Christian Utz Musical Composition in the Context of Globalization

**Christian Utz** is Professor of Music Theory and Analysis at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz and an associate professor at the University of Vienna. He directed the FWF-funded research projects "A Context-Sensitive Theory of Post-tonal Sound Organization" (2012-2014) and "Performing, Experiencing and Theorizing Augmented Listening" (2017-2020).

# Christian Utz **Musical Composition in the Context of Globalization**

New Perspectives on Music History in the 20th and 21st Century

translated by Laurence Sinclair Willis

Translation, copy-editing, and open access publication of this book are kindly supported by the Austrian Science Fund FWF and the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz

#### Revised and expanded edition

Original edition:

Christian Utz, *Komponieren im Kontext der Globalisierung. Perspektiven für eine Musikgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts*, Bielefeld, transcript, 2014

#### **Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek**

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (BY) license, which means that the text may be be remixed, transformed and built upon and be copied and redistributed in any medium or format even commercially, provided credit is given to the author. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Creative Commons license terms for re-use do not apply to any content (such as graphs, figures, photos, excerpts, etc.) not original to the Open Access publication and further permission may be required from the rights holder. The obligation to research and clear permission lies solely with the party re-using the material.

#### **First published in 2021 by transcript Verlag, Bielefeld © Christian Utz**

Cover concept: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld

Cover illustration: Kazuko Takada plays a reconstructed five-string ancient Chinese zither in Yūji Takahashi's *Unebiyama* (1992) (photo: Takashi Kijima). Reproduced in Toshirō Kido, *Reconstructed Music Instruments of Ancient East Asia,* edited by the National Theatre of Japan. Tokyo: Japan Arts Council/Ongaku no tomo sha 1994. The rights to the cover image could not be clarified beyond doubt, despite our efforts. We request that the publisher be notified if necessary.

Copy-editing by Wieland Hoban Typeset by Jan Gerlach Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-5095-2 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-5095-6 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839450956

Printed on permanent acid-free text paper.





# **Preface**

In the public debate, the relevance of the topics of musical interculturality and musical globalization seems to have faded in many places, to be replaced by a technology-centered media discourse that shows little interest in conventional notions of culture and emphasizes the permeability, performativity, and mutability of interconnected concepts of identity. In this context the idea of globalization, inf luenced by the model of popular musics, which have always been "global" in their orientation and increasingly determine musicological discourses, has all too often been restricted to the economic spectrum of meanings that once spawned it; what is of interest here is less a play with or problematizing of established cultural identities, whose significance is fairly marginal in the mainstream, or the worldwide dissemination of particular idioms or genres of pop, which is often taken for granted, than a grown market of consumers that was opened up by the new distribution possibilities of the internet – a situation that seems to fundamentally change the general reception of music far beyond these popular genres.

Against this background, insisting not only on a concept of interculturality but also on an art music discourse must therefore appear doubly quixotic, a clinging to long-questionable, paling categories, especially if this shows a tendency to presuppose the critical – "culture-critical" – impulse of art that was allegedly only brought forth by the "special path" of Western aesthetic modernity. But, one could respond, is it even necessary to emphasize that the concern cannot be to transfer a "purely Western" concept of art (assuming this can be constructed in the first place) to other cultural and geographical contexts, or must we do away with the misconception that the concept of "interculturality" is predicated on an obsolete, isolationist "container model" of cultures? Such questions, which certainly demand more than simple answers, are examined in detail in Chapter 1 of this book.

A desire to point not only to such "false dichotomies," but also to impulses in a musicological field that – with a few exceptions – can still be considered a blind spot in musicology and music theory, but also compositional practice, was sufficient motivation to undertake the studies presented here, written over the last twelve years following the publication of my 2000 dissertation under the title *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität. Von John Cage zu Tan Dun* in 2002. These studies have been brought together in a thoroughly revised, refocused, and reconsidered state. Most texts could, in the widest sense, be understood as excursuses on the previous book: they were meant to close certain gaps inevitably left by the earlier study, despite its considerable length, and also to expand the range of historical-analytical research methodologically and, to a limited extent, geographically. The relationship between East Asia (China, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea) and the West (Europe and North America) continues to play a central part, as

in *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, but is augmented through the inclusion of several other local contexts (Africa, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Arab world).

Many of the compositional trends discussed in this book are characterized by a growing ref lexivity vis-à-vis compositional methods and aesthetic positions toward the two opposing tendencies in cultural globalization: on the one hand, owing to an often hasty reception of European music in Asia, Africa, or Latin America, there are unmistakably clear tendencies toward a worldwide standardization of compositional practice according to Western criteria, seemingly continuing the effects of colonial power structures to the present day. On the other hand, the composition of art music and the discourses awakened by it often act as important triggers for movements of self-determination and liberation in non-Western countries – though equally as tools of pure nationalism, oppression, and exclusion. In the six chapters, I attempt to interpret such "paradoxes" of producing music in the globalized tension field against the background of contemporary historical developments, culture-political and culturesociological situations in their many layers of meaning. The argumentation also attempts to open up perspectives on the problem of a consistently globally conceived music historiography (→ II.1) and compositional practice, but can perhaps also offer individual suggestions for answering the question of how cultural techniques and processes of globalization can, beyond the realm of music, fundamentally be understood and interpreted more precisely. In this context, the attempt to incorporate music-analytical, culture-scientific, and sociohistorical approaches serves the purpose of breaking through the methodologically one-sided application of these research paradigms found all too often in musicological disciplines. An additional expansion of methodology comes from the fact that essays on the author's own "culturally f luctuating" compositional projects are included in the final chapter, albeit understood as a supplement and an art-specific, in many ways irreducible extension of the argumentation, not as the artistic "realization" of a theoretical model.

Needless to say, the present study does not purport to offer any concise historiography or universalist historical conception. "Perspectives" on music history are meant in the sense of selected, disparate snapshots of the tightly interwoven music histories of the West and East Asia, and certainly not a comprehensive consideration thereof. Thus, in contrast to the broadly conceived overview chapters in *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, I have refrained here from attempting to show any form of representative selection of compositional conceptions with the greatest possible stylistic range from a bird's eye view, as it were; rather, I attempt to thematize exemplary sonic thought in which the fault lines of cultural, historical, or aesthetic discourses become audible and appreciable. The studies presented give particular weight to the prehistory and early history of intercultural musical ref lection (→ II.3–4, III.2–3) as well as to recent developments of the last two to three decades (→ II.6, III.5, IV–VI).

 *Vienna, 1 October 2013*

# **Preface to the Revised and Expanded English Edition**

Musical interculturality and intercultural composition have been addressed as concepts somewhat more often in music studies in recent years. Many of these scholarly activities emerge from the globalizing and transnational dynamics whose preconditions and musical consequences form the core of this book. A motivation shared by scholars working in this area is surely what Tobias Janz and Yang Chien-Chang have termed "Decentering Musical Modernity" in their volume of collected essays, edited by transcript in 2019, which reconsiders more recent concepts of historical analysis such as "multiple modernities" and "entangled histories" for musicology, concepts which have also been inf luential for the newly added and revised parts of the present book.1 Although we have been now aware for some time that gender, racial, social, historical, and cultural biases surround research and teaching of music history and music theory in multiple ways, the actual musical repertory tackled in research projects, publications, and theory and history classes often remains restricted to works of the Western, white, and classical canon. Recently, in a plenary talk first given in 2019 at the Plenary Session of the Annual Conference of the Society for Music Theory (SMT), Yayoi Uno Everett distinguished two main issues to be addressed in what she describes as "counter-framing the East-West binary": "a greater inclusion of this [non-Western] repertory into the canon and […] diversifying methods of analysis."<sup>2</sup> Indeed, against the backdrop of political upheavals in the USA, recent activities within the SMT have prompted a group of theorists to publish an "Open Letter on Antiracist Actions Within SMT" which criticized "the structural force of white supremacy in our discipline." According to the letter, "we all need to ask ourselves: What have I done as an individual to perpetuate existing white supremacist systems of power and inequity in our field?"3 The situation is further ref lected by the 2020 publication of Philip A. Ewell's article "Music Theory and the White Racial Frame" in *Music Theory Online*, also first presented as a plenary talk at the 2019 Plenary Session of the Annual Conference of the SMT, an article that broadly ref lects on the deep and long-established cultural, social, and racial processes of exclusion in our disciplines.<sup>4</sup>

Some of the original impulses that sparked my interest in what is presented in this book had been similar observations, although they might have appeared somewhat less pressing or violent in the European context twenty years ago. On the one hand, the narrowness of reper-

<sup>1</sup> Janz and Yang, *Decentering Musical Modernity*.

<sup>2</sup> Everett, "From Exoticism to Interculturalism."

<sup>3</sup> "Open Letter on Antiracist Actions Within SMT," https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pne06DbjDt-ume06JMtc5fljpbLDkMZgw3mRFOrRepE.

<sup>4</sup> Ewell, "Music Theory and the White Racial Frame."

toire studied at music academies and during musicology programs at universities was all too obvious during the late 1990s and early 2000s, when even the impulses of Anglophone critical musicologies could hardly be felt. The continuous isolation of ethnomusicological and historical branches of musicology contributed (and arguably still contributes to some degree) to this unsatisfactory situation. Well into the new millennium, intercultural composition was denounced in German-language music journalism as an escape into "distant illusory worlds" or an arrangement of "stolen ideas and objects."<sup>5</sup>

This made it increasingly obvious to me that the very reality of interculturality in musical life, past and present, was something that gnawed at some hidden point as a critical voice in the ear of the purely academically Western-trained and oriented composer, music theorist, or music historian. The tendency toward global standardization of compositional idioms based on models of a "historical avant-garde" legitimized by Western musical history ultimately contradicts this aesthetic reality, as does the geographically ubiquitous commercialization and banalization of traditional music genres.

While culture and identity have been acknowledged as key areas of popular music studies for some time, an intensified examination of the consequences, aporiai, and potential of cultural globalization in the historical and analytical interpretation of new art music not only seems to be urgent, but has become the only conceivable standard for a present in which "cultures" are in an unprecedented process of transformation, mixing, and overlap – but also (still) in confrontation with one another. Recent writings on intercultural composition and the historical processes it involved and involves have taken up this challenge hands-on during the seven years since the original edition of this book appeared, showing how transnational meetings and associations such as the Darmstadt International Summer Course (since 1946),6 the Asian Composers League (founded in 1973),7 or the Dutch Musicultura Meetings (since 1974)8 increased the interconnectedness and awareness of globalized forms of music-making in the context of the Cold War. However, as Hilary Vanessa Finchum-Sung explains, "insider/outsider dichotomies have remained foundational to the reception and interpretation of compositions by non-European, non-U.S.-American composers into the new millennium."9 The conclusion drawn from this, as formulated by Yang Chien-Chang, namely "to avoid the East-West binary opposition, so that a more entangled web of the history can be revealed,"<sup>10</sup> is shared by the studies presented here. They also demonstrate that the earlier focus of many composers and scholars on the musical materialization and reception of cultural difference has given way to increasingly complex forms of ambiguity,<sup>11</sup> not least in relation to new processes of migration and cultural multiplicity that feed into a continuous decentering, readjusting, and sometimes reaffirming of identity concepts in and through music.

Although the present book attempts neither a history nor a theory of intercultural music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in an all-encompassing sense, the revised and expanded edition strives to demonstrate the potential of entangled historical perspectives more

<sup>5</sup> Boehmer, "Globalisierung als heimischer Fetisch," 44 ("in ferne Scheinwelten […] fliehen," "Arrangeur geklauter Ideen und Objekte").

<sup>6</sup> See Caitano, "Intercultural Perspectivesin the International Summer CoursesforNew Music."

<sup>7</sup> See Yang, "Technologies of Tradition in Post-War Musical Avant-Gardism."

<sup>8</sup> See Langenkamp, "Close Encounters of Another Kind."

<sup>9</sup> Finchum-Sung, "Foreword: Aesthetics of Interculturality in East Asian Contemporary Music," 8.

<sup>10</sup> Yang, "Technologies of Tradition in Post-War Musical Avant-Gardism," 43.

<sup>11</sup> See Lee, "Postcolonial Af fect" and Lee "Introduction: From Dif ference to Ambiguity."

comprehensively than the original German edition, especially in the newly added Chapters II.2, II.4, and II.5. While many of the added parts include a broader approach combining institutional, sociocultural, and analytical perspectives, the core methodology pursued in most chapters may be described as a "bottom-up" focus on what has been called "artistic agency,"<sup>12</sup> including ref lections on performance, perception, and reception. Many intercultural musical processes discussed in this book emerged from grassroots projects without much institutional support, sustained by the composers' and the performers' shared enthusiasm for the area. The observation that a "re-negotiation of new cultural spaces" in intercultural composition is often based on "intimate artist-to-artist, musician-to-musician collaborations"13 and requires a community of dedicated listeners describes unstable preconditions that cannot be taken for granted today or in the future. This makes it obvious that within the often socially and institutionally marginalized sphere of contemporary music, intercultural composition may easily be considered an ephemeral and peripheral phenomenon. It is implied in this book's multiple narratives that, on the contrary, composers who have continuously scrutinized the cultural and historical prejudices of our listening provide models of musical interculturality that should be valued as key elements of a globalized music-historical process. Certainly, the book's most important aim is to suggest a change in focus by bringing these new geographies, new protagonists, and new ideas to the center of historiographical attention. Installing these composers as key figures of a grand "world music history," however, would likely fail to grasp the fragmented, f luctuating, and decentered musical cultures of the past century, as outlined in Chapter II. A more moderate implication of the research presented here, then, might be that all music is in a fundamental sense intercultural, and that the hybrid or composite character of the historical constructs of "Western" or "non-Western" music today and their long history continuously demand new perspectives in music research as well as in composition, performance, and listening, perspectives that challenge and discard long-held stereotypes and canonized thinking.

 *Vienna, 17 September 2020*

<sup>12</sup> Finchum-Sung, "Foreword: Aesthetics of Interculturality in East Asian Contemporary Music,"16.

# **Acknowledgements**

In total, 41 different publications laid the groundwork for the present book, with the main articles forming the background of the original German edition of 2014 supplemented by six more recent ones. The Appendix offers a list of these publications. At this point, I would like to express my sincere thanks to all colleagues and friends who have helped me to pursue my research, and who have inspired me and provoked my imagination and scholarly as well as artistic activity. Significant discussions emerged during the long processes of translation by Laurence Willis and copy-editing by Wieland Hoban (who also made important contributions to the translation at an earlier point), and I extend my deepest gratitude for their long and continuous efforts to manage the considerable amount of text to be interpreted (and, in that process, reconsidered and updated). I am also grateful for additional research material and comments on chapters of the revised edition provided by Yayoi Uno Everett, Sophie Fetthauer, John Winzenburg, Lin-Ni Liao, and Nancy Yunhwa Rao. In addition, three anonymous reviewers made valuable comments and suggestions on how to improve the content and scope of the book.

Major research contexts, conferences, collaborations, and valuable discussions that have found their way into the book involved a large number of scholars including Hermann Gottschewski (University of Tokyo), Frederick Lau (The Chinese University of Hong Kong), John Winzenburg (Hong Kong Baptist University), Kam Lap-Kwan and Tung Chao-Ming (National Chiao-Tung University Hsinchu, Taiwan), Pan Hwang-Long (Taipei National University of the Arts), Lo Kii-Ming (National Taiwan Normal University), Wang Yingfen and Yang Chien-Chang (National Taipei University), Hee-Sook Oh (Seoul National University), Jia Daqun and Yang Yandi (Conservatory of Music Shanghai), Jörn Peter Hiekel (Hochschule für Musik Dresden), Tobias Janz (University of Bonn), Claudius Torp (University of Kassel), Sophie Fetthauer (University of Hamburg), Minari Bochmann (University of Leipzig), Barbara Mittler and Dorothea Redepenning (University of Heidelberg), Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer (Berlin), Albrecht Riethmüller (Free University of Berlin), Federico Celestini (University of Innsbruck), Nina Polaschegg (Vienna), Yayoi Uno Everett (University of Illinois at Chicago), Sandeep Bhagwati (Concordia University), Nancy Yunhwa Rao (Rutgers University), Martin Scherzinger (NYU Steinhardt), Philip V. Bohlman (University of Chicago), Anna Maria Busse Berger (University of California Davis), Nicholas Cook (University of Cambridge), Jonathan Stock (University College Cork), Luciana Galliano (Universitá Ca' Foscari di Venezia) as well as Lin-Ni Liao, Jean-Yves Bosseur (Paris), and François Picard (Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV). Also, many important conversations with colleagues at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz including Peter Revers, Gerd Grupe, Christa Brüstle, André Doehring, Deniz Peters, and Andreas Dorschel, as well as many students in the music theory and PhD programs, sparked new ideas and perspectives.

I am equally deeply indebted to all colleagues, musicians, ensembles, and organizers who helped me to develop, create, and realize my own musical ideas, including Chai Found Music Workshop (Caifeng Yuefang) Taipei, the Contemporary Music Ensemble Korea, PHACE (formerly ensemble on\_line, Vienna), Simeon Pironkoff (Vienna), Lars Mlekusch (Zurich), Martin Lindsay (Cologne), Kō Ishikawa (Tokyo), Qin Wenchen (Central Conservatory of Music Beijing), Wu Wei (Berlin), Yeh Jiuan-Reng (Taipei), Hong Wen-Tsien (Vienna), Jong-Ah Yoon (Singapore), Dirk Rothbrust (Cologne), Xenia Xienyue Groh-Hu (Berlin), William Lane (Hong Kong), the late Jack Body and Michael Norris (New Zealand School of Music/Victoria University of Wellington), Tony Prabowo (Jakarta), Matthias Osterwold (Berliner Festspiele), the late Reinhard Oehlschlägel (Deutschlandfunk Cologne), Giselher Smekal (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation Vienna) as well as Gerhard Stäbler and Kunsu Shim (EarPort, Duisburg/Düsseldorf).

I am grateful to transcript for taking on the revised English translation of this book after producing the original German edition so beautifully. In addition, I must thank the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) for its generous financial support of the translation and open access publication, as well as the Graz University of Music and Performing Arts for additional funding. Oren Vinogradov kindly assisted in the formatting and proofreading of the lengthy bibliography and the footnotes, Dimitrios Katharopoulos offered his help in reformatting the musical examples, and Dieter Kleinrath again provided his assistance in putting together the index. Last but not least, I am deeply grateful for all the love and support I have received from my family and close friends over the years.

\*\*\*

A few closing remarks: Asian names are rendered in the order first name, family name for Japanese and Korean names (Tōru Takemitsu, Isang Yun), but in the more common reverse order for Chinese and Taiwanese names (Tan Dun, Pan Hwang-Long). Exceptions are made where a common order differs from this system, as in the case of the Korean poet Ko Ŭn. In the bibliography, all names are of course ordered alphabetically according to family names. The date of last access to internet links in footnotes and bibliography has not been specified for each link for reasons of readability. All weblinks have been checked and updated as of 2 February 2021.

# **List of Examples, Figures, and Tables**




Example 4.5: Toshio Hosokawa, "*Wie ein Atem im Lichte"* for *shō* solo, opening


Example 5.3: Tan Dun, *Silk Road* for soprano and percussion, 3, systems 1+2



Example 6.20: Christian Utz, *telinga – mulut*, section A4.2, mm. 275–282


# **I. Introduction: Art Music, Identity, and Reflexive Globalization**

#### **1. Art Music in a Global Context**

Simon Rattle's assessment that the future of "classical music" lies in China, made on the occasion of the Berlin Philharmonic's China tour in 2005 that Rattle conducted,1 may be taken as a jumping-off-point for the re-examination of the now over one-hundred-year history of the reception of Western music in Japan, China, and Korea from new perspectives that can help answer obvious questions: how did this seemingly high esteem for European art music in East Asia come about? Against which historical, political, and social dynamics did this development take place? And can it really be assumed after critical examination that, in fifty or one hundred years, East Asian artists will dominate "classical music" globally?

Of course, the unquestioning reference to the concept of "classical music" already makes one suspicious: "The categories of autonomously oriented art have no applicability to the contemporary reception of music; not even for that of serious music, domesticated under the barbarous name of classical so as to enable one to turn away from it again in comfort."<sup>2</sup> It is probably not wholly unnecessary to point out the ongoing relevance of this statement from 1938 by Theodor W. Adorno. The trend to use the music industry label "Classical Music" as a seemingly neutral technical term in several recent music-sociological publications correlates with an unwillingness to allow for multifaceted interpretations of musical works, or to grant them the potential of provoking independent meaning.3 The codification of a canon of European and North American symphonic, opera, vocal, chamber, and solo repertoire (roughly from Bach to Mahler) is thus accepted without reservation, along with the exclusion of large parts of twentieth-century

<sup>1</sup> Rattle expressed this at a pressconference in China as part of the tour. See Spahn, "Der lange Marsch zu Beethoven."

<sup>2</sup> Adorno, "On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening," 289. ("Die Kategorien der autonom intendierten Kunstsind für die gegenwärtige Rezeption von Musik außer Geltung:weithin auch für die der ernsten, die man unter dem barbarischen Namen des Klassischen umgänglich gemacht hat, um sich ihr weiter bequem entziehen zu können." Adorno, "Über den Fetischcharakter in der Musik,"15.)

<sup>3</sup> See especially the reviewof the book Jungmann, *Sozialgeschichte der klassischen Musik*, in Zehentreiter, "Anatomie des Bildungsbürgertums."Michael Custodis gives a comprehensive history ofthe concept and its definitions. Yet, he also uses it over broad passages in a way that is (too) little dif ferentiated. In particular, it is not suf ficiently clarified that "classical music" has long been one of those "common buzzwords" that are based on "market strategies of the recorded musicindustry," which is how Custodischaracterizesthe term "crossover" (Custodis, *Klassische Musik heute*,19).Anuanced discussion ofthe conceptis presented inKramer,*Why Classical Music Still Matters*.

art music.<sup>4</sup> Even when more recent composers are considered for admission to this "Classical" canon, this inevitably happens within the relatively narrow framework of value criteria and listener expectations dominated by the canon. Music that deliberately challenges the conventions of such a canonized listening (or, in Helmut Lachenmann's terminology, breaks away from the f low of habit-oriented "listening" [*Zuhören*] to an existential "hearing-in" [*Hinhören*])5 (→ IV.2) has no real place in this concept of musical future – even if such a fragility of listening may undoubtedly turn itself into an object of canonization, and thus be aesthetically tamed.

The discussion about the process of canonization for Classical-Romantic music and its effects on the present has indeed hardly been addressed at length by representatives and theorists of new music. Undoubtedly, there is also a tendency within new music discourse toward the canonization of certain composers or works arising from the desire to identify structures in the "new obscurity," while at the same time – in all areas of contemporary music – we are confronted with an ever widening and intensifying fragmentation or diversification.6 If the deconstructive perspective of globalization is added to this complex situation, the implied problem of "canonicity" becomes particularly acute: Jim Samson aptly argues that "the authority of the canon as a measurement of quality in some absolute sense has proved increasingly difficult to sustain," since "any notion of a single culture, of which the canon might be regarded as the finest expression, is no longer viable."7 The sense of insecurity created by this situation has lately led to numerous attempts at re-canonization, including in the field of contemporary repertoires. Such attempts, however, are usually confined to Western protagonists. Consider, for example, the list of the "100 Classics of Modern Music" (*100 Klassiker der modernen Musik*) in which the editors of the German weekly *Die Zeit* did not rank a single Asian, African, or Latin American artist.<sup>8</sup> Not only does the term "classical music" tend to exclude critical forms of new music, its use is usually implicitly ethnocentric and a priori prevents a substantial expansion and alteration of the repertoire through intercultural hybridization or elementary compositional interventions in tonal system, pitch structure, and musical syntax. That a concept of "classical music" or "classical style" also exists in other musical cultures is certainly not an ar-

6 Michael Custodis places this term at the center of his investigation (Custodis, *Klassische Musik heute*, 9–22).

<sup>4</sup> On the genesis, theory, and critique of the Classical-Romantic musical canon, see, among others, Pietschmann and Wald-Fuhrmann, *Der Kanon der Musik*, Bergeron and Bohlman, *Disciplining Music*, Weber, "The History of Musical Canon," Dorschel, "Über Kanonisierung."

<sup>5</sup> "Hearing means, in contrastto co-enacting listening:to radically reorient oneself,to have to find newbearings; it means opening up hidden spaces within oneself in tackling unfamiliarstructures." (Lachenmann, "Accanto," 169, "Hören heißt im Gegensatz zum mitvollziehenden Zuhören: sich radikal umorientieren, sich neu zurechtfinden müssen, heißt, im Ertasten ungewohnter Strukturen verborgeneRäume in sich erschließen.") See alsoHamilton, *Aesthetics and Music*, 95–111.

<sup>7</sup> Samson, "Canon [iii]."

<sup>8</sup> This is stated laconically in episode 96 of the series: "95 musical classics have already been presented in this series but, as the series is coming to an end, no African (or Asian, New Zealand, Australian) recording has been included. Globalization has not yet led to a truly global view of the cultures of the world." (Groß, "Aus dem Schrein." "95 Musikklassiker wurden in dieser Rubrik bereits vorgestellt, die Serie geht auf ihr Ende zu, doch eine afrikanische [wahlweise auch: asiatische, neuseeländische, australische] Aufnahme war bislang nicht dabei. Die Globalisierung hat eben doch noch zu keinem wirklich globalen Blick auf die Kulturen der Welt geführt.") Related examples abound, such as in Dietrich Schwanitz's successful publication *Alles, was man wissen muß* (1999), which exclusively contains chapters on European history and art forms, or Dubal, *The Essential Canon of Classical Music*(2003), inwhich merely oneAsian composer(Tōru Takemitsu)isfeatured. See Citron,*Gender and the Musical Canon* for an exclusion of female composersfrom the musicalcanon of Classical and Romantic music.

gument against the unambiguously ethnocentric idea of a "future of classical music in China." There is no doubt here that the "classical" is considered exclusively European in the sense defined above. In addition, it would first be necessary to examine on a case-by-case basis whether designations such as "classical Indian music" or "classical Persian music" actually describe original concepts of canonization in the respective musical cultures or are, rather, premature transfers of (Western-oriented) research. Although there are certainly tendencies in the canonization of certain pieces of music or interpretive schools in virtually all art music traditions, they are usually associated with forms of cultural transmission that fundamentally differ from the Western process of canonization (in the Japanese context, for example, they can be described by the ambiguous binary *dentō*/*denshō*<sup>9</sup> ).

Even more problematic in the context of Simon Rattle's account of the future of "classical music" in China or Asia is the implied thesis that – if more is meant than just a new consumer market – future Asian performers will cultivate and maintain the core repertoire in more or less the same way as Western performers have in the past 200 years. Indeed, among contemporary Asian performers of (Western) art music, significant deviations from established paradigms of interpretation seem extremely rare. There are exceptions of course, such as Yūji Takahashi's second recording of the Bach "Goldberg Variations" (2004). While the pianist here applies his decades-long compositional and practical experience with the performance practice of Japanese instruments (→ IV.4) to create an exceptionally free and f lexible rhythmic representation of Bach's work, such a recording is given little attention at the international level and is certainly too unspectacular on the surface to survive on the "Classical market."10 The global concert audience, both in the West and in Asia, is usually fed by far more harmless varieties of a vaguely assumed "Asian identity," such as those featuring star pianist Lang Lang – adorned with the stereotype of virtuoso dexterity – in a duo with his father, who played the Chinese two-stringed fiddle *erhu*, as an encore in his solo recitals.11 From a compositional perspective, the Chinese-American composer Tan Dun hits the bull's eye of this new pseudo-traditional Asian future music when, in his piano concerto for Lang Lang (with the additional title *The Fire*, 2008), he vaguely references the archaic Chinese philosophy of the five elements (*wu xing*). The composer makes use of simplified Chinese folk tunes cast in the style of Liszt's *Liebesträume* and Bartók-esque motoric passages as central elements of the composition. In this way, he consciously accepts the association of these features with exotic clichés of Asian sensuality

<sup>9</sup> See Ackermann, "Japan," 110. Both terms vaguely signify what is meant by the term "tradition" in Western languages; while *dentō* implies the concepts of heritage, continuation, and handing-down, *denshō* additionally connotesthe acts ofreceiving and inheriting traditions.AsAckermann explains,the termscan also be associatedwith a strong tendency in Japan'straditionalculture to preserve (musical)traditions down to the tiniest detailsin small groups ofspecialists,which, however,can also imply adapting them to changing circumstances or necessities.

<sup>10</sup> AvexAVCL-25026, 2004. LikeGlennGould, Takahashi hasrecorded thework twice,forthe firsttime in 1976 (newly edited as Denon COCQ-84162, 2006). The aforementioned "Asian" characteristics are much more radical in the second recording than in the first, and are a document of a decades-long examination of the body, instrumental practice, hearing, and sound aestheticsin an interculturalcontext. See, among others, Takahashi, "Bach as a Failure," and Takahashi, "Two Statements on Music." Takahashi also criticized both of Gould'srecordings as "an auto-repressive stoicism of North American intellectuals before the Vietnam War" and as "a projection of the Eastern American Puritanism" on Bach's music (review, *On-Stage Shinbun*, 27/01/1995, translated by Junichi Miyazawa, http://glenngould.org/f\_minor/msg01925.html).

<sup>11</sup> See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyJemf8hwkU. This is a duo adaption of Huang Haihuai's (1935–1967) virtuoso *erhu* solo *saima* (Horse Race,1964). On the development of the *erhu* solo repertoire,see Stock "Contemporary Recital Solosfor the Chinese Two-Stringed Fiddle *erhu*."

or primitiveness. Otherwise, however, the Western genre type of the virtuoso solo concerto is not questioned for one second.

In this book, by considering this contemporary background and interpreting historical developments at the intersection between Asia and the West, I will address the question of what an alternative future of global art music might look like if less blatantly dominated by economic constraints. I consciously replace the concept of "classical music" with that of "art music." In using this term, it must first be asked whether this implies a (too) strong tendency to exclusion, particularly toward forms of popular music. Indeed, it is often said that the future of "classical music" must open up more to contemporary popular music, and popular culture more generally.12 Linked to this is an adoption of new forms of presentation and dissemination, allegedly pragmatically embodied in the YouTube Symphony Orchestra (for which Tan Dun composed a five-minute "Eroica" Symphony from Beethoven quotations).13 Even if one rejects too close a rapprochement of the "Classical" to popular culture, or believes that such an approach is already more than sufficiently well-established in many places (Beethoven's construction as a star of popular culture is as old as the Beethoven myth itself14), the question of which concept of art one uses in the formulation "art music" is by no means trivial. For the time being, it may perhaps be stated that a basic conception of "music as an art form" does not *a priori* make a cultural confinement to a specific concept of art (such as the European one), nor does it necessarily require certain types of transmission (such as written notation) or presentation (such as the "concert"). The first two chapters of this book interrogate these issues (→ I.3, II.1).

So, what could an art music of the future look like in which Asian (or other non-Western) performers and composers are not merely vicarious agents of an unquestionable European art and music concept? Where they are not consumers of a museum-like "Classical" market, but where – from diverse perspectives (theories, concepts, or ways of making music as an art form) – traces of a *ref lexive* globalization (more on this concept below) can be recognized? Countless composers from Asia, Oceania, the Arabic world, Africa, Latin America, but also North America and Europe have been seeking answers to such questions for more than a hundred years, though each has faced radically different sociopolitical conditions that have had a lasting effect on the answers.

<sup>12</sup> This demand is based on the 2009 study by the TNS Emnid Institute commissioned by the Bertelsmann Foundation: "Asked what needs to change so that more people are interested in classical music, nearly three-quarters of people respond that they want lower ticket prices for concerts and opera performances (72 %), closely followed by awish for more eventsthatcombine classical and pop (71 %)." ("Danach gefragt,wassich ändern müsse,damitsichmehrMenschenfür klassischeMusik interessierten, antwortennahezudreiViertelderMenschen, sie halten niedrige Eintrittspreise für Konzert- undOpernabende fürwünschenswert(72 Prozent), dicht gefolgt (mit 71 Prozent) von mehr Veranstaltungsangeboten, die Klassik und Pop verbinden." https://www.bertels mann-stif tung.de/de/presse/pressemitteilungen/pressemitteilung/pid/klassik-und-oper-sind-unverzichtbar)

<sup>13</sup> http://www.youtube.com/user/symphony. The debut of the orchestra, which was put together through a selection process via video broadcasts,took place on 15April 2009 at CarnegieHall. TanDun's *Internet Symphony Eroica* (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w47v5Nl5g7Q)wasthe firstcomposition for this project and served as one of the two compulsory pieces in the selection process. The symphony was recorded in advance on 6 October 2008 by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer on video and released on 20 November 2008 on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tqiro1kdRlw). Thousands of video submissions to the orchestrawere later made into a "mash-up" version of the symphony ("'The Internet Symphony' Global Mash Up," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC4FAyg64OI).

