Music can be a passive history lesson. Sometimes, it can take us on a fantastic, aural journey, as with Japanese composers active before World War II who reflect in their music nearly half a century of tumultuous, societal change.

Yasuji Kiyose

A concert Tuesday featuring works by Yasuji Kiyose (1900-1981) provides a rare chance to hear Japanese history. The program of Kiyose's songs, chamber works and short piano pieces written during the prewar years of 1932-1940 and in the postwar years between 1949-1966 reveals both the musical side of the volatile 1930s and the shift toward the internationalism of post-Olympics Japan.

Kiyose, hailed as one of the godfathers of modern music in Japan, was a rare combination of entrepreneur and creative artist. He was a romantic dreamer with roots in rural Oita Prefecture. With no formal music training, he moved to Tokyo in his 20s to try his luck as a professional musician and found gainful employment as a piano accompanist. In 1930, Kiyose and his friends formed the Newly Rising Composers Federation to foster the growth of Japanese styles of composition that would "equal or surpass" Western archetypes.

It was a tall order and a bold move at a time when classical Western music was not yet fully appreciated in Japanese society and the achievements of Japanese artists were largely ignored by an audience who preferred concerts of tangos and chansons sponsored by Tokyo department stores. To complicate matters, the Japanese government intensified control over all cultural education in public schools in the early 1930s, and even more after the Feb. 26 Rebellion in 1936. Music books and records that featured European classical music were removed from the shelves of public libraries, and the Information Bureau seized control of Japan's recording industry. By 1937, only music with nationalist themes was sanctioned for public distribution.

Kiyose and his colleagues saw opportunity where others saw restrictions. They invented suitable "Japanese" versions of Western-style classical music, based on various combinations of traditional Japanese and other Asian musical genres.

Shukichi Mitsukuri constructed unique theoretical and tuning systems, which he adapted from ancient Chinese and Japanese music theories, aimed at changing the fundamental structure of Western-style music in Japan.

Fumio Hayasaka, best-known for his score for Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai," based his orchestration on the delicate, translucent timbre and harmonic principles of Japanese court music.

Kiyose captured the unbridled vitality of Japanese folk music for the melodies and rhythms of his compositions. From the onset of the musicians' federation, the music of these creative composers found its place in concert halls, NHK radio broadcasts and award ceremonies.

At the concert Tuesday, second of the centennial series, you can hear Kiyose's romantic vision of Japan. The program includes works from Kiyose's most creative period in the immediate prewar years to the postwar 1960s when he moved to an international stage, representing Japan at UNESCO-sponsored festivals in Europe and China. His "Trio for Shakuhachi" of 1964 typifies Kiyose's rediscovery of the unique sonic characteristics of traditional Japanese instruments, embracing fragments of German romanticism, French impressionism and Japanese prewar pop. "String Trio" (1949) and "Violin Sonata" (1960), two of the more pedantic compositions, follow a stricter line.

Balanced in between Kiyose's early piano pieces, you can hear the efforts of a composer struggling to break free from nationalistic nuances. Particularly noteworthy are Kiyose's works for solo piano. The four simple musical poems from his second volume for piano, placed at the beginning of the program, are glimpses into the continual presence of Japanese tradition: like being overcome by the subtle emotion of haiku or tanka poetry, or smelling the fragrance of plum blossoms in the coldest days of February.

If you expect a program inundated with nationalistic spirit or kitsch, you will be sadly disappointed. In its place, you will find the musical and psychological legacy Kiyose passed on to his famous student, Toru Takemitsu. Kiyose's love for the Japanese spirit, the environment of unique sounds and flavors, and the spiritual side of tradition are pervasive and infectious.

Japan was lucky to have such brave souls.