Activities of the Twelve Months
The concert on this webcast features music for the koto, a thirteen-string Japanese zither played with fingerpicks. In addition to music played on an actual koto (by Masayo Ishigure), the recording includes compositions that imitate koto using piano. Still others employ a cello to invoke the shamisen, a long-necked lute plucked with a large plectrum. In this detail from a late nineteenth-century woodblock, two women play the koto and shamisen.
Detail, Activities of the Twelve Months in Edo: December. By Toyohara Chikanobu (1838�1912). Japan, Meiji era, 1890. Woodblock print; ink and color on paper. Gift of Moses Albert Walker in memory of Marion Walker, S1995.116.66a-c.
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