<sup>14</sup> For an overview,see the articles"Mythos Beethoven," "Popmusik," and "Rezeption und Wirkung," in Loesch and Raab, *Beethoven-Lexikon.*

#### **2. Identity Criticism and Reflexive Globalization**

An identity developed from artistic positions, despite all cultural "turns" in research, seems the unquestioned foundation for a variety of texts about new art music. They proceed from the basic assumption that the works of individual composers articulate a "distinctive" and "authentic" position. The principle, which references Enlightenment philosophy, of "speaking with one's own voice" – understood since the late eighteenth century as the obligation imposed on each of us "to live up to our originality"15 – is omnipresent in the discourse on contemporary music. It also generally remains the decisive criterion in the education of composers today, which aims for novelty and uniqueness. The crisis of the modern subject asserted by Theodor W. Adorno, Michel Foucault and others,<sup>16</sup> the poststructuralist critique of the authorial principle and monologic authority, and attempts to highlight the "mixed identities" or "semantic chameleon"17 hidden in musical works of art barely seem to play a part in such a perpetuation of the aesthetics of genius.18 With a mixture of obstinacy and helplessness, this adherence to composer-centered hermeneutics opposes their obvious marginalization in favor of performers and events that takes place in the commercialized "classical music" scene.

Musicology and music criticism play a key part in this process of ascription. Writing and speaking about music as well as documenting the processes of its creation and performance ultimately cannot avoid providing or "writing over" sound and musical text with identities of the most varied kinds. The increasingly strong orientation toward cultural studies in music research has sensitized us to the subtexts of such music-related identity discourses: the basic idea that composers, performers, and listeners are acting as part of a "cultural practice"19 implies that their conception of musical sounds and structures is inextricably linked to culturally specific ideas about music. Viewed in a broad historical context, such concepts emerge from a "cultural memory" as described by Aleida and Jan Assmann. The "connective structure" of cultural memory is based on a continued evocation of canonical motifs and ideas within an "extended situation."20 It is bound to specific institutions and ritualized forms of public and private presentation and reception as well as the interactions between production, transmission, and reception.21 Even if many of these processes of cultural practice are disintegrating in the age of digitalization and globalization, we should not underestimate their ongoing presence in cultural discourse and their tendency to reactivate cultural essentialism.

The conception of music as a "cultural practice" has led many authors to reconsider the particular *local* context in which musical concepts, ways of thinking, works, or performances are formulated and realized. Thus Annegret Fauser describes the compositional results of Claude Debussy's fascination with West Javanese *gamelan saléndro* and the Vietnamese music theater form *hát bội* at the 1889 Paris World's Fair as "a form of appropriation firmly inscribed in the tradition of French music of the 1890s" while emphasizing that Debussy's "structural appropriation" eventually paved the way for many similar reinventions of gamelan in twentieth-century

<sup>15</sup> Taylor, *Sources of the Self*, 37.

<sup>16</sup> See Wellmer, "Über Musik und Sprache. Variationen und Ergänzungen," 23–37.

<sup>17</sup> Kramer, "Hercules'Hautboys,"149.

<sup>18</sup> An extensive critique of thissituation isfound in Utz, "Musik von einem fremden Planeten?"

<sup>19</sup> See Kramer, *Music as Cultural Practice*, *1800–1900*.

<sup>20</sup> Jan Assmann, *Cultural Memory and Early Civilization*, 2–4, 7–8.

<sup>21</sup> See Aleida Assmann, *Cultural Memory and Western Civilization* and Jan Assmann, *Cultural Memory and Early Civilization*.

music on a global scale.22 Fauser's study sharpens our understanding of the specific cultural and historical context of Debussy's reception of gamelan, but also makes clear that his particular approach points beyond the framework of a historical contextualization limited by, or to, local or national contexts.

The changing "faces" of Debussy indeed demonstrate very clearly how identities in musical discourse are not simply "given" but continuously reshaped and reinvented. Famously, Debussy idealized "Javanese music" as a refined form of polyphony following "a counterpoint that makes Palestrina's seem like child's play,"23 a form of music that "contained all the nuances […] where tonic and dominant became naught but vain ghosts for the use of unruly children."<sup>24</sup> These statements express serious doubts about what many of Debussy's contemporaries perceived as the unchallenged superiority of Western musical culture over non-Western cultures – whereas Debussy's formulations also transferred elements of the exoticist "noble savage" topos to the context of modernity.25 These hints at a culture-critical skepticism did not prevent Debussy from subsequently becoming a key representative of French national music in the run-up to the First World War. Debussy and his increasingly explicit nationalist sentiments played a crucial part in this process, as documented in detail by Barbara L. Kelly.26 In this way, while the earlier Debussy decided of his own accord to *identify* with a counterculture, partly constituted of the culture-pessimistic discourse that characterized the *ennui* of an entire generation in late nineteenth-century Europe,27 Debussy later contributed equally explicitly to the reinvention of an affirmative, essentialist French national style in the early twentieth century. One could name many other cases around 1900 that demonstrate a shift from an ambivalent internationalist to an affirmatively nationalist idiom – or vice versa – including those of Bartók, Stravinsky (→ II.3), and Sibelius.

Such examples show clearly that on the one hand, identity is the result of a deliberate, considered, and at times strategic choice between several options, while on the other hand, it is closely tied to complex sociological and political entanglements that may make it seem "inevitable" in many cases. In Debussy's case, such entanglements were his close connection to widespread tendencies of cultural pessimism and orientalism as well as the overall trend of re-ethnicization and a nationalist form of pre- and post-World War I cultural essentialism that ultimately led to the extreme polarizations and ideological conf licts of the 1930s and 40s.

<sup>22</sup> Fauser, *Musical Encounters at the 1889 Paris World's Fair*, 205.

<sup>23</sup> "Yet Javanese music is based on a type of counterpoint compared to which that of Palestrina is child's play." ("Cependant, la musique javanaise observe un contrepoint auprès du quel celui de Palestrina n'est qu'un jeu d'enfant." Debussy, *Monsieur Croche et autres écrits*, 223. Thischaracterizationwas published in a retrospective in 1913 in the *Revue S.I.M.*)

<sup>24</sup> Letter to Pierre Louÿs, 22/1/1895, translation quoted af ter Fauser, *Musical Encounters at the 1889 Paris World's Fair*, 198.

<sup>25</sup> See Locke, *Musical Exoticism*, 228–238.

<sup>26</sup> Kelly, *French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870–1939*, 58–76.

<sup>27</sup> See Charle, "Debussy in Fin-de-Siècle Paris."

#### Problems of Identity

So, what are the problems with the affirmative concept of identity that is still invoked so often in today's discourse on recent music? In his seminal text "The Question of Cultural Identity," Stuart Hall names five factors that lastingly decentered the image of a stable self-identity in modernity,28 all based on a close intertwining of subject identity and collective identity:


At first glance, the concepts of personal and collective identity, already lastingly destabilized, have been completely abandoned by postcolonial criticism. To state any form of affirmative connection between identity, culture, and ethnicity would raise suspicion of complicity with inherently colonial thought. Viewed against this background, the types of identity offered by strengthened neo-nationalist or pan-national religious, even fundamentalist, "isms" are only seemingly anachronistic: they both react to the same tendencies toward grassroots globalization,<sup>29</sup> in which local and global processes interact and new communities beyond established nations and cultures are formed. The increasing fragmentation of modern societies, termed "super-diversity"30 by Stephen Vertovec, has in many places sparked the desire for re-territorialization and (re-)ethnicization of identity, extending to a "proliferation and reification of [geographical and mental] boundaries."31 Today, the traditions that Eric Hobsbawm terms "invented" play a key role in this process, as they have in the construction of national identities for 200 years, as well as in the field of music.32

Arif Dirlik shows that it is highly questionable to understand migrants – as paradigmatic as they seem at the present – as the key metaphor of the contemporary world: "The great majority of humankind [continues to] lead settled lives unless pulled or pushed into mobility."33 Indeed, it is doubtful whether a convincing connection can be made between the social phenomenon of migration and issues of identity in recent arts discourse. Slavoj Žižek incisively shows that the models of the academic or artist, who is always equipped with an appropriate visa, and the migrant, for whom "hybridity" is a traumatic experience, are incompatible (→ I.3).34 Helmut

<sup>28</sup> Hall, "The Question of Cultural Identity," 285–291.

<sup>29</sup> Appadurai, "Grassroots Globalization."

<sup>30</sup> Vertovec, "Super-Diversity and ItsImplications."

<sup>31</sup> Dirlik, "Transnationalism in Theory and Practice."

<sup>32</sup> Hobsbawm, "Introduction: Inventing Traditions." For an application of this concept to the music history of China see Lau, "Forever Red."

<sup>33</sup> Dirlik, "Transnationalism in Theory and Practice."

<sup>34</sup> See Žižek, *Ein Plädoyer für die Intoleranz*, 80–81.

Lachenmann has pointed out that the composer – embarking on intercultural encounters with a valid return ticket in their pocket – is unable to understand the kind of "security" that the music of other cultures might constitute in its own local setting (→ I.3; IV.2).35 In addition, the tendencies of polycultural mixture and hybridity in art and pop culture seem equally toothless: "Obviously, these diverse impulses can be absorbed without remotely threatening the respective societies with descent into an identity crisis. But above all, such a pluralizing and increasingly colorful cultural scene has never threatened, at least not so far, the core of political culture."<sup>36</sup> So, in new art music too, one can speak of what Dieter Senghaas calls "globalization *deluxe*",<sup>37</sup> a privileged mode in which the advantages of globalization outshine its problematic side-effects.

Can one, however, conclude from this, as Harry Lehmann suggests, that new music since the postwar period has not known "identity problems" because "otherness" is virtually its basic prerequisite?38 This would mean overlooking the fact that there is a complex intertwining of music-historical, aesthetic, and compositional discourses that certainly do limit the possibilities to articulate such otherness in specific contexts. One should first of all mention the sustained tendency to suppress the "cultural" element in much new music, which is primarily the legacy of the global political situation after 1945. The institutions for new music in Germany were supported by the allied occupying powers not least with the ulterior motive of installing a supposedly ideology-free area of artistic development as a symbol of political freedom from which no new ideological dangers could result (→ II.5).39 In fact, in postwar serialism a special compositional logic was developed that sought to remove any "culturally" encoded language from music. Such techniques were guided by the search for an alternative model to the misuse of the language-like communication of messages in totalitarian political systems. The same sociohistorical background can be seen as informing John Cage's conception of music as "free from likes and dislikes," which can be understood as the result of a basic skepticism toward the values of European schools of thought among American intellectuals in the aftermath of the Second World War (→ II.6). Admittedly, Igor Stravinsky's neoclassicism had already been based on a departure from a narrowly defined ethno-national character of the musical language of the Russian nationalist school and his own neo-national works prior to 1917/21. Meanwhile, Béla Bartók adhered to his concept of hybridity of folk and art music, even if its original neonational components were heavily ruptured by historical events and his overall conception became increasingly universalistically accentuated from the 1930s on (→ II.3).40 Specifically,

<sup>35</sup> Helmut Lachenmann in conversation with Rolf Elberfeld and Toshio Hosokawa (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin,12/5/2005), quoted inUtz, "Zwischen Mythos und Kooperation," 28, 31. Probably both Žižek's and Lachenmann's argumentscan be traced back toHerbert Marcuse's much-disputed 1965 critique of "repressive tolerance" (see Marcuse, "Repressive Tolerance").

<sup>36</sup> "[O]f fensichtlich lassen sich diese vielfältigen Impulse absorbieren, ohne daß die betrof fenen Gesellschaf ten auch nur anfänglich in Identitätskrisen zu verfallen drohen.Vor allem: eine sich dergestalt pluralisierende, bunter werdende Kulturszene bedroht nicht, zumindest nicht bis heute, den Kernbestand der politischen Kultur." (Senghaas, "Moderne und Antimoderne angesichts kultureller Globalisierung," 329.)

<sup>37</sup> Ibid., 328–329.

<sup>38</sup> Lehmann, "Entfremdung – Verfremdung."

<sup>39</sup> See Beal, "Negotiating Cultural Allies."

<sup>40</sup> See Brown, "Bartók, the Gypsies, andHybridity in Music."

Bartók's approach had a formative effect on decisive developments in art music in Turkey (during the 1920s) and China (during the 1980s).41

Of course, the practical implementation of the claim of universalism and self-referentialism in the early 1950s left much to be desired. Even a superficial look at German-French polarities dating back to the beginning of the century shows this clearly: if the Schoenberg-Debussy relationship was "uptight" in every respect due to complications of historical tendencies,<sup>42</sup> it is also scarcely possible to find commonalities between Pierre Boulez's reception of Antonin Artaud in a work such as the Second Piano Sonata (1946–48)43 and the structuralist mysticism of Karlheinz Stockhausen's *Kreuzspiel* (1951) as supposed "founding moments" of serial thought. And Wolfgang Rihm's neo-expressionist chamber opera *Jakob Lenz* (1977–78), like the neo-organicist sound-time processes in Gérard Grisey's *Les Espaces Acoustiques* (1974–85), can hardly be understood outside of their respective nationally specific traditions of expression, time, language, and sound (though neither work can, of course, be reduced to these traditions). These "cultural" dimensions of modern music in Europe, which are closely connected to their institutional establishment,44 were barely discussed in European publications until recently. Against such a background, the position that new art music is independent of any "culture," as stated a number of times during the symposium *Musik-Kulturen* at the Darmstadt Summer Course in 2006, is certainly untenable. "Identity problems" indeed hardly seem to exist in many areas of today's composing – but not least because a firm (re)focusing on specific local European forms of thought, language, and sound is taking place. Since the 1980s, this new cultural isolationism can be interpreted not least as echoing the failure of the explicit cultural universalism of the 1960s, which had been articulated in such works as Stockhausen's *Telemusik* (1966) or *Hymnen* (1965–67) (→ II.2).45 The unhesitating approach to the "resources" of a diffuse "world music" in these works highlights the fact that a critical compositional ref lection on cultural difference must first of all overcome the "self-awareness and sense of mission of the (Western) composer."46 Until now, however, few have been prepared to take this step with its full implications.

#### Reflexive Globalization

Pointing out the diversification of contemporary music has become commonplace in music journalism. There is now an increasing awareness that general patterns of cultural globalization can be identified equally in the social, political, and structural dimensions of an art music whose production and reception take place almost everywhere in the world today. One of these patterns lies in the interdependence of cultural homogenization and cultural particularization:47 on the one hand, cultural norms and idioms are subject to a process of standardization – largely synonymous with Westernization – expressed in striking buzzwords of globalization

<sup>41</sup> See Gertich and Greve, "Neue Musik im postkolonialen Zeitalter," 52–55, Kouwenhoven, "Mainland China'sNew Music(III)," 85–86, and Wong, "Bartók'sInfluence on ChineseNew Musicin the Post-Cultural Revolution Era."

<sup>42</sup> SeeHaselböck, "Debussy und die Wiener Schule."

<sup>43</sup> See Zenck, "Artaud – Boulez – Rihm."

<sup>44</sup> See Born, *Rationalizing Culture*.

<sup>45</sup> See Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*,136–171.

<sup>46</sup> Wilson, "Die Ahnen des Kolumbus,"18 ("Selbst- und Sendungsbewusstsein[s] des[westlichen] Komponisten.")

<sup>47</sup> SeeHall, "The Question of Cultural Identity," 273–316.

theory such as "McDonaldization"48 or "Coca-Colonization."<sup>49</sup> In the realm of contemporary art music, this trend is closely linked to an enduring monopoly on professional music education exerted by Western musical institutions as well as the problems posed by the institutionalization of an independent art in non-Western societies. One can observe a leveling-out process: it is often hard or impossible to determine whether a new work has been created by a composer from Cologne, Paris, Milan, Beijing, San Francisco, or Johannesburg. At this point, no concept initially seems more questionable in the music of today than that of a specific local or regional identity, let alone "ethnicity." This skepticism toward the "idiomatic" must undoubtedly be viewed as the legacy of the aforementioned radical critique of music's likeness to language after 1945.

This situation, however, triggers an understandable compensatory backlash: a search for lasting and emphatic forms of cultural difference that cannot be leveled out by this process of standardization (→ III.4). At the same time, however, it is important to realize that simply opposing homogenizing Westernization and a naïve "back to the origins" movement cannot do justice to the complexity of the situation. Several studies of non-Western contemporary music have emphasized that music which defies the stereotypical patterns of local identity can been seen in the social contexts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America as a resistance against those ubiquitous styles that f latten traditional practices for commercial or political purposes.50 Such ways of accentuating cultural difference in the new art musics of Africa, Asia, and South America are suggestive for an intercultural music history (→ II.1), but also demand a more precise definition of what cultural difference, alterity, or incommensurability can mean (→ I.3, II.4).

This seems all the more urgent because ethnomusicology has abandoned its formerly strict concept of authenticity. Now ethnomusicologists often sympathize with forms of popular music that adopt elements from traditional musical practice. Standardizing tendencies inherent in such forms of pop music (defined as "ethnic") are rarely criticized. This is despite their homogenized phrases and regular beats often eliminating precisely the subtle melodic or rhythmic blurring that forms one of the "irritating" layers of cultural difference, and is therefore unsuited to representative or economic purposes.51 Overall, forms of standardizing mediation have particularly far-reaching effects in the age of digitalization, including in non-Western practices. Thus, the media-assisted production and dissemination of certain traditional genres can result in a loss of religious or ritual functions, as shown by Gerd Grupe in the case of *qawwali* music in India and Pakistan. In addition, one can observe a transregional standardization in certain styles of performance that leads to a loss of diversity in regional practices, for example in the *karawitan* compositions of Javanese gamelan music.<sup>52</sup>

Taking all this into account, then, one should begin by noting that with regard to the dynamics of globalization, global standardization processes and local identity conf licts interact in manifold ways – as Roland Robertson already tried to express in 1995 with the term "glocalization."53 Applied to musical discourses, these dynamics mean first of all that very specific local practices (that cannot be learned or understood without personal, long-term contact) mingle

<sup>48</sup> Ritzer, *The McDonaldization of Society*.

<sup>49</sup> Kooijman, "Fabricating the Absolute Fake," 34–35, Wagnleitner, *Coca-Colonisation und Kalter Krieg*.

<sup>50</sup> See Scherzinger, "Art Musicin a Cross-Cultural Context," 610–611.

<sup>51</sup> See the discussion in Dorschel, "Interkulturelle Begegnung als existentielles Risiko,"104–108.

<sup>52</sup> Grupe, "Wachswalzen und CDs," 206.

<sup>53</sup> Robertson, "Glocalization: Time-Space andHomogeneity-Heterogeneity."

in various ways with the appropriation of "international" practices. This inevitably leads to a process of fragmentation and progressive differentiation.

Naturally, such fragmentation is already implicit in the European concept of modernity, which initiated an increasingly critical form of self-ref lection expressed in the concept of a "Second Modernity" or "ref lexive modernity." These terms emphasize the irreversibility of globalization processes and urgently thematize the resulting social and societal problems such as mass unemployment, environmental damage, and so forth.<sup>54</sup> Following on from this at the end of the 1990s, Ulrich Beck described the concept of "ref lexive globalization" as a situation in which the current problematic, conf lict-laden (environmental or social – but also cultural) effects of globalization can be "ref lected upon" and incorporated into new cultural practices.55 He thus rejected, as in the previously mentioned theories of Appadurai, Vertovec, and Dirlik, the basic model of "container theory," in which a dynamic acting from "outside" a clearly delineated territory inf luences it locally. Instead, ref lexive globalization also refers to the formation of new groupings and communities across established (national, cultural, political, or religious) identity boundaries.

Since at least the early twentieth century, such ref lexivity has been absolutely essential for understanding musical cultures outside Europe. They have evolved in close, ref lexive, and often fractious interaction with European modernity. Thus, during the notorious symposium "Overcoming Modernity" (*Kindai no chōkoku*) in July 1942 in Kyoto, the Japanese composer Saburō Moroi (1903–1977)56 stated that only music that expressed Japanese "spirit" using the means of Western compositional techniques and instrumentation was capable of "overcoming modernity."57 This was the slogan of the symposium for the construction of an alternative Japanese modernity that was not meant to be synonymous with "Westernization." Its jingoistic undertones in the context of Japanese military aggression led to sustained criticism of the symposium in postwar Japan.<sup>58</sup> While those that repeatedly praise the title and content of this symposium have mostly been nationalist Japanese authors,59 the realization has spread in the last two decades that a discussion of modernity will remain inadequate without an acceptance of several different, competing "modernities"60 (→ II.1).

Moroi's distinction between spirit and technique was a master pattern for the adoption of Western culture in Japan and China as early as the mid-nineteenth century (→ III.1). It has been incorporated, in a milder form, as part of the cultural essentialism in the aesthetics of many composers in Asia since the 1930s. In the 1960s, Isang Yun, José Maceda, Chou Wen-Chung, and Tōru Takemitsu established – each with their own points of emphasis – a discourse on the "characteristics" of Asian music that specifically aimed to "overcome" the dominance of Western aesthetics (→ III.4). Such aesthetics had become particularly questionable, not least because of the Second World War. But these composers also sought to integrate key elements

<sup>54</sup> Beck, "Das Zeitalter derNebenfolgen und die Politisierung der Moderne."

<sup>55</sup> Beck and Zolo, "What Is Globalization?";see also Beck, *Die Erfindung des Politischen*.

<sup>56</sup> On Moroi see Galliano, *Yōgaku*, 73–76, 88.

<sup>57</sup> See Minamoto, "The Symposium on 'Overcoming Modernity.'"

<sup>58</sup> Thiscriticism also concerned the philosophers ofthe Kyoto school participating in the symposium, namely Keiji Nishitani and Shigetaka Suzuki,see ibid.

<sup>59</sup> SeeHijiya-Kirschnereit, "Leuchtet Japan?"

<sup>60</sup> See Eisenstadt, *Multiple Modernities* and Elberfeld, "Moderne interkulturell."

of Western thought.61 Yun and Chou, as migrant composers, faced the challenge of leading this discourse in direct confrontation with Western aesthetic trends.

While their writings and statements showed clear tendencies toward essentialism,<sup>62</sup> their works, by contrast, often dealt with very specific traditions. Chou's works *The Willows are New* (1957) and *Yü Ko* (1965), for example, attempt – with somewhat limited success – to apply performance principles of the ancient Chinese zither *qin* to Western instruments.63 Yun's *Réak* (1966) transfers the continuous pitch inf lections and interwoven lines of Korean court music into sound textures of the Western orchestra.64 If such concepts often emphasize *alterity* in relation to Western musical aesthetic discourse, it should not be forgotten how strongly they were also inf luenced by Arnold Schoenberg's, Edgard Varèse's, Iannis Xenakis's, and Karlheinz Stockhausen's critiques of tradition and identity in Western modernity.

The brief outline I have thus far presented already suggests that jettisoning the concept of identity entirely on account of the crisis of identity is far too crudely reductive. It has been asserted on various occasions that the music of non-Western contemporary composers ought not only to be discussed against the backdrop of debates of cultural identity, but rather primarily understood and respected as a manifestation of "individual" artistic positions:

NewChinese Music ought to be considered on an internationalstage, not as a music both exotic and Other, but as a music in its own right, […] as a music of international import, by individuals, independent of their national descent. […] the Chineseness of Chinese music need not be considered a matter of course but of individual choice and development. Each of these composers writeshisorherownpersonalmusic,creatingsomethingbeyondthe traditions(Chineseorotherwise) that are being used.65

What is required is to illuminate these international, simply musical aspects rather than persisting in the search – naturally an important one, but no longerindispensable – for Chinese or Asian identity,self-assertion or nationalstyle in this music, which, to put it in extreme terms, amounts more to a discrimination against Asian composers and their music. […] the Asian composer must be able and allowed to define themselves not as an *Asian* composer, but as an Asian *composer*. 66

In fact, this has long been a reality in the music scene. Younger composers such as Unsuk Chin, Dai Fujikura, or Ying Wang pursue exceptionally successful careers, mainly in Western cultural centers. Their international, virtuosic idiom is a guarantee of success, and it seems that if they were to address themes of intercultural rupture and hybridity more explicitly, this success would be hindered rather than assisted. But is it really possible for "cultural" discourse – re-

<sup>61</sup> See Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 222–311.

<sup>62</sup> See for example Chou, "Asian Esthetics and World Music" and Yun, "Über meine Musik."

<sup>63</sup> See Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 270–277.

<sup>64</sup> See Choi, "*Réak* (1966)."

<sup>65</sup> Mittler, "AgainstNational Style."

<sup>66</sup> Mittler, "Wider den 'nationalen Stil,'" 607. ("Diese internationalen, einfach musikalischen Aspekte gilt es zu beleuchten, nicht mehr zu verharren in der [natürlich wichtigen, aber nicht mehr unerlässlichen] Suche nach chinesischer oder asiatischer Identität, nach Selbstbehauptung, nach nationalem Stil in dieser Musik, die, um es extrem auszudrücken, eher einer Diskriminierung asiatischer Komponisten und ihrer Musik gleichkommt. […]: Der asiatische Komponist musssich neu definieren können und dürfen, nicht als *asiatischer* Komponist,sondern als asiatischer *Komponist*.")

gardless of a composer's origin and tradition – to be simply ignored in favor of an "individual" perspective? Is it not necessary, rather, to place renewed emphasis on the sociocultural conditions of recent composition and its incorporation into a network of sociocultural transfer of meaning (in the sense of abandoning the music-historical paradigm of "techno-essentialism"67)? (→ II.1) In this sense, Samson Young makes it clear that the possibility of "culture-free" listening is limited while "cultural identities" continue to be deliberately evoked by composers and their performers alike through appropriately charged signifiers:

Ifwe embrace the viewthat ethnicidentities are constructs,thentowhat extent arewe interested in how cultural signifiers function to reinforce these imaginary categories? […] Instead of focusing on the degrees to which a signifier is "traditional" or "contemporary," could one not ask why ethnicity is performed when it is not always necessary, and potentially even distracts attention from the musicitself? In the case ofcontemporary Chinese music, if sound can indeed be heard free ofculturalcontexts[…],thenwhy do composers and analystscontinue to invoke culture?68

Young has also emphasized that it is precisely the demand for a continuous *opposition* to cultural essentialism and a culturalist stereotyping of artistic positions that necessitates thematizing questions of "race, ethnicity, culture and politics" time and again:

I don't think of myself as Chinese in some way, but I probably don't believe in, and certainly do not want to play any part in, reaf firming the notion of a singular, unproblematic "China proper": the communist China, the China that sits behind firewalls, the China that suppresses freedom of speech and individual liberty. Artists do not operate in vacuums. Works of art circulate, generating realcultural,social and politicalconsequences. It is my belief that an artist as a free agent ought to reflect upon the valuesshe/he abides by in all acts ofcreativity […]. The age [of] globalization demands an intensified level of communicative nuance. In times of conflicts, turbulence and confusion,we need to say more, notless, aboutissues ofrace, ethnicity,culture and politics.69

Frederick Lau ultimately went so far as to say that the protean (and in parts rather successful) adoption of culturalist identity models by Chinese composers of the "new wave" generation in the USA, since the 1980s, can be considered a symptom of identity construction as a career strategy, much like the pop industry's "superstar syndrome":

In advocating a style that makes use of Chinese elements, the new wave composers are participating in a codified and globalizedmarketinwhich they are being perceived through their music and the use of Chinese elements. They are clearly capitalizing on Orientalism as expressed in their music and in their own wordsin order to transgressthe boundaries of Western Orientalist discourse with its emphases on dif ference, othering, and the exotic. Musical exoticism, according to Jonathan Bellman, suggests the strangeness of a specifically alien culture or ethos. The newwave composers are utilizing such a strategy under the aegis of multiculturalism.70

<sup>67</sup> See Williams, "Of Canons and Context." See also Cook and Pople, "Introduction: Trajectories of Twentieth-Century Music," 4.

<sup>68</sup> Young, "Reconsidering Cultural Politicsin the Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Music," 607.

<sup>69</sup> Young, "Reading Contemporary Chinese Music," 89–90.

<sup>70</sup> Lau, "Fusion or Fission," citing Bellman, *The Exotic in Western Music*, xii. See also Melvin and Cai, *Rhapsody in Red*, 332–333.

Positively put, when art music's "identity problems" become genuinely perceptible, ref lexive globalization becomes truly relevant. Only then can a new framing and definition of perspective regarding established concepts of identity affect both the – admittedly hegemonic – European discourses on aesthetics and the culture-essentialist and neo-nationalist models in and outside of the West. In the process, the resulting musical situations can produce "cluster identities," "patchwork identities," or "multiple identities,"71 however one chooses to define them in detail. Thus they can ultimately claim contemporary social relevance after all, albeit from a *deluxe* position. Against the backdrop of twentieth-century musical and political history, and the overwhelming economization of present times, this ref lexivity appears not merely to be the best of many options, but rather a necessity for advanced art music's survival.

#### **3. Discourses of Intercultural Composition**

The term "intercultural" is intended here to refer to the interaction of two or more cultural discourses – a form of interaction that must inevitably critically question the lines separating "cultural entities." One way to accentuate the processual aspect of intercultural action is developed in this chapter. Further below, I will apply Jan Assmann's concept of "hypolepsis" – understood as the transformative continuation of texts within the configuration of (inter)cultural memories – to musical contexts.

In analyzing musical *inter*culturality, it would seem that we are obliged to problematize fundamental preconditions of the European concept of art if we are to avoid the frequent accusation of merely integrating elements from non-Western cultures into a "Eurological"72 discourse. That integration inevitably places the Other in an asymmetrical power structure, appropriates it in a postcolonial fashion, and thus distorts it without giving its elements a chance to articulate their cultural difference. However accurate this critique may be in the cases of some allegedly intercultural, but in fact monocultural, compositional approaches, its problem lies in its culture-essentialist precondition, which remains trapped in the very dualism of "self" and "other," of "cultural self" and "cultural other," that it purports to reject. Wolfgang Welsch addresses this with his concept of "transculturality," and accuses theories of multiculturality and interculturality of clinging to the traditional concept of culture attributed to Johann Gottfried Herder's "sphere premise."73 This means that they propagate (at least implicitly) a homogeneous concept of culture and thus lay the foundation for culture-based separation and isolation, extending to "cultural racism,"<sup>74</sup> whereas *multiculturality* retains a basic polarity in the model of coexistence of cultural entities, Welsch argues, and produces "parallel cultures." The basic model of dialogue presupposed in *interculturality* does not solve the basic problem, since its insistence on the singularity of cultures involves the exclusion of others. Rather, Welsch highlights the hybrid, permeable, and transformative constitution of all present cultures and emphasizes, in the context of globalization, the *internal* transculturality of individuals, which is clear in the fact that "we all possess 'multiple attachments and identities.'"75 This is taken a step further by Byung-Chul Han

75 Ibid.,198.

<sup>71</sup> See Elberfeld, "'DasIch ist kein Ding,sondern ein Ort.'"

<sup>72</sup> Lewis, "Improvised Music af ter1950." See Bhagwati, "Imagining the Other's Voice."

<sup>73</sup> See Löchte, *Johann Gottfried Herder: Kulturtheorie und Humanitätsidee*, 128–139, Zimmermann, "Globale Entwürfe," 227–231, and Welsch, "Transculturality: The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today."

