Audio recordings, playbacks, albums

Audio recordings, playbacks, albums

We have created a page on our website called Audio Recordings, Playbacks, albums.

A short explanation might be helpful.

By albums, we mean the audio recordings that we have thematically bundled and that have been released via streaming platforms.

This format is mainly aimed at the music lovers who put a lot of emphasis on the sound quality

and less on the visual perception, whose requirement for the sound quality can not be satisfied with YouTube videos.

Through platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, or YouTube Music, these pieces can be heard in particularly good sound quality.

The point of playbacks is to give music lovers the opportunity to play pieces that have been distributed as videos or audio recordings. You could also call it "instrumental karaoke". In this case, the melody part is missing, and the piece starts with a count-in, so that the player can recognize the tempo in time. It is said that the most beautiful

music is the one you make yourself - and there is nothing to add to that.

The audio recordings are recordings of pieces that are not suitable for videos. It may be that they don't fit thematically with the images we have, or that they are too long. In many pieces from the Baroque or Viennese Classical periods, the individual movements are repeated, in which case the question arises: Why was this done? Probably not just to gain time. Often the solution is that the repetition is simply played softly. In the baroque period, there was the so-called "art of ornamentation", in which the interpreters used trills, transpositions, etc. in the repetition and thus showed what they had both in spontaneous ideas and technical possibilities. The composers did not have the claim that they had to specify everything. This tradition has more or less continued in the following epochs. Today, improvisation is mainly found in jazz and rock, rarely in modern classical music.

We try to keep the art of ornamentation in our recordings, but it is necessary to emphasize that every instrumentalist who wants to play in this sense can use his own ornaments. That is why our playbacks, like the audio recordings, also feature repetitions.

The playbacks can only be found on YouTube. You can download them with the appropriate software and start playing.

With our offer of videos, audio recordings, playbacks, albums and sheet music material we hope to do justice to what Aristotle said:

"In the essence of music is to give pleasure."

Siegfried Marx, January 2023

Insights (into our team)

Our team consists of two women and two men, two ear people and two eye people, three Germans and one Japanese - It is clear that this leads to different opinions and evaluations...

Here is a small example:

Johanna and Siggi had finished recording "Drei Wakas" and now it was a matter of finding an appealing cover under which the tracks could be found on Spotify, AppleMusic, YoutubeMusic and AmazonMusic. So Siggi created a design for the necessary details and was now undecided what color the background should be. So he posted his designs for discussion in our WhatsApp group.

• He didn't care about the color.
• I was this time - although I usually like it colorful - for the more pastel shades. A soft yellow or a light green appealed to me, they seemed fitting to the delicacy of the verses.
• Johanna, on the other hand, was surprisingly in favor of the strong tones like red or golden yellow, but added, ready to compromise, that she was open to "anything but gray."
• Tak chose - gray.

I don't think gray is really a color at all, and if it is, it's the color of boredom and gloom. In high school, I had an art teacher who wore only gray clothes. I thought that was terrible even then: how could such a creative woman be dressed so boringly? I also associate "gray" with days of high fog or gray cloud cover in November (now more like December, thanks to global warming). The world consists then only of different gray tones, which strike me on the mind...

Siggi was also surprised by this voting result and started to research. In one of my color books he found the confirmation of my view. "Gray" means in "the whole world: sadness, modernism, fear, monotony, simplicity. "*

"All over the world?" It couldn't be true like that, and fortunately Siggi wasn't satisfied with that either, but kept searching until he came across a wonderful article on the Internet: "The color gray in Japan: the other color of Japan." The conclusion reads:

"But the color gray has a different history in Japan. It is perceived differently, evokes different associations and feelings, it simply fits into life in Japan differently. And yes, despite all the modern trends, all the extravagant fashion designers and individualists, and all the peoples loving modern urban lives, it is obvious that gray plays a more positive role in Japanese life than it does by Western standards. Gray is just kakkoii (cool), gray is sad-beautiful, gray is just elegant."

You already guess which design was realized then? Yes exactly, of course the gray one!

