声の不在を、音楽的空間として現前させる試みです。加えて、物理的な追悼と慰霊の場が失われていく現実も続いています。作曲中当時にもありました。1
この沈黙／の声、聴こえない声が、「わたしたち」の立場、そして記憶のあり方を見つめ直すきっかけとなることを願います。
1 2024年1月29日に群馬県が県立公園「群馬の森」（高崎市）にある朝鮮人追悼碑「記憶 反省 そして友好」の撤去工事に着手した件。 朝日新聞, [県立公園内の朝鮮人追悼碑、群馬県が撤去始める 知事「公益反する」] , 2024年1月29日（https://digital.asahi.com/articles/ASS1X5TN4S1WUHNB009.html?iref=pc_ss_date_article）
Commentary (english version)
There are unnoticeable voices, and fading voices, that are certainly here.
This work is primarily composed of the sound of “breath” that precedes song or speech, and of ephemeral grains of sound that vanish upon touch. In the society “we” live in today, there are unceasing movements that seek to erase the history of perpetration and the voices of its victims by blatantly revising or denying history. At the same time, when faced with these voices, society often demands a uniform narrative that is easy to sympathize with, silencing the voices of people who lived complex realities that do not fit that mold and pushing them into oblivion. What are those who do not have a voice to speak for themselves to do?
As someone who belongs to the side bearing histories of perpetration, I am always conscious of the gaze from the other side—from those who have these complex voices, and also from those who cannot. This work is an attempt to resist the erasure of the memory of people who were rendered nameless within the history of Japan’s imperialism and colonialism in Asia, and those who are still forced into silence in society today. (Within my own family history, I too find unnoticeable voices—that must have been complex—that existed within and alongside the history of perpetration.) This is not to speak for them. Rather, it is an attempt to make present, as a musical space, the very absence of the voices that “I (we)” could not or did not try to hear. In addition, the loss of physical spaces for mourning and commemoration is an ongoing reality. This was also the case at the time of this work’s composition.1
I hope that these silence/t voices,2 these inaudible voices, become an opportunity to re-examine ‘our’ position, and the very nature of memory.
1 This refers to recent events in Japan, such as the January 29th, 2024 removal by a local government of a public monument dedicated to Korean victims of forced labor during the colonial era. For more information about this event, see: Asahi Shimbun (English), [Memorial for wartime Korean laborers coming down in Gunma], Jan. 30, 2024 (https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15138198)
2 The notation “silence/t voices” is intentional.
Takahiro Kuroda 