<sup>74</sup> Welsch, "Transculturality: The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today,"195.

with his concept of "hyperculturality," which assumes a free-f loating mass of "defactized" objects no longer tied to the here and now.76 These are available to the "hypercultural tourist" with virtually no preconditions, without requiring the effort of crossing boundaries or "wandering."77 The model of a hyperculture, however, is unconvincing because of its definitional imprecision: it is by no means true that the methods, idioms, and grammars of "all cultures" are – for today's creative artists, for example – equally learnable and available. In addition, any remotely substantial acquisition of such an idiom demands a great deal of time and patience. Paradoxically, the idea of "defactized" cultural objects contradicts the very desire to overcome established cultural concepts that guides Welsch's and Han's thought. It is precisely when assuming a dynamic, transformative concept of culture that one thing must become clear: any decontextualization of "cultural objects" risks descending into a stereotypical representation of (national) cultures. Indeed, the notion of a removal of such contexts is an illusion. In addition, the idea of hyperculture overlooks that artistic production to this day is integrated into a global power discourse in which Western and non-Western artists can by no means always act with the same preconditions. What makes both concepts problematic is their idealizing tendency: "parallel cultures" are as much an indisputable reality in today's societies as the necessity of a continuous intercultural dialogue. Here one can argue against Welsch that the dialogical model is limited in its ability to transcend cultural essentialism (see below).

At any rate, the constantly changing constitution of cultures has long been recognized by the constructivism of postcolonial cultural theory. Since at least the 1970s, cultures have been understood as resulting from a construction of historical "narratives," and no longer as essential, given *a priori*. 78 The process of constant reinvention and redefinition has been demonstrated especially through the history of nationalism.79 Against the background of increasingly multiethnic societies, the cultural theory of the 1990s developed such concepts as "mixed identities" or "strange multiplicity."80 Edward Said saw the achievement of such theoretical formulations as questioning the "binary oppositions dear to the nationalist and imperialist enterprise"81 and replacing them with more complex models. On the contrary, there is no doubt that the dichotomy of "us" and "them" continues, and has at times even been intensified in the public consciousness – as can be experienced daily in post-9/11 societies. Here it is important to recognize that this dichotomy not only served the foundation of the (former) colonizers' identity, but also provided crucial building blocks for a self-definition of the (formerly) colonized cultures.82

The resulting web of entangled intercultural inf luences, demarcations, and connections makes an "aseptic" definition of cultures (at the expense of their inner complexity) seem reductionist and simplistic. It fails to recognize the long history of their mutual dependence. Such a reduction of complexity is especially characteristic of the authoritarian construction of national cultural identity for political or propaganda purposes. The wealth of examples in the West, East Asia, and elsewhere is well-known. In global music history, they include the simplification of Asian musical models in European exoticism – and in the early style of composed East Asian

79 See Gellner, *Nations and Nationalism* and Anderson, *Imagined Communities*.

81 Said, *Culture and Imperialism*, xxviii.

<sup>76</sup> Han, *Hyperkulturalität*,13.

<sup>77</sup> Ibid., 20, 56–60.

<sup>78</sup> SeeHobsbawm and Ranger, *The Invention of Tradition*, Said, *Culture and Imperialism*, and Benhabib, *The Claims of Culture*.

<sup>80</sup> See Tully, *Strange Multiplicity*.

<sup>82</sup> See Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 22–23.

music (→ III.1) that Barbara Mittler terms "pentatonic romanticism."83 She uses this term to describe the dominant compositional style in twentieth-century East Asia, which is usually based on crudely simplified scales, models, and melodies from East Asian tradition cloaked in Western late Romantic harmonies. This style was in turn inseparable from the high degree of politicization in East Asian contemporary music and in some areas has remained this way to the present day.

In the following section, I will connect culture-theoretical discussion to questions of compositional aesthetics and methodology. We can initially assume that the tiny (in the global context) area of an emphatically or critically conceived "art music" seems most suited to provide a space for concrete utopias of musical interculturality. Here, admittedly, composers are faced with a seemingly chaotic "field of possibilities" in the dynamics between individualist and collectivist conceptions of culture, and also between an affirmation and a problematization, or even (potential) negation, of cultural self and cultural Other.

#### Myth and Migration

It is not always possible to distinguish clearly between mythologizing processes of reception and creative engagement with myth, ritual, and spiritual experience as an open space of encounters between cultures. In the most diverse contexts, composers keep referring back to existential, structural, and spiritual dimensions of archaic-mythological cultural layers. In this, they are often motivated by the intention of pointing beyond a simple East-West (or North-South) cultural dualism, or culturalist thought in general (→ II.6). Admittedly, the less philologically or analytically founded this approach to an allegedly precultural area of myth, the greater the tendency to *construct* "modern myths" of cultures. These find frequent corroboration in the media's propagation of culturalist stereotypes that portray such phenomena as "mythical India" or "mysterious China" (often for representational purposes) through supposedly "timeless" and "inviolable" attributes and paint a static, collectivist picture of culture as a whole. This culturally essentialist discourse may be accentuated both from the Western side (often for commercial purposes such as tourism) and the non-Western side (often with a nationalist – but also commercial – agenda), frequently buttressed by politically dominant groups. Contrasting practices are found in those forms of myth reception that allow for spaces of intuitive connection or encounter while distancing themselves from essentialist stereotypes.

A direct contrast to mythologization is found in the "migration" discourse, which focuses on the hybridity and complexity of contemporary cultural situations (for example, in urban centers). That discourse rejects a monistic concept of culture and confronts the seemingly "depoliticized" myth discourse with "harsh" political reality. Although migration discourse has rarely been connected to art music, it resonates with Helmut Lachenmann's aforementioned demand to engage compositionally and existentially with intercultural processes, rather than merely "strolling" comfortably through non-European worlds, safe in the knowledge of always having a "return ticket" "in one's pocket":

For me as a European, Ithink thatthis aspect ofresistance issomehownecessary to avoid simply consuming [Japanese *shō* music] as "fresh non-European meat" (as I called it on one occasion) for the broken, weary European world, or strolling about in it as a tourist – and as long as you still have your return ticket in your pocketso that you can listen to Beethoven again at home, it's

<sup>83</sup> Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 33.

alright. But actually exposing oneself to aworld inwhich that music gives people security, that's an existential challenge.<sup>84</sup>

Lachenmann does not, admittedly, specify what the compositional consequences of entering the other "lock, stock, and barrel" might be, nor whether it has had concrete effects on his own music (→ IV.2). Lachenmann's polarization, as explained, echoes Slavoj Žižek's criticism of academic theories that celebrate hybridity without dealing with the existential, often traumatic experience of hybridity among political migrants.<sup>85</sup> A potential way out of this dilemma would be the existential commitment (formulated by Hans Zender and others) to the multidimensionality of musical cultures in the form of personal, unguarded, even hazardous encounters with actual musicians, ensembles, genres, texts, or through spiritual experiences.<sup>86</sup> In this context, Charles Taylor has emphasized that a key to overcoming polarized essentialist thought lies in the act of solidarity: in the fact "that we have been transformed by the study of the other, so that we are not simply judging by our original familiar standards."<sup>87</sup> Here, at last, the step has been taken from concepts emphasizing the collective to concepts emphasizing the individual experiences of culture. These concepts, especially in a time when collective "cultural values" are still demanded by some in today's societies, take on ever greater significance and undoubtedly show a tendency toward a fragmentation and individualization of (inter)cultural experience (which is also emphasized by Welsch).

#### Dialogue and Hypolepsis

We can use the terms "dialogue" and "hypolepsis" to refer to two models that seek to explain how individuals might articulate themselves within the dynamics of myth and migration. While the "dialogue" model presupposes fundamental differences between (usually two) partners in dialogue that are meant to be bridged, or at least contained, the model of *hypólepsis*, a concept from ancient rhetoric taken up by Jan Assmann,88 refers to a configuration of cultural memory in which, unlike the discourses of "myth" and "canon," contradictions and critique are preserved:

Mythical discourse is[…] pacified in so far asitis notconfronted by any visible contradiction, and all of its statements and images stand on an equal footing beside one another. Canonical discourse is also appeased because it simply does not allow any contradiction. But hypoleptic discourse is riddled with contradictions, and indeed its whole basis is a sharpened perception of contradictions, that is, of criticism that at the same time preserves the positions that it criticizes.<sup>89</sup>

<sup>84</sup> Helmut Lachenmann in conversation with Rolf Elberfeld and Toshio Hosokawa (see footnote 35); see also Hiekel, "Interkulturalität als existentielle Erfahrung," 64.

<sup>85</sup> Žižek, *Ein Plädoyer für die Intoleranz*, 80–81.

<sup>86</sup> SeeHans Zender'sstatement in Dorschel, "Interkulturelle Begegnung als existentielles Risiko,"106–107.

<sup>87</sup> Taylor, "The Politics of Recognition," 70.

<sup>88</sup> Jan Assmann, *Cultural Memory and Early Civilization*, 255–267. The term *hypólepsis* was coined by Aristotle in his late treatise *De anima* (see Theobald, "Spuren des Mythos in der Aristotelischen Theorie der Erkenntnis"). Assmann, however, mainly refers to the usage in antique treatises on rhetoric (Jan Assmann, *Cultural Memory and Early Civilization*, 257–258)where the term signifies a connection towhat a preceding speaker hassaid.

<sup>89</sup> Jan Assmann, *Cultural Memory and Early Civilization,* 262 ("Der mythische Diskursist insofern beruhigt, als er keinen Widerspruch sichtbar werden und alle Aussagen und Bilder gleichberechtigt nebeneinander stehen lässt.

In classical rhetoric, "hypolepsis" meant taking over from the words of the previous speaker and continuing them freely. Assmann expands the concept to include commentary on and further development of texts within the configuration of cultural memories:

[…] the hypoleptic process is one of engaging in approximations. It draws its momentum from the awareness that knowledge is never complete, and there is always more to be had. You can only come closerto the truth […] by freeing yourself from the delusion that you can keep starting afresh, by recognizing that you have been born into an ongoing process, by seeing which way things go, and by consciously, understandingly, but also critically learning what your predecessors have already said.90

In contrast to the "dialogue" model, which may ultimately result in understanding partners merely for the sake of understanding (and may thus block creative and altering processes), hypolepsis leaves space for free, transformative, critical variation. The concept can only be transferred to intercultural musical situations if one assumes that composers today can operate in a theoretically unlimited meta-cultural space in which a globalized cultural memory continually reconfigures itself. Differences are not eliminated in this space, but neither are they posited as absolutes. The hypoleptic discourse only becomes visible, however, through the highly specific competencies that enable a substantial identification – whether philological or intuitive – of these differences, and possibly also their points of contact.91 Thus a globalized cultural memory is by no means a license for the consumerist attitude implicit in the concept of the "hypercultural tourist."

#### Alterity, Hybridization, and Incommensurability

One can identify a key problem connected to musical interculturality in supposed explanations of the question of cultural *alterity*: "alterity" can basically be defined as the form of being-different that cannot be directly decoded as a sociocultural phenomenon that is ideological, or shaped by power discourses, and hence historically conditioned. Rather, it requires "essential" justifications, however one chooses to define them. In this definition, the concept of "alterity" has become an important instrument in identity-creating liberation discourses that are critical of authority. In addition, the tendency of those who use alterity toward essentialism exposes them to the critique of constructivist theories of identity summarized above.

In his thoughts on recognition, Paul Ricœur stresses that the foundations of the concept of "alterity" contain an originary asymmetry ("the other remains inaccessible in his or her alterity as such"; "the one is not the other") and a reciprocity that retains a middle position between

Der kanonische Diskurs ist beruhigt, weil er keinen Widerspruch duldet. Der hypoleptische Diskurs ist demgegenüber eine Kultur des Widerspruchs. Er beruht auf einer verschärf ten Wahrnehmung von Widersprüchen, d. h. Kritik, bei gleichzeitiger Bewahrung der kritisierten Positionen." Jan Assmann, *Das kulturelle Gedächtnis*, 288).

<sup>90</sup> Ibid., 261 ("Der hypoleptische Prozess ist ein Prozess der Annäherung. Aus dem Bewusstsein der nie ganz vollständigen, immer vorausliegenden Erkenntnis bezieht erseine kinetische Energie.Der Wahrheit kann man nur näher kommen […], wenn man erkennt, dass man immer schon in einen laufenden Diskurs hineingeboren ist, sieht, wie die Richtungen verlaufen, und lernt, sich bewusst, verstehend und kritisch auf das zu beziehen, was die Vorredner gesagt haben." Jan Assmann, *Das kulturelle Gedächtnis*, 287).

<sup>91</sup> See Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 483.

nearness and respect in equal measure, and thus avoids the "pitfalls of a fusional union."<sup>92</sup> At the same time, alterity is a key agent of conf lict, such that "recognition" can be replaced by Hegel's model of a "struggle for recognition" implying an "involvement of misrecognition in recognition."93 In other words, every attempt at mutual recognition must seek a balance between the abandonment of a "narcissism of minor differences" and the acceptance of originary asymmetries. What Freud called the "narcissism of minor differences," namely "a comfortable and relatively harmless gratification of the inclination to aggression, through which cohesion is made easier for the members of the community,"<sup>94</sup> ultimately tends toward a stance that is often less harmless than Freud claims. It potentially extends to discriminatory culturalism and essentialism. By contrast, "forgetting" originary asymmetries can result precisely in cementing open or hidden hierarchies.

Ricœur's emphasis on the "intermediate" finally appears as a common factor with the deconstructivist cultural theory of Homi K. Bhabha, revealing links with the Japanese cultural philosopher Tetsurō Watsuji (Bhabha: "in-between," Watsuji: "intervening" [*aidagara*] 95). According to Bhabha, the "in-between" breaks up the "politics of polarity," advancing into a "Third Space" of articulations in which cultural hybridity becomes possible:

the split-space of enunciation may open the way to conceptualizing an international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism orthe diversity ofcultures, but on the inscription and articulation ofculture's hybridity. To that endwe should rememberthatitisthe "inter" – the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the in-between space – that carries the burden of the meaning ofculture. […] And by exploring this Third Space, we may elude the politics of polarity and emerge asthe others of ourselves.96

Martin Stokes, on the other hand, has argued that the concept of hybridity implicitly perpetuates the authenticity discourse so that "authenticity and hybridity are, from a discursive point of view, more complexly entangled concepts. Popular world music discourse reveals the links between the two terms and betrays their ideological dimensions."97 In addition, Peter Burke has criticized the supposedly neutral-objective observer position associated with hybridityoriented thought, partly following the same argumentation as Žižek. It is from this position that opposites merge almost of their own accord: the concept of "hybridity," Burke argues, rules out all action and evokes "the outside observer that studies culture as if it were nature, and the products of individuals and groups as if they were botanical specimens."<sup>98</sup> So, in the concept of

<sup>92</sup> Ricœur, *The Course of Recognition*, 259–260, 263.

<sup>93</sup> Ibid., 259. This might be further highlighted by the thin line that Ricœur perceives between the French words *mépris* (contempt) and *méprise* (mistake) (ibid., 258). While mistakes turn out to be constitutive components in the search for the truth, contempt is inseparably linked to the "struggle for recognition" and thus ultimately inherent to all forms of recognition.

<sup>94</sup> Freud, *Civilization and Its Discontents*, 88. ("Narzißmus der kleinen Dif ferenzen, […] eine bequeme und relativ harmlose Befriedigung der Aggressionsneigung, durch die den Mitgliedern einer Gemeinschaf t das Zusammenhalten erleichtertwird." Freud, *Das Unbehagen in der Kultur*, 79.)

<sup>95</sup> See Pörtner andHeise,*Die Philosophie Japans*, 366 andNagami,"TheOntological Foundation in TetsuroWatsuji's Philosophy."

<sup>96</sup> Bhabha, *The Location of Culture*, 38–39.

<sup>97</sup> Stokes, "Music and the Global Order," 59.

<sup>98</sup> Burke, *Cultural Hybridity*, 54–55.

hybridity, one can also identify those idealizing traces criticized above in the figures of transand hyperculturality. Certainly, we should remain aware that the hybrid substance of cultures describes a fundamental constitution of all cultures that has simply become increasingly visible as we have approached the present day – and can thus claim considerable empirical evidence for itself. Yet hybridity should not be understood as an insubstantial game with cultural articulations, but rather as a complement to fundamental differences between these articulations. These differences – often enough in trivialized forms – like hybridity, continue to define large parts of globalized societies.

Viewed in the broader context of the history of ideas, cultural alterity can also be connected to the idea of "incommensurability." This is a central topic of discussion in the philosophy of language, political aesthetics, and the philosophy of science, as well as a basic model for understanding the modern and postmodern arts. Though a detailed treatment of this discourse is not possible here, it certainly is a relevant concept for the discussion of musical interculturality.

Incommensurability became a key concept in the philosophy of science as a result of Paul Feyerabend's writings after the late 1950s, and especially Thomas Kuhn's inf luential study *The Structure of Scientific Revolutions* (1962/69).99 The central focus of Kuhn's theory is the methodological and conceptual incompatibility between historically successive scientific paradigms, as well as "translation errors" between scientific theories belonging to different paradigms.100 Similarly, Feyerabend had earlier described the irreconcilability of successive ontological theories: they are incompatible and cannot be reduced to or derived from one another.<sup>101</sup> Although they developed their respective theories of incommensurability on different foundations, Kuhn and Feyerabend were both inf luenced by the gestalt-theoretical postulate that basic theoretical concepts have a lasting effect on the process of observation in the (natural) sciences. Hence, they both followed

the basic idea […] that because the meanings, even of observational terms, are determined by the theoriestowhich they belong,when there istheory change,there are meaning changesthat can result in a new conception of reality. As a consequence, logical relations cannot correctly characterize the relationship between certain pairs ofsuccessive scientifictheories.102

In French poststructuralism in particular, "incommensurability" became a decisive part of the discourse, albeit in a sharper form that constituted a "general attack on rationalism that still triggers defensive reactions to this day."<sup>103</sup> Michel Foucault's concept of the "archaeology of knowledge," for example, highlights the discontinuous development of the forms in which knowledge is represented in "heterotopias" without offering a (rational) reason for such an abrupt breaking-away of the *episteme*. 104 Meanwhile Jean-François Lyotard, following on from Ludwig Wittgenstein's theory of language games, uses the term "incommensurability" to address the irreconcilable and untranslatable nature of language systems.<sup>105</sup> He points out, in Wittgenstein's sense, the fundamental irreconcilability of saying and showing, and thus ulti-

<sup>99</sup> See Oberheim, "On theHistorical Origins of the ContemporaryNotion of Incommensurability."

<sup>100</sup> Kuhn, *The Structure of Scientific Revolutions*.

<sup>101</sup> Feyerabend, "Explanation, Reduction and Empiricism," 74, 90.

<sup>102</sup> Oberheim, "On theHistorical Origins of the ContemporaryNotion of Incommensurability," 386.

<sup>103</sup> Abitor, "Metapher als Antwort auf Inkommensurabilität," 124 ("Generalangrif f auf den Rationalismus […], der bis heute Abwehrreaktionen hervorruf t").

<sup>104</sup> Foucault, *The Order of Things*.

<sup>105</sup> Lyotard, *The Dif ferend*,128–137.

mately the irreducibility of linguistic materiality.106 Lyotard connects such models to the aesthetics of artistic avant-gardes in the twentieth century and their tendency to make "an allusion to the unpresentable by means of visible presentations" and thus deny themselves "the solace of good forms."<sup>107</sup>

Those researching music-historical reception and intertextuality have often contented themselves with showing traditions and anxieties of "inf luence," without addressing the question of cultural (un)translatability. Yet this has long been discussed in depth by ethnomusicologists and literary scholars108 – very often explicating language-inherent power discourses in the process.109 It is clear that even (or especially) in the age of digitalization and the increasing availability of cultural "objects," the possibility of misunderstanding and talking at cross purposes is omnipresent. Admittedly, "productive misunderstandings" are always welcome in the artistic context, and "communication disturbances" are a popular topic in avant-garde artistic production (projects based on the Theater of the Absurd, for example). In situations of productive misunderstanding, the idea of incommensurability can indeed become fruitful without having to withdraw to the position of a rigorous untranslatability.<sup>110</sup>

It is also important to recognize that comparable discourses on the incommensurable exist in many cultures, and are also taken up by non-Western composers, often in a very explicit political sense (→ III.4–6). Here one could point to the reception of Daoist philosophy or references to the archaic verses of the exiled poet Qu Yuan (340–278 BCE) in Chinese music of the 1980s. Instances of this reception refer to anti-authoritarian and regime-critical elements of these traditions – a type of coded political statement that forms a tradition of its own in Chinese intellectual history.<sup>111</sup>

In this context, therefore, what is required is no less than a critical discussion of the limits and exclusion mechanisms of the European concept of art already mentioned above, as well as an engagement with the cultural preconditions of composition (→ II.1). We should be aware of the inadequacy of Helmut Lachenmann's cultural categorizations. That is, his attempt to associate the European concept of art with structuring, rupture, self-ref lection, and self-perception, while associating non-European music – with reference to a concert given by Ravi Shankar at the 1957 Darmstadt Summer Course – all too one-sidedly with religious, ritual and magical intentions, and a "paradise of content intactness."112 (→ IV.2)

In these introductory "circlings," I have attempted to place contemporary composition in the context of wider discourses, specifically those of canonicity, identity critique, ref lexive globalization, and interculturality. Against the backdrop of a continuous dominance of Western

\*\*\*

<sup>106</sup> See Mersch, "Geschieht es?"

<sup>107</sup> Lyotard, "Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?,"129,131.

<sup>108</sup> See the late writings of Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard as well as Chan and Noble, *Sounds in Translation*;see also the overviewin Pym, *Exploring Translation Theories*.

<sup>109</sup> See for example Asad, "The Concept of Cultural Translation."

<sup>110</sup> For an updated and general reviewof musicology-related translation conceptssee Lessmann, "Übersetzung – ein Thema der Musikforschung?"

<sup>111</sup> See Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 355–357, 403–423 (Qu Yuan) and 444 (Daoism). See also Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*,116–125.

<sup>112</sup> Lachenmann, "East meets West?," 90–91.

cultural centers in global cultural politics,113 as well as the inescapable ethnocentrism of canonforming discourses (→ I.1), it is clear that a central challenge of intercultural composition – and a historiography contextualizing and ref lecting it – is to respect "originary asymmetries" and seek out areas of the "in-between," without falling into the trap of a "narcissism of minor differences." Most of all, however, the task is to contextualize such musical works and their social embeddedness without subsuming these asymmetries under a pseudo-universalist but ultimately ethnocentric conception of global culture. This means that the methodology of a global, or more modestly a "globally informed," historiography and analysis of music would first have to meet four requirements:


<sup>113</sup> I have previously labeled this phenomenon "gravitation." See Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 482–483.

# **II. Toward an Entangled History of Twentieth-Century Music in a Global Context**

### **1. Preliminaries of an Intercultural Music Historiography**

The methodological ref lections in the first chapter result in two understandings: first, the necessity of recognizing the aesthetic, cultural, local, and individual particularity of specific artistic positions. Second, the need to develop categories for comparing forms of music that come about under different sociocultural and culture-historical conditions without smoothing over their differences or presupposing any speculative claims of "shared roots" – but also with the aim of moving beyond a mere statement of multiplicity. In the light of recent (and not so recent) developments in music research, it is a given that this cannot take the form of an "either/ or" of aesthetics or history, of work history or social history, or of analytical or socioethnological methodology.<sup>1</sup> Admittedly, as heated discussions of the work concept2 or historiographical methodology<sup>3</sup> have shown, many of these polarities are still alive and well. For example, we still debate how music historiography, despite all postmodern objections, can continue to be conceived of as a "grand narrative" following "mainstreams,"<sup>4</sup> or whether we should rather allow competing descriptions to exist alongside one another and increasingly seek out alternative sites, foregrounding once-neglected areas through a "micrology" of *pétit récits*. 5 Naturally such

<sup>1</sup> See thepolemicinTaruskin,"Introduction: TheHistoryofWhat?,"XXVII–XXVIII againstthepolarities establishedin Dahlhaus, *Grundlagen der Musikgeschichte*. Thisis discussed in Christensen,"Dahlhausin Amerika,"135–136.

<sup>2</sup> See Strohm, "Looking Back atOurselves: The Problem with theMusical Work-Concept" and Goehr, "'On the Problems of Dating' or 'Looking Backward and Forward with Strohm,'" referring back to Goehr, *The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works*.

<sup>3</sup> See Taruskin, "Speed Bumps," Cook, "Alternative Realities." See also Janz, "Musikhistoriographie und Moderne" and Danielczyk et al., *Konstruktivität von Musikgeschichtsschreibung*.

<sup>4</sup> "*CH20* degenerates before our eyes into a Babel of squabbling mainstreams, all clamoring for supremacy. That well exemplifies a salient feature of twentieth-century musical life, to be sure; but what a *history* of twentiethcentury music ought to attempt is a realistic contextualization of it, and an explanation." (Taruskin, "Speed Bumps," 205.) "[…] the trouble is the way in which, as the dif ference between 'streams' and 'mainstreams' illustrates, that kind of approach tends to prioritize the historian's interpretation at the expense of communicating the experiences of historicalsubjects." (Cook, "Alternative Realities," 207.)

<sup>5</sup> See Lyotard, *La condition postmoderne*, 107. "[…] it will be evident to all readers that this book devotes as much attention to a congeries of 'petits récits' – individual accounts of this and that – as it does to the epic sketched in the foregoing paragraphs. Butthe overarching trajectory of musical literacy is nevertheless part of allthe stories, and a particularly revealing one."(Taruskin, "Introduction: TheHistory of What?,"XXIII.) See also Kogler, "Von der großen Erzählung zur Mikrologie?"

supposedly antagonistic positions need not remain mutually exclusive. A specifically intercultural historiography, however, would have to investigate the existing tensions between such opposing positions intensively. Especially when – as would seem almost indispensable for the actual repertoire and when ref lecting on material, perceptual, and performative turns in musical scholarship – music breaks with the criterion of scripturality, or an exclusive orientation toward the *text* paradigm. It is clear that such a history can ultimately only be described, as Jürgen Osterhammel has done in his recent history of the nineteenth century,6 as a "polylogue of different narratives, themes and theories" through a "consistent decentering of perspective […] no longer from Europe as the center, but from an ensemble of different centers."7 Music historiography has, at best, only taken tentative steps in this direction.8

First of all, then, the analyses presented here presuppose a basic comparability of musical works from different cultural and historical contexts, though this by no means suggests a purely functionalist notion of structure (in the sense that "all music" is ultimately no more than a structured, and hence analyzable, organization of sounds). Rather, attempting to act with methodological rationality demands that we seek to avoid the pitfalls of both a rigorous culturalist relativism (that would rule out any possibility of comparability) and an emphatic, covertly ethnocentric universalism (that would view all individual phenomena as manifestations of a single reference concept).9 Furthermore, it seems no less self-evident that one should assume a continued interplay of immanent and contextual factors in the production of musical "meaning" through composition, notation, interpretation and reception, and increasingly understand how these areas correlate and interweave. When combining individual "voices" in the complex of what "music" can mean in an interculturally expanded domain, however, we must be content to dispense with evolutionary or teleological models. Inevitably, we must respect discontinuity as a basic principle present even in the smallest cells of the individual articulations being examined: a fundamental "polyphony."

At the least, dispensing with the "grand narratives" must be a precondition when they refer to the orthodoxy of "techno-essentialism,"10 a naïve concept of progress that reduces musichistorical dynamics to an increase in structural complexity or gives absolute precedence to the structural paradigm as a whole:

This orthodoxy, of fering a headline story around which a range of more conservative or simply dif ferent traditionscan be clustered, not only construes history as a quasi-evolutionary process

<sup>6</sup> Osterhammel, *Die Verwandlung der Welt*.

<sup>7</sup> Janz,"Musikhistoriographie undModerne," 313–314 ("konsequenteDezentrierung der Perspektive […] nicht mehr vom Zentrum Europa,sondern von einem Ensemble unterschiedlicher Zentren aus erzählt").

<sup>8</sup> See Gertich and Greve, "Neue Musik im postkolonialen Zeitalter," Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, Danuser, *Musikalische Lyrik*, vol. 2: *Vom 19. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart – außereuropäische Perspektiven*, Cook and Pople, *The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music*.

<sup>9</sup> Such a method is in many respects akin to Michael Tenzer's approach to an "analysis and theory of musics of the world," though I do not share Tenzer's optimism that we are indeed heading toward a "world music theory" (Tenzer, "Introduction: Analysis, Categorization, and Theory of Musics of the World," 32–35). What I share is Tenzer's insight that "comparison across any boundary requires reconsidering basic assumptions so that clear descriptive language can emerge and lead not only to newcategories of learning, but beyond them to newexperiences and construals of music"(Tenzer,"Temporal Transformationsin Cross-Cultural Perspective," 517). The universalistic project of a "Global Music Theory" in which, among others,scale systems are introduced as"qualified musical universals" (Hijleh, *Towards a Global Music Theory*, 9) mustsurely evoke considerable doubts.

<sup>10</sup> See Williams, "Of Canons and Context."

but also locatesthat processin compositionaltechnique: itisthe same kind of approach that you might use inwriting the history of,say, the internalcombustion engine […].11

Nicholas Cook's and Anthony Pople's attempt to oppose this orthodoxy through the broad focus of the *Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music*, however, proves problematic in some respects. While it seems fair that the chapter on serial music does not take up more space than that on the "moderate mainstream 1945–75," one of many things that remains unclear is why there is a chapter on art music in Africa, but none on art music in Asia or Latin America. In a strangely timid gesture, the explanation provided for this takes back the de-restriction aimed for directly beforehand:

The rationale, in short, isthat non-Western musicsfallwithin the book'sscope to the extentthat they can be seen as integral to the historical development of Western music, "our" music. That can't to any great extent be said of Beijing opera between the wars, but it becomes more generally the case as the century progresses, with globalization replacing a pattern of sporadic encounters by one ofsustained interaction. Indeed there is a sense inwhich, by the time you getto the end of the century, it isin principle impossible to justify leaving *any* music, anywhere, out of the book. […] "Western" music, clearly located around 1900 in the urban centers of Europe and North America, has become a globalcurrency in the sameway asthe hamburger, and one sometimes hasthe impression thatthe "art"tradition flourishes more in East Asia, Israel, and parts of South America than in its former heartlands. It is not so much that there has been a relocation from the center to the periphery as that the distinction between center and periphery has become increasingly fuzzy […].Andso itis appropriate thatthe accumulating emphasis, asthe book proceeds, on increasingly globalized and hybridized popular musicsleads[…]to a kind ofreverse discourse: issues of musical modernism and autonomy, increasingly sidelined in the First World, ironically take on a newculturalsignificancewhen relocated to the Third.12

However instructive the insight may be that the discourses of Western music have to change in a globalized context and take on new qualities, I find that the seemingly helpless, albeit ironically understated, retention of the focus on "'our' music" is rather questionable. Björn Heile is therefore right in his criticism that "the consequences of the global and globalized nature of new music haven't been fully thought through or conceptualized. […] behind the ostensible cosmopolitanism of the new music scene, the old thinking in terms of 'self' and 'other,' 'center' and 'periphery' seems to go on unabated."13 Admittedly, Cook himself did not stop at this unsatisfactory perspective; since 2002, he has worked continuously on a concept of "relational musicology,"14 referring, among other things, to an approach outlined by Regula Burckhardt Qureshi,15 a concept further pursued by Georgina Born.16 Cook bases this perspective not only on an integration of music analysis, music historiography, and ethnomusicology, but also on a fundamentally *relational* understanding of musical "meaning":

<sup>11</sup> Cook and Pople, "Introduction: Trajectories of Twentieth-Century Music," 4.

<sup>12</sup> Ibid., 8–9.

<sup>13</sup> Heile, "*Weltmusik* and the Globalization ofNew Music,"101–102.

<sup>14</sup> SeeCook'sessays"'OneSizeFitsAll'?,""WeAreAll(Ethno)musicologistsNow,""InterculturalAnalysis asRelational Musicology," and "Anatomy of the Encounter."

<sup>15</sup> Qureshi, "Other Musicologies."

<sup>16</sup> Born, "For a Relational Musicology."