And for me the beautiful realization remains that my gray strands of hair can also be seen as something positive... Please read "The Color Gray in Japan" (unfortunately in German): https://kunst-aus-japan.de/the-colours-of-japan-black-white-grey/

* Jean-Gabriel Causse: Die unglaubliche Kraft der Farben. Hanser-Verlag München 2018, S. 169.

https://kunst-aus-japan.de/the-colours-of-japan-black-white-grey/ , aufgerufen am 30.11.2022

Astrid Klier-Marx, 2022

There is war in Ukraine - and we continue to work our music videos... About the artist's bad conscience 

We live in depressing times: Covid remains with us, the world climate report paints a bleak future, and the war in Ukraine shakes our belief that there is any moral progress for humanity. Added to this depressing mood are our private worries and strokes of fate. As an artist, one wonders whether it is right to compose, to make music, to write poetry, to make paintings or sculptures, photos or videos. The public has to deal with more important things. Are we allowed to publish anything at all at the moment?

We ask ourselves this question and yes, we feel guilty!

An interview with the Erlangen psychotherapist Andre Pittig (published on 3.3.2022 in the Nürnberger Zeitung) helps with sober reflection. He says: "We cannot undo the direct situation, as much as we would like to. However, we can influence how we deal with our fears. On the one hand, social support helps, talking to others, exchanging ideas. A short-term solution would also be to avoid the content for a bit. I may be able to set a specific time in the day when I specifically seek out information. So avoidance and distraction can help in the short term."

It's also important to actively counteract the feeling of one's own helplessness "by doing something within my means: donating or going to a demonstration, for example. We have the feeling that we can make a difference."

So the three coping strategies Andre Pittig points out are 1. get active, 2. channel the frustrating information, and 3. distract yourself. We think a particularly effective way to distract yourself is to occupy yourself with something beautiful. This gives peace, strength, it strengthens hope... So our videos are also small islands of positivity, let them work!

Some comments on our videos describe exactly that. Two particularly courageous examples we would like to mention here at the end:

We "would like to thank you very much for the beautiful composition "Friends" 🙏. We have come this evening to listen to and look at your work in peace.... We have not seen something so beautiful together with the music for a long time.😍 We can only encourage you to continue here and go public.... Wonderful contributions to the human family on earth🥰✨."

Ulriken Brisken

"Thank you very much - also for the pictures - pictures of flowers, and of nature probably reflect any kind of soul movement best, when listening and watching then something similar happens with the listener, as with what can be seen in the pictures, the appearance of mysterious and rare blossoms, or the way these flowers can be seen, just not "habitually", but in their specialness, in the mysterious beauty and creation they just have in reality.... so the things are lifted into their real meaning - with sounding flowers. Everything that contributes to this is really needed in the world at the moment, and I'm glad that something like this is being shown and made audible here." 

"Maria Magdalena" to our video "For Johanna."

Johanna Keupp-Kosbahn, Tak Kuratsuwa, Siegfried Marx, Astrid Klier-Marx, 3.3.2022

Why is the German folk song “Der Letzte Abend” forgotten in Germany and is still very popular in Japan?

Two years ago I was asked to sing two songs at the Christmas party of our table tennis club in Bremthal-Eppstein in Germany.
I decided to sing two German folk songs, “Loreley” and “Der Letzte Abend”, as both songs are very popular in Japan. I decided to sing both in German and in Japanese. It was easy to find the Karaoke versions of Loreley in both languages for practice purposes. I was able to find the Karaoke version of “Der Letzte Abend” in Japanese without a problem. But I was not able to find any video of this song in its original language. I have found more than 100 videos of the Japanese version in all sorts of formats, solo singing, singing with orchestra, choir, piano solo, violin, guitar, koto (Japanese traditional harp), flute, harmonica, ukulele etc. but no YouTube video of this song made in Germany. The song is completely forgotten here. Fortunately, I was able to find the sheet music and its lyrics in German. Since I cannot read notes, I had to ask my tandem language partner and musician, Johanna, to record her singing of the song. Thanks to her, I was able to manage my singing at the Christmas party. But my question on the difference of the popularity of this song in both countries has remained. I also found that there are Japanese people who want to listen to the song sung in German. Now that we have the capability of making YouTube videos here, we decided to create the first German video of this song and publish it on YouTube especially for Japanese folk song lovers.

It is known that the original song was published in the song book of the Handworker Association, Potsdam, in 1859. Judging from the lyrics, this is a song expressing sadness at the departure of a wandering craftsman from his lover.

