; September 29, 1916, Tokyo – February 2, 1996, Tokyo) was a Japanese composer. Minao studied

botany Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek w ...

Tokyo University , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...

, graduating in 1939, and made further studies in the fine arts while studying music privately with Saburo Moroi and playing cello as a member of the Tokyo String Orchestra. His early works are mostly for chamber groups and are indebted to

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...

. In 1948, he took a position as a professor of theory at Tōhō Gakuen School of Music, working there through 1955; he also taught at Ochanomizu Women's College in 1952, remaining there until 1959. He began incorporating elements of serialism and

musique concrete Musique is the French word for music. Musique may also refer to: Music *Musique (disco band), a 1970s studio band produced by Patrick Adams *Musique, a British dance act consisting of Moussa Clarke and Nick Hanson best known for their 2001 song ...

in the 1950s, and wrote for increasingly larger orchestral forces. Shibata accepted a professorship at

Tokyo University of the Arts or is the most prestigious art school in Japan. Located in Ueno Park, it also has facilities in Toride, Ibaraki, Yokohama, Kanagawa, and Kitasenju and Adachi, Tokyo. The university has trained renowned artists in the fields of painting, scul ...

in 1959, where he remained until 1969, and while there his compositions incorporated aspects of

aleatory music Aleatoric music (also aleatory music or chance music; from the Latin word ''alea'', meaning "dice") is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance, and/or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the ...

. He wrote pieces which used graphic or artistic scoring notations and made use of

microtonal Microtonal music or microtonality is the use in music of microtones— intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals". It may also be extended to include any music using intervals not found in the customary Western tuning of t ...

sonorities. From 1973 he composed theater works which combined elements of Japanese folk music with European-derived song structures. Shibata also write extensively on music history and theory, and was an editor of ''

The New Grove ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language '' Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and th ...

'''s Japanese edition.

References

*Masakata Kanazawa, "Minao Shibata". ''

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theo ...

'', 2nd edition. {{DEFAULTSORT:Shibata, Minao 1916 births 1996 deaths Japanese composers Japanese male composers Musicians from Tokyo 20th-century Japanese male musicians