Antonin Dvořák -- Symphony No. 9, Largo/William Arms Fisher -- Goin' Home

 

Happy Monday! The shot above is one from the balcony of my old Ichikawa apartment in Chiba Prefecture over a decade ago since I did catch sight of a rainbow...as faint as it is. Those were quite rare but there was something that I always heard every day without fail.

Play this at 5 pm if you can. This is what I heard every day at that time if I were at home on a regular day off or if it was on a holiday. And it emanated from Ichikawa City Hall. Super homey and natsukashii!😯 Usually that was the signal for me to get the fixins ready for dinner.

Last week, when I was watching the popular NHK information variety program "Chiko-chan ni Shikarareru!"（チコちゃんに叱られる!...Don't Sleep Through Life）, one of the segments involved the local government disaster prevention radio alarm system. Basically every village, town and city in the nation have tested the system daily by playing a particular song on their loudspeakers promptly at 5 pm. The songs differed from municipality to municipality although groups of them shared the same song. Well, that got me to thinking...what was the song being played for Ichikawa?

And thus begins one of the more unusual KKP articles in its history since the music here doesn't have any origins or connection with Japan or Japanese songwriters. Yet, the recording of that organ sweetly playing it has had me getting all homesick for my old home-away-from-home of Fukuei 3-chome in Ichikawa some ten minutes away on foot from Minami-Gyotoku Station on the Tozai Line.

I found out pretty quickly thanks to the explanation underneath that YouTube video of the Ichikawa system that it was called "Ieji"（家路）in Japanese (not to be confused at all with Hiromi Iwasaki's early 80s pop hit). Then, one search on J-Wiki informed me that the title was the translation of the 1922 "Goin' Home" by American composer and music historian William Arms Fisher. But then, the story takes me back even further on discovering that Fisher had been a protégé of the one-and-only Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, and "Goin' Home" had been adapted from the latter's "Symphony No. 9", 2nd movement "Largo" as you can hear above and first presented in 1893, joining another entry on KKP from that year. "Goin' Home" can be heard below as performed movingly by the BYU Choir.

I would think that "Goin' Home" is the perfect title for that Ichikawa system considering that it's played at 5 pm, but no one actually goes home from work at 5 pm in Japan. Plus, I think even the kids have to head off to juku so they don't hit home until later. But if you know of any exceptions, please let me know.

"Symphony No. 9" is also known as the New World Symphony, and the fourth movement "Allegro con fuoco" is arguably even more famous for those dramatic horns. Recently, I got to see and hear its hilarious use in one scene of the anime "Gekkan Shojo Nozaki-kun"（月刊少女野崎くん）.

Now, if I'm ever back in my old city again at 5 pm, I'll have to always remember Mr. Dvořák and Mr. Fisher, and pay tribute through a dinner at Tonki, my beloved tonkatsu restaurant right underneath the tracks of the Tozai.