Kosaku Yamada
| Kosaku Yamada | |
|---|---|
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Kosaku Yamada in Manhattan in 1918
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| Born |
June 9, 1886 Tokyo, Japan |
| Died | December 29, 1965 (aged 79) Tokyo, Japan |
| Cause of death | Heart attack |
| Education | Tokyo Music School |
Kosaku Yamada (山田 耕筰 Yamada Kōsaku?, 9 June 1886 – 29 December 1965) was a Japanese composer and conductor.
In many Western reference books his name is given as Kôsçak Yamada. During his music study in the Imperial German capital of Berlin from 1910 to 1913 he hated the times when people laughed at him because his "normal" transliteration of his first name "Kosaku" sounded like the Italian "cosa" meaning "what" or "thing" + the German "Kuh" meaning "cow"; which resulted in his choosing a somewhat fanciful transliteration of Kôsçak Yamada ever since.
Yamada was born in Tokyo on 9 June 1886.
After studying at the Tokyo Music School, he left Japan for Germany where he enrolled in the Berlin Hochschule and learnt composition under Max Bruch and Karl Leopold Wolf and piano under Carl August Heymann-Rheineck, before returning to Japan. He travelled to the United States in 1918 for two years. During his stay in Manhattan, New York City he conducted the temporarily-organized orchestra, members of the New York Philharmonic and the New York Symphony, soon before their amalgamation.
Yamada left about 1,600 pieces of music. Especially, songs (Lieder) amount to 700 pieces of music excluding songs for schools, municipalities and companies. They were performed and recorded by many singers which include Kathleen Battle, Ernst Haefliger and Yoshikazu Mera. His opera Kurofune (The Black Ships) is regarded as one of the most famous Japanese operas.
As a conductor, Yamada made an effort to introduce many orchestral works to Japan. He was the first performer in Japan of Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, Dvořák's Symphony No. 9, Gershwin's An American in Paris, Mosolov's Iron Foundry, Sibelius' Finlandia, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1, Johann Strauss II's An der schönen blauen Donau, and Wagner's Siegfried Idyll.
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