Matsuo Basho's Song

Máté Balogh's work entitled Matsuo Basho's Song was commissioned by and dedicated to Ryoko Aoki. The piece is written for solo noh-singer and based on Matsuo Basho's famous travel-book The Narrow-Road to the Deep North (Oku no hosomichi). The piece contains the very first phrase of Basho's book, putting the text in different contexts using various manners of the noh-singing-tradition, such as Oshirabe, Nanori, Issei, Sashi, and Sageuta.

These singing techniques are used as different personalities or viewpoints, representing different interpretations of the same text. Balogh's piece suggests that the person - the reader or listener of the book - can imagine more than one exact meaning of Basho's intellectual message. The one who is able to see all the meaning of a phenomenon is unsure but open-minded.