I think of meaning as something that emergesthrough the interaction between dif ferent texts or practices (between works and performances, between dif ferent media), and that is accordingly negotiated atthe point ofreception. In otherwords meaning is notintrinsic but arisesfrom relationships, and that'swhy Ispeak of relational musicology.17

### Models of Music Historiography and the Critique of Universal History

From the age of colonialism and historicism onward, a persistent dichotomy was established between the *history* ascribed to Western music, and how Asian, African or Latin American musical cultures have only been credited with musical *traditions* but no music-historical continuity. Such a dichotomy exists not least because scripturality has usually only played a secondary part in those cultures: in traditional music historiography, a basic model of continuity closely relates to scripturality. This view, stemming from the theories of history developed by Friedrich Schlegel and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in the early nineteenth century, and the accompanying selectionist value judgments, have retained their inf luence to this day. In Taruskin's compendium, explicitly termed a history of *Western* music, the criterion of scripturality becomes the decisive key to an overarching narrative:

it isthe basicclaim of this multivolumed narrative – its number-one postulate – that the literate tradition of Western music is coherent at least insofar as it has a completed shape. Its beginnings are known and explicable, and its end is nowforeseeable (and also explicable). And just as the early chapters are dominated by the interplay of literate and preliterate modes of thinking and transmission (and the middle chapters try to cite enough examples to keep the interplay of literate and nonliterate alive in the reader's consciousness), so the concluding chapters are dominated by the interplay of literate and postliterate modes, which have been discernable at leastsince the middle ofthe twentieth century, andwhich sentthe literate tradition (in the form of a backlash) into itsculminating phase.18

In Taruskin's case, this delimitation of pre- and postliterate epochal boundaries has an undertone of cultural pessimism that foregrounds the prevalence of cursory, fragmented listening in the media age. His attitude connects with Jerrold Levinson's phenomenological theory of merely stringing together isolated events while listening to music – *concatenationism*. <sup>19</sup> In addition, Taruskin defends the restriction to the Western world (Europe and North America) with a clearly contestable argument: "The sheer abundance and the generic heterogeneity of the music so disseminated in 'the West' is a truly distinguishing feature – perhaps the West's signal musical distinction. It is deserving of critical study."<sup>20</sup> But this unique "abundance of the most varied styles and expressive forms"21 in Western music, often celebrated even by "critical" voices, hardly stands up to objections from postcolonial theory or ethnomusicology, and could surely be claimed for traditions such as Indian or Korean art music with equal justification.

<sup>17</sup> Cook, "Intercultural Analysis as Relational Musicology."

<sup>18</sup> Taruskin, "Introduction: TheHistory of What?," XXIII.

<sup>19</sup> Taruskin, *Music in the Late Twentieth Century*, 510–514. See Levinson, *Music in the Moment*.

<sup>20</sup> Taruskin, "Introduction: TheHistory of What?," XXIII.

<sup>21</sup> Helmut Lachenmann in Spahn, "Gegen die Vormacht der Oberflächlichkeit" ("Keine [andere Musiktradition außer der europäischen] hat sich so rasant fortentwickelt und einen solchen Reichtum an unterschiedlichsten Stilen und Ausdrucksformen hervorgebracht.")

Alternative approaches to music historiography have repeatedly been outlined, but rarely put into practice. A teleological principle of progress was already questioned in rudimentary manner during the 1920s, for example in the model of metamorphosis and f luctuation in Paul Bekker's *Musikgeschichte als Geschichte der musikalischen Formwandlungen* (Music History as the History of Changes in Musical Form, 1926),22 in the cyclical model of Alfred Lorenz's *Abendländische Musikgeschichte im Rhythmus der Generationen* (Occidental Music History in the Rhythm of Generations, 1928),23 and in sociohistorical approaches first pursued systematically since the 1920s.24 To be sure, every one of these studies was limited to European music25 and, in Lorenz's case, was even shaped by a deep cultural pessimism of a decaying "occidental" (or more specifically German) culture threatened by non-European cultural "forces" as outlined in proto-fascist writings such as Oswald Spengler's *Der Untergang des Abendlandes* (The Decline of the West, 1918/22, first translated into English in 1926), of which the second volume in its subtitle claimed to provide "Perspectives of World History."<sup>26</sup>

While it is still the prevailing view that "everything presented as a line of development is simply an abstraction from progressions and regressions," and that "development has many threads and moves in several directions simultaneously,"<sup>27</sup> there is hardly a music-historical overview that has truly drawn out the necessary conclusions from this insight. A systematic discussion of methods would have to draw on something like Dahlhaus's "problem history of composition" against the backdrop of a combination of compositional history, history of ideas, and social history,28 as well as its critique or refinement in the context of New Musicology.29 Such a discussion would have to ref lect especially on developments in other disciplines, for example the idea of an intercultural history of philosophy.30 Ultimately, the models of "multiple modernities" and "entangled history," explored further below in this chapter, pursue the aim of weaving together at least some of these requirements.

First, however, steps toward an engagement with the tradition of universal-historical and culturally comparative research approaches will be sketched in contrast to two well-known studies, Walter Wiora's *Die vier Weltalter der Musik* (The Four Ages of Music, 1961) and John Blacking's *How Musical Is Man?* (1973). Despite Wiora's efforts to distance himself from Eurocentrism,

24 See Potter, *Most German of the Arts*.

<sup>22</sup> See Bekker, *Musikgeschichte als Geschichte der musikalischen Formwandlungen*, 5–15.

<sup>23</sup> See Lorenz, *Abendländische Musikgeschichte im Rhythmus der Generationen*.

<sup>25</sup> Very few exceptions such as Jacques Handschin's essay "Réflexions dangereuses sur le renouveau de la musique ancienne" [Dangerous Reflections on the Revival of Early Music] (1938) were labeling non-European (here: Japanese) musicconsistently as"exotic,"crediting itwith a lack of immediacy.Handschin though questionsthe universal validity claim of music historiography based on these reflections. See Maier, *Jacques Handschins "Toncharakter"*, 50–59.

<sup>26</sup> See Spengler, *Der Untergang des Abendlandes*. Lorenz later became an enthusiasticsupporter of theNazi regime; see among others Kinderman, "DasInstitut für Musikwissenschaf t in derNS-Zeit."

<sup>27</sup> Rienäcker and Rösing, "Epochendefinition und Geschichtsschreibung," 411 ("[…] alles, was als Entwicklungslinie dargestelltwird, [ist] nichts anderes als Abstraktion von Progressionen und Regressionen"; "Entwicklung ist [...] vielsträngig und geht gleichzeitig in verschiedene Richtungen […].")

<sup>28</sup> Dahlhaus, *Grundlagen der Musikgeschichte*,182–187, Dahlhaus, "Zur Problemgeschichte des Komponierens."

<sup>29</sup> See Treitler, *Music and the Historical Imagination*, Tomlinson, *Music in Renaissance Magic*, Cook and Pople, *The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music*, and Taruskin, *The Oxford History of Western Music*.

<sup>30</sup> See for example Wimmer, *Interkulturelle Philosophie*, 89–117 and Kimmerle, *Interkulturelle Philosophie zur Einführung*.

his outline stands in the tradition of colonialist universal-historical concepts. He presupposes a "natural" foundation of music that he only believes to have been fully developed in "occidental music," and whose "naturalness" – as opposed to power-political factors, for example – is the chief cause for the global dissemination of Western musical forms:

It was easy for occidental music to be appropriated by tribal cultures and basic classes of the Orient because its folk forms of fered very simple, striking and therefore convincing shapes. One such simple shape is the straight eight-bar tune in a major key with a constant alternation between the tonic and dominant. This was encountered in all cultures by structures of varying kinship, and was thus easily assimilated, for example in national anthems. The "second primitivity" of rhythmically straight song types is in keeping with the original primitivity. The typical structure of marches or popularsongs has a "striking" ef fect.31

In 1939, in a review of the volume *Zur Tonalität des deutschen Volksliedes* (On the Tonality of the German Folk Song), edited by Guido Waldmann and published in 1938 by the Nazi organization Reich Youth Leadership (Reichsjugendführung), Wiora had listed basic aims of folk music research, including calls to reconstruct what he considered a natural development of folk music toward tonality and emphasizing the ability of German folk song to assimilate foreign inf luences.32 It is not difficult to recognize, then, how a blatantly nationalist and xenophobic emphasis can be reworked, without any changes to the substance of the argumentation, as a universal-historical concept. That concept, then, attempts to prove with great enthusiasm the special status of Western music in purely technical, seemingly non-ideological terms.

One could say that Blacking's study starts from a diametrically opposed position, namely the thesis that "all music is structurally, as well as functionally, folk music."33 Hence his study attempts to examine all forms of music from a culture-sociological position through analyses "that explain how a musical system is part of other systems of relationships within a culture."<sup>34</sup> From this perspective one can understand Blacking's critique of world-historical approaches, especially when they have an evolutionist focus: "Musical styles cannot be heard as stages in the evolution of music, as judged in terms of one particular civilization's concepts of music."35 Blacking calls for a precise examination of the sociocultural situation from which music emerges, the "cultural agreement"<sup>36</sup> through which alone it can communicate meaning, and the "sonic order"37 that, as a music-specific principle of organization, enables this communication. Blacking's approach f lattens out the differences between cultures as he tries to apply the same basic

<sup>31</sup> Wiora, *Die vier Weltalter der Musik*,146 ("Musik des Abendlandes konnte in Stammeskulturen und Grundschichten des Orients darum leicht angeeignet werden, weil sie in ihren volkstümlichen Formen überaus einfache, prägnante und darum einleuchtende Gestalten darbot. Eine solche einfache Gestalt ist der glatte Acht-Takter in Dur mitständigem Wechsel von Tonika und Dominante. Er traf bei allen Völkern auf mehr oder weniger verwandte Strukturen und konnte sich leicht einbürgern, so in Nationalhymnen. Die 'zweite Primitivität' rhythmisch glatter Liedtypen kommt der ursprünglichen Primitivität entgegen. Die durchschnittliche Struktur von Märschen oder Schlagern hat 'schlagende' Wirkung.").

<sup>32</sup> Wiora, "Die Tonarten im deutschen Volkslied." See also Potter, *Most German of the Arts*.

<sup>33</sup> Blacking, *How Musical is Man?*, xi.

<sup>34</sup> Ibid., 25.

<sup>35</sup> Ibid., 56.

<sup>36</sup> Ibid., 9–10.

<sup>37</sup> Ibid., 11.

socioanalytical approach to all kinds of music – a goal that he barely achieves when, in contrast to structuralist analyses of the music of the South African Venda, in discussing works by Benjamin Britten or Gustav Mahler, he follows his own subjective feelings and strongly emphasizes that he has not drawn on any analyses by other authors.<sup>38</sup>

Blacking's approach has nonetheless been continued intensively in Anglo-American research in particular, one example of which is Stephen Blum's notable article "Composition" in *The New Grove*. 39 Blum defines composition primarily by the postulate of self-identity (music that remains identifiably the same in different performances can be termed "composition") and begins his account paradigmatically with examples of African and Latin American ritual music whose self-identity – as in many genres of European music – lies primarily in core models that can be augmented in a given performance with varyingly extensive variations. Indeed, as the following section shows, opening up the notion of composition is a preliminary when intercultural contexts of music history are approached, as narrow conceptualizations of this term would leave major gaps in the repertoire to be discussed in such a history. This implies that scripturality can by no means be the sole criterion to delineate what music should be included in an intercultural music history, but also that distinguishing between the connection to written and non-written components of the compositional process can assist in laying out the criteria for comparison sought here. What must also be found is a convincing combination of textual and contextual analysis that unifies hermeneutical, structural, music-aesthetic, and sociohistorical factors in order to grasp the fabric-like, network-like basic structures woven between compositional act, composer, society, politics, and historical "encyclopedia."

#### Opening Up the Notion of Composition

The sociohistorical preconditions for artistic, and hence compositional, acts in the globalized context are undoubtedly closely linked to the problems accompanying the global dominance of the Western musical *discourse* (in the Foucauldian sense). So when one speaks of "new *composed* music," for example (or also "*composed* new music"), it is certainly worth questioning first of all how culturally-conditioned these concepts, or the historical processes to which they refer, in fact are.

If we direct our attention toward "new composed music" in East Asia, for example, we are confronted with a common two-phase model. The phase *before* the intensive encounter with Western culture through imperialism and colonialism since the nineteenth century essentially featured nothing analogous to the Western concept of "musical composition," which consequently appears as a "special path" of the West. *Af ter* this confrontation with the West, however, the concept of composition experienced a gradual reception and assimilation in East Asia. The spectrum of this assimilation meanwhile extends from the imitation or f lawless mastery of Western styles or compositional tendencies toward the rupturing of the cultural-aesthetic foundations underlying the concept of "composition." Leaving aside the problematic postcolonial perspective that presents music-historical movements as solely dependent on Western inf luence, this also denigrates (traditional) forms of composition in East Asia without further discussion by denying them the dignity of being considered "composition." Thus, in the article "Komposition" (1996) from the encyclopedia *Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart*, non-Western contexts are consistently ignored, implying that their forms of musical creativity do not meet

<sup>38</sup> Ibid., 60.

<sup>39</sup> See Blum, "Composition."

the standard laid out, namely producing a "construct with artistic ambition (which is thus characterized by a particular quality of forms, expressive capacity, depth of meaning etc.)."40

In opposition to this rather dualistic view of Western composed music and non-Western traditionally (predominantly aurally and orally) transmitted music, I would like to propose a more complex model. My model will not dispute the cultural autonomy and largely independent historical development of both forms of musical creativity before the nineteenth century while adopting a less essentialist position. For now, let us continue to assess the concept of "musical composition" in the Western context.41 No matter which point of time or period one chooses as the time of its birth – 1025, 1474, or 153742 – the criteria that justify "viewing composition as specific to the European cultural tradition"43 and hence placing it in opposition to musical creativity in other cultures are far from self-evident.<sup>44</sup> Certainly there was a new development between the Notre Dame period and the Franco-Flemish school toward the separation and autonomy of the fixed text in relation to various practices of improvisation and extemporized performance, leading to the introduction of a functional and exact music notation. Together with a new hierarchy led by the creative *poeticus musicus*, <sup>45</sup> this situation laid the foundation for a new form of musical autonomy, reaching a first peak in the compositional procedures of the late fourteenth-century *ars subtilior*. These properties of musical composition remained crucial in Western music up to the twentieth century, in a complexity that only became possible through scripturality. The "New Complexity" associated with Brian Ferneyhough, for example, is only conceivable as the radicalized autonomy of written formulation in relation to musical practice, which it certainly enriches creatively at the same time, but without being limited by the possibilities of any established *res facta* (which may freely signify here both the means of standard notational practice as well as limitations of traditional musical perfor-

<sup>40</sup> Sachs et al., "Komposition" ("ein Gebilde mit Kunstanspruch [das sich somit durch besondere Gestaltqualität, Ausdrucksfähigkeit, Sinntiefe u. ä. ausweist]").

<sup>41</sup> See Cahn, "Zur Vorgeschichte des 'Opus perfectum et absolutum,'" Kaden, *Des Lebens wilder Kreis*, 64–103, Loesch, *Der Werkbegrif f in der protestantischen Musiktheorie des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts*, Strohm, "Opus: An Aspect of the Early History of the Musical Work-Concept," Strohm, "Der musikalische Werkbegrif f: Dahlhaus und die Nachwelt," Flotzinger, "Glossen zum frühen abendländischen 'Kompositions'-Begrif f," and Bandur, "Composition/Komposition," Sachs et al., "Komposition," Blum, "Composition," Möller, "Komposition."

<sup>42</sup> One might understand this concept to have arisen in the early appearance of the term "componere" in Guido of Arezzo's *Micrologus de musica* (Chapter 15, 1025), indicating a significant paradigm shif t toward a "reflective, thoroughly considered form of musical invention." (Kaden, *Des Lebens wilder Kreis*, 69; "reflektierte[], mehrfach überdachte[] Form musikalischen Erfindens.") Equally one might view the term *res facta* of Johannes Tinctoris (*Terminorum Musicae Dif finitorium*, 1472–74) or the definition of the *opus perfectum et absolutum* (and the *opus consumatum et ef fectum*) in ChapterI ofNikolaus Listenius's *Musica* (1537), thatisto say,the German *musica poetica* of the Reformation, as a decisive step toward the establishment of the concept in Western music history.

<sup>43</sup> Kaden, *Des Lebens wilder Kreis*, 65 ("Komposition als ein Spezifikum europäischer Kulturtradition zu erachten").

<sup>44</sup> See Blum, "Composition."

<sup>45</sup> See Cahn, "Zur Vorgeschichte des 'Opus perfectum et absolutum'" and the critical arguments in Loesch, *Der Werkbegrif f in der protestantischen Musiktheorie des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts*, rejected by Strohm, "Der musikalische Werkbegrif f: Dahlhaus und die Nachwelt," 272: "Der Begrif f des musikalischen *opus* […] war lange vor Listenius und der Wittenberger Schulreform im internationalen humanistischen Sprachgebrauch verbreitet und stellte bereits dieselben normativen Ansprüche wie derjenige des 19. Jahrhunderts, wenn er auch die Musikpraxis noch nichtin derselben Breite abdecktewie in späteren Jahrhunderten." ("The concept of a musical *opus*[…]was common long before Listenius and the Wittenberg educational reform in international humanistic usage and already placed the same normative demands as those of the nineteenth century, although it did not yet cover music practice to the same extent asin latercenturies.")

mance). Yet Debussy's polemical comment, quoted in Chapter 1, that characterized Javanese gamelan music as "a counterpoint that makes Palestrina's seem like child's play"46 shall remind us that complexity is by no means linearly dependent on scripturality. (This will be exemplified, among many other examples, by those African genres that served as György Ligeti's models in creating hyper-complex rhythmic-metrical structures in his later works, → V.2.)

Such practices as Ferneyhough's are undoubtedly deeply indebted to a specific feature in the Western conception of composition that emerged in the early phases of modernity around 1800: the "objectified spirit" of the musical work, in which the notated appears as a (culturally encoded) *text*. 47 The culture-sociological circumstances involving this topos were the emancipation of music from social functions, the development of concert and opera life, and above all a corresponding repertoire that enabled the intertwining of antiquity and modernity in which the paradoxical postulate of "originality" could be realized. This paradox is illustrated most clearly by the expectation that the "original genius" (*Originalgenie*) will keep creating new things while still respecting the limits of certain conventions.<sup>48</sup> In other words, the new and advanced was (or is) only acceptable if it could (or can) be related to the existing repertoire, even if only by slowly "seeping into" that repertoire through its repeated performance and gradual ascent to canonic status.

This kind of self-ref lexivity of music has been singled out as the decisive criterion for the definition of musical modernity by Tobias Janz,49 who also stresses the extent to which progress-driven European modernity remained dependent on an anti-modernist "discomfort of modernity."50 Examples of such a paradoxical linking of modernist and anti-modernist layers are the juxtaposition of authoritarian pre-modern art religion and high-modernist dramaturgy of sound in Richard Wagner' *Parsifal* (1877–82),51 or the ambivalence between colonialist and postcolonialist readings in Charles Koechlin's and Percy Grainger's adaptations of Rudyard Kipling's *Jungle Book*, where the non-European Other as an idealized "counter model" of Western modernity is at once integrated and ostracized.<sup>52</sup>

The question still remains whether general autonomy from musical practice, involving the strong focus on scripturality, is sufficient to qualify composition as specific to Western culture. In recent musical performance studies, this assumption has been thoroughly challenged and countered by minimizing the impact of written musical notation to a mere "script," a secondary aid for the primary experience of musical performance or "*musicking*,"53 positing a work concept which is inwardly based on "sounded writing" – the "work *as* performance."<sup>54</sup> Probably the most important intervention in this field has been Carolyn Abbate's essay "Music – Drastic or Gnostic?," which adopted Vladimir Jankélévitch's music philosophy for a much-discussed challenge of the long-lasting discourse of "great works as unperformed abstractions,"55 in-

<sup>46</sup> Debussy, *Monsieur Croche et autres écrits*, 223 (see Chapter1, footnote 23).

<sup>47</sup> Dahlhaus, "Der Werkbegrif f als Paradigma," 94–95. See also Bürger, *Theory of the Avant-Garde*, 47–54.

<sup>48</sup> Dahlhaus, "Der Werkbegrif f als Paradigma," 97–98.

<sup>49</sup> Janz, *Genealogie der musikalischen Moderne*, 239–265.

<sup>50</sup> Ibid., 513 ("Unbehagen an der Moderne" – a formulation which alludes to the title of the German translation of Charles Taylor's book *The Malaise of Modernity*,1991)

<sup>51</sup> Ibid., 448–456.

<sup>52</sup> Ibid., 457–514.

<sup>53</sup> See Small, *Musicking*.

<sup>54</sup> See Cook, *Beyond the Score*, 237–248.

<sup>55</sup> Abbate, "Music – Drastic or Gnostic?," 505.

stead demanding a new focus of musicology on "music not as a work but as an event"56 and its "material presence and carnality."<sup>57</sup> It has been noted by several commentators that Abbate's intervention (via sources from Jankélévitch that extend back to the 1920s) can be traced to early twentieth-century vitalism, but also to music-specific approaches of prioritizing sounding performance as introduced by Paul Bekker or Alfred Schütz.58 This substantiates the observation, made by many scholars today, that a critique of modernity is deeply ingrained in the process of modernity itself, a process which prominently and necessarily involves the decentering dynamics of globalization processes and intercultural conf lict zones.

Even if this tradition of turns toward "material" or "performance" in music scholarship tends to retain a dualism of written and sounding dimensions of music, thus remaining indebted to a basic polarization they claim to transcend, each offers a highly necessary extension of focus when approaching the definition of composition in an intercultural context: not only is composition dependent on performative reproduction and aural perception, composition and listening can themselves be understood as performative acts and thus described as incommensurable and idiosyncratic.59 This idea will become obvious in numerous analyses presented in the following chapters. There we will see how an interaction between composers, performers, and audiences may become completely reconceived and "reinvented," often on the basis of specific cultural preconditions. This concept will perhaps become clearest in the partly politically motivated ideas of José Maceda and Yūji Takahashi (→ III.4).

Of course, the idea that non-Western cultures would be based primarily (or even entirely) on performative and "material" (aural/oral) practices is equally one-dimensional. It should be acknowledged that non-Western musical cultures also have writing practices that emancipate themselves from musical realization and add speculative and autonomous dimensions to the functionality of musical notation.60 Even in early phases, one can detect a creative self-awareness in this context – for example, in the scores of *ci* songs by the Chinese scholar Jiang Kui (1155–1221) from the southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279). Jiang not only termed these songs his "own compositions" (*ziduqu*), but also added prefaces to his scores explaining in detail how he had developed the text and music in close parallel.<sup>61</sup>

Therefore, it seems cogent to define the concept of "composition" in a "global" manner from the outset, as Stephen Blum has done.62 Understanding the invention, notation, performance, and reception of music as sociocultural acts lets "composing" appear as the definition of an (inter)cultural position and thus offers insight into the composer's (and performer's or listener's) stance toward cultural, social, and societal conditions and realities. According to Theodor W. Adorno, we can trace these conditions to the tiniest details of a score,<sup>63</sup> even if the composer remains unaware of such connections. The complexity of thus defining a sociocultural position

<sup>56</sup> Ibid., 533.

<sup>57</sup> Ibid., 529.

<sup>58</sup> See Bork, "Text versus Performance – zu einem Dualismus der Musikgeschichtsschreibung," 383, Jost, "Der 'performative turn' in derMusikforschung," 292, andKabisch,"'Verschwindendes Erscheinen' als Prinzip einerMusik der Moderne," 39,summarized in Utz, "Carolyn Abbate. Music – Drastic or Gnostic?"

<sup>59</sup> See Kramer, "From the Other to the Abject," 65–66 and Utz, "Vom adäquaten zum performativen Hören" for a theory of "performative listening."

<sup>60</sup> See for example Liang, *Music of the Billion*,186–202.

<sup>61</sup> Lam, "Writing Music Biographies of Historical East Asian Musicians."

<sup>62</sup> Blum, "Composition."

<sup>63</sup> Adorno, "Zur gesellschaf tlichen Lage der Musik," 731.

undoubtedly increases with the two opposing tendencies in cultural globalization: homogenization and diversification. Through this binary, one can understand the compositional process as the conceptual linking of historical location, social context, cultural context, and the composer's biographical "constellation" to the specific processing of problems immanent in tradition, genre, œuvre, and the individual work. In an interculturally accentuated approach to composition, the interplay between these factors becomes clear. As soon as composers operate between different cultural contexts, their historical location and the immediately relevant musical traditions begin to oscillate. Such oscillations should be the focus of an intercultural music historiography.

#### De-Nationalizing Music Historiography

Broadening our idea of musical composition, integrating dimensions of performed and perceived sound, and deconstructing the idea of authenticity are merely preliminary steps in an attempt at decentering and denationalizing the writing of music history. In order to outline a more comprehensive view of this challenge, the following chapters (II.2–II.6) develop ideas put forward by recent theories in historical studies such as "entangled history"<sup>64</sup> and "multiple" or "alternative modernities."65 The focus is on "non-simultaneous" processes in music history of different nations or regions of the world during the first and the second half of the twentieth century, alluding to the notions of "relationality" and "synchronicity" as discussed in recent historical scholarship:66 Whereas *relationality* signifies that in modernity no region or nation is the sole agent of its history, that the emergence of modern societies is deeply connected to an interactive process among regions, nations, or cultures,<sup>67</sup> *synchronicity* stresses the fact that "synchronous" (largely synonymous with "simultaneous") global processes in modern history have often engendered interdependent changes in different areas of the world.68 While these approaches suggest a more emphatic perspective on the project of a "world history" by bringing local developments together into a common framework, my approach aims to confront this framework with those "non-synchronous" or "non-simultaneous" aspects of pre- and postwar (music) history of the twentieth century that *resist* the project of a unified "world (music) history." The precondition and challenge, therefore, is to understand any local, national, or regional music-historical processes not in isolation from global processes but as (frequently unconscious and/or unconsidered) consequences of inter- or transnational dynamics, including (but not limited to) political and social contexts such as political ideologies and postcolonial power structures, images, and mentalities. Local or national dynamics and processes that do not match an overarching historical narrative must still be acknowledged.

Ref lecting these tensions and the divergent preconditions of art music composition in the different areas of the world since 1900, the notion of a "non-simultaneity of the simultaneous" [*Ungleichzeitigkeit des Gleichzeitigen*] as coined by art historian Wilhelm Pinder during the 1920s and made famous by Ernst Bloch's in-depth Marxist analysis of rising fascism in the

<sup>64</sup> See Werner and Zimmermann, "Beyond Comparison."

<sup>65</sup> See Eisenstadt, *Multiple Modernities*, Gaonkar, *Alternative Modernities*, Conrad and Eckert, "Globalgeschichte, Globalisierung, multiple Modernen," and Janz, "Multiple Musical Modernities?" Thisconcept is discussed more thoroughly toward the end of Chapter II.4.

<sup>66</sup> See the summaries in Conrad, *What is Global History?*, 65–66,150–156.

<sup>67</sup> See Goody, *The East in the West*.

<sup>68</sup> SeeHarvey, *The Condition of Postmodernity*.

1930s springs to mind.69 In Bloch's social theory, the "non-simultaneous" designated the "different times, the different 'nows'" of European societies during the first decades of the twentieth century, which Bloch determined "using the coordinates of age, class, and geography":70 the unemployed youth, the peasantry, and the rising urban middle class all lived in different "nows" but shared a common impulse to reject the modernist present, making them susceptible to extremist ideas and movements. A literal transfer of this theory to music history is surely not viable and is not my principal aim. Rather, I am curious about how the "radical polyphony" of twentieth-century new music as described by Andreas Meyer<sup>71</sup> can be understood against the background of Bloch's theoretical framework. The challenge thus is not to resort to the common stereotype of a simple "stylistic pluralism" in music since 1945 or to the trope of non-Western areas experiencing an "asynchronous delay" to Western centers, connected to an implicit or explicit pressure to "catch up" with Western standards (though this was a common, if often shortsighted demand articulated by many non-Western reformers in early postcolonial periods72). Rather, the repeated emphasis on "non-simultaneity" points to the fact that twentieth-century music is much less subject to *one* linear historical narrative than has often been supposed.

That music history can only be adequately understood and written from an inter- or transnational perspective is neither a new nor, probably, a particularly provocative insight. Concert and opera companies of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries were characterized by continuous processes of migration and exchange, and their protagonists – composers, virtuosos, singers, impresarios – usually had correspondingly polyglot life stories.73 Styles typically blended ingredients from diverse local, supra-regional, and "foreign" traditions, even and paradoxically where they claimed to produce "national styles."74 Even in the nineteenth century, fueled by the "poison of nationalism," public recognition could only be gained on the basis of international success, and the musical biographies of Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, or Mahler are unimaginable without transnational journeys – in part forced by economic pressures.

In its turn, music historiography from Johann Nikolaus Forkel, François-Joseph Fétis, and August Wilhelm Ambros to Hugo Riemann has followed the model of a universal history, dating back to the Enlightenment – with the well-known problems associated with this concept in the context of a world marked by colonialism, imperialism, and militarism. In these universal music histories, international or intercontinental relations were by no means presented neutrally, but – since the mid-nineteenth century mostly under Hegelian inf luence – increasingly shaped teleologically or evolutionarily toward recent European art music as a kind of "optimized" state of global development. This viewpoint downgraded music of other cultures and earlier times to mere early or pre-history, if it was attributed a "historical capacity" at all. Even after 1900, when such Eurocentrism was criticized by comparative musicology, which aimed

<sup>69</sup> Pinder, *Das Problem der Generation in der Kunstgeschichte Europas* and Bloch, *Erbschaf t dieser Zeit*; see Schwartz, "Ernst Bloch and Wilhelm Pinder."

<sup>70</sup> Schwartz, "Ernst Bloch and Wilhelm Pinder," 58.

<sup>71</sup> "The music history of the twentieth century isradically polyphonic. It disintegratesinto dif ferentcultures, and no *zeitgeist* can mediate between them." (Meyer, "Volkstümlich – primitiv – populär," 27. "Die Musikgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts ist radikal vielstimmig. Sie zerfällt in verschiedene Kulturen, die kein Zeitgeist miteinander vermittelt.")

<sup>72</sup> Mishra, *From the Ruins of the Empire*, 7.

<sup>73</sup> See, Calella, "Migration, Transfer und Gattungswandel."

<sup>74</sup> See, among others, Bohlman, *Focus: Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe* and La Motte-Haber, *Nationaler Stil und europäische Dimension in der Musik der Jahrhundertwende*.

at a more context-sensitive understanding of musical cultures, little changed. Hugo Riemann, for example, reacting to early studies of non-Western tone and tuning systems in the foreword to the first volume of his *Handbuch der Musikgeschichte* (1904) insisted on the universal validity of the "division of the octave into twelve semitones" and declared this a "historical fact that a few poorly drilled pipes from Polynesia or questionable singing performances of colored females cannot upset."75 In his late work *Folkloristische Tonalitätstudien* (1916), Riemann attempted to substantiate the alleged universality of the European major and minor scales by means of a developmental narrative of melodies and modes in various musical cultures. At that point, the inf luential nineteenth-century concept of a continuous evolution of cultures had already been challenged by new ideas of a relativity, equality, and multiplicity of cultures as put forward most prominently by Alexander Ellis's epochal comparative study on the "Musical Scales of Various Nations" (1885) and in writings by German-American anthropologist Franz Boas.76 This cultural relativism, however, was *not* yet a well-established concept in early comparative musicology, as testified by Erich Moritz von Hornbostel's and Carl Stumpf's but also by Charles Seeger's basically evolutionary concepts of cultural history, which generally accredited low developmental stages to "primitive" non-Western musics.<sup>77</sup>

Despite the blatant isolationism brought about by totalitarian systems, especially in the first half of the twentieth century, and despite many neo-nationalist tendencies extending into the immediate present, the extent of the transnational network of interrelationships in both art and popular music grew in the twentieth century. At least toward the end of the century, these changing relationships made the need to revise the established music-historical methodologies increasingly clear. It can be said that, as a result of exile and extensive migratory movements, an increased transnational orientation in the arts has been a simple historical fact since the beginning of the twentieth century. This orientation also decisively inf luenced the aesthetics and reception of prominent émigré artists such as Edgard Varèse, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Isang Yun, or Tan Dun. The awareness of addressing a global audience shaped compositional aesthetic concepts on a particularly broad scale after 1945, even though initially only few composers defended an explicitly inter- or transculturally oriented universalism (→ II.2).

