The idea of ma (間) is an ancient Japanese concept concerning space and time. Ma means“interval” or “gap” in Japanese, but it is a beautiful and philosophically nuanced word, which
carries the implication of movements within silence or “empty” spaces. The concept has served
as an essential element in people’s daily life in Japan, in traditional arts, such as brush paintings,
ikebana (flower arrangement), and music for hundreds of years, and is often considered to be an
original concept, unique to Japanese culture. Because of this perceived uniqueness, ma has,
especially in the last few decades, been discussed and treated with a slight hint of a nationalistic
mindset.
However, I will argue that although the formalization of these ideas as “ma” is uniquely
Japanese, the phenomenon described is more globalized. As a Japanese pianist who engages
with Western classical and experimental music, I have witnessed ma-like elements in musical
pieces from different geographic locations and time periods.
My artistic interest has, thus, centered around finding ma-like structures in music from outside of
Japan’s sphere of influence, with the goal of demonstrating that the concept of “charged
stillness” is quite widespread. With this idea in mind, I recorded a piano solo album that includes
pieces by Chinese American composer Lei Liang, 18th-century Austrian composer Joseph
Haydn, Swiss composer Katharina Rosenberger, and 20th-century Greek avant-garde composer
Iannis Xenakis, as well as Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu. These works are very different
from each other, but I believe that they all embody ma-like ideas in their own ways. As a
performer, one can then apply this ancient idea to the performance of a wide variety of musical
situations to enrich their performance experiences.
