Kajiura's ancient opera / stort stories site on wayback machine

[george1234]

I was looking for her short stories page but i found link to her opera site on wayback machine in the article about her on wikipedia.
https://web.archive.org/web/20080927041736/http://www.fictionjunction.com/opera/index.html

Now with machine translation its easy to get an idea about what she was talking about. She has a huge text about her and her father which should be similar to the stuff she talks about when in interviews.
(her old main site is here too https://web.archive.org/web/20081217052601/http://www.fictionjunction.com:80/index2.html and some blogs about destination are quite funny to read.)

@MushiMushi btw the only short story we have is here https://canta-per-me.net/yuki-kajiura/yuki-kajiuras-short-stories/the-echo-of-instruments/
but i just found the 5 short stories here https://web.archive.org/web/20100526123839/http://kanan.ptu.jp/short_s/renai/ (number #2 is NSFW i think)

 

[tsubasa]

She has a story titled "Heigen"

 

[MushiMushi]

She has a story titled "Heigen"

She doesn't want people to read it these days :D
I'd also respect her wish by not spreading this info around.
(I mean I did read it in the past so it's not fair for me to say so. It was actually a very complete story. By the end of it there were some philosophical aspects but it was genre'd as fantasy/sci-fi.)

 

[george1234]

Ιt seems she had wrote music for the heigen story too that she distributed to friends or sold for limited time as she has notice its no longer available.

Meanwhile in her opera site there is an article about 'overtures and preludes' in opera pieces. In my opinion that explains why she often makes overtures in her lives and some songs have "prelude" title in some of the beginning tracks like in Xenosaga 2, Mai-Hime, Madoka Magica, and Heaven's Feel osts.

 

[CloisteredFlame]

https://canta-per-me.net/yuki-kajiura/yuki-kajiuras-short-stories/the-echo-of-instruments/

A quote from this is interesting to me:

"Yuuri searches for an instrument. Searching for something she can play to her desires, and produce a sound to match her hopes and dreams. An instrument unable to do that has no value to her. A musician feels no hesitation when discarding an instrument. Test playing, giving up, this is how Yuuri works. Yuuri is constantly in search of a better sound."

Just makes me think about Kajiura and the relationship she has as a composer to the musical elements that she brings together to create music that satisfies her creative vision.

 

[CloisteredFlame]

I was looking for her short stories page but i found link to her opera site on wayback machine in the article about her on wikipedia.
https://web.archive.org/web/20080927041736/http://www.fictionjunction.com/opera/index.html

Now with machine translation its easy to get an idea about what she was talking about. She has a huge text about her and her father which should be similar to the stuff she talks about when in interviews.
(her old main site is here too https://web.archive.org/web/20081217052601/http://www.fictionjunction.com:80/index2.html and some blogs about destination are quite funny to read.)

@MushiMushi btw the only short story we have is here https://canta-per-me.net/yuki-kajiura/yuki-kajiuras-short-stories/the-echo-of-instruments/
but i just found the 5 short stories here https://web.archive.org/web/20100526123839/http://kanan.ptu.jp/short_s/renai/ (number #2 is NSFW i think)

So, this is Kajiura's proto-Revo stage, where she was creating mini-stories herself, but wasn't inclined to do extensive, longform stories (unlike Revo), then write music to them. We all know Revo also tends to write music to fleshed-out stories, either his own (SH) or others' (LH).

Maybe, Kajiura's own non-tie-in songs are self-OSTs to which only she knows the short stories (or they refer to stories she's written in the past), while the popular anime tie-ins are (of course) the book reviews of others' stories, to which she has often alluded.

 

[tsubasa]

"Yuuri searches for an instrument. Searching for something she can play to her desires, and produce a sound to match her hopes and dreams. An instrument unable to do that has no value to her. A musician feels no hesitation when discarding an instrument. Test playing, giving up, this is how Yuuri works. Yuuri is constantly in search of a better sound."

I think the plot twist in the story is that she referred to the instrument as a person hahaha

 

[CloisteredFlame]

I think the plot twist in the story is that she referred to the instrument as a person hahaha

It can also be seen referring to the person, in one sense, being an instrument. Of course is referring uniquely to vocalists, since their bodies are literally the instrument.

Kajiura also said the violin sings (like a human) which is why, I believe, she uses strings a lot, since it's almost like having a second chorus doing vowel-only vocalizations, without lyrics. I would imagine there are always strings in virtually all her soundtrack instrumental compositions as well, since they would serve as the "voice" in the absence of vocalists.

Is it possible that the strings in general and maybe the violin in particular, since she has such a skilled violinist as Konno) is the primary timbre Kajiura uses to relate to her vocalists' tonal qualities in her musical imagination, especially in a chorus/blend context. I've read that she compared some of her singers' voices to string and other instruments (Yuriko/Wakana - violin; Keiko - cello; Hikaru - reed instrument, flute?).

I imagine it's part of the reason she always had an additional voice to do those vibrato-infused high soprano parts in much of Kalafina's non-rock music. They served as the high violin.