From Bagatelles: Twice Seven Haiku
Paul Chihara (b. 1938)
About the Composer
Paul Seiko Chihara is a Japanese American composer whose career has encompassed concert music, ballet, film, television, musical theater, and education. Born in Seattle in 1938, Chihara spent part of his childhood incarcerated with his family at the Minidoka camp in Idaho during World War II. He later pursued advanced musical study at Cornell University, earning his doctorate in 1965, and studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, Ernst Pepping in Berlin, and Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood.
Chihara established an extensive career in American concert music, serving as the first composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and, from 1973 to 1986, as composer-in-residence with the San Francisco Ballet. His music has been commissioned and performed by leading orchestras and ensembles, and his honors include Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships and the Lili Boulanger Memorial Award. Alongside his concert work, Chihara developed a substantial career composing for film and television, creating scores for more than 100 productions, as well as working in musical theater, including as musical consultant and arranger for Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies.
Education has remained another important thread throughout Chihara’s career. At UCLA, he founded and chaired the graduate program in Visual Media, bringing together the worlds of concert composition and music for film and other media; he has also taught at New York University. Across these varied settings, Chihara’s career reflects an unusually broad conception of what it can mean to be an American composer, moving freely between the concert hall, stage, screen, and classroom.
About the Piece
Paul Chihara’s Bagatelles (Twice Seven Haiku) comprises fourteen concise piano pieces, divided into two groups of seven. Their subtitle suggests the concentrated quality of haiku: each miniature establishes a distinct musical character with remarkable economy. Hommage aux trois B’s, which opens the second group, looks across centuries of musical history to three composers—Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, and William Bolcom.
Rather than presenting the three composers in separate episodes, Chihara allows their musical worlds to mingle. Bach is evoked without direct quotation through a line that weaves throughout the piece. Against this appear two recognizable quotations: a fragment of a clarinet melody from Brahms’s Clarinet Trio, Op. 114, followed by a more extended reference to Bolcom’s beloved Graceful Ghost Rag. The Bach-inspired material returns between these quotations, binding the three very different voices together.
The result is playful and charming, but also touched by nostalgia. In a remarkably brief span, Chihara creates an affectionate conversation among three composers separated by centuries, treating musical history not as something distant or chronological, but as a collection of voices that remain vividly present alongside one another.
Explore Further
- Music and Conversation with Paul Chihara (WFMT interview)
- Composer Paul Chihara (interview with Bruce Duffie)
Sheet Music
The score for Bagatelles is available from the publisher.
Myriad Voices 