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"Music," says Toshio Hosokawa, "is the place where notes and silence meet." This identifies his aesthetic concept as a genuinely Japanese one. It is found both in Japanese landscape painting and in the music, such as the courtly gagaku, in which audible sound always stands in relation to nonsound, i.e. to silence. In their rhythmic proportions Hosokawa's compositions are oriented around the breathing methods of Zen meditation, with their very slow breathing in and very slow breathing out: "Each breath contains life and death, death and life."

Mayumi Miyata (sho - the instrument of the universe or of tradition) and Stefan Hussong (accordion - the human or contemporary instrument) are among the most important interpreters of Hosokawa's music, which here is framed by four traditional gagaku pieces.