Instrumentation: Noh voice, bass flute, cello
First Performance: Ryoko Aoki, Kazushi Saito, Seiko Takemoto. Shibaura House, Tokyo, December 19, 2019
Commissioned by and dedicated to Ryoko Aoki and ensemble-no. Part of Noh x Contemporary Music Vol. 7.
Duration: 14 minutes
This work is a series of meditations on butterfly and dream imagery, specifically related to the ancient passage in the Zhuangzi (莊子) that poses one of the most beautiful and enigmatic questions on the nature of existence and reality: “…Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.” Three haiku related to this theme (by Buson, Bashō, and Moritake) frame the central passage of excerpts from Kochō, a Noh drama by Kanze Kojirō Nobumitsu. In this story, a monk encounters a woman in Kyoto who reveals herself to be the spirit of a butterfly. She tells thim that she will meet him in a dream, and then disappears, only to reappear later as the butterfly spirit, freely dancing among the plum blossoms. The breathy, earthy, and flexible instrumental writing is directly in response to the dynamic artistry of Ryoko Aoki and the Noh vocal traditions, as well as the imagery of the selected text. The title of the piece, translating as “butterfly-dream,” is also the name of the monk/poet Chōmu (蝶夢, 1732–95), a contemporary of Yosa Buson and follower of Bashō.