懺悔するピロギー zange-suru pierogi (2023)

zange-suru pierogi (literally the confessing pierogi) is a flexible instrumentation work that can be performed by any number of musicians.

Zange-suru Pierogi懺悔するピロギー is a made up title combining the Japanese verb zange suru 懺悔する (to confess) and the Polish word for dumpling. The title has two inspirations. The first is a short story entitled Zange 懺悔 (Confession) by Japanese author Tetsuya Okuda 奥田哲也 from a collection of short stories. In it, an old criminal has just been released from prison and is walking on the streets and crosses paths with a young monk. The two begin talking. The monk notices the old man seems to have a lot on his mind and says that he can speak freely. The old man begins recounting the various crimes he has committed. As he speaks, the old man starts de-aging, while the monk starts to age rapidly as if consuming his sins.

Before long the old man has become a baby and the monk has aged so much, his body collapses into an amorphous blob, however the two continue speaking. As the old man (now baby) tells its final crimes, he leaves human form and only his soul free of his crimes remains. The monk, now fully in blob form, proceeds to devour the soul of the old man in one bite. It exclaims: “Oh dear, I've finally got my meal. The human soul is good, but it's hard to peel. After all that hard work, and that’s it?”

The second influence is Arnold Schoenberg’s 1912 Pierrot Lunaire, specifically the opening movement. For a long time, I had wanted to write my own musings on Albert Giraud’s text “Mondestrunken” (Drunk with Moonlight) or even try to set it myself. While reading Okuda’s confession, I could not help but wonder if the “monk” felt the same type of joy of being bathed in moonlight while waiting in anticipation to eat the soul of the old man. However, after spending too much time with the piece during my graduate studies, I jokingly referred to the work as Pierogi Lunaire unceasingly. Therefore, to please my own juvenile interests I call this work Zange-suru Pierogi.

Zange-suru Pierogi is around 7-9 minutes long depending on repeats and hocketing.

if interested in purchasing parts/audio score for this work, please contact me