Yet even today, a critique of the national bias of music historiography is by no means obsolete. Certainly, Richard Taruskin has been accused of, in volume 5 of his *Oxford History of Western Music*, which deals with music since 1945, overemphasizing American tendencies78 (and among them neotonal currents) and constructing a teleological music-historical narrative from the geopolitical tensions of the Cold War based on the supposed decline of the avantgarde. Taruskin unequivocally defends his narrative in the preface to the paperback edition of the volume:

<sup>75</sup> Riemann, *Handbuch der Musikgeschichte*, vol. 1, V–VI. ("Teilung der Oktave in zwölf Halbtöne," "historisches Faktum, das man mit ein paar mangelhaf t gebohrten Pfeifen aus Polynesien oder mit fragwürdigen Gesangsleistungen farbiger Weiber nicht über denHaufen rennt.")

<sup>76</sup> Ellis, "On the Musical Scales of Various Nations" and Boas, *The Mind of Primitive Man*. See Taylor, *Beyond Exoticism*, 107–108.

<sup>77</sup> See Stumpf, *Die Anfänge der Musik* and Hornbostel, "Die Probleme der vergleichenden Musikwissenschaf t." On Seeger see Sharif, *Speech about Music*.

<sup>78</sup> See among others the critique of Taruskin's "xenophobic essentialism" (Cook, "Alternative Realities," 208) and his"erstaunlichen Akt des Ethnozentrismus" ("amazing act of ethnocentrism") (Cox, "Richard Taruskins *The Oxford History of Western Music*,"103).

The United States unquestionably inherited musical leadership during this period from Europe – at first by default, as a gif t from Adolf Hitler, thanks to whom Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartók, Hindemith, Krenek, Korngold, Milhaud, and many others had, by 1945, joined Rachmaninof f, Varese, and Bloch in America, many of them remaining and becoming citizens. The conditionsthat stimulated the rise of the postwar European avant-garde were largely created by the Of fice of Military Government, United States(OMGUS), the American occupying force that, for one particularly telling example, financed and at first administered the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, at which total serialism, European-style, was born – in far more direct response to Soviet arts policy than has ever been publicly admitted. Thereaf ter, itwasthe music ofthe American avant-garde,chiefly represented by John Cage and Morton Feldman, and enthusiastically propagated by lavishly subsidized West German radio stations[…],thatsetthe tone for European experimentation.79

Despite all legitimate criticism and an unmistakable onesidedness, it can be conceded that Taruskin's arguments not only fulfill a general and basic requirement of cultural-scientific methodology by combining the ideological and institutional historical with aesthetic dimensions of recent music history, but in particular, his text places a finger on sore points and unresolved problems of historiographical methodology (it is no coincidence that Taruskin sees it as the historian's primary task "to disenchant auras and demystify discourses"80). What could a less polemically charged concretion of such a method look like that also ties in with recent considerations of a global music history as outlined above? The case studies in the following chapters (II.2–II.6) address this challenge by revisiting the situation of an increasingly interconnected world against the backdrop of music-historical situations in Europe, the USA, and East Asia. The focus will be placed on applying the model of entangled history, which, in contrast to models of national history, attempts to "systematically draw attention to the interlocking of the levels of investigation and their mutual conditionality."81 This approach aims to explore "social, cultural, and political formation, generally at the national level, that are assumed to be one-toone,"<sup>82</sup> with internationalized art production as a prime example of "areas of contact that are transformed through their mutual interaction."<sup>83</sup>

Transferred to the field of music, interdependencies between compositional decisions, conventions and innovations, institutional developments, and (cultural) political conditions can be considered at the transnational level. In the current subject discourse of musicology, such a model seems to encounter problems, above all, because the division of labor between subdisciplines of musicology is very advanced and sometimes seems irreversible: a "World Music" explored by ethnomusicology, encompassing traditional and popular music, is juxtaposed with globalized "Western Music," for which historical musicology is deemed responsible.<sup>84</sup> A high degree of differentiation and, certainly, the institutional separation of these two disciplines, seem to make linking them perennially difficult.

<sup>79</sup> Taruskin, "Preface," XIX–XX.

<sup>80</sup> Taruskin, "Af terword: *Nicht blutbefleckt*?," 280.

<sup>81</sup> Werner and Zimmermann, "Vergleich, Transfer, Verflechtung," 630 ("die Aufmerksamkeit systematisch auf die Verschränkung derUntersuchungsebenen und aufihrewechselseitige Bedingtheit[lenken]"). Forthe historical classification of this approach see among others Haupt, "Historische Komparatistik in der internationalen Geschichtsschreibung."

<sup>82</sup> Werner and Zimmermann, "Beyond Comparison," 31.

<sup>83</sup> Ibid., 35.

<sup>84</sup> See Janz, "'Gibt es eine Weltgeschichte der Musik?,'"148.

New music before and after 1945, however, is at odds with this division simply because in its development, the turn to forms of traditional (often non-European) musical practice, which were increasingly marginalized in the course of musical and social modernization, played a key part – at least since Bartók's and Stravinsky's doubly ref lected and broken folklorism (→ II.3). What Andreas Meyer refers to as "musical anthropology"85 sheds light on a specific area of tension in twentieth-century art music: between the integration of the marginalized, the "Other," into public discourse and the shift toward the allegedly "non-cultural," "pure" structures as they appear especially in the aesthetics of serial music after 1950, numerous facets of new music emerge in which modernist and anti-modernist motifs are interwoven. In other words, for new music – especially in the 1950s and 60s – there is a paradox that exists between a basic cultural relativism – an essentialism insisting on the uniqueness and incommensurability of local traditions – and an advanced structuralist universalism. Such aesthetic transformations cannot be adequately understood without the geopolitical context of the twentieth century.

#### Transnational Avant-gardes?

Understanding musical composition, performance, and reception as results of "non-simultaneous" entangled networks, does not, of course, imply the existence of a "transcultural avantgarde." As discussed earlier, a single person may always be conceived or conceive themselves as "transcultural," as not indebted to a specific national or regional cultural essence – perhaps, following Welsch or Han, transcending or even eliminating the very notion of clearly distinct, separate cultures (→ I.3). However, such an idealized definition of transculturality is ill-fitting with a historical analysis of the decades around 1900 and later periods in which cultural essentialism blossomed in both its hegemonic and its emancipatory forms. Of course, this polarity between authoritarian and relativist cultural essentialism did not stop at the frontiers of musical composition. The way in which composers (mis-)represented and appropriated non-Western musics in musical exoticism and orientalism is a well-studied area of postcolonial musicology. However, we can arguably detect traces of relativist thought in the ideas of some composers who turned to non-Western musical traditions with more dedication and enthusiasm. In such cases, the context of musical modernity, its rejection of established musical modes and practices, helped to overcome prejudice against an assumed low evolutionary stage of non-Western traditions.

One of the questions we have to solve here is whether such modernist approaches toward non-Western musics resulted in a transnational proliferation of compositional techniques and aesthetic ideas that were indeed shared by a "transcultural avant-garde." Even if we, as a first step, attempt here to replace "transcultural" with the more neutral term "transnational," and thus challenge the idea that composers actually created a hybrid aesthetic area beyond the spheres of distinct cultures, the question remains whether these composers formed transnational groups connected either by real networks or at least by shared ideas. My basic argument here will be that such transnational connections were quite loose, especially before the 1950s, but even during later periods.

Adopting Bloch's concept of the "non-simultaneity of the simultaneous" to music historiography may enable us to understand how composers and musicians developed similar ideas and approaches against radically different social backgrounds, and motivated by hardly comparable social and aesthetic agendas (→ II.4, II.5). Whether we highlight the entanglement (relationality, simultaneity) of these ideas (guided by the principle of an *entangled history*) or rather

<sup>85</sup> Meyer, "Volkstümlich – primitiv – populär," 34–40.

their social, geographical, or conceptual distinction and independence (isolation, non-simultaneity; guided by the principle of *multiple modernities*) might not least be a question of our trust or skepticism toward the idea of a global music history in an emphatic sense. Though my focus on the "non-simultaneity of the simultaneous" may seem to place me in the camp of the skeptics, I must emphasize that I endorse the concept of global music historiography precisely because it makes us aware of such "non-simultaneities" or non-relations.

The other, even more complex issue to be tackled here is the definition of a musical avantgarde. One might argue that we must somehow live with the problem of "musical avant-garde" as an ill-defined term which turns out to be either too narrowly or too broadly defined. The key point for the discussion of a *transnational* avant-garde is, of course, that it compels us to redefine the notion of "musical avant-garde" in the context of a global dimension of (art) music making. But let us first remind ourselves that the definition of the term *avant-garde*, even within a Western discourse of new music, is far from evident. Recently, Pietro Cavallotti has insisted that Peter Bürger's standard definition of the term, which takes its cue from early twentiethcentury avant-garde movements in visual arts and literature, is in many ways ill-fitting with twentieth-century *music* history.<sup>86</sup> In this sense, Gianmario Borio suggested earlier that an aesthetics of continuously *surpassing* the features of musical modernity must be considered a key concern of the *musical* avant-garde (without necessarily calling such procedures "progress" in a narrow sense).87 Applying this definition consistently, however, provokes the paradoxical conclusion that the avant-garde concept must be opened up for large parts of twentieth-century music because innovation, the surpassing of previously "modern" musical features, the "remaking of the past," as Joseph N. Straus put it,88 is a broad concern of musical poetics from the early to the late twentieth century in and beyond the West.

I believe that this situation prompts us to doubt seriously the usage of the term "avantgarde(s)" in music-historical writing. On the one hand, anti-traditionalist innovation, the critique of unconsidered convention in a contemporary society, has been described as a key feature of modernity in general, so that "avant-garde" and modernity seem to be inclusive or at least closely entangled in the field of music. On the other hand, giving up the term avant-garde enables intercultural music historiography to stress how closely musical modernity and the awareness of non-Western traditions are intertwined:

The ethnographic fascination, from André Jolivet to Boulez, from Varèse to George Crumb, is not a relic of conventional exoticism. It marks a music that – under the condition of extreme self-alienation and a questionability of all established forms – is willing to discover expression and emotion in the encounterwith the distinct Other of reason and conventional expression.89

The affection and solidarity which many composers of new music in the twentieth century developed toward non-Western "traditional music" arguably grew out of the observation that

<sup>86</sup> Cavallotti, "Avantgarde,"see Bürger, *Theory of the Avant-Garde*.

<sup>87</sup> Borio, *Musikalische Avantgarde um 1960*.

<sup>88</sup> See Straus, *The Remaking of the Past*.

<sup>89</sup> Meyer, "Volkstümlich – primitiv – populär," 34. ("Die ethnographische Faszination, von André Jolivet bis Boulez, von Varèse bis George Crumb, ist kein Relikt des konventionellen Exotismus. Sie kennzeichnet eine Musik, die bereit ist, unter Bedingungen einer extremen Selbstentfremdung, einer Fraglichkeit aller überkommenen Formen, in der Begegnung mit dem ganz Anderen der Vernunf t und des konventionellen Ausdrucks dennoch Ausdruck und Emotionwiederzufinden.")

both globalizing art music in the Western tradition and traditional non-Western musics were marginalized by the processes of canonization, commerce, and the abounding genres of popular music established since the advent of the recording industry. For emerging non-Western composers, the situation was even more complex, as traditional musics underwent accelerated and often radical transformations, usually closely linked to nationalist, pro- or anti-Western agendas. It is thus vital to see a connection between the modernist readings of traditional non-Western musics by Western-educated composers and these composers' social situation. I will therefore aim consistently to place emphasis on the social embeddedness of the musical works that serve as my case studies.

#### **2. Internationalism and Universalism: Repercussions of Political and Cultural History**

Both before and after 1945, "internationalism" and "universalism" have been the most prominent concepts of global entanglement; it therefore seems consistent to dedicate a closer reading to their changing meanings and implications in music-historical contexts. By attending to the controversial debates which arose from these ideas, this chapter demonstrates how the increasing awareness among composers (and, in turn, performers and audiences) of acting as "agents" in an international or global context substantially affected compositional technique and aesthetics. I also show how the "simultaneity" of such an increasingly globalized musical communication continued to imply many "non-simultaneities" between global and local, Western and non-Western music aesthetics or "realities." I suggest that these "non-simultaneities" in particular offer a key to understanding the music-historical dynamics of these periods. This will provide a framework for detailed case studies to follow in the subsequent chapters (II.3–6).

#### Internationalism

The dedication to internationalism in twentieth-century music predated the Cold War period by several decades, and resulted from both political-militarist confrontation and a certain social isolation of modernist music in European societies. The trend toward internationalization was in fact already a global characteristic of political movements in the second half of the nineteenth century, including the First International, founded by Karl Marx in 1864; the Second International, founded in Paris in 1889; the International Council of Women founded in Washington, D.C., in 1888; and international pacifism*,* emerging from the Universal Peace Congress in Paris (1889) and the Conventions of Geneva (1864) and The Hague (1899, 1907), as well as the first steps toward the establishment of international law. In general, the decades around 1900 saw a proliferation of international non-governmental organizations in many areas, particularly in the social and political domain, which became crucial sites of activity for the globalization process.90 Not least, this tendency accelerated a normalizing universalization of economic, communicative, and technical standards such as standardized measures and weights – but it also led to an increasing internationalization of cultural events as marked by the revitalized Olympic Games in 1896.91 World exhibitions in London (1851/62/86), Paris (1855/67/78/89, 1900), and elsewhere celebrated "world peace" and "social harmony" as

<sup>90</sup> Osterhammel, *Die Verwandlung der Welt*, 723–735.

presumably brought about by Western civilization.<sup>92</sup> Some had a profound impact on cultural and musical processes and innovations,93 suggesting a fine line between imperialist strategies of appropriation and modernity-skeptical cultural pessimism (→ II.1).94 In addition, the internationalization of the world did not exclude the (mis)use of international communication for nationalist agendas.<sup>95</sup>

The International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) was founded in 1922 to overcome the national isolation of musical scenes and institutions resulting from World War I and the largely nationally defined infrastructure of nineteenth-century musical institutions that had been deeply involved in musical "nation building." Inspired by the League of Nations founded in 1919, and the Club of Poets, Essayists, Novelists (PEN) founded in 1921,96 the ISCM intended to represent and support composers, performers, and amateurs of contemporary music "of all aesthetic directions and tendencies – irrespective of citizenship, race, religion, or political beliefs."97 Although nationalist and aesthetic conf licts arose within the ISCM early on, the organization remained a platform for a relatively non-ideological, though clearly Western-oriented, international exchange – Soviet and communist countries never applied or were considered for membership.98 Indeed, the "Prague manifesto," approved by the Second International Congress of Composers and Music Critics in May 1948, envisioned the foundation of a counter organization.99 The countries under Soviet control during the decades until 1991 were dominated by the powerful Union of Soviet Composers under the general secretary Tikhon Khrennikov, although the repression of Western-oriented aesthetics varied considerably, with Poland and later former Yugoslavia and East Germany establishing particularly close ties of musical exchange with the West.

In the immediate postwar period, the word "internationalism" usually had positive connotations when used by Soviet-oriented writers, based on the idea of solidarity among nations fighting for a common cause against capitalist exploitation.100 Most notably, this "internationalism" was based on the preservation of national identities and characteristics, in declared contrast to Western capitalist "cosmopolitanism," which was considered to erode these characteristics. The word "cosmopolitan" was also used as a propagandist invective during the concealed Stalinist anti-Semitic campaigns and pogroms between 1949 and 1953.101 In the Prague manifesto, formulated by Hanns Eisler, these terms were connected with the diagnosis of a "serious crisis" of contemporary music, contributing to a much-repeated trope of postwar musicrelated discourse and, indeed, of the modernist discourse in general.<sup>102</sup> In both popular and art

<sup>92</sup> Ibid., 41–42.

<sup>93</sup> See Fauser, *Musical Encounters at the 1889 Paris World's Fair*.

<sup>94</sup> See Born and Hesmondhalgh, *Western Music and Its Others*.

<sup>95</sup> Osterhammel, *Die Verwandlung der Welt*, 733.

<sup>96</sup> Nonnenmann, "Institutionen/Organisationen," 284–286.

<sup>97</sup> Haefeli, *IGNM: Die Internationale Gesellschaf t für Neue Musik*, 53 ("gegründet zur Förderung zeitgenössischer Musik aller ästhetischen Richtungen und Tendenzen – ohne Rücksicht auf Staatsangehörigkeit, Rasse, Religion oder politische Ansicht ihrer Mitglieder").

<sup>98</sup> Russia has been a member of the ISCM since 2005, China since 2012. Japan joined the ISCM in 1935, South Korea in 1957,Hong Kong (Hong Kong Composers' Guild) in 1983, Taiwan in 1989.

<sup>99</sup> Kovácz, "Die Institution – Entstehung und Struktur,"118.

<sup>100</sup> The following information is predominantly based on ibid.,116–139.

<sup>101</sup> See Azadovskii and Egorov, "From Anti-Westernism to Anti-Semitism."

<sup>102</sup> See Meyer, "Volkstümlich – primitiv – populär," 39–40.

music, the reason for this "crisis" was believed to lie in the "individualism" and "subjectivism" of the Western composer and performer.

Leftist artists living in the West usually defended the freedom of individual expression. They included Hermann Scherchen and most prominently René Leibowitz, whose book *L'artiste et sa conscience* (1950) features a critique of his former student Serge Nigg's inclination toward the program of the Prague manifesto.103 Some were more explicit in their support for Eisler's program, such as the prominent scholar and critic Hans Mayer, one of the most inf luential speakers during the first five years of the Darmstadt Summer Course (1946–50). Mayer sought to reconcile socialist realism with musical modernism, including his positive assessment of Schoenberg and the Viennese School attuned to the rhetoric of a "crisis" of bourgeois culture attributed to an increasing gap between art and "reality." For Eisler and Mayer, the origins of modernity's crisis were to be seen in the "emancipation from the religious-cultic to the cultural-civil" and the implied processes of individualization and anti-collectivism. In contrast to the official Zhdanov doctrine, however, Mayer was skeptical about a preservation of "national characteristics" and associated "formalism" with Stravinsky's and Hindemith's neoclassicism rather than with atonality and dissonance. The audience and press reception of the early Darmstadt Summer Course demonstrates how such "moderate" positions during the years around 1950 increasingly gave way to a more polarized rhetoric. Such polarization is especially documented in East German press reviews that idealized nationalist and folkloristic styles, of which Béla Bartók was considered exemplary, while denouncing "international" and "formalist" tendencies, particularly associated with American composers such as Edgard Varèse – whose lifelong fight against "formalist" aesthetics in this context evidently remained unnoticed. Thus in Soviet-inf luenced rhetoric, the term "international" had changed from positive to negative within a few years. Meanwhile, the Darmstadt course increasingly claimed to represent a true "international" platform, not least marked by the notable change of name from "Ferienkurse für internationale neue Musik" to "Internationale Ferienkurse für neue Musik" in 1948. In the following decade, the proportion of non-German participants increased from 4.3 percent in 1948 continuously to a peak of 70.4 percent in 1961.104

Musical trends and works from that period, which manifest elements of such new "internationalism," may be found most prominently in interwar, wartime, and postwar neoclassicism, which from the beginning had been declared an "international" trend with profound inf luences on pre- and postwar musical history in Russia, France, Eastern and Northern Europe, and Latin America. The awareness of writing for a broad international audience, however, informs many politically imbued works of the period that are not of the neoclassicist repertoire, such as Arnold Schoenberg's *A Survivor from Warsaw* (1948) – which instigated a particularly broad and controversial discussion on political music in postwar Europe,105 Karl Amadeus Hartmann's postwar Symphonies 3 to 8 (1945–62),106 and Hanns Eisler's paradigmatic *Deutsche Symphonie* (1935–57).107 In their idioms and programs as well their genesis and performance history, these pieces mirror particular concrete facets of wartime and postwar history, as do the well-known examples of Shostakovich's Symphonies 9 to 13 (1948–62) and Stravinsky's *Sym-*

<sup>103</sup> See Carroll, *Music and Ideology in Cold War Europe*,116–131 and Sprout,"The 1945 Stravinsky Debates."

<sup>104</sup> Kovácz, "Die Institution – Entstehung und Struktur," 62.

<sup>105</sup> Carroll, *Music and Ideology in Cold War Europe*,116–131, Calico, *Arnold Schoenberg's* A Survivorfrom Warsaw *in Postwar Europe*, and Shref fler, "Cold War Dissonance," 53–54.

<sup>106</sup> See Mosch, "'Freiheitwar esimmer, die er meinte.' Karl AmadeusHartmann und die 'StundeNull.'"

<sup>107</sup> See Wißmann, *Hanns Eisler: Komponist, Weltbürger, Revolutionär*,107–126.

*phony in Three Movements* (1943–45). Most composers (including the prominent cases introduced below, → II.5), even if they did not react to the political situation or the terrors of the recent past in similarly explicit terms, consequently tended to conceive of their potential audience as a "global" community, which, not least, in many cases may have helped to overcome local resistance to their innovations. This "global audience," naturally, turned out in some ways to be an *imagined community*, and was not dissimilar to the "humanity" Theodor W. Adorno had in mind when he termed Beethoven's symphonies "public addresses to humanity" ("Volksreden an die Menschheit"108). Against this background, postwar musical internationalism and universalism must arguably be viewed not only as reactions against the nationalist discourses of the recent past, but also as evidence of an increasing awareness of global interconnectedness – including the awareness that many trends in Cold War policies were threatening to push the world back into localist or regionalist isolationism. The two most inf luential music-historical tendencies in this context were the invention of serial music, with its structuralist universalist claims, and forms of ethnically accentuated multi- or transethnic universalism occurring later on.

#### Universalism

Whereas "internationalism" seems to signify a complex of global or transnational networks, often implying the wish to overcome restrictive nationalist thinking and agency, "universalism" clearly indicates a more emphatic and optimistic world-embracing concept aimed at transcending the limits of national or culture-specific discourse, heading toward "world music," "world literature," "world art," etc.109 Universalism in the European context is primarily a product of Enlightenment thought, in the area of music ref lected in the well-known quote attributed to Joseph Haydn in which he assumes that his "language" can be understood throughout the whole world. This idea was criticized and met with skepticism in many areas of nineteenthcentury aesthetics.110 At the same time, universalism served as the founding ideology of nineteenth-century colonialism and imperialism. The concept is thus heavily involved in political history and ideology:

In the same period when most political philosophers began to defend the principles of universalism and equality, the same individualsstill defended the legitimacy ofcolonialism and imperialism. One way of reconciling those apparently opposed principles was the argument known as the "civilizing mission," which suggested that a temporary period of political dependence or tutelage was necessary in order for "uncivilized" societies to advance to the point where they were capable ofsustaining liberal institutions and self-government.111

In music historiography and comparative musicology, Eurocentric universalism dominated the early decades of the disciplines almost exclusively. Even though comparative musicology criticized Eurocentric music-theoretical and music-historical methodologies early on, the search for musical universals continued to shape (and confine) later studies in global music history,

<sup>108</sup> Adorno, "Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie," 281.

<sup>109</sup> SeeUtz,*Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 26–43,Heile, "*Weltmusik* and theGlobalization ofNewMusic,"Huang, "Constellating World Literature," and Fillitz, "Anthropology and Discourses on Global Art."

<sup>110</sup> Dahlhaus, "Historisches Bewußtsein und Ethnologie," 220;see Janz, "'Gibt es eine Weltgeschichte derMusik?,'" 147.

<sup>111</sup> Kohn, "Colonialism."

such as Walter Wiora's *Die vier Weltalter der Musik* (→ II.1). The idea of musical universals still figures in the (predominantly ethnomusicologically based) discourse on "world music," which tends toward a notion of "music" that encompasses all kinds and genres worldwide, seemingly without introducing hierarchies:112

Whether musical systems leak at the borders or not, languages are not all that coherent, being subject to constant change, and failing in the test of precise geographic borders. Whether there is something still to be said for the concept of music asthe universal language of mankind, and whether enjoying the sounds of a foreign musicisidentical with understanding may be argued. The issue is not 'one' or 'many,' but in what waysthe notion of music and musics provide insight. A history ofworld musicshould, if it does notcome down on one side orthe other,showhowthe two perspectives provide dif ferent interpretations ofwhat happened.113

It is obvious (and has been explained by many authors) that universalism is dialectically opposed to the concepts of (cultural) essentialism, particularism, and relativism. The latter concepts tend to deny the possibility of universal forms of artistic (or political) articulation and to emphasize cultural uniqueness and the partial incompatibility or alterity of a "culture" or "nation" with other comparable entities. Relativism in particular seems to function essentially as a critical counterpart of universalism, exemplified by some approaches in postcolonial studies. Nonetheless, cultural and national essentialisms are deeply embedded in the history of modernity and act both as intrinsic components in the process of nation building and as the basis of most claims of cultural difference.114 At the same time, we can recognize that essentialism and universalism are not mutually exclusive but rather interdependent concepts: universalists often presuppose basic and essential differences – cultural, national, racial, political, aesthetic, stylistic – that are then emphatically "transcended" in an act of "synthesis" or "integration." The idea of essential entities is a shared assumption of both universalism and essentialism.

Therefore, a reasonable and careful discussion about whether different forms of music, art, religious ideas, or social structures, etc. are (partly) compatible or not might easily revert to ideological forms of opposition, or even become the basis for new kinds of radicalized thinking or political misuse, as for example in diverse forms of neo-nationalism. Such a reclamation of identities seems to recur in waves. The term "neo-nationalism," for example, has been used in describing European music history of the 1910s and 1920s (pre- and post-World War I affirmations of national identities, as in Stravinsky's "Russian" ballets or in Bartók's idealization of peasant music; → II.3). This idea, however, can equally apply to dimensions of transnational history of the early 1990s (post-1989, post-Cold War reclamation of national identity especially in Eastern Europe, but also in East Germany, as well as a first wave of right-wing populist parties and politicians) and to the present period (the reaffirmation of national interest and xenophobic sentiments throughout Europe and in many Asian and American countries as an obvious counter-reaction to migration and economic changes resulting from globalized political and economic dynamics). In Asia, (neo-)nationalist tides have proved inf luential for music history, as can be identified in many areas of twentieth-century music in Japan, Korea, and China (→ III).

<sup>112</sup> See Janz, "'Gibt es eine Weltgeschichte der Musik?,'"148.

<sup>113</sup> Nettl, "On World Music as a Concept in theHistory of Music Scholarship," 25.

<sup>114</sup> See, e.g., Zhou, "Essentialist Legacies and Shif ting Identities."

In European music from the 1940s to the 1970s, there are at least four basic forms of universalism, which I label "religious" or "spiritual universalism," "technological universalism," "structuralist universalism," and "transethnic" or "transcultural universalism," and I will characterize each below. These classifications are all indebted to Enlightenment ideas regarding "art" and music, particularly the notion of art as a universal phenomenon, understood as a "collective singular" with the composer acting as a kind of high priest of a "religion of art" with potentially global impact. My categories do not exclude one another, but rather interact in myriad ways. From this perspective, these different types of musical universalism potentially appear as a particularly apt exemplification of the "non-simultaneity of the simultaneous" in pre- and postwar music history, which will ultimately become evident in the case studies discussed below.

#### Religious and Spiritual Universalism

Religious thought mostly tends to be universal by definition. This universalism to some extent lets the political impact of Enlightenment universalism and the universalism of political theories and ideologies such as Marxism appear as necessary consequences of a critique of religion (eventually itself taking on many features of a religion). The "sacred" implications of musical performance and reception became particularly pertinent in nineteenth-century "religion of art," eventually motivating composers to conceive an all-encompassing reform of the modes of musical presentation and reception, the most prominent example being Richard Wagner. The decades around 1900 saw a wave of highly inf luential post- or pseudo-religious universalist theories such as Theosophy and Anthroposophy, many of which incorporated fragments of mystic Asian traditions. An important Russian-American-Italian trajectory in this respect leads from Alexander Scriabin and Ferruccio Busoni to Dane Rudhyar and Giacinto Scelsi.115 Olivier Messiaen's outline of a "theological" music was deeply informed by such individualized mystic universalism, as it was cultivated during the 1930s in the group *La Jeune France* by André Jolivet, among others,116 while the inspiration drawn from the *Renouveau catholique* movement also included considerable culturally conservative elements.117 Messiaen's Indianinspired rhythms, however, were not used to evoke Indian music (in contrast to the clearly audible evocation of *gamelan* music in the *Turangalîla Symphony*, 1946–48, or of Japanese *gagaku* in the fourth movement of the *Sept Haïkaï*, 1964), but rather represented a "timeless," primordial theological world order, thus also connecting to the *quadrivium* tradition of religiously based numerical rationalism and symbolism.<sup>118</sup>

In the early 1950s, inf luenced by Messiaen's religiously based universalism, Karel Goeyvaerts and Karlheinz Stockhausen were strongly attracted to the idea of a "pure structure."119 Early on, Stockhausen grounded his activity on the idea of being sent on the compositional path by a divine message,<sup>120</sup> claiming that his music merely "translated" divine vibrations.<sup>121</sup>

<sup>115</sup> Reish, "The Transformation of Giacinto Scelsi's Musical Style and Aesthetic," Celestini, "Busoni und Scelsi," Utz, "Klang als Energie in der Musik seit1900."

<sup>116</sup> Gut, *Le Groupe Jeune France*, Borio, "Vom Ende des Exotismus."

<sup>117</sup> Lindhorst, "Gedanken, Bilder und Schlüsselbegrif fe des *Renouveau catholique* in den Texten von Olivier Messiaen."

<sup>118</sup> Bruhn, *Messiaens musikalische Sprache des Glaubens*.

<sup>119</sup> Sabbe, *Karlheinz Stockhausen. … wie die Zeit verging …*

<sup>120</sup> Blumröder, *Die Grundlegung der Musik Karlheinz Stockhausens*, 73.

<sup>121</sup> Ibid., 89.

Stockhausen also proposed more explicitly culturally or ethnically defined universalist ideas. Inspired by a 1952 Paris concert with Balinese and Tibetan music, Stockhausen (retrospectively) claimed to have decided to "make a kind of music that relies on the tradition of music from the entire world."122 This claim acquired neo-imperialist undertones and thus aroused heated debate in a later formulation, in which Stockhausen proposed to write "not 'my own' music but a music of the whole earth, of all countries and races."123 The mystic tradition of religious intuition as a basis for the compositional process, with the composer acting as a "medium" between divine forces and sounding material in Stockhausen's case, can be linked to at least two major traditions of thought: Messiaen's "theological" aesthetics, in which mystic universalism had already been closely linked to the reception of non-Western musical traditions harking back to Debussy's, Roussel's, and Delage's "submerged exoticism"124 around 1900 (→ II.4); and Catholic thought, which substantially inf luenced Stockhausen's conception of music, resulting in a characteristic simultaneity of rationalism and mysticism.<sup>125</sup>

#### Technological Universalism

The argument that technological innovation, usually considered a driving force of modernity if not its main constituting factor, has led to the "time-space-compression"<sup>126</sup> typical of globalization processes (→ I.2), is familiar from our immediate present where the high-speed internet, Google, and YouTube seem to contribute to a readily available and continuously expanding archive of "world cultures." The essentialist, materialist, and technocratic conviction that a musical recording has the capacity to "represent" a specific culture; the misconception that technology is a culture-independent force, transcending traditional forms of encultured communication and articulation; and the optimistic enthusiasm that saw new technologies as a symptom of a "new era" can all be detected clearly in many areas of European music of the 1950s and 1960s.127 Marshall McLuhan's trope of the "global village" offers the best-known theorization of this overt technological optimism (McLuhan, *The Gutenberg Galaxy*, 1962, German translation 1968; *Understanding Media*, 1964; *The Medium Is the Message*, 1967; *War and Peace in the Global Village*, 1968128). McLuhan's theory was sparked by sensational technological innovations during the 1960s, culminating in the first satellite communication in 1969.129 Many of Stockhausen's statements suggest close ties to McLuhan's ideas, as he repeatedly invokes the metaphor of the "global village";130 indeed, McLuhan is quoted once in Stockhausen's essay "Ein

129 Siebert, *Musik im Zeitalter der Globalisierung*, 86.

<sup>122</sup> Stockhausen, "Nr.13:Momente für Sopran, 4 Chorgruppen und 13 Instrumentalisten,"133 ("es mir bewußtwurde, daß ich mich sogarin kleinsten Fragen der Klangmaterial-Auswahl entscheiden müßte, ob ich mich streng an unsere zentraleuropäische Tradition halte oder eine Musik mache, deren Tradition die Musik der ganzen Welt ist").

