Widely known for his folk music and children's songs, Yamada Kosaku also composed in numerous Art music genres. This paper focuses on the works from Yamada's early period, c. 1913-1920, during which time he experimented with combining multiple styles--Yamada used the term 'counterpoint' -- within single compositions. The paper divides into three parts.

Part 1 provides a brief overview of late Meiji and Taisho; culture with special attention given to the poetry of Hakushu Kitahara. Hakushu wrote in multiple styles and genres and often utilized stylistic disjunctions, such as foreign words and local dialect, to achieve exotic effects. Influenced by French Symbolism, Hakushu valued suggestion over explanation and, like many Japanese poets at the time, saw explicit connections between traditional Japanese and modern European verse.

Part 2 turns to Yamada's early music. While Yamada often composed in a single European style, especially interesting are those pieces that juxtapose styles--modern and Romantic, European and Japanese--either between movements or, more radically, within a single movement. Focus is given to two works, Yamada's 1914 Kare to Kanojo ('He and She') a programmatic seven movement piano piece, and his 1917 Chogetsu shu ('Clear Moon Cycle') a song cycle based upon five traditional tanka by Terasaki Etsuko. In both works, rapid shifts in surface musical language serve to mark distinct styles and their overall flow creates a sense of development that can be read in conjunction with the underlying program as in the case of Kare to Kanojo, or the poetic texts as in the case of Chogetsu shu.

Part 3 briefly examines Yamada's later music in which multiple styles are presented and combined in ways more refined and less jarring.

David Pacun is currently Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Ithaca College, and previously taught at University of Vermont and University of Connecticut (Storrs). He wrote his dissertation on Brahms's variation sets under Richard Cohn at the University of Chicago, and has read papers on Brahms, transformation theory and the music of Yamada at various regional conferences.