Kazumasa Yoshimaru published the Japanese version with his own lyrics in 1913 in a song book. He was a well known lyricist, literary scholar and a professor at the Tokyo Music School, currently Tokyo University of the Arts. The song was titled as “Kokyouwo hanaruru uta, 故郷をはなるる歌, literally “departure from a hometown”” but his lyrics are not the translation and have nothing to do with the original. Five- and seven-syllable words, as are used in Japanese traditional short poems, waka, are used in the lyrics, and they make the song sound elegant.

The theme of the original lyrics is the relationship between two lovers. It is told from the boy’s perspective with the subthemes such as wealth, religion, God and death, which were typical themes in the romantic thinking of the 19th century in Germany according to Astrid. The song does not explicitly express the farewell from his hometown. We can, however, imagine this departure happens when a wondering craftsman leaves his hometown on the journey for mastering his skills. On the other hand, the Japanese lyrics clearly express the farewell from a hometown. It describes what a man, who leaves his hometown, had seen and done there. He says goodbye to them. It may be also correct to say that the Japanese, especially middle and upper aged, feel stronger about hometowns from geographical and historical aspects than the German. Industrialization mobilizes population. During the industrialization before and after World War 2 the geography of Japan forced people living in rural areas to go far away into industrial areas which are concentrated in the middle part of the main island, Honshu, creating a stronger feeling of departure from hometowns compared to that of German people who were able to find new working places relatively nearer to their hometowns. My German Tandem language exchange partner said that this may also be related to the German atmosphere after World War 2, in which people tried to avoid pure German sentiment like “Heimat”.

I finished studying mechanical engineering at the age of 20 and had to leave my hometown to start working in a company in Kyoto. My father asked me to accompany him to go fly-fishing before my departure. It was in the evening just after the sunset at the end of March when small insects flew low over the river surface and fish jumped trying to catch them. I still feel strong nostalgia for that evening in my hometown in the sunset glow, when I think of my father, who is now 97 years old, lives in a nursing home and cannot recognize me. The Japanese version of “Der Letzte Abend” conjures up such nostalgia rather than the personal sadness expressed by the German version.

It is well established that the “Der Letzte Abend” is the orignal folksong. Here is the link of a detailed study about the relationship of these versions and the second German version titled “"Abschied von der Heimat” with the text "Tränen hab ich viele viele vergossen" by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben. 

http://blog.livedoor.jp/kiichirou_sakiyama/archives/cat_1274947.html
Unfortunately the article is only in Japanese. But readable with the help of the Google Translator.

The conclusion is:
The original version of "Kokyouwo hanaruru uta" is believed to be the German folk song "Der Letzten Abend" = "Wenn ich an den letzten Abend gedenk". It seems to have been scored in 1822 or 1826. The original text of "Kokyouwo hanaruru uta" is "Abschied von der Heimat" = "Tränen hab ich viele viele vergossen" by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, probably written in 1842. The original tune of this song was probably "Der Letzten Abend".

It is not easy to conclude why and how the popularity difference between these two versions is created. For better understanding, we may have to dig further in the historical backgrounds in both countries in which these songs were sung and also compare with the situation of a similar volksong like “Muß i denn, 別れの歌”. But it is beyond our Capacity. We are just hoping that our activities will contribute to the revival of the German version in Germany and in Japan.

The following English lyrics are translated from the original German and Japanese lyrics with the DeepL translator. If you are interested in the original text, please visit the German or Japanese section of this homepage.

Tak Kuratsuwa, 2021

“Der Letzte Abend” - The last evening

1.
When I remember the last evening, When I said goodbye to you !

Oh, the moon, it shone so bright,
I must part from you,
But my heart will always be with you,

Now farewell, farewell, farewell, farewell, farewell, Farewell, sweetheart.

2.
My mother said,
I should take a rich woman, That has much silver and gold.

But I'd rather like to

Stay poor
Than to leave you, my love.

3.
Great wealth brings us no honour,

Great poverty is no shame.

I would that I were
A thousand crowns richer And have thee by my hand.

4.
I intend to be rich once more,

But not in money or goods

If only God would give me

Eternal life,
I'll be rich enough.

5.
Eternal life, much happiness and blessings

I wish you a thousand times over!

And you're my treasure
And you'll always be my treasure

Till the cool grave.

Hofmann von Fallersleben: “Abschied von der Heimat” - Farewell to the homeland

I have shed many, many tears,

That I must part from here.
But my dear father has decided,

From our homeland we go.