<sup>123</sup> Stockhausen, "Telemusik," 75 ("nicht 'meine' Musik zu schreiben, sondern eine Musik der ganzen Erde, aller Länder und Rassen").

<sup>124</sup> See Locke, *Musical Exoticism*, 214–244.

<sup>125</sup> Gutknecht, "Das Geistliche im realen Kompositionsprozeß Stockhausens," Ulrich, "Spirituelle All-Einheit und das Subjekt des Komponisten," and Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*,141–144.

<sup>126</sup> Hall, "The Question of Cultural Identity," 300–302.

<sup>127</sup> Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*,147–148.

<sup>128</sup> See Heile, "*Weltmusik* and the Globalization ofNew Music,"105–106.

<sup>130</sup> Stockhausen, "Interviewüber *Telemusik*," 81("Wirwerden immer mehr der Tatsache bewußt, daß dieser ganze Globus ein einziges Dorf ist.").

Mundstück" from 1969.131 In a 1968 interview on his electronic composition *Telemusik*, realized in the NHK studios Tokyo in 1966, Stockhausen offered clear examples of how this technological universalism may be put into compositional practice:

Overcoming time and space atsuch a speed thatthe time delay and the distance become almost zero has become possible only by applying these modern technical possibilities of communication. They make it possible for the first time for this world to become *one* world. And for us musicians,the toolsforthis are microphones and magnetictapes. They may produce othertools that improve those first possibilities. Thisisthe beginning of universalism; the integrating force is expressed in the technical devices we use. The possibility of my phoning to Africa to order a tape recording, whose parts I then combine with electronic sounds that I make in Tokyo, is an outrageousfactthat enables usto connectthingsthatwere previously completely unconnected. In the past it was only possible to listen to musicfrom Africa if you traveled there. And who had that opportunity? Todaywe can all listen to this music. […]

You just shouldn't try to level things. I do not strive for a 'synthesis' in which everything merges into a huge mishmash, on the contrary: one still has to support the characteristic structures in a chosen context. I don't want to destroy anything, but I want to preserve the independence of the individual phenomena in the sense of the aforementioned polyphony. Af ter all, individual aspects of a structure are related to other individual details.<sup>132</sup>

This skepticism toward synthesis, however, does not fit in with the affirmative synthetic universalism of Stockhausen's electronic composition *Hymnen* (1965–67), based on forty different national anthems, in which the fourth "region" of the work culminates in the anthem of the imaginary country of *Hymunion* (part of the cosmic *Harmondie*) led by Pluramon:133 the universalist claim, based on the technological availability of sound documents and their collage-like presentation, is filtered into an "original" composition, superseding pluralism and reinstalling the genius composer as a universalist, "global" agent empowered by technology.<sup>134</sup>

<sup>131</sup> Stockhausen, "Ein Mundstück," 300.

<sup>132</sup> Stockhausen, "Interview über Telemusik," 83 ("Zeit und Raum in dieser Geschwindigkeit überwinden, daß die Zeitverzögerung und der Abstand fast Null werden, können wir eben erst dadurch, daß wir diese modernen technischen Möglichkeiten der Kommunikation anwenden. Sie machen es erstmals möglich, daß diese Welt *eine* Welt wird. Und die Mittel hierzu sind bei uns Musikern Mikrophone und Magnetophonbänder. Ausihnen werden vielleicht andere Mittel hervorgebracht, die jene Möglichkeiten noch verbessern. Das ist der Anfang des Universalismus. Die integrierende Kraf t drückt sich aus in den technischen Mitteln, die wir verwenden. DieMöglichkeit, daß ich nach Afrika telephonieren kann, um eine Tonbandaufnahme zu bestellen, deren Teile ich dann mit elektronischen Klängen, die ich in Tokio herstelle, verbinde, ist eine unerhörte Tatsache, die es erlaubt, Dinge in Beziehung zu bringen, die bisher völlig unbezogen waren. Früher war es nur dann möglich, Musik aus Afrika zu hören,wenn man dorthin reiste.Undwer hatte diese Chance schon?Heute könnenwir alle diese Musik hören. […] Man darf nur nicht versuchen, die Dinge zu nivellieren. Ich strebe nicht eine 'Synthese' an, bei der allesin einem riesigenMischmasch aufgeht, im Gegenteil:Man muß die charakteristischenGebilde noch unterstützen in einem gewählten Kontext. Ich will ja nichts zerstören, sondern im Sinne der genannten Polyphonie die Selbständigkeit der einzelnen Phänomene erhalten. Eswerden ja einzelneMomente eines Gebildes zu anderen Einzelheiten in Beziehung gesetzt.").

<sup>133</sup> See Siebert, *Musik im Zeitalter der Globalisierung*, 88.

<sup>134</sup> Revers, "Europäische Treibhausblüten,"192–196 and Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*,165–171.

The implied position of the composer becomes even clearer in Stockhausen's *Telemusik*, in which – contrary to the composer's emphasis on a diversity of musical styles that should not be distorted by creating a "superstyle," but rather retain their diversity – Stockhausen's procedures do not give a prominent role to the articulation of cultural difference, but appear firmly rooted in the aesthetics and techniques of Western Europe's electronic music of the 1950s and 1960s.135 The cultural difference of the recorded music is transformed and filtered into a musical context in which the uniqueness of the individual elements is almost completely erased – *Telemusik*  employs both synthetically generated sounds from sine tone and triangle wave generators and recordings of traditional art and folk music from Japan, China, Vietnam, Bali, sub-Saharan Africa, indigenous Amazonian peoples, Spain, and Hungary. Stockhausen's Pluramon concept, which strives for a balanced relationship between pluralism and "monism,"<sup>136</sup> is hardly put into practice here – the monism of Stockhausen's compositional style clearly predominates. When fragments of the traditional music recordings become audible, they are heard in a blurred, sometimes even grotesquely distorted manner that seems to mock the original performance style. Even if Stockhausen's reluctance to render the qualities of the traditional music genres used might have been rooted in the wish to respect their "original" form by not quoting them literally, the question remains why he actually decided to make use of them in the first place. The analyses show that the reasons for this decision do not stem from the specific musical qualities of the recorded music, nor from its acoustic properties;137 rather, Stockhausen's conventionally Western conception of a composer as universalist and "discoverer," based on nineteenth-century religion of art and Catholic faith, probably should be considered the main reason.

#### Structuralist Universalism

The cases of Messiaen and Stockhausen clarify how religious and structural universalism interrelate. The assumption of the universal, culture-free, or transcultural properties of serial structure is an oft-invoked topos, although it was employed in most cases with reservation and, more importantly, articulated in quite different ways by different composers and authors. In both the Cologne and Paris contexts, the impact of universalist linguistic theories should be noted (Saussurian and Lévi-Straussian structuralism in Paris and Meyer-Eppler's information-theoretical research into an artificial hyperlanguage in Cologne). Although the common understanding of a "global" structure in which "everything is contained," supposedly ref lecting a "universal, planned order,"138 was rarely connected to explicit cultural or ethnic claims during the 1950s, the interpretation of serial technique as a "culturally neutral" basis of postwar musical language was emphasized retrospectively in Dieter Schnebel's 1972 essay "New World Music." This text was written for the catalogue of the Munich Olympic Games 1972, entitled *World Cultures and Modern Art: The Encounter of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century European Art and Music with Asia, Africa, Oceania, Afro- and Indo-America*:

<sup>135</sup> See the analyses in Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 153–165, Kohl, "Serial Composition, Serial Form, and Process in Karlheinz Stockhausen's *Telemusik*," Erbe, "Karlheinz Stockhausens 'Telemusik,'" and Hünermann, "Transkription und Intermodulation."

<sup>136</sup> Cott, *Stockhausen. Conversations with the Composer*,144 and Shimizu, "Wasist PluraMonismus?"

<sup>137</sup> Thisisclaimed by Maconie, *The Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen*, 207.

<sup>138</sup> Stockhausen, "Zur Situation desMetiers," 46–47 ("universelle[], geplante[]Ordnung";"*Musik* jeweils *als Vorstellung jener umfassendsten 'globalen' Struktur* zu verstehen, *in die alles einbezogen* ist"; emphasis original).

The music produced af terthe Second World War, especially in Europe, marked a newbeginning. Thenewmusicwasdistinguishedfromtheoldinthatitlackedtoa large extentboththe traditional rules and regionalcoloring. We can almost talk of the birth of a futuristic world language. Although the new compositionsstemmed from Western music, they did not necessarily demand a knowledge of itfortheir understanding. Theywere the creations ofcomposers hailing from all the industrialized countries,without more than hidden regionalreminiscences:the serial music of a Korean has as little of the oriental about it as that of a Swede has of the Nordic. This rather uncharacteristic and seemingly traditionless world music of a technological age at first avoided employing the customary apparatus of the bourgeois era. The usual operatic and concert forms were scorned and the compositionswerewritten for unorthodox ensembles.139

Considering that the catalogue included both a "postcolonial" criticism of aesthetic (and political) universalism140 and seemingly "neutral" descriptions of how Western artists used "non-Western material,"<sup>141</sup> this period today appears as a transitional phase from a structurally to an ethnically rooted universalism while, at the same time, the deep problem inherent in musical universalism slowly came to be more openly disputed , especially in the wake of Stockhausen's essay "Weltmusik" from 1973, which can be considered a peak of his universalist aesthetics, summarizing ideas since the 1950s142 and particularly building on a Darmstadt seminar on "meta-collage" from 1970.143 The postwar "ideology" of a nonpolitical role of art and music here takes on the increasingly esoteric and vague language Stockhausen developed since at least the late 1960s, denying any postcolonial impact in favor of a "process of inner renewal":

One of ten hears the argument today that Europeans had transformed their earlier land-colonization into cultural colonization. In other words, today, the tourists are the conquerors and exploitersin anotherform. Butthis argument overlooksthe factthat underthe surface mankind is moved by trends of development which crop up in allcultures. One cannot speak of separate problems of some island culture without taking into account the trends which bind this island culture to all others. The process of inner renewal in allcultures begins more or less at the same time […].144

<sup>139</sup> Schnebel, "New World Music," 338.

<sup>140</sup> Lissa, "Vom Wesen des Universalismusin der Musik."

<sup>141</sup> Pelinski, "Oriental Colouring in the Music of the Nineteenth Century," Pelinski, "Musical Exoticism Around the Year 1900," Raab, "Dif ficultiesin the Fusion of Jazz and Symphonic Music," Raab, "Negro Musicin Latin America," Schnebel, "New World Music."

<sup>142</sup> Siebert, *Musik im Zeitalter der Globalisierung*, 41–92.

<sup>143</sup> Ibid., 45. The essay was written by Stockhausen on 8 April 1973. Excerpts first appeared in the *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* on 17November1973. Printed unabridged in*Musik und Bildung* 6, no. 1(1974) and in*Universitas* 31, no. 6 (1976). Published in Stockhausen's *Texte zur Musik*, Vol. 4 (see Stockhausen [1973]1978).

<sup>144</sup> Stockhausen, "World Music," 5–6 (Stockhausen, "Weltmusik," 470. "Man hört heute of t das Argument, die Europäer hätten ihren bisherigen Land-Kolonialismus umgewandelt in einen Kultur-Kolonialismus. Mit anderen Worten: die Touristen seien Eroberer und Ausbeuter in anderer Form. Man übersieht aber dabei, daß die Menschheit unter der Oberfläche durch Entwicklungsströme bewegt wird, die in allen Kulturen auf tauchen. Man kann nicht über separate Probleme irgendeiner Inselkultur sprechen, ohne die Ströme zu berücksichtigen, die diese Inselkultur mit allen anderen verbinden. Der Prozeß der inneren Erneuerung in allen Kulturen setzt mehr oderweniger gleichzeitig ein […].")

It is surely characteristic that Stockhausen recognized some crucial features of the globalization process early on when he emphasized the interconnectedness and entanglement of global regions, while his belief in a deterministic convergence and "inner renewal" of decaying and perishing cultures shows clear traits of early twentieth-century cultural pessimism in the style of Dane Rudhyar's writings of the 1920s and 1930s, which were in turn inf luenced by politically proto-fascist writings such as Oswald Spengler's *Der Untergang des Abendlandes* (The Decline of the West):145

[…] at the same time,cultures are destroyed from within. They are over-ripe and in a state of decay, and therefore definitely destined to change into something new. The consequence of this rapid process of the disintegration of individualculturesisthat they all lead into a more unified *world culture*. 146

This decline sets the stage for the "savior-composer," labeled "earthling" (*Erdling*) by Stockhausen, who has abandoned the chimera of a "personal style";147 he "literally embrace[s] the earth," and sets out to create "new forms […] in which many aspects – stylistic qualities – are united." Only to this end is the "[p]reservation of the greatest possible number of musical forms of all cultures" deemed necessary.<sup>148</sup>

The complex interrelation between presumably declining cultures – both Western and non-Western – serving as a justification for the individual genius composer's task of taking up the "invigorating" forces of global musical traditions, the call for a preservation of traditional musical cultures (to be freely used as material in new compositions), and the assignment of a key role to the composer, staged as a preserver of traditions and innovator transcending them at the same time, is a paradox that lies at the heart of globalized art music's universalist tendencies from the 1960s up to the 2000s. It recurs, for example, in Tan Dun's intermedia cello concerto *The Map* (2002), which integrates video footage of music from southwestern Chinese minorities into a conventional Western orchestra with a cello soloist. In this work, Tan Dun seems to be playing two roles simultaneously, each coming from a different ideological standpoint: that of the preserver of vanishing cultures, specifically as an ethnically Chinese artist, and that of the innovator of the modern Western orchestra, a citizen of the world and practitioner of Western art (→ III.5).149

#### Transethnic Universalism

Stockhausen's arrival at an explicit transethnic universalism was undoubtedly instigated by his increasingly international success as a composer, which included performances, commissions, and invitations from the United States (1958, 1961, 1965, 1966-67) and Japan (1966, 1970,

<sup>145</sup> Ertan, *Dane Rudhyar*,18–21;see Utz, "Klang als Energie in der Musik seit1900."

<sup>146</sup> Stockhausen, "World Music," 4 (Stockhausen, "Weltmusik," 469. "[…] gleichzeitig zerstören sich Kulturen von innen herausselber. Sie sind überreif und im Zustand der Fäulnis, dazu bestimmt,sich in etwas Neues zu verwandeln. Die Konsequenz aus diesem schnellen Prozeß der Auflösung individueller Kulturen ist, daß sie alle in eine mehr einheitliche *Erdkultur* münden.")

<sup>147</sup> Ibid., 9. (Stockhausen, "Weltmusik," 472. "persönliche[r] Stil.")

<sup>148</sup> Ibid. (Stockhausen, "Weltmusik," 472–473. "buchstäblich die Erde umfassen"; "neue Gebilde […], in denen eine große Zahl von Aspekten – stilistischen Qualitäten – vereinigt ist"; "Erhaltung möglichst vieler musikalischer Formen aller Kulturen.")

<sup>149</sup> See Young, "The Voicing of the Voicelessin Tan Dun's *The Map*."

1976-77), among others. The multiple mutual inf luences between Stockhausen and the American "Experimental Tradition" before, during, and after his professorship at the University of California (Davis) in 1966-67 remain a desideratum of future research.150 In contrast, the impact of Stockhausen's trips to Japan have been highlighted by both Stockhausen himself and several studies.151 Historically, the concept of transethnicism had developed in North American music in the early twentieth century with proponents such as Percy Grainger, Henry Eichheim, Dane Rudhyar, Henry Cowell (see below), Colin McPhee, Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, Alan Hovhaness, George Crumb, and John Cage<sup>152</sup> – although Cage's universalism is arguably better described as a complex synthesis of structural and ethnic or cultural components.

Transethnic universalism in music was of course no new idea in the 1960s. It had been discussed controversially in the early twentieth century, sparked by the concept of a new "exoticist musical style," testified in the theory of Georg Capellen that was destined to overcome the "crisis" of modern music with its "rejuvenating" forces.<sup>153</sup> Capellen's approach shows obvious parallels to Stockhausen's, suggesting that the idea of "stagnation" of both European and non-European cultures – to be "revitalized" by the genius composer – and the idea of a necessary (static) "preservation" of non-Western cultures by documentation are archetypes of transnational modernity discourse, recurring in waves.<sup>154</sup> Representatives of early comparative musicology were horrified by the "specter" and the "unrealistic utopia" of a "Universalmusik" to which one might listen "with the same excitement on Fifth Avenue as in the Kalahari,"155 a position expanded and intensified in critiques and polemics surrounding Stockhausen's "Weltmusik" concept amply documented and analyzed in earlier studies.<sup>156</sup>

The impact of an explicit, ethnically oriented universalist thought around 1970 in both US and European musical contexts can hardly be overestimated, with many approaches reacting directly or implicitly and often critically to Stockhausen's "Weltmusik" ideal.157 Mauricio Kagel, Peter Michael Hamel, Hans Zender, and Helmut Lachenmann in Germany, Giacinto Scelsi, Luciano Berio, Alvin Curran in Italy and the United States, Pierre Boulez, Jean-Claude Eloy, and Georges Aperghis in France, Benjamin Britten in Great Britain, and, largely neglected by research, Henri Pousseur in Belgium,158 as well as the aforementioned North American composers and a considerable number of Asian composers (including most prominently Pan-Asiat-

<sup>150</sup> See Heile, "*Weltmusik* and the Globalization ofNew Music,"106.

<sup>151</sup> Gutknecht "Stockhausen und Japan," Shimizu, "Stockhausen und Japan," and Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*,148–153.

<sup>152</sup> Nicholls, "Transethnicism and the American Experimental Tradition."

<sup>153</sup> Capellen, *Ein neuer exotischer Musikstil an Notenbeispielen nachgewiesen*, Capellen, "Exotische Rhythmik," and Capellen, "Was können uns exotische Melodien lehren?" See Utz, "Musikalische 'Treibhausblüten'?"

<sup>154</sup> Revers, "Europäische Treibhausblüten."

<sup>155</sup> Hornbostel, "U.S.A. National Music," 67–68 ("Eine Universalmusik […], die der tönende Ausdruck des 'Allgemein-Menschlichen' wäre und der man mit gleichem Entzücken in der Fif th Avenue und in der Kalahari lauschen würde, […] wird immer eine wirklichkeitsfremde Utopie bleiben. Auch würde sie besser zum Schreckgespenst taugen als zum Ideal.").

<sup>156</sup> Fritsch,"ZurIdee derWeltmusik,"Utz,*Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*,136–171,Heile,"*Weltmusik* and the Globalization ofNew Music,"109–115, and Siebert, *Musik im Zeitalter der Globalisierung*, 43–44.

<sup>157</sup> Nicholls"Transethnicism and the American Experimental Tradition," Utz,*Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, Heile, "*Weltmusik* and the Globalization of New Music," Borio, "Convergence Between West and East in 20th-Century Music," and Borio, "Vom Ende des Exotismus."

<sup>158</sup> Heile, "*Weltmusik* and the Globalization ofNew Music,"113.

ic tendencies in works by Toshirō Mayuzumi, Akira Nishimura, Minoru Miki, José Maceda, and Isang Yun), all included intercultural ideas prominently in their compositional aesthetics during this period, sometimes in an explicitly universalist manner close to Stockhausen (e.g., Pousseur), sometimes with a decidedly opposing approach (Boulez, who, as a young man, wanted to study ethnology and was in close contact with the anthropologist André Schaeffner throughout the 1950s to 1970s159). The reason for this broad attempt at an identification with non-Western cultures, though frequently linked to a rigorous criticism of modernized non-Western musical practices, might very well be found in the precarious social situation of new music, necessitating the creation of aesthetic and cultural alliances and solidarities that transcend the limitations of the immediate (local) "realities" and constraints.160

#### **3. The Ambivalence of the Local in Twentieth-Century Music**

A dynamic concept of culture must concede that a tendency toward essentializing cultural symbols, idioms, or stereotypical representations of (national) cultures in musical contexts is not simply a thing of the past. Not only do the local and the global stand in an ongoing relationship of interaction or feedback (as Robertson's concept of "glocalization" tried to explain → I.2), but local and national (or nationalist) discourses are also variously interwoven. The local challenge of nationalist generalization can itself turn into a questionable nationalism when aiming to escape from a hegemonic "internationalist" standardization: a resentment of the Other may be subsumed under the local, and in a generalized form – as an "invented tradition" – turn into a (neo-)nationalist symbol. In the following, I will investigate how such specific, locally focused concepts of musical culture can be understood within the tensions between national essentialism and global standardization. This question will be broached against the background of two prominent examples from the first half of the twentieth century that had "non-simultaneous" resonances during the century's second half.

#### Stravinsky and Bartók: Construction and Criticism of National Music in the Tension Fields Between Composition and Ethnography

The tendency toward suppressing "ethnic" categories in most new music was primarily a legacy of the post-1945 political-musical situation. In this period, serial music acted as a self-referential counter-model to the misuse of musical topicality by the totalitarian political systems of the immediate past, especially in National Socialism (→ I.2). But a phenomenon both aesthetically and socially contradictory to serialism, such as the neoclassicism of Igor Stravinsky (a declared sympathizer of Italian fascism161 with notoriously anti-Semitic attitudes), was also based on a renunciation of musical "language" in the narrower sense. In Stravinsky's case, this renunciation concerned above all the idiom of the national Russian school of the decades following the 1860s and was preserved and transformed in the neo-national "Russian" sound of his works before the October Revolution in 1917. In his *Autobiography* of 1936, Stravinsky attacked the

<sup>159</sup> Borio, "Vom Ende des Exotismus,"117–118 and Zenck, *Pierre Boulez*, 63–64.

<sup>160</sup> Meyer, "Volkstümlich – primitiv – populär," 34.

<sup>161</sup> In 1930, Stravinsky declared Mussolini "the savior […] of Europe" (quoted in Taruskin, "The Dark Side of the Moon," 208). See Stenzl, *Von Giacomo Puccini zu Luigi Nono*, 29, Sachs, *Music in Fascist Italy*, Taruskin, "Notes on *Svadebka*," 450–453, and Taruskin, "The Dark Side of the Moon," 208–212.

"naive but dangerous" and "sterile tendency" of nationally minded Russian and Spanish composers including his former teacher Nikolai Rimski-Korsakov "to remake an art that has already been created instinctively by the genius of the people" on an ethnographic basis.<sup>162</sup> At the same time, he drastically downplayed the importance of Russian folk music as a source of his own works. Stravinsky's tendency to mask the ethnic contexts of his music continued in the inf luential, purely structuralist analyses of his music by Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez after 1945.163

Recent investigations, namely the extensive studies of Richard Taruskin,164 show, on the contrary, how fundamental the confrontation with local music was for Stavinsky's three "Russian" ballets and other works before 1917. Much of the melodic material of *The Rite of Spring* (*Le Sacre du Printemps* 1911–13) was based on Lithuanian and Russian folk melodies, though considerably abstracted and transformed.<sup>165</sup> Similarly, the sonorities in large parts of *The Rite of Spring*, *Petrushka* (1910–11), and *The Firebird* (1909–10) are based on the aural impression of characteristic Russian instruments, such as the shepherd shawms *dudka* and *rozhók*, the hurdygurdy *líra* or the psaltery *gusli*. 166 Stravinsky used various folk song collections, but apparently also occasionally notated the music of his local environment.167 On the whole, it is noteworthy that Stravinsky emphasized ethnographic precision and critically assessed the reliability of the melodic transcription of his sources, even considering the sociocritical context of the melodies in the context of his ballet scenarios.168 Yet, in contrast to the "kuchkist" tradition of his precursors, "The Five" (*Mogučaja kučka*), he did not set these sources in their "original form," but rather exposed them to radical transformation processes that went as far as pre-serial methods (including, for example, the verticalization of folk melodies on the basis of serial practices).169 Against this background, Martin Zenck's interpretation of the music of *The Rite* in accordance with Sigmund Freud's analysis in *Totem and Taboo* (which appeared in 1913, the year of the premiere of *The Rite*) seems cogent. Such an analysis seems particularly apt for the final *Danse Sacrale* (which conspicuously no longer features folk melodies); the often analyzed *Danse* seems to formulate a critique of the sacrificial practice of the ritual and not an archaistically colored

<sup>162</sup> Stravinsky, *An Autobiography*, 97. See Taruskin, "Russian Folk Melodiesin *The Rite of Spring*," 503.

<sup>163</sup> See Taruskin, "Russian Folk Melodiesin *The Rite of Spring*," 505.

<sup>164</sup> See ibid. and Taruskin, *Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions*, vol. 1, 891–950.

<sup>165</sup> Stravinsky used at least four melodiesfrom the collection *Melodje ludowe litewskie* [Lithuanian Folk Melodies], edited by the Polish priestAnton Juszkiewicz (1819–1880), in the composition of *The Rite of Spring*. The collection contains1,785 Lithuanian folk songs(especiallywedding songs). See, for further details, ibid., 891–923.

<sup>166</sup> See ibid., 730, 935. The title page of volume 1 of Taruskin's *Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions* features a sketch of a *rozhók* player in a costume by Nicholas Roerich for *The Rite of Spring* (Bakhrushin State Central Theatrical Museum, Moskau).

<sup>167</sup> As seen in a frequently reproduced photograph, Stravinsky notated the hurdy-gurdy (*líra*) lyrical accompaniment of a song of a sightless *lirnik* (traveling musician) in his summer residence at Ustilug (c. 1910; see Danuser, *Die Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts*, 53, Taruskin, "Russian Folk Melodies in *The Rite of Spring*," 507). In his monograph (*Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions*, vol.1, 870) Taruskin contradicts his own earlierinterpretation ofthe photograph, in which he (as well as Danuser) took the photograph as evidence that Stravinsky had conducted ethnological studies "à la Bartok." Taruskin rather suggests that the photo does not allow conclusions to be drawn about Stravinsky's wider ethnomusicological activities, since it seems "posed" and that closer contact with local musicianswould have contradicted Stravinsky's"class"consciousness.

<sup>168</sup> Taruskin, *Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions*, vol.1, 893, 911.

<sup>169</sup> See Taruskin,"Russian FolkMelodiesin *The Rite of Spring*," 541–543 andVlad,"Reihenstrukturen im *Sacre du Printemps*."

nostalgia for lost primitivity.170 Thus, Stravinsky's music clearly stood in opposition to Nicholas Roerich, who designed the scenario based strictly on ethnographic authenticity. The composer implicitly distanced himself from a neo-nationalist idealization of archaic Slavic rituals.

Today, Béla Bartók's attempt to establish new art music on the basis of Hungarian, Romanian, and Slavic folk music – which initially showed a far clearer neo-nationalist emphasis – may seem even more contradictory than Stravinsky's engagement with the sources of traditional folk music forms. Only since the mid-1990s has Bartók research subjected this approach to differentiated criticism, and thus also uncovered the reasons why this composer still occupies a position of primacy in the "official" history of new music – even if this position has been reaffirmed and in a broader sense surely appears beyond doubt.171 Julie Brown distinguishes two phases of Bartók's neo-national aesthetics, which are inextricably linked to turbulent contemporary history:172 Bartók turned to a "pure" and "authentic" form of Hungarian peasant music (also using the central orientalist trope of the "noble savage") as a point of departure until about 1931.173 He clearly distinguished it from the hybrid and "contaminated" form of urban gypsy music and chose it as the sole legitimate source of this new art music. Under the inf luence of socialism, however, Bartók re-examined his assessment of gypsy music and gave it a more neutral interpretation, defining it as "Hungarian popular art music."174 At the same time, Bartók called the "purity" of peasant music into question. Through expanded ethnological studies, Bartók gained knowledge of the constant reciprocal inf luences that made it difficult to differentiate between "authentic" and "contaminated" forms of local music. However, this insight remained qualified by Bartók's demand that the ethnographic sources of new art music should be "pure, fresh and healthy."<sup>175</sup>

The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the repressions of the proto-fascist Hungarian Horthy-regime, and upcoming Nazism and anti-Semitism transformed Bartók's nationalist project into an undertaking that aimed at universality, with the dream of creating a "brotherhood of people." Romanian, Slovakian, and Arab music – and essentially music from around the world – is now being presented as a possible source ("well assimilated foreign impulses offer possibilities of enrichment"176), and the *Rákóczi March*, which integrates extremely diverse cultural inf luences, is used as an example of the hybrid nature of Hungarian folk music. Nevertheless, Bartók remains tied to the concept of "national character": despite its inner hybridity, the march is labeled "incontestably Hungarian."177 The contradiction between isolationist and diffusionist models of culture, which, based on Johann Gottfried Herder, has determined the discourse on culture and "race" since the nineteenth century,178 is evident in Bartók's models of thought. In that context, it is particularly interesting that Bartók ultimately did not consider philological authenticity to be relevant for art music at the highest level, but rather foregrounded the ability of a composer – such as Stravinsky – to reinterpret the versatility of folk

<sup>170</sup> See Zenck, "Ritual or Imaginary Ethnography in Stravinsky's *Le Sacre du Printemps*?"

<sup>171</sup> See Taruskin, "Why You Cannot Leave Bartók Out."

<sup>172</sup> Brown, "Bartók, the Gypsies, andHybridity in Music."

<sup>173</sup> Ibid.,128–129.

<sup>174</sup> Bartók, "Gypsy Music orHungarian Music?";see Brown, "Bartók, the Gypsies, andHybridity in Music,"130.

<sup>175</sup> Letter to Octavian Beu,11/01/1931. In Bartók, *Weg und Werk*, 261–263: 262.

<sup>176</sup> Bartók, "Race Purity in Music," 31.

<sup>177</sup> Ibid., 32.

<sup>178</sup> See among others Young, *Colonial Desire*, 36–43 and Löchte, *Johann Gottfried Herder: Kulturtheorie und Humanitätsidee*,128–139 (→ I.3).

music through the transformative processes of art music. Bartók's and Stravinsky's use of local music thus did not rule out an unbroken commitment of their music to the Western art music tradition after Beethoven and its drive toward autonomy – Bartók consequently refrained from voicing any skepticism toward Stravinsky's statement that a composer could make use of all conceivable sources, and that the mere fact that he considers musical material suitable for inf luencing art music would make it his intellectual property. <sup>179</sup>

#### Localism in Chinese New Music Since the 1980s

The subliminal discourses of nation and race cast a problematic light on the compositionally certainly remarkable transformative processes in the music of Stravinsky and Bartók. That these dimensions of power and appropriation are more visible today than in the past cannot least be considered an important effect of the work of many composers outside the West. The discourse of cultural difference between Asian aesthetic and musical concepts and the mainstream of Western composition, founded on a broad basis by Chou Wen-Chung, Isang Yun, José Maceda, or Tōru Takemitsu since the 1960s (→ I.3, III.4), played an important part in this process. This discourse should also be understood as a reaction to the increasing Westernization of Asia since the mid-nineteenth century and the tendency, often particularly marked in this context, toward cultural homogenization according to Western models (→ III.1). The understanding of Asian musical "characteristics," which in the 1960s were still conceived in a strongly culturally essentialist way – such as the constant change, variation, coloring of single tones, the great importance of silence, non-finalistic concepts of form, or anti-causal concepts of time – has become more differentiated and pluralistic since the 1980s – a process that has ultimately led to a fundamental critique of cultural essentialism through pointed localist or pluralistic approaches (→ III.4–5).

