Conservatory of Music

by Joji Yuasa

I have been composing pieces under the same title since 1955, of which this is the thirteenth. I took the word “projection” from Jean-Paul Sartre’s “projet”, which I understood as expressing ideas and intentions in terms of time, and projecting them towards the future. As was the case with Projection for String Quartet I and II, I was faced here with the task of finding a way of composing my own music without being constrained by the traditional forms that have been established for a great many years, namely the string quartet or trio.

This particular piece lasts approximately twelve minutes and includes extended techniques, inviting the listener onto a new journey. What serves as its unifying principles are atonality, derived from the twelve-tone mode and systematized, and musical narrativity developing along the axis of time. I emphasize this entity, the narrativity of sound, because I am convinced that this is where the greatest possibility lies for the future of music using conventional musical instruments.