Home, today we go,
Today from you forever
So farewell, farewell

So farewell, farewell, farewell.

Farewell, my roses in the garden
And you, my little flowers
May I no longer tend and wait for you,

For it must be done.
Dear little flowers, weep with me

Today I part from here.
So farewell...

Farewell, you green flowery fields,
Where I tied many a bouquet
Farewell, you bushes, arbours and woods,

Where I found cool shade

Mountains and valleys, silent meadows,

I'll never see you again
So farewell...

Farewell I call sadly down,
I cry from the mountain down to the valley.

Home, home, I'll never see you again:
I'll see you for the last time
Darkness is all around me -
And my heart is so heavy.
So goodbye...

“Kokyouwo Hanaruru uta”

The lily of the valley, the thousand grasses of the hedge

Today is the last day to gaze upon thee.
When I think of you, tears fall down my knees, Farewell home,

Farewell home, farewell home, farewell home,

Farewell home, farewell home, farewell home.

O hill, where I picked the brush, the forest of the shrine
O stream where I fished for crucian carp

O bank of willows

Farewell to me, look upon me with pity, Farewell to my home,

Farewell home, farewell home, farewell home,
Farewell home, farewell home, farewell home.

I'll stand here and bid you farewell
Home behind the mountains, sleep in peace,
The sun has set. It is now in twilight. Farewell home,

Farewell home, farewell home, farewell home,

Farewell home, farewell home, farewell home.

Information about the folk songs "Der letzte Abend" and "Tränen hab ich viele viele vergossen" by Dr. Heidi Christ

(Forschungsstelle für fränkische Volksmusik)

"According to our findings, the text and melody - as noted in the credible information from the "Volksliederbuch für gemischten Chor" - were recorded several times since the first quarter of the 19th century, traces lead to the Wernigeroder Arienbuch of 1759. The song seems to have been quickly widely disseminated and was sung a lot until at least the last third of the 19th century (cf. the different source references); in 1890 we also find it in the Reichs-Commersbuch, i.e. in the student body among young people. In Franconia, Ditfurth (mid/end 19th century) and Ries (early 20th century) were still able to record it from people's use. As far as I know, it has not been included in the institutionalized folk music cultivation since the 1970s, nor do we have any evidence from the free movement of folk song singing circles. However, it can be assumed that it is still sung here and there on various occasions. Newer songbooks still on sale contain it, but we have no information about their reception.

The poem "Tränen hab ich viele viele vergossen" ("I have shed many many tears") by August Hoffmann von Fallersleben was definitely written later than the song text of the "last evening", namely in 1842. First published in Hoffmann von Fallersleben, August Heinrich (ed.): Deutsches Volksgesangbuch. Hildesheim / New York: Georg Olms 1975, reprint of the Leipzig 1848 and Zurich and Winterthur 1843 editions (= Volkskundliche Quellen 8 Volkslied) printed Fallersleben's text together with the obviously already widespread, well-known and popular melody of the " Der letzte Abend ". This is not an unusual occurrence, but a well-known practice that texts that found favor were sung to existing melodies. The Japanese text version is based on the Fallersleben text.

Although I can understand Mr. Kuratsuwa's reasoning, I would like to point out that the text "Wenn ich an letzten Abend gedenk" ("When I think of last evening"), which belongs to the German Romantic period, does not refer to a farewell scene in the sense of a craftsman's hike, but rather to a union between two young people that is not befitting their status. The mother is thereby put in the mouth of the class arrogance, she points out that the young man should rather choose a rich girl and not give himself to a real love. To the young man, on the other hand, wealth (and thus prestige) mean nothing compared to love for the obviously poor girl. Nevertheless, he leaves her - not without assuring her of his eternal love.

I find your video very successful. On the one hand, the footage accompanies the departing, sad craftsman straight on his trek to the grave. On the other hand, I like the clear singing voice, carefully and delicately accompanied by the piano and framed by the flute - a folk song recording, not an elaborate or even overloaded art song. Many thanks for this.

May 2022

Dr. Heidi Christ - Forschungsstelle für fränkische Volksmusik

Schlossstraße 3

97215 Uffenheim

E-mail: www.volksmusik-forschung.de

Fon: 09842-9369490

Why did we name our first album "Blossom Dreams"?

