O Hototogisu! - Full Score

O Hototogisu! is presented here as a typeset score with two facsimile pages from the composer's manuscript.

This exquisite 'fragment of a Japonisme' - premiered in 2017 and conceived as a kind of double concerto for soprano, flute and ensemble of 23 players - proved to be Oliver Knussen's final work. The 8-minute piece couches seven exquisite haiku settings in richly evocative music which incorporates signals from Japanese theatre (particularly Kabuki). It concerns the Hototogisu (or Lesser Cuckoo), a bird widely invoked in Japanese haiku poetry of the 17th-19th centuries, where the poet listens for its arrival from the mountains both as a harbinger of summer and a voice from the land of the dead.

Product details

• Authors: Oliver Knussen
• Publisher: External catalogues UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.12.2019
• EAN: 9780571541119
• ISBN: 978-0-571-54111-9
• No. of pages: 36
• Series: Faber Edition
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Music > General, dictionaries; Humanities, art, music > Music > Sheet music; Non-fiction book > Music, film, theatre > Classical, opera, operetta, musical