Joe Hisaishi is a renowned composer of Japan. He produced many splendid music works with Hayao Miayazaki, Takeshi Kitano and more film makers and many of them got international prizes at contests. His ability is arguably the god-sent talent and we still expect his new works to come out.
Recently I read his book. He explained in the book how he composes music and how he keep his own rules in his mind when composing music.
To be honest, I expected a kind of his view about the music in the book. But surprisingly the book is telling his business mind. He seems to think that composing music is his business and for the business only, he now tries to work. For example, his masterpieces are for the movies and if it’s not going well with the movies, he thinks it’s a fail even if the music itself is fantastic.
His opinion is of course right. As far as he keeps successful works, nobody can deny it.
But as a music fan, it’s not interesting to hear like that. For fans, probably the music is not business. Music is a kind of treasure of mind. For example, if John Lennon said that he wrote music for business only, we would be disappointed and probably John would not have been such a giant star. We wanted to hear John’s music and voice with his own honest thoughts, not by business mind. He always did it honestly. So he attracted many in the world.
Like that, music fans often want to listen to the musician’s natural and naked heart through the works.
Joe Hisaishi’s music is often for movies. So it’s different from the artists like John. Joe Hisaishi is a composer, it means he write music on requests from others. Joe Hisaishi’s comments are right.
It was my mistake. I expected the same thing as I listen to John Lennon’s songs. Joe Hisaishi’s category is of course different.
One thing I expect to Joe is that he someday would write music only for the pleasure of his own mind, not by the business requests. Until it comes true, I would listen to his masterpieces WITH thinking of the movies. After reading his book, maybe it’s hard for me to listen to his music as sole work of art because he says what he writes are based on movie business. A little sad, though.