Spotify makes quite a lot of guidelines how to name your album and so after quite a few unapproved attempts we came up with the idea to be inspired by Tak's beautiful cherry blossom, which we chose for the cover. So cherry blossom. But that wasn't accepted either. And after some more brainstorming, we ended up with "blossom dreams". Hooray, that was accepted! Blossom Dreams, in German “Blütenträume”... As a German teacher, I immediately thought of it: The famous German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe invented this word for his poem "Prometheus". The Titan Prometheus rebels against the gods and speaks to Zeus: 
                                                Didst thou e'er fancy
                                                That life I should learn to hate, And fly to deserts,
                                                Because not all
                                                My blossoming dreams grew ripe?

Other translations say: flower dreams, blossom dreams.

"Blossoming dreams" as a synonym for "wishes and ideas", perhaps also "youthful fantasies", which cannot necessarily be realized in reality, or as the Duden puts it: "not everything one strives for can be realized".

This "blossom dream" could be realized, that's a really nice title for our album!

The whole poem in German and English, background information and interpretation can be found at:
  https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_(Hymn)

Astrid Klier-Marx, November 2021

My encounter with still life paintings

Tak: My encounter with the old master “Jan Davidsz. de Heem” took place in the Residenzgalerie in the DomQuartier Salzburg. When the late chairman, Mr. Masanori Matsuura, of Matsuura Machinery Corporation in Japan and I visited Salzburg, Mr. Matsuura wanted to visit the gallery to see paintings by “de Heem”. He had already visited the gallery once with his daughter who is married to an owner of a fine art gallery in Tokyo and who loves the still life paintings by “de Heem”. There we saw one painting by Jan Davidsz. de Heem, father, and another by Cornelis de Heem, son.

https://www.domquartier.at/en/residenzgalerie/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Davidsz._de_Heem

I was fascinated with the supreme realism of the paintings. I had seen many still life paintings by then, but had to agree with Mr. Matsuura that they are among the best still life painters of its golden age. Since then I arranged visits to museums having “de Heem” paintings, whenever Mr. Matsuura visited Europe.

We have visited most of the famous fine art museums in Europe. Meanwhile, Mr. Matsuura bought a digital single reflex camera and started to take photos of these paintings. Since we both were working at that time, we had to make our visit to the museums on weekends or after work. So we developed our dream of visiting the museums again after our retirements from work and build a virtual “de Heem” museum using the photos taken by him and my explanations on the artists and their works in Japanese. We thought that “de Heem” could be more popular in Japan than now in this way because we believed that the beauty of their paintings was well suited to the taste of Japanese art lovers. This project became impossible, because he died just after my retirement. I learned how to take photos and started to visit museums for taking photos of the works of these painters by myself. But for some time it was not possible to visit museums because of corona regulations. So I decided to take photos of still lives in a small room of my apartment house. I hope that the corona situation will soon go away, and I can freely visit the museums with the “de Heem” paintings again.

Tak Kuratsuwa, 2021

Astrid: My encounter with still life paintings was in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. I was there as a child (probably at elementary school age) with my parents. And when I was standing in front of a still life with many flowers, my father drew my attention to the little fly that was painted on a flower. He said that was not only a fly, but also a sign that everything passes away. Every baroque still life would have such a symbol of transience, often visible, but sometimes hidden. From then on, I looked closely at every still life and searched for the symbols of transience, mostly insects. As a child, however, I did not want to understand that butterflies also belong to it. I thought they were too beautiful to symbolize anything negative...

That's why I particularly like Tak's still life with the beautiful old clock. It shows in a noble way that time is passing....

Astrid Klier-Marx, 2021

The wonderful adventure of a performer

Tackling a new piece as a performer is a wonderful adventure. The musical text can first be compared to a written text, where dots, commas and sometimes even the space between the words are missing. I send my sound particles on their journey. They are in good spirits, looking forward to their task and they try to understand harmonic tensions, references of the individual phrases, which they must first recognize as such. They yearn, exult, leap, complain, are depressed or happy, depending on which feelings are aroused in them. They can also be perplexed. At the same point in the phrase, there used to be a bar line and they were allowed to skip a bit. Now it's missing, the bar structure has changed, and they are at a loss for a moment, look at each other questioningly, and move on a bit unsettled. Things like that happen. And they look forward to each new piece, each new adventure!

Johanna Keupp-Kosbahn, 2021