Time for Marimba Miki Minoru

für Marimbaphon

Minoru MIKI composed this piece during the summer of 1968 for Ms. Keiko Abe's first marimba recital. Before that year, Miki had listened to many marimba performances, but many of the pieces which he heard were arrangements of famous Western instrumental pieces. He also found that tremolo was used too often. When he agreed to compose this piece, therefore, he was determined to avoid the use of tremolo except in very limited cases.

From an early age Miki loved the special feeling of Indonesian Gamelan ensemble music. There are very different mechanisms at work in the Gamelan and marimba. For example, the marimba has fixed well-tempered pitches while Gamelan scales are very special in comparison. Regardless of these differences, he wanted to create a unique, fantastic music using just one marimba.

A six tone series consisting of C,B,Eb,G,E,Ab, along with variable quintuplet rhythm constructions are very important for this purpose. However, the general atmosphere through the work should be very free, almost like an improvisation. Many years later, Miki was surprised when he read a doctoral dissertation written by a Japanese marimba player, This dissertation, an analysis of "Time for Marimba", discussed the composer's careful mathematical plan in realizing the form of this work. The composer very moved by this analysis, but in fact, the piece was through-composed during a brief one week period during the hot summer.