Meguri Meguru

Meguri Meguru (めぐりめぐる) – Tadao Sawai, 1991
2 Bass Kotos

In recent years, the bass koto’s possibility as a solo instrument has been gaining recognition and attention. However, duet pieces for two bass kotos are still very rare. This is because not only it is hard to make the sounds of two bass kotos harmonize and produce a beautiful resonance, by having two bass kotos, the unnecessary noise produced from the picks hitting the strings will also be doubled. Being able to cleanly resolve these two aspects is the main challenge in composing for two bass kotos.

When I composed this piece, I kept these facts in mind but I feel that they were not fully resolved. In the end, this piece was finished based on my own comprehension of this instrument.

The first movement of this piece uses a simple 4 bar chord progression that is repeated a series of 24 times.