In Asia, localism has played an important part in music history, especially in China, starting from the political upheaval at the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). Firstly, many young composers had been ordered to grow rice in the context of the large-scale relocation program (*shangshan xiaxiang*, "Up to the mountains, down to the villages") like many other "educated youth" (*zhishi qingnian*) since the late 1960s.180 Some of them had come to know local forms of music first-hand and usually with active participation over the years. In the composition classes at the newly opened conservatories of the late 1970s and early 1980s, a Western modernity – almost completely unknown and viewed as taboo for decades – was received enthusiastically, with Bartók's work playing a key role: Many composers of this generation, known as the *xinchao* (new

<sup>179</sup> Bartók, "The Influence of Peasant Music on Modern Music," [1931], 343 ("Stravinsky […] wants to demonstrate that it does not matter a jot whether a composer invents his own themes or uses themes from elsewhere. He has a right to use musical material taken from all sources. What he has judged suitable for his purpose has become through this very use his mental property. […] The question of originscan only be interesting from the point of view of musical documentation. […] This much iscertain, that if among the thematic material of Stravinsky's there are some of his own invention (and who can doubt that there are?) these are the most faithful and clever imitations of folk songs.") See Taruskin, "Russian Folk Melodies in *The Rite of Spring*," 501–502. See also Bartók's similar statement referring to Stravinsky's neoclassicist period: "[…] when I once met Stravinsky in Paris, he told me that he thinks he hasthe right to incorporate into his music any material he believesto be fit or appropriate for his purposes. […] Stravinsky uses this material in his own way, arranging and transforming it according to his own individual spirit, thus creating works of a new, individual style." (Bartók, "Harvard Lectures," 360.)

<sup>180</sup> See Bernstein, *Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages* and Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 296. See also https:// chineseposters.net/themes/up-to-the-mountains.php.

*Example 2.1: Guo Wenjing, She Huo, rehearsal number 6*

wave), initially referred explicitly to Bartók's concept of hybridity and attempted to amalgamate Chinese local traditions in an analogous way.181 It was, however, only after the Bartók model had been overcome that genuinely original concepts of cultural difference emerged through radicalization, hybridization, and abstraction of local traditions in works such as Qu Xiaosong's (b. 1951) *Mong Dong* for voice and chamber ensemble (1984), Tan Dun's (b. 1957) *On Taoism* for voice and orchestra (1985), or Guo Wenjing's (b. 1956) *She Huo* for chamber ensemble (1991). Guo's work for Western instrumental ensemble is not so much about the musical depiction of a harvest festival to which the title refers<sup>182</sup> as a general atmospheric characterization of Chinese country life. In this work, the means of reinforcing, distorting, and intensifying the textures found in the models of Chinese rural music practice are more reminiscent of Stravinsky's technique than Bartók's, such as when the cross-rhythms of two cymbal players from the local Sichuan Opera (*chuanju*) are extended to three players (Ex. 2.1) and thereby condensed. Following the same principle, the blurring of the instrumental tuning of various local ensembles is "radicalized" by microtonally adjusted tunings of the stringed instruments and by using a violin with four A-strings (Ex. 2.2).

Similarly, Qu Xiaosong's known ensemble work *Mong Dong* for male voice and ensemble would be unthinkable without the complex experience of the *xinchao* generation. What is decisive for the quality of this work is not so much the nature-symbolic aspect, the attempt to summon a lost originality between man and nature, evident in the adoption of vocal techniques of *shan'ge* folk songs, the use of microtones, and the renunciation of a text setting. The reference to the local here also involves the integration of a new dimension of structural thinking. Possibly inf luenced by techniques of the older generation, such as Luo Zhongrong (b. 1924) (→ III.1), Qu refers to the *yu-he-ba* patterns of the *shifan luogu* percussion ensembles.<sup>183</sup> In a dialogic manner, short phrases of eight beats each are grouped in ever new proportions, for instance in measures 85–92 as 7+1, 5+3, 3+5, 1+7.184

Perhaps the most spectacular result of the move toward localism in Chinese new music has been Tan Dun's "ritual opera" *Nine Songs* (1989).185 Tan Dun recombines fragments of the famous archaic poetry cycle *Jiu ge* (Nine Songs) by Qu Yuan (340–278 BCE), and has them articulated in an "imaginary dialect" of the archaic Chu culture (c. 800–223 BCE), using singing, screaming, and whispering, as well as ceramic instruments that were largely newly built for this project. Tan develops his imaginary archaist music from a very broad repertoire of vocal characters such as the *shan'ge* folk songs, simple rhythmic figures, and a largely monophonic melodic texture, determined by the goal to redesign the ritualist music conjured up in Qu Yuan's poetry. This conception refers to an attitude of the literary *xungen* ("root") movement in China during the 1980s, whose main representative Han Shaogong (b. 1952), as well as Tan Dun from Hunan Province, derives a f luid connection between local – rather than national – identity with an openness to international tendencies – but without the goal of "total Westernization" often demanded by China's early reformers (→ III.1). Tan Dun also positioned himself with *Nine Songs* in a time of political upheaval in China: the premiere took place in New York on 12 May 1989, shortly before the massacre in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989.

<sup>181</sup> See Kouwenhoven, "Mainland China's New Music (III)," 85–86 and Wong, "Bartók's Influence on Chinese New Musicin the Post-Cultural Revolution Era."

<sup>182</sup> Mittler, *Neue Musik aus China,*14–15.

<sup>183</sup> See Jones, *Folk Music of China*, 260–269.

<sup>184</sup> See Kouwenhoven, "Mainland China'sNew Music(III) – The Age of Pluralism," 83–85, 93.

<sup>185</sup> A detailed introduction to thiswork can be found in Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 403–423.

*Example 2.2: Guo Wenjing, She Huo, rehearsal number 26*

Copyright © by Universal Music Publishing Ricordi; Milan, Italy

His concept would thus immediately become a criticism of Chinese nationalism as well as the homogenizing tendencies of Western cultures.

#### Toward a Critique of Authenticity-Based Thinking

The works of Guo, Qu, and Tan remain ambivalent in their attitude. Their musical character sketches of rural Chinese atmospheres cannot only be considered a critique of nationalism. Rather, they may be heard also as a "paradoxical redemption" of Mao Zedong's anti-urban ideology, as an aftereffect of the idealization of rural life during the time of relocation. The ideological dimension of compositional localism is thus hardly less complex here than in Bartók or Stravinsky, as it always f lirts with a mythically transfigured ethnological authenticity, which can then be "abstracted" almost arbitrarily in the process of appropriation. Here

lies the basic problem of musical localism as a whole: on the one hand, composing as an act of cultural or intercultural positioning seems more plausible the more *specific* it becomes*,* and the more precisely art takes certain local traditions seriously, with all their implications, and draws comprehensive compositional conclusions from them. On the other hand, such a rigorous restriction of the musical-idiomatic "listening field" – as becomes very clear in Tan Dun's *Nine Songs* – risks approaching imitation, a culture-specific onesidedness and – in an international context – a f lirtation with one's own exoticism: self-exoticization.186 In this context, however, it should be noted that since 1986, Tan Dun's works have been produced in the United States and are primarily aimed at Western audiences – even though they have been no less successful in China – and that Guo Wenjing's and Qu Xiaosong's larger works in the 1990s have likewise been predominantly performed in Europe and the USA.

This paradox makes it clear once again that musical traditions – art music and local music genres – are in a constant process of transformation and do not produce immutable "authentic objects," so that any compositional action inevitably decontextualizes such traditions. Every musical or compositional act will therefore operate, consciously or unconsciously, within this tension field – whether concrete local traditions are explicitly addressed or not. Both extremes that can be deduced from this are problematic: the notion of an "absolute authenticity" of local music, which must not be touched by art music, as well as the image of a "hypercultural" supermarket that music creators can freely navigate. Only compositional designs that completely transform these extremes through variety and precision of compositional ideas and solutions can attempt to outstrip the ideological accents of the local – especially in view of the resurgent nationalism in Asia today, especially in China (and in parts of Europe and the Americas), and its demagogically leveling construction of national characteristics. Effectively rejecting nationalist or provincial discourses involves an artistically substantive reference to local identities as refracted, pluralistic, and critical. The final statement in Theodor W. Adorno's *Philosophy of New Music* is rather topical in this regard: "Perhaps that art alone would be authentic that would be liberated from the idea of authenticity, of being thus and not otherwise."<sup>187</sup>

#### **4. Modernist Reception of Japanese and Indian Traditional Music between 1910 and 1945: Delage, Cowell, Mitsukuri, and Hayasaka**

Having reapplied Ernst Bloch's concept of the "non-simultaneity of the simultaneous" (*Ungleichzeitigkeit des Gleichzeitigen*) to music historiography in Chapter II.1 (section *De-Nationalizing Music Historiography*), I will now attempt to show, in Chapters II.4 and II.5, how composers and musicians during the pre- and postwar decades developed similar musical ideas and approaches against radically differing social backgrounds, motivated by distinct social and aesthetic agendas. Guided by the principle of an "entangled history" (→ II.1), the following case studies highlight the differing cultural and historical situations in which these protagonists acted, focusing on the degree to which their works exhibit affinities and entanglements.

The four composers introduced in this chapter represent three generations born in the decades around 1900, three countries or continents (France/Europe, the United States/America, and Japan/Asia), and different compositional schools and aesthetics. Maurice Delage (1879–1961),

<sup>186</sup> On the subject of "self-exoticization" in the Japanese contextseeHijiya-Kirschnereit,*Das Ende der Exotik*,13–16.

<sup>187</sup> Adorno, *Philosophy of New Music*,158.("Vielleichtwäre authentisch erst dieKunst, die derIdee vonAuthentizität selber, desso und nicht anders Seins,sich entledigt hätte." Adorno, *Philosophie der neuen Musik*,196.)

Henry Cowell (1897–1965), Shūkichi Mitsukuri (1895–1971), and Fumio Hayasaka (1914–1955) distinguish themselves from most of their contemporaries by their dedicated and systematic attempts to adopt, incorporate, and re-invent non-Western music traditions as a *principal* feature of their music (and not, as it was far more common at the time, as a subsidiary element). Moreover, all of them acted as nodes of local and international networks and music societies (see Table 2.1), embedding their artistic work in an internationalized social context. We may retrospectively consider their independent artists' groups as key institutions of modern music in their respective countries. These groups shared a pronounced internationalism, implemented through the performance of the most recent and advanced new music from other countries, while also sharing anti-establishment aesthetics. This context was undoubtedly crucial in provoking the composers' modernist reception of non-Western musics. The guiding idea behind these approaches emerged from a pessimistic view of contemporaneous Western music, a common stance in early twentieth-century discourse. Japanese and Chinese as well as Indonesian or Indian traditional music seemed to provide all those features that Western music of the early twentieth century supposedly lacked: intricate rhythm, refined melodic design, spontaneity, "feeling," timbral differentiation, complex layering, etc.188 This search for a decentering Otherness converged in an unsettling manner on tendencies of nationalist, essentialist, and isolationist thought in the wake of two world wars and major sociohistorical turns such as the Great Depression. The conf licts and paradoxical situations resulting from such "non-simultaneities" will be at the focus of the following analytical readings, which relate musical detail to historical context. Table 2.1 provides an overview of the institutions, musical works, and articles referred to throughout.

#### Maurice Delage: Close Listening to Asian Traditions and the Emancipation from Exoticism

Maurice Delage, born in 1879, was a leading member of the artists' collective *Apaches*, founded in 1902, and of the *Société Musicale Indépendante* (SMI), founded in 1909. Both groups were centered around Maurice Ravel (1875–1937), Delage's teacher and close friend. The *Apaches* considered themselves a rebellious group and were united by their enthusiasm for Claude Debussy's opera *Pelléas et Mélisande* (premiered in 1902), their substantial interest in Russian music, and their criticism of the nationalist and conservative impact of the academic musical establishment of the *Schola Cantorum* around Vincent d'Indy who also controlled the politics of the inf luential *Société National de Musique* (founded in 1871). The weekly gatherings of the *Apaches*, starting in 1904, took place in a pavilion in the Parisian quarter Auteuil which was rented by Maurice Delage (son of a wealthy entrepreneur) especially for that occasion.189 The largely selftaught Delage was an important figure in this group which his close friendship to Igor Stravinsky ref lects. Stravinsky joined the group along with Manuel de Falla, Isaac Albeniz, and other international figures during the first decade of the twentieth century.

Delage was also involved in the foundation of the more official organization *Société Musicale Indépendante* in 1909 that formally marked the rejection of the ideas represented by the *Société National*. The immediate reason for its foundation was that the *Société National* had declined to perform "Temples," the first of Charles Koechlin's two *Etudes antiques* (1908–10), and Delage's

<sup>188</sup> See Pasler, "Race, Orientalism, and Distinction in the Wake of the YellowPeril,"101–103.

<sup>189</sup> Pasler, "Stravinsky and the Apaches," 403.

*Table 2.1: Chronology 1875–1965 of the institutions, works, and articles discussed in this chapter*

symphonic poem *Conté par la mer* (1908) due to their advanced style.190 The SMI from its beginnings successfully introduced the most recent musical trends from both its French members and international composers. Among other activities, it organized the French premieres of Arnold Schoenberg's *Three Piano Pieces* op. 11 (1909) in 1913 and *Six Little Piano Pieces* op. 19 (1911) in 1914.191 Stravinsky's enthusiasm for Schoenberg's *Pierrot lunaire* (1912)192 sparked the plan to organize the French premiere of this work in what Ravel imagined to be a "scandalous concert."193 Although the *Pierrot* premiere had to be canceled for practical reasons,<sup>194</sup> the society's concert on 14 January 1914 featured the world premieres of two pieces that were at least indirectly inf luenced or triggered by the enthusiasm for Schoenberg's *Pierrot*: Stravinsky's *Trois poésies de la lyrique japonaise* (1912/13) and Ravel's *Trois poèmes de Mallarmé* (1913) – along with Delage's *Quatre poèmes hindous* for soprano and chamber ensemble (1913) which is closely intertwined with these two cycles. The rebellious tone is evident in a review of this concert by *Apaches*- and SMI-member Émile Vuillermoz:195

For a long time – since the heroic evenings of the old *Nationale* – musicians had not had the sensation of attending such an important event,so significant for the evolution of our art. The Salle Erard,where so many glorious pages of our musical historywere alreadywritten, heard that day echo the energetic blows ofthe young demolisherswho had been occupied forsome time,to the great terror of the ignorant crowd, to tear down the walls, behind which they hope to discover the beautiful enchanted gardens of earthly paradise. […]

There is no longer any security on the market of the sixteenth notes and new cataclysms are preparing. The SMI has just torn down a whole wall and, blinded by the cloud of sound dust that rose af ter the collapse of the wall,some listeners are already trying to discover, among the chunks, a road toward the obscure sensed delights.196

<sup>190</sup> Duchesneau, "Maurice Ravel et la Société Musicale Indépendante," 257. Both pieceswere performed in the first orchestralconcert ofthe SMI on 9 June 1910 in Salle Gaveauwith considerable success,see ibid., 261–262, 274.

<sup>191</sup> op. 11: 28 May 1913, Salle de la Société desconcerts(Ancien Conservatoire); op. 19: 9 February 1914, Salle Erard. See Duchesneau, "Maurice Ravel et la Société Musicale Indépendante," 278–280, Meyer, *Ensemblelieder in der frühen Nachfolge (1912–17) von Arnold Schönbergs* Pierrot lunaire, 141.

<sup>192</sup> Stravinsky had attended the fourth performance of the work in Berlin on 8 December 1912; later Stravinsky claimed that he had been merely interested in the instrumental music of the *Pierrot lunaire* (Stravinsky, *An Autobiography*, 43–44;see Meyer, *Ensemblelieder*, 26–28).

<sup>193</sup> "Projet mirifique d'un concert scandaleux […]." Maurice Ravel, letter to Hélène Kahn-Casella (for the *Comité de la SMI*), 2/4/1913, quoted in Meyer, *Ensemblelieder*, 29.

<sup>194</sup> See ibid., 32–33.

<sup>195</sup> See ibid.,137.

<sup>196</sup> Vuillermoz, "La musique au concert." ("Depuis bien longtemps – depuislessoirs heroiques de l'ancienne*Nationale* –lesmusiciens n'avaient pas eu la sensationd'assister à unemanifestationaussi importante, aussicapitale pourl'évolution de notre art. La salle Erard, où s'écrivirent déjà tant de pages glorieuses de notre histoire musical, entenditce jour-là résonner les énergiquescoups de pic desjeunes démolisseurs occupés depuis quelque temps, au grand ef froi de la foule ignorante, à abattre des murs derrière lesquelles ils espèrent découvrir les beaux jardins enchantés du paradisterrestre.[…]II n'y a plus aucune sécurité surle marché de la double-croche et de nouveaux cataclysmes se préparent. La SMI vient d'abbatre tout un pan de mur et, aveuglé par le nuage de poussière sonore que souleva sa chute,certains auditeurscherchent déjà à se frayer péniblement, parmi les plâtras, une route vers d'obscures délices pressenties.")

This radicalized rhetoric initially seems unjustified in light of the fragile pieces performed during this concert, but it documents the struggles of the younger generation of Paris-based composers in the aftermath of the *Sacre* scandal of 29 May 1913.

Their drive to reach beyond the limitations of a narrowly defined nationalism made the *Apaches* and the *Société Musicale Indépendante* a fertile ground for openness toward non-Western music. Such interests were necessarily prefigured by the superficial appropriations of French orientalism and exoticism reaching back at least to Jean-Philippe Rameau's ballet opera *Les Indes galantes* (1735) and still present in Ravel's song cycle *Shéhérazade* from 1903, one of the first artistic achievements of the *Apaches* group (Tristan Klingsor, whose poems provided the lyrics for Ravel's cycle, was also a member). Debussy's simultaneous, refined efforts at incorporating Javanese gamelan structures into some of his piano pieces, most notably in *Pagodes* from 1903,197 gave way to attempts at a closer modeling of non-Western traditions as in Charles Koechlin's *Deux pièces javanaises*, which were based on transcriptions of Javanese gamelan pieces and were premiered in the second concert of the SMI on 4 May 1910.198 Furthermore, given that, during his studies with Ravel, Delage had been encouraged to accept the concept of stylistic imitation as a major technique in developing one's own style,<sup>199</sup> it seems consistent that his approach to Asian traditions was based on detailed study, close listening, and reconstruction of these traditions' musical details in his scores. These features were elaborated to their furthest point in a series of works for soprano and piano or chamber ensemble, most notably in "Lahore," the second movement of *Quatre poèmes hindous* (1913), in *Ragamalika* (1914), as well as in *Sept Haï-kaïs* (1923/24).

The reception of Indian music by Maurice Delage has been documented and discussed in great detail by Jann Pasler and Andreas Meyer, and thus this aspect of Delage's work will only be brief ly summarized here.200 The *Quatre poèmes hindous* were composed in the wake of the composer's five-month trip to India and Japan in 1911 and 1912. The exact dates of composition are not easy to determine. In the autograph and the printed edition of the piano score, the following dates are indicated at the end of the movements: I. *Madras* (*Une Belle…*) [Madras, Mars 1912]; II. *Lahore* (*Un Sapin isolé…*) [Lahore, Février 1912]; III. *Bénarès* (*Naissance de Bouddha*) [Bénarès, Janvier 1912]; IV. *Jeypur* (*Si vous pensez…*) [Jeypur, Janvier 1912].201 Delage mentioned in a letter to Stra-

<sup>197</sup> See, most recently, Tamagawa, *Echoes from the East: The Javanese Gamelan and Its Influence on the Music of Claude Debussy*.

<sup>198</sup> Duchesneau, "Maurice Ravel et la Société Musicale Indépendante," 264. This work, catalogued by Orledge, *Charles Koechlin (1867–1950): His Life and Works*, 345, as the *Suite Javanaise* op. 44b, is an arrangement of two Javanese *gamelan* pieces "Gamelan palag" and "Gamelan salandro" (transcribed by Louis Laloy) for eleven European instruments, and was composed in April 1910. Koechlin wanted to reconstruct the impression he had of this music during the World Exposition in 1889 based on the transcriptions by Laloy, see Koechlin, *Écrits*, vol.1, 88.

<sup>199</sup> See Meyer, *Ensemblelieder*,152.

<sup>200</sup> Pasler, "Reinterpreting Indian Music," Pasler, "Race, Orientalism, and Distinction," and Meyer, *Ensemblelieder*, 31–35,149–153, 244–268.

<sup>201</sup> Madras, modern-day Chennai, isthe capital of the Tamil Nadu state in South-East India and wasthe center of the East India Company; Lahore, formerly part of Northern India, isthe historicalcapital of the Punjab region (today the second largestcity of Pakistan); Bénarès, now Varanasi, in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, is considered the spiritual capital of India and attracts pilgrims who go there to bathe in the Ganges; Jeypore (Jaipur) isthe capital of the Northern Indian state of Rajasthan (close to New Delhi). Thus, it would seem that Delage's trip followed the route Jeypore (Jan. 1912) – Bénarès (Jan. 1912) – Lahore (Feb. 1912) – Madras (Mar. 1912). Delage's"Lettre de l'Inde" from Kandy (Ceylon, today Sri Lanka), published in the *Revue musicale S.I.M.* on 15 June 1912, is dated 4 March 1912 (see below).

vinsky, however, that he completed these pieces only in the summer of 1913, so it seems likely that the dates indicated in the score signify the time of Delage's visit to the four cities during his trip rather than the dates of composition.202 This would mean that more than one year passed after the trip before Delage actually composed this work. The chamber ensemble version for 2 f lutes (1 also piccolo), oboe (also English horn), 2 clarinets (in both A and Bb, 1 also bass clarinet), harp, and string quartet, probably completed in November 1913, was of particular significance for Delage, as he indicated in a letter to Stravinsky eight days before the premiere: "I am restless about my small orchestra since I have searched for Hindu sonorities that send chills up my spine."<sup>203</sup>

Based on Delage's "Lettre de l'Inde," a short account of his Indian trip published in the journal *Revue musicale S.I.M.* on 15 June 1912204 and other sources, Jann Pasler has singled out those characteristics of Delage's approach to Indian music that differed from the common exoticism of his epoch:205 he followed Debussy's strategy in focusing on those features of Indian music that seemed to expose a culture-specific logic – deemed opaque to the Western listener – as well as the continuity of pitch, rich timbres, especially in vocal music, and their supposed spontaneity and emotional effect. Like many composers in the following decades, Delage was concerned about "contaminating" Western (phonograph, harmonium, violin) and particularly Muslim inf luences on "Hindu music."206 Like Dane Rudhyar about ten years after him, he held on to the image of a "pure" Hindu music.207 Delage was in personal contact with several distinguished soloists from different Indian music traditions and bought several recordings of Indian music, which served as his main source for the adaptations elaborated in his scores after he had returned to France.

Pasler has identified the beginning of *Lahore* (a song based on the French translation of a poem by Heinrich Heine208) as a transcription of a *surbahār*<sup>209</sup> performance of *Jaunpuri Todika* 

<sup>202</sup> "Heureusement que j'ai fait quatre poèmes Hindous cet été. Ravel pretend que c'est bien." Maurice Delage, letter to Igor Stravinsky, 9/12/1913 (Collection Igor Stravinsky, Paul Sacher Foundation Basel), quoted in Meyer, *Ensemblelieder*, 31.

<sup>203</sup> "Je suis inquiet pour mon petit orchestre, car j'ai cherché des sonorités Hindoues qui me donnent froid dans le dos." Maurice Delage, letter to Igor Stravinsky, 6/1/1914 (Collection Igor Stravinsky, Paul Sacher Foundation Basel), quoted in Meyer, *Ensemblelieder*, 32.

<sup>204</sup> Delage, "Lettre de l'Inde."

<sup>205</sup> Pasler, "Race, Orientalism, and Distinction,"100–103.

<sup>206</sup> Ibid., 101.

<sup>207</sup> See Rudhyar, "A Call to Indian Musicians."

<sup>208</sup> Delage obviously relied on the French translation of this poem by Gérard de Nerval, first published in 1848 (although no source is provided in the two printed editions of the work): "Un sapin isolé se dresse sur une montagne / Aride du Nord. Il sommeille. / La glace et la neige l'environnent / D'un manteau blanc. / Il rêve d'un palmier qui là-bas / Dans l'Orient lointain se désole, / Solitaire et taciturne, / Sur la pente de son rocher brûlant." German original: "Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam / Im Norden auf kahlerHöh. / Ihn schläfert; mitweißerDecke /Umhüllen ihn Eis und Schnee. / Erträumt von einer Palme, /Die, fern im Morgenland, / Einsam und schweigend trauert / Auf brennender Felsenwand." (Heinrich Heine, "Lyrisches Intermezzo" [1822/23], no. 33. In: *Sämtliche Gedichte,* Stuttgart, 1997, 94, quoted in Meyer, *Ensemblelieder*, 244.) Pasler notes that Delage had already set a poem byHeine in French translation three years earlier(*Intermezzo* no. 1 of the *Trois mélodies* op. 2, composed in January 1910, a setting ofHeine'sfamous"Auf Flügeln des Gesanges"). This poem already invokes dreamy images of India in the lines"Fort nach den Fluren des Ganges, / Dort weiß ich den schönsten Ort;" and "Dortwollenwir niedersinken / Unter dem Palmenbaum, / Und Liebe und Ruhe trinken, /Und träumen seligen Traum." See Pasler, "Reinterpreting Indian Music,"136.

<sup>209</sup> Large plucked long-necked lute inNorth Indian music, belonging to the same family ofinstruments asthe *sitar* and usually tuned a fourth or fif th lower.

*Alap* by Imdad Khan (1848–1920), probably recorded in 1905, the slow, unmeasured introduction (*alap*) to an improvisation on the *rāga jaunpuri* (upward: C D F G Ab Bb C; downward: C Bb Ab G F Eb D C).210 Delage closely reconstructs *surbahār* playing techniques in the cello part including slides between adjacent pitches with the same finger. The ensemble slowly establishes a drone on the fifth B-F# in different registers, recalling another key principle of Indian music practice. The sparse harmonic structure is based on modal and plagal progressions and tends to avoid conventional triadic harmony. The timbres, however, repeatedly evoke topics of musical orientalism, namely in the harp's arpeggiation and the two f lutes' soloistic figures that accompany the line "Il rêve d'un palmier qui là-bas dans l'Orient lointain se désole" [It dreams of a palm-tree which grieves far away in the distant East]. Conventional orientalist "coloring" is thus "quoted" in the context of a much more refined approach to Indian music, clearly marking the difference between these two forms of composition based on non-Western material.

The most remarkable feature of this song is surely the partly unaccompanied concluding vocalise, which systematically changes between open and closed mouth articulation, a feature of Indian vocal music that Delage had described in his "Lettre de l'Inde."211 In contrast to the famous vocalise from Léo Délibes's opera *Lakmé* (1883), one of the most representative works of late nineteenth-century exoticism, the refined rhythmic structure in Delage's song again suggests close modeling on a recorded performance.212 In the final part of this vocalise, the ensemble joins in a highly complex heterophony. A 1914 review of the edited score highlights the end of "Lahore" as a particular successful part of the work after quoting a sentence from Delage's "Lettre de l'Inde" that clearly evokes orientalist stereotypes:

"Strange impressionofhorizonswhere vehement or very sof ttears passby,tendersites andawakenings in beautiful light." I do not know any other such exquisite newness for our European ears than the vocalise that terminates the melody synthesized in Lahore; a vocalise sung with a closed mouth on strange nasal sonorities, hot breath, cries and caresses!<sup>213</sup>

The complexity of the musical structure is even increased in Delage's *Ragamalika* from May 1914, composed a few months after the successful premiere of the *Quatre poèmes hindous*. The piece is a detailed transcription of a recording of the *devadasi* singer Coimbatore Thayi (1872–1917), who was based in Madras214 and whom Delage had met during his trip in India while visiting the temples at Mahabalipuram.215 Coimbatore Thayi made about 300 recordings after the

211 Delage, "Lettre de l'Inde," 74.

<sup>210</sup> Pasler, "Race,Orientalism, andDistinction,"103–104,117. The recording can be found on the 78 rpm disc Gramo G.C.17364.Without knowledge ofthissourceMeyer(*Ensemblelieder*, 254), hastried to identify the *rāga* as *darbari-kanada* ("midnight *rāga*"; upward: C D Eb F G Ab Bb C / downward: C Ab Bb G F G Eb D C). Pasler ("Reinterpreting Indian Music," 138) specifies that the switch from *jaunpuri* to *darbari* in the final part of the cello solo marks an intentional departure from the recorded model.

<sup>212</sup> See Pasler, "Race, Orientalism, and Distinction,"105, Meyer, *Ensemblelieder*, 260–262.

<sup>213</sup> "'*Curieuse impression d'horizons où passent des sanglots véhéments ou très doux, des sites tendres et des réveils dans la belle lumière*.'Je ne connaisrien de plus exquisément nouveau pour nos oreilles européennes que la vocalise qui termine la mélodie qui synthétise Lahore; vocalise à bouche fermée sur d'étranges sonorités nasales, souf fle chaud, cris et caresses!" Gabriel Grovlez, "La musique dans les partitions," *Musica* 1/7/1914, 141; quotation from Delage, "Lettre de l'Inde," 73.

<sup>214</sup> See Badrinathan, "Interplay of the *devadasi* and the Composer" and Sampath, "Coimbatore Thayi."

<sup>215</sup> Pasler, "Race, Orientalism, and Distinction,"106,117. Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram), located south of Chennai(Madras), is a townwith important archeologicalsitesfrom the Pallavian Period (seventh to ninth century).

British Gramophone Company had started to record Indian music in 1904.216 The recorded piece *Rāgamālika, Ramalinga swamis arulpa* was probably recorded in 1909.<sup>217</sup> *Devadasi* dancers and singers were temple courtesans who were sold to temples at a young age and learned classical Indian styles of music and dance. *Arulpa* is a genre of devotional song with the highly melismatic and sliding line of the voice accompanied by *tabla* drums and a *tanpura* drone; *rāgamālika* means "garland of *rāgas*," signifying a continuous change between different *rāgas* during the same piece.218 The text of this specific *arulpa* is attributed to Ramalinga Swamigal (Swamy, 1823–1874), a Tamil Shivait saint and poet. In Carnatic vocal tradition, a "vocalist usually sings a Sanskrit, Tamil, or Telugu poem toward the end of a concert by improvising in a *rāgamālikā* 'garland of ragas.' This is nonmetered improvisation similar to *ālāpana*, in which the performer uses the text freely to bring out the essence of the *raga* and the meaning of the text."219 The common pitch center of the emerging *rāgas* in this piece, Bb, in Delage's adaption is optionally damped in the piano by placing a small piece of cardboard under the hammer of the piano's Bb2-string, imitating the buzzing sound of the *tanpura*. Delage here also makes an attempt to transliterate the Tamil lyrics of the piece, which praise the god *Nadaradjâ* (*Shiva*),220 indicating special pronunciation rules in a short note at the beginning. The final section recapitulates the beginning, creating a variation similar to the end of "Lahore" by continuously alternating between open- and closed-mouth sections (Ex. 2.3).

Delage's literal approach definitely shows deep respect for the musical tradition he was approaching – and the orientalist ideal of "purity" may have inf luenced his method, even though it was doubtless naïve considering the complex history of Indian music traditions and their continuous mutual inf luences and f lux: "With its emphasis on self-criticism, sound for its own sake, and respect for traditions on their own terms, the modernist aesthetic prepared Delage to hear Indian music in its own terms."<sup>221</sup>

Ten years later, in the *Sept Haï-kaïs* of 1923/24, Delage's approach appears to have changed, now being less oriented toward ethnographic precision than the India-inspired works. Still, these seven short songs also markedly differ from the musical *Japonisme* in many French and other European works from the turn of the century. In contrast to Delage's trip to India, his stay in Japan appears to be largely undocumented. It is obvious, however, that Delage acquired a substantial knowledge of the Japanese language.222 He probably assisted Stravinsky in selecting the poems for the latter's *Trois poésies de la lyrique japonaise* in 1912/13 and provided French translations.223 Five of the seven poems of *Sept Haï-kaïs* are taken from Kikou Yamata's anthology of translations of Japanese poetry from different periods (*Sur les lèvres japonaises*, Paris: Le Divan 1924);

<sup>216</sup> Sampath, "Coimbatore Thayi."

<sup>217</sup> Pasler, "Race, Orientalism, and Distinction,"106,117. The recording is published on Gramo G.C. 8-13793.

<sup>218</sup> Kassebaum, "Karnatak Raga," 99.

<sup>219</sup> Ibid.

<sup>220</sup> Gordon, "Discovering Maurice Delage," 302.

<sup>221</sup> Pasler, "Race, Orientalism, and Distinction,"107.

<sup>222</sup> Rodriguez, *Maurice Delage ou La solitude de l'artisan*, 38.

