Saburō Moroi


Saburō Moroi was a Japanese composer.

Life

Moroi was self-taught in composition while studying at the Tokyo Imperial University before moving in 1932 to Germany to study in the Berlin Musikhochschule under Leo Schrattenholz and Walter Gmeindl. While Moroi had been active in the Tokyo musical scene, forming with other colleagues a society named Surya, he claimed that his creative life truly started from his Berlin days. Returning to Japan in 1934, he built a successful career in subsequent years.
Soon after completing his Symphony No. 3 in 1944 he was called up by the Japanese Army to serve in the Pacific War. Following the country's surrender he focused on teaching and writing books on music theory, composing just eight works in the following three decades, including two more symphonies. In his last works he turned to the twelve-tone system.
Pupils of Moroi include Ikuma Dan, Toriro Miki, Toshiharu Ichikawa, Yoshirō Irino, Kunio Toda, Minao Shibata, Sōkichi Ozaki, Akio Yashiro and Chūji Kinoshita. His son Makoto Moroi is also a composer.

List of works

Orchestral

Moroi composed a total of ten sonatas for piano: three early sonatas, five numbered sonatas written between 1927 and 1931, and a second set of two numbered sonatas with opus numbers written in 1933 and 1939.