溝上　日出夫

Mizokami, Hideo

1936 - 2002 　イタリア

When looking at the activity and work of Mizokami, two aspects stand out in particular: firstly, he was a leader of Japanese eurhythmic music education, and secondly, he was a composer who extended the repertories of piano pieces for four hands. Regarding the first point, eurhythmics as proposed by E. J. Dalcroze was regarded as an important part of Japanese preschool education. Mizokami was the head of the Eurhythmics Music Institute and a regular board member of the All Japan Eurhythmics Music Education Society. Concerning the second point, the performances by Sachiko Kodama and Kunio Kodama of Mizokami’s compositions are notable. “E no nai Ehon (Picture Book without Pictures)”, published by Zen-On Publishing Company in 1974, is a piano piece for four hands based on the children’s stories by H. C. Andersen. The composition sets eleven of the thirty-three short stories from the original work to music. Since this work can be somewhat difficult to play, Mizokami composed “E no nai Ehon Daini-kumikyoku (Picture Book without Pictures the Second Suites)” in order to make more people able to perform and enjoy the piece. These two works, having a touch of the moon light and the scent of roses, present various forms of musical dialogues and are rich in variations.