<sup>223</sup> Funayama, "Three Japanese Lyrics and Japonisme," 279. It is known, however, that Stravinsky used the Russian translation of the poems during the compositional process. Stravinsky's enthusiasm for Japanesewood prints and their"two-dimensional"characterseemsto have developed independently ofDelage (see ibid. and Taruskin, *Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions*, vol. 1, 822–848).

#### *Example 2.3: Maurice Delage, Ragamalika (version for voice and piano, 1914), final section*

Copyright © by Durand & Cie 1915

*Example 2.4: Maurice Delage, Sept Haï-kaïs (1923/24), no. 5: " La lune d'automne… ," piano version*

Copyright © by J. Jaubert 1924

no. 6 was translated by Paul-Louis Couchoud, who in 1905 had published *Au fil de l'eau*, a collection of French *haikai*, and no. 3 was written by the French poet Georges Sabiron (1882–1918).224

<sup>224</sup> Chipot, "Musique & haiku." The *haikai*, a form of *tanka* poetry (following a verse scheme of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables) emerged in Japan during the fif teenth to seventeenth centuries. Yet among the seven poemsselected by Delage, only two are examples oftraditional *haiku* form – a reduced variant ofthe *haikai* model organized in 5-7-5 syllables(no. 6 byOnitsura Uejima,1661–1738, and no. 7 by BashōMatsuo,1644–1694),while two poems have to be attributed to the medieval Heian-period *waka* genre (no.1byKino Tsurayuki, 872–945, andno. 2by Sosei,c. 844– 910). The three remaining poemswerewritten by contemporary poetsin *haiku* or *haikai* form (no. 3, in French, by Georges Sabiron,1882–1918, no. 4 byHiroko Katayama,1878–1957, and no. 5 by Akiko Yosano,1878–1942).

Both the piano and the ensemble version of the *Sept Haï-kaïs* were published by Jaubert in 1924. The cycle was premiered on 16 February 1925 in a SIM concert (soprano: Jane Bathorie, conductor: Darius Milhaud) and performed again at the ISCM festival in April 1929 in Geneva by Madeleine Grey and Ernest Ansermet. Around the same period, in 1925, Delage and Ravel organized a private concert with their Japanese friend Jirohachi Satsuma (1901–1976) of the Japanese *shamisen* player Kineya Sakichi IV (1884–1945) in the apartment of the pianist Henri Gil-Marchex, who had toured Japan for the first time the same year.225 Delage dedicated another (yet unpublished) short song, based on a *haiku* by Bashō Matsuo, to Satsuma on 20 December 1924 after completing the *Sept Haï-kaïs*. 226

The *Sept Haï-kaïs*, created more than ten years after Stravinsky's *Three Japanese Lyrics*, are hardly related to Stravinsky's musical style. Neither is there any clear indication of an adaption of Japanese scales or modes – although the harmonic structure, based on stacked fourths and fifths, may well be derived from a polymodal arrangement of pentatonic or heptatonic pitch collections. Repeatedly, Delage employs drone-like structures in these songs. The first song ("Préface de Kokinshiou") after a free prelude establishes a drone on Eb and Bb with major and minor thirds (G/Gb) repeatedly colliding in a setting that rather closely resembles that of *Ragamalika*. A calmer variant of the same harmonic principle is taken up in the second half of no. 6 ("Alors…"), prolonged into the final song (no. 7: "L'été…"), establishing a harmonic frame for the cycle. The third song ("Le coq…") introduces a similar structure raised by a semitone to E§-B§ and the conf licting thirds G§ and G#, providing the frame for a musical pictorialism that evokes the coq's cackling by short appoggiaturas in the style of Ravel's *Histoires naturelles* (1906).227 The second ("Les herbes de l'oubli…") and the fourth song ("La petite tortue…") as well as the first half of no. 6, in contrast, situate the drone-like structures on major seconds (D#-E# in no. 2, F#-G# in no. 4, C-D/Cb-Db in no. 6). While no. 2 is characterized by melodic lines moving in parallel fourths, no. 4 adopts the appoggiaturas from no. 3, possibly now pointing to the clunky movements of the tortoise.

A reference to Japanese modes is perhaps intended in no. 5 ("La lune d'automne…"), which starts with an ostinato figure comprising the pitch-classes C#-D-F#-G-B (Ex. 2.4), reminiscent of the *miyakobushi*-mode, popular in adaptations of Japanese melodies and modes around 1900.228 However, a modal ambivalence is established when the voice takes B as its pitch center and adds E to the pitch collection (F#-B-C#-E-F#) while the ensemble/piano now again (as in the preceding movements) continuously switches between G§ and G#. The ambivalence remains unresolved until the end: a tendency toward E minor in the final two bars of the instrumental part, supported by the B-E-B contour in the voice, is undermined by the bass that superimposes the progression A-D below the E minor harmony, resulting in a polymodal arrangement of a complete pentatonic scale (D-E-G-A-B).

<sup>225</sup> Funayama, "Three Japanese Lyrics and Japonisme," 278–279. Kineya Sakichi IV was a reformer of Japanese traditional music and developed larger types of shamisen such as the *sero shamisen* (cello *shamisen*) and the *teion shamisen* ("lower range *shamisen*") (Wade, *Composing Japanese Musical Modernity*, 250). Henri Gil-Marchex (1894– 1970)toured Japan fourtimes, in 1925,1931,1932, and 1937. The Japanese composer YoritsuneMatsudaira (1907– 2001) wasimpressed by Gil-Marchex's performances and took piano lessons with him while the pianist wasin Japan (Galliano, *Yōgaku*, 83–84). In 1936 Gil-Marchex composed *Quatre [Deux] images du vieux Japon* for piano.

<sup>226</sup> Funayama, "Three Japanese Lyrics and Japonisme," 279–281.

<sup>227</sup> Rodriguez, *Maurice Delage ou La solitude de l'artisan*, 83.

<sup>228</sup> Pacun, "Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar *Yōgaku*,"11–22 (see below).

*Example 2.5: Maurice Delage, Sept Haï-kaïs (1923/24), no. 5: " La lune d'automne… ," orchestral version, final part* 

Copyright © 1924 by Jaubert

The rich sonorities of the ensemble version considerably expand these restrained harmonic structures into veritable f lashes of color. This may be exemplified by the fifth song again (Ex. 2.5). The quick tempo here lets the highly perforated orchestration, comprising f luttertonguing in the f lute and glissandi in the strings, turn into a dissonant and bewildering sonorous field. The composer's great attention to detail, evident from the score, thus gives way to a "sound composition" reaching far beyond established orientalist musical concepts. Although the current state of research does not allow a reliable conclusion as to the actual impact of Japanese traditional music for Delage's compositional conception, it is apt to say that in comparison to the earlier literal approach in "Lahore" or *Ragamalika*, the *Sept Haï-kaïs* establish a far more abstract and concealed way of communicating with the non-Western tradition – most importantly through a radicalized aphoristic form and a highly refined (poly)modal harmony.

#### Henry Cowell: Toward Cultural Hybridity

If the *Société Musicale Indépendante* stood for a new internationalism and new approaches toward the music of non-Western cultures, those preconditions reappeared in a more rigorous and resolute manner in the context of Henry Cowell's New Music Society of California, established in Los Angeles in 1925, continued in San Francisco from 1927 to 1936, and later in New York. According to Cowell's first f lyer, the society was dedicated to the performance of the "most discussed composers of so-called ultramodern tendencies, such as Strawinsky [*sic*], Schoenberg, Ruggles, Rudhyar, etc."229 and it had a decidedly international perspective (works

<sup>229</sup> Quoted in Mead, "Henry Cowell'sNew Music Society," 450.

by 36 European, six Latin-American, and 30 American composers were performed in the society's concerts between 1925 and 1936230). At least one of the society's events (a concert on 1 April 1935) also included performances of traditional Japanese music.231

By 1925, at the age of 28, Cowell had already become an international celebrity. He had been on tour to Europe several times since 1923 as a "scandalous" pianist performing clusters and playing on the piano strings, and had made his debut at Carnegie Hall on 4 February 1924. In Europe he met a number of leading modernist composers and musicians. His Berlin recital in 1923 had been funded by Hermann Scherchen's *Neue Musikgesellschaf t*. <sup>232</sup> Similarly to Ravel's and Delage's societies, Cowell's New Music Society of California was conceived in opposition to the nationalist aesthetics of composers assembled in the League of Composers, founded in 1923.233 An anti-nationalist stance was a precondition especially for many composers who had emigrated to the US during the First World War, such as Edgard Varèse or Dane Rudhyar,234 a close friend and ally of Cowell. Rudhyar wrote in 1922:

Nationalism breeds hatred ofthe foreigner.Whereversuch hatred exists[and]the fundamental interhuman quality is killed, musicceasesto expressthe essential life ofMan, hisideal, hisfervor, his aspirations – colored as they may be by racial idiosyncrasies – it expresses only the superficial complex of fashions, of peculiar brain-activities, which constitutes the outer make-up of a nation, not truly a Race in the spiritually human sense of theword. […]

We insist on this point because it is an essential one today. America should be considered asthe new soil (culturally speaking) which will be the home of the next civilization when Europe has fallen in the state of slumber and medievalism which she is fast approaching. It is nationalism which killed Europe. The various European statescould not and cannot realize their fundamental identity, unite and constitute the United States of Europewhich alone could have given birth to a true European culture. Now the American civilization which is being born is inherently an heir to the European civilization. Will it inherit its nationalistic attitude, or will it repudiate it at the outset, and begin to think in terms of interhuman unity? […] If these [European] seeds are permeated by the virus of nationalistic separativeness, the future will repeat the past, and variousschools will war within the borders of America instead ofcooperating together in a true syntheticculture. Such a glorioussyntheticculture can only manifestif America respondsto the spiritual note of artistic internationalism, which is not indif ference to race but humanism as a fundamental, and racial differences as overtones.<sup>235</sup>

<sup>230</sup> Ibid., 454.

<sup>231</sup> Ibid., 454, 461.

<sup>232</sup> Ibid., 449.

<sup>233</sup> An explicitly international perspective had also been envisioned by Edgard Varèse and Carlos Salzédo when theyhadfoundedthe InternationalComposer'sGuild(ICG)in1921.Amongother activities,the ICGwasorganizing the US premiere of *Pierrot lunaire* on 4 February 1923. The League of Composerssegregated from the ICG in 1923. In 1928 Varèse and Cowell united to form the PanAmericanAssociation of Composers(PAAC),supporting composersfrom bothNorth and LatinAmerica (ibid., 453;see alsoOja,*Making Music Modern*,177–200 andNonnenmann, "Institutionen/Organisationen," 285).

<sup>234</sup> Varèse arrived in the US on 29 December 1915, Rudhyar (then still under the name Daniel Chennevière) on 13 November1916.

<sup>235</sup> Rudhyar, "Edgard Varèse and theNew Music of America."

Cowell's international activities between 1923 and 1936 show great efforts and also a certain restlessness, increasingly leading to frustrations in the wake of the Great Depression and the ensuing financial limitations. The Pan American Association of Composers (PAAC), founded by Varèse and Cowell in 1928, for example, involved, among others, a close contact to the Havana Society for Contemporary Music in 1930 and the collaboration with the Commission for International Exchange Concerts, founded in Vienna also in 1930.236

Both Rudhyar and Cowell were deeply inf luenced by non-Western musical traditions early on. Rudhyar had immigrated to the United States from France in 1916, and by 1918 had established ties to theosophical communities through Scriabin's student Djane Lavoie-Herz (1889– 1982), whom Rudhyar met in New York in 1918.237 Rudhyar and Cowell first met in 1920 in the Californian theosophical community Halcyon,238 led by John Varian (1863–1931), an Irish-American poet and amateur musician. Cowell had already joined the community as a teenager in 1912 and many of his early pianist practices, such as cluster and string piano techniques, as well as music-theoretical ideas, namely microtonal and polyrhythmic concepts,<sup>239</sup> can be attributed to theosophical inf luences, as Gregor Herzfeld has demonstrated.240 The clusters, for example, were to represent the oneness of humans and nature,<sup>241</sup> and the string piano techniques (sound created by playing directly on the piano strings) evolved in the context of the idea of a giant harp conceived as the universe's body of resonance (a reference to the antique concept of the "Aeolian harp" as first described by Athanasius Kircher), an idea adopted by Varian in his "cosmic play" *The Harp of Life* (1916), for which Cowell wrote the music.242 A transcultural dimension was implicit in theosophical thought. Inf luenced by Indian myths of origin preserved in the Vedas, Helena Blavatsky conceived of music as "cosmic energy" and as a principle characterized by continuous movement and dynamic motion<sup>243</sup> – features that abound in Cowell's early work. In a more explicit move toward cultural and racial hybridity, John Varian considered the theosophical community the "germic embryonic seed of future majesties of growth," of a "new civilization now starting round the Pacific" prominently including "oriental races."244

<sup>236</sup> Sachs, *Henry Cowell*, 182–183, 198–199. Already by 1929 Cowell, returning from a tour to the Soviet Union, had suggested to Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Carl Stumpf in Berlin the "creation of an international network to exchange and disseminate information through centersin Moscow, Leningrad, Berlin, Paris,NewYork, and Stanford." (ibid., 187.) Af ter the same idea was presented to a circle of New York scholars and composers, the New York Musicological Society was founded, reorganized as the American Musicological Society (AMS) in Philadelphia in 1934. Both international and intercultural focuses were abandoned during this process, so Cowell did not remain involved (ibid.;see also Rao, "American Compositional Theory in the 1930s," 596–608).

<sup>237</sup> Ertan, *Dane Rudhyar*, 30–32.

<sup>238</sup> Oja, *Making Music Modern*,128–129.

<sup>239</sup> InHalcyon, Cowell was probably drawn to "Hindu rhythms" by the community's music director Edgard Cheetham as early as1916 (Sachs,*Henry Cowell*,188). Themostsubstantial influence on the rhythmicsystem explored in Cowell'streatise*New Musical Resources*(1916–19), however,resulted from the correspondencewith John Varian'sson Russell (Herzfeld, *Zeit als Prozess und Epiphanie*,136–137).

<sup>240</sup> Herzfeld, *Zeit als Prozess und Epiphanie*,122–151.

<sup>241</sup> Ibid.,126.

<sup>242</sup> Ibid.,132–133.

<sup>243</sup> See Oja, *Making Music Modern*, 101–106, Reish, "The Transformation of Giacinto Scelsi's Musical Style," 68–76, and Baatz, "Resonanz des'weißen Unbewegten,'" 36.

<sup>244</sup> "There is a newrace birthing here in theWest[…].In the agescoming, itwill be a large factorin a newcivilization nowstarting round the Pacific – of a quite dif ferent nature from that of the Atlantic. Oriental raceswill be in it

In his childhood days in San Francisco where he spent the first nine years of his life, Cowell came into close contact with music traditions of China (Cantonese Opera), Japan (*koto* music), and India ("Indian virtuosi" who allowed Cowell to listen from a corner in their room),245 – an experience that, according to the composer, explains his open-mindedness toward musics of the world: "No one [in these early years] […] ever told him that Western music was supposed to be superior."<sup>246</sup> In his short piano encore *Amiable Conversation* from 1917, Cowell modeled the (largely pentatonic) melodies in the left hand (black keys) and right hand (white keys) on the speech melodies in a conversation between two Cantonese in a Chinese laundry.<sup>247</sup>

During the 1920s, Cowell repeatedly established contacts with Asian musicians and studied the foundations of Asian music practices. He organized two "Symposia on Exotic Music" in 1924 and 1926 in the Manhattan church St. Mark's-in-the-Bouwerie, featuring performances of traditional music from Japan (*shamisen*, *shakuhachi*), India (*sitar*, *esraj*), and China in 1924,248 and performers from Japanese, Chinese, Hindu, and Arab music traditions in 1926. The first symposium also included a talk on "the peculiarities of Oriental Music illustrated by Instrumentalists."249 This might have been "the first public presentation of extra-European music in the United States" for a "white audience."250 Anti-immigrant and racist discourse generally confined musical activities of Asian musicians to their local urban communities such as Chinatown and lend Cowell's efforts a pioneering character.

In 1927, Cowell's possible conversations with Béla Bartók and his trip to a Moravian mountain village in 1926 were referred to in two articles.251 In the same year, he began a study of the North Indian *rāga* and *tāla* systems with Sarat Lahiri (a performer in the Symposium on Exotic Music in 1924) and Arab music; he obviously also studied African drumming in 1928.252 After he was appointed music teacher at the New York School for Social Research, he lectured on "Newly Discovered Oriental Principles" in spring 1930, organized twelve weekly lecture recitals on "Music Systems of the World" in spring 1932,253 and from 1933 on regularly taught "World Music" classes at the New School and from 1934 on at the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University, henceforth using the title "Music of the Peoples of the World."254 In the autumn

[…].We are germic embryonicseed offuture majesties of growth."(JohnVarian,foreword to *Tirawa* [SanDiego: Troubadour,1930], quoted in Johnson, "Henry Cowell, John Varian, andHalcyon,"16.)


<sup>249</sup> Ibid.,129.

<sup>250</sup> Ibid.

<sup>251</sup> Cowell, "Moravian Music" and Cowell, "HowYoungHungary ExpressesIndividuality."

<sup>252</sup> Sachs, *Henry Cowell*,188.

<sup>253</sup> This series included live performances of Arab, Balkan, Chinese, Indian, Irish, Japanese, Javanese, Mexican, Russian, Scottish,Native American, andHebrew music(ibid.,195).

<sup>254</sup> Ibid., 208–209.

and winter of 1931, and from the summer to the winter of 1932, Cowell was living in Berlin on a Guggenheim Foundation grant.255 In Berlin, he was studying audio recordings in Erich Moritz von Hornbostel's *Phonogramm-Archiv* systematically as well as receiving intense instructions in the performance and theory of Javanese music by Raden Mas Jodjana, in Balinese music by the dancer-musician A. F. Roemahlaiselan, and in Indian music by Pichu Sambamoorthy (1903–73) from the University of Madras.256 During his Berlin years he met Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern, who at one point was supposed to conduct a concert with American composers in Vienna.257

Perhaps the most significant aspect of Cowell's approach toward non-Western music is his anti-essentialist position, based on the close observation of the musical traditions he studied. Criticizing the focus of comparative musicology on acoustics and tone psychology, Cowell deplored that such an approach would exclude cultural exchange and hybridity: "There is very little music in the world of which one may say with certainty that it is completely indigenous to the region in which it may be found. And when, through integration, does a hybrid form cease to be hybrid? It is hard to say. Opinions differ."258 This eventually led to Cowell's provocative idea that "the single tone with a given pitch is not the basis of musical sound" but that such a basis rather is to be found in the *sliding tone*, represented by a curve.<sup>259</sup> In reaction to systematic scale theories in American music theory during the early 1930s,260 this idea was eventually worked out in the 1937 treatise *The Nature of Melody*, in which sliding tones occupy a prominent position because

[Sliding tones] are dif ferentiated so as to express the finest shades of meaning in the cultivated Oriental systems of music. In our vocal music, they are a sort of skeleton in the closet. It is physically impossible forthehuman voice to proceedfromone pitchto another, legato,withoutsliding. […] The reason that slides have been banned is doubtless because they were so badly used, and thatwas because so littlewas known oftheirfunctions. In all vocal music, and on allstringed and otherinstrumentscapable ofsliding,they are used of ten according to certain conventions[…].261

The idea that it is not fixed tones but rather continuous movements between tones or pitches that act as the basis of music clearly emerged from the close study of Indian, Chinese, and Japanese music traditions, as well as theosophical ideas of a continuous, dynamic, energetic f low of sound as manifest in Cowell's string piano compositions.

As Nancy Yunhwa Rao has demonstrated, expanded sliding structures form the basis of the unpublished score of *Atlantis* (1926) for three vocalists and orchestra. The premiere of the piece, written for a dance performance of the choreographer Doris Humphrey, was canceled, possibly due to the experimental setting of the score.262 The first movement shows a systematic layering

<sup>255</sup> Cowell's stays in Berlin (including frequent trips to other places in Europe) covered the periods 1/10/1931– 23/12/1931 and 31/7/1932–22/12/1932. The Guggenheim grant was granted for one year but Cowell was allowed to split hisstay inBerlin into two halvesto be able to teach attheNewSchool in spring semester1932 (ibid.,189).

<sup>256</sup> Ibid.,190.

<sup>257</sup> Ibid.,192–193.

<sup>258</sup> Cowell, "Hybrid Music" (unpublished Ms.), quoted in Sachs, *Henry Cowell*,197–198.

<sup>259</sup> Sachs, *Henry Cowell*,198.

<sup>260</sup> See Rao, "American Compositional Theory in the 1930s" and Rao, "Henry Cowell and His Chinese Music Heritage,"129–130.

<sup>261</sup> Cowell, *The Nature of Melody*, 76, quoted in Rao, "Henry Cowell andHis Chinese MusicHeritage,"130.

<sup>262</sup> Rao, "Henry Cowell andHis Chinese MusicHeritage,"125.

of glissandi with and without a change of direction (Ex. 2.6). The immediate inspiration for this approach may have been a vocal ensemble using extended vocal techniques that Cowell heard in a concert in Prague in April 1926, probably led by Emil František Burian.263 *Atlantis* thus demonstrates impressively how principles derived from non-Western practices and the latest techniques of contemporary music may merge into specific and innovative musical structures. Perhaps even more remarkable is Cowell's adoption of the slide principle in his early orchestral score *Some Music*, published as early as 1922. The orchestral structure exemplifies the principle of continuous movement, realized by alternating scalar movements within semi- and wholetone-clusters of different ranges. The score seems to anticipate certain sound compositions by Iannis Xenakis and Krzysztof Penderecki of the 1950s and 60s, and clearly represents the idea of indistinct, steadily inf lected pitches and the theosophical "oneness of sound."

Sliding pitches are used more consistently in works from Cowell's later periods, as in Symphonies 11 to 15 (1953–60). In the works of the 1930s, sliding tone techniques are not dominant; the restricted use of sliding lines for the purpose of word-painting in the song *Rest* (1933) and the secondary role of continuous slides in the third movement of the *Mosaic Quartet* of 1935, where three higher strings provide a background of continuously sliding pitches for the cello's cantilena, do not define sliding tones as core structural elements.264

Cowell's *United Quartet* (String Quartet no. 4) of 1936 marks the composer's first explicit attempt at musical polystylism, f lexibly adapting a variety of "the world's music systems," a feature which would become characteristic of Cowell's later style, although usually only one particular tradition per piece is evoked.265 Cowell declared the *United Quartet* "an attempt toward a more universal musical style"<sup>266</sup> and a preface to the score explicitly addresses a multicultural listenership across all social classes ("Americans, Europeans, Orientals, or higher primitives; anybody from a coal miner to a bank president").267

<sup>263</sup> Sachs, *Henry Cowell*, 139. It is most likely that Cowell heard Emil František Burian's (1904–1959) Voiceband, which, however, was only of ficially formed in 1927. Cowell described Burian's practices in 1930 in his article "Vocal Innovators of Europe."

<sup>264</sup> See Rao, "Henry Cowell andHis Chinese MusicHeritage,"126,136.

<sup>265</sup> Among others,the followingworks by Cowellreferto specific musicaltraditions: Indonesia:*Ostinato Pianissimo* for percussion ensemble (1934); Ireland: *Celtic Set* for Concert Band (1938); Iran: *Persian Set* for chamber orchestra (1956–57); India: *Pulse* for percussion ensemble (1939), Symphony no. 13 "Madras" (1956–58); Japan: *Ongaku*  for orchestra (1957, → II.5.). Besides the *United Quartet*, the explicitly "multi-ethnic" pieces include *Four Assorted Movements* for flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, horn, and piano (ad lib.) (1938) [first movement: *Hoedown*; second movement: *Taxim*; third movement: *Tala*; fourth movement: *Chorale*] and *American Melting Pot* forchamber orchestra (1940).

<sup>266</sup> "[…] the United Quartet is an attempt toward a more universal musical style. […] Primitive music is represented, not by imitating it, nor by taking a specific melody or rhythm from some tribe, but by using a three-tone scale, and exhausting allthe dif ferentwaysthe three tonescan appear,which is a procedure ofsome primitive music." (Henry Cowell, note to *String Quartet no. 4, United Quartet*,NewYork: C. F. Peters,1966, quoted in Taylor, *Beyond Exoticism*,109.)

<sup>267</sup> "The Quartet should not only be easy to understand, without following any known pathway, but it should be understood equallywell by Americans, Europeans,Orientals, or higher primitives; by anybody from a coal miner to a bank president. The main purpose of it, of course, is not in its technique, but in the message, which, of course, is not suitable for expression in words. It may be said that it concerns human and social relationships. The technique isfor the purpose ofconveying the message to thewidely dif ferentiated groups who need to be united in these relationships." (Cowell, "Introduction," quoted inNicholls, "Henry Cowell's *United Quartet*,"199.)

*Example 2.6: Henry Cowell, Atlantis, first movement, mm. 1–14*

Reproduced by permission of the David and Sylvia Teitelbaum Fund, Inc., assuccessorsto Henry and Sidney Cowell

Timothy Taylor has interpreted this as evidence of Cowell's relativist approach to musical cultures, in tune with Boas's cultural theory (→ II.1).268 However, Cowell here makes a clear distinction between "primitive music" ("represented […] by using a three-tone scale, and exhausting all the different ways the three tones can appear, which is a procedure of some primitive music"), "Oriental music" ("represented by modes which are constructed as Oriental modes are constructed, without being actual modes used in particular cultures"), and "the modern" ("The modern is represented by the use of unresolved discords, by free intervals in two-part counterpoint, and by the fact that the whole result is something new, – and all that is new is modern!").269 It becomes clear from this distinction that both Cowell's cultural relativism as well as his aesthetic universalism are based on those essentialist concepts he had felt at odds with during his days in the Berlin *Phonogramm-Archiv*. The fourth movement presenting its three simple layers as "principal melody, countermelody plus drone, and percussive accompaniment"270 makes the unspecific ethnic background problematic and tends toward a stereotypical "neo-primitivism." In 1933 Cowell had conceived of this style theoretically in order to set his approach clearly apart from French and American neoclassicism. Characteristically, Cowell here navigates between sweeping generalizations and anti-essentialist arguments:

Nowthe time hascome for a strong newcounter-movement, full-blooded and vital. The tendency already exists, and showssigns ofsteady growth. It reacts against the over-complexity of the earlier modern music but not against experiment; against the sentimentality and pomp of later romantic music but not againstfeeling; againstthe superciliousformalism of a return to the particular style of some past century but not against the use of primary musical elements. […] It is not an attemptto imitate primitive music, butratherto drawon those materialscommon to the music of all the peoples of the world, to build a new music particularly related to our own century. […] Many of the customary generalizationscan no longer be made in the face of this wider knowledge. There is, ofcourse, no aboriginal musicto be found anywherewhich correspondsto the common conception of an uncontrolled expression of wild, unbridled, savage feeling. Nor can primitive music be lumped into one group. The music of varioustribesis as dif ferent asthe music of the variouscultivated nations. […]

Howeverthere are some generalcharacteristicswhich nearly all primitive musicshares. Most of it issung to the accompaniment of percussion; melody and rhythm are thusthe main elements. Where several dif ferent voices sing together they are either in unison or heterophonic, making a free polyphony in which each part is quite independent except that it mustcome out with the others atthe end. Further, nearly all primitive music hasrapid rhythmicalchanges,syncopations, polyrhythms and cross-rhythms. In the melody there may be a wide range of dif ferent sorts of pitch curves aswell asstraightlines ofsound. The tones eitherwabble back and forth orslide up or down – notcarelessly, but as a vital part of the musicalscheme.271

Cowell detailed his perspectives on the relationship between traditional and contemporary music in many further essays and statements that have been scrutinized in the dissertation by Ethan Lechner from 2008. Lechner confirms that Cowell's approach to non-Western mu-

<sup>268</sup> Taylor, *Beyond Exoticism*,106–108.

<sup>269</sup> All quotationsfrom Cowell, note to *String Quartet no. 4* (see footnote 266).

<sup>270</sup> Nicholls, "Transethnicism and the American Experimental Tradition," 573.

<sup>271</sup> Cowell, "TowardsNeo-Primitivism,"150–151.

sics was still shaped by an evolutionary concept distinguishing between "primitive cultures" and "civilizations," and between different stages of "development" achieved in different cultures.272 Notably, this concept did not conceive of Western culture or music as the fulfillment of an evolutionary process because Western music, according to Cowell, particularly lacked rhythmic and melodic refinement. Still, it was substantiated by a positivistic compositional and scholarly concept of music consisting of discrete, analyzable "elements" that might be turned into "resources" for composers. The composer as a quasi-scientific experimenter was free to use and combine these resources into a new universalist model of a "music of many cultures." Such naïve openness and the straightforward goal of its audience-friendly compositional realization would become increasingly explicit in Cowell's output from the 1930s on, eventually making him the ideal composer for the American cultural politics of transcultural universalism during the Cold War period (→ II.5).

#### Shūkichi Mitsukuri and Fumio Hayasaka: Between Modernity and Nationalism

Switching the geographical and sociocultural context to 1920s and 1930s Japan, the differences are obvious. By the early 1930s, Western-oriented musical institutions and musical life in Japan had reached considerable standards, an outcome of roughly sixty years of radical and all-encompassing modernization and Westernization programs since the Meiji restauration in 1868 (→ III.1). Westernization was not only prevalent in *yōgaku*, Western-oriented chamber and orchestral music written by Japanese composers, but also in *hōgaku*, traditional Japanese music. While these two segments of Japanese music were largely isolated from each other until the late 1920s, attempts at convergence arose in the early 1930s, not least in a response to Michio Miyagi's *Etenraku Variations* with an orchestral arrangement by Hidemaro and Naomaro Konoe, an adaptation of the most famous piece from *gagaku* court music, performed during the enthronement ceremonies of the new Showa emperor in 1928.273

This rapprochement should also be viewed in the context of an increasingly obvious nationalist tide in Japanese politics, escalating in the occupation of the Manchuria peninsula in 1931. Although composers' groups of the early 1930s, such as the *Shinkō sakkyokuka renmei* (Federation of Innovative Composers), founded in Tokyo in 1930, and the *Shin ongaku renmei* (New Music Federation), founded in Sapporo in 1934, did not pursue explicit political agendas, their common objective was to qualitatively change the integration of Japanese musical traditions into contemporary music. As Stefan Menzel has demonstrated, the compositional scene had been monopolized far into the 1920s by Kōsaku Yamada (1885–1963), who, at the age of 29, had returned to Japan in 1914 after four years of study in Berlin (→ III.1).274 Oriented toward Richard Strauss's style, Yamada wrote the first Japanese opera (*Ochitaru tennyo*, 1913, premiered in 1929), the first Japanese symphony (Symphony in F major "Peace and War," 1912, premiered in 1914), and the first Japanese symphonic poem (*Kurai to*, 1913; premiered in 1918). Relying on generous funding from the Mitsubishi corporation, Yamada was central in the founding and development of musical institutions, namely the Philharmonic Society Tokyo (founded in 1910), the Japanese Symphony Orchestra (1923), and particularly the New Symphony Orchestra (*Shin kōkyō gakudan*) together with the inf luential conductor Hidemaro Konoe in 1926. The New Symphony Orchestra was crucial in performing new orchestral works by Japanese composers over

<sup>272</sup> Lechner, "Composers as Ethnographers,"110–176.

<sup>273</sup> Menzel, *Hōgaku*,117–119.

<sup>274</sup> Ibid.,104–108.

the decades that followed.275 At the same time, Yamada composed a large number of songs (his total output amounts to over 1,100), the favorite genre of Japanese composers up to the 1940s.276 By the early 1920s, certain topoi of a "Japanese harmony" had developed, particularly in folk song settings by Yamada and other composers such as Kiyomi Fujii (1899–1944), including the prominent use of the half-diminished seventh chord in connection to the *miyakobushi* scale and harmonies based on stacked fourths and fifths, emerging from pentatonic scales, as well as a frequent evocation of French music by Debussy, Ravel, and their contemporaries.277

The *Shinkō sakkyokuka renmei*, founded by sixteen young music artists aged between 23 and 34 (eleven composers, four musicians, and one critic278) from differing backgrounds, aimed to reach beyond such conventional limitations, adopting the term *shinkō* (lit. "rising," "innovative") which in the late 1920s had replaced *bunmei* ("civilization") as a guiding principle in Japanese cultural discