Japanese Festival Music, Op. 84, is a composition by Richard Strauss. The full title is Festmusik zur Feier des 2600jährigen Bestehens des Kaiserreichs Japan für großes Orchester . The Japanese government commissioned music from composers of six nations to mark the 2600th anniversary of the Japanese Empire. Other composers writing for the festivities included:
Hisato Ohzawa who wrote his Symphony no. 3, "Symphony of the Founding of Japan"
Jacques Ibert who wrote an Ouverture de fête "pour célébrer le 26e centenaire de la fondation de l'empire Nippon"
Ildebrando Pizzetti who wrote a Symphony "In Celebrazione dell XXVIo Centenario della Fondazione dell'Impero Giapponese"
Sándor Veress who wrote his first symphony, "Hungarian Greetings on the 2600th Anniversary of the Japanese Dynasty"
Benjamin Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem was also commissioned in this process, but was ultimately rejected by the Japanese foreign ministry as an insult.
Japan’s request for a composition from an American composer was turned down due to the deterioration of relations between the countries. Joseph Goebbels assigned the Japanese commission to Germany's most prominent composer, Richard Strauss. Strauss, age 75, put aside composition on his opera Die Liebe der Danae to work on Japanese Festival Music while staying in the Italian Tyrol. He completed the work on April 22, 1940 and received 10,000 Reichsmarks for his effort. There are five sections:
Meerszene
Kirschblütenfest
Vulkanausbruch
Angriff der Samurai
Loblied auf den Kaiser
Japanese Festival Music is written for a large orchestra 3 Flutes, 2 oboes, English Horn, 4 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 8 French horns, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, 2 Tubas, 14 tuned temple gongs, timpani, various percussion, two harps and strings. There is also an option for either an organ or an additional 3 trumpets, 4 trombones and 2 French horns. The première was at the Kabukiza Theatre, Tokyo on December 14, 1940. Helmut Fellmer, a music professor in Tokyo at the time, conducted the NHK Symphony Orchestra. The audience for this occasion also heard the other three commemorative works. Fellmer conducted this orchestra again on December 19, 1940 for a recording on Nippon Columbia. The first European performance was in Stuttgart on October 27, 1941 with Hermann Albert conducting. Japanese Festival Music is probably Richard Strauss’s least programmed work and is often described as one of his weakest compositions. Norman Del Mar compared it to the Festliches Präludium in which “a vast orchestra piles one towering climax upon another”. Strauss conducted the work for recording in late 1940 with the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra ; this recording was issued on CD in 1990 by Deutsche Grammophon in a 3-CD set of Strauss conducting his own works, and four years later on Preiser 90205. The duration of the work is approximately fourteen minutes. The score was published by Oertel in Berlin in 1941 and is obtainable from Boosey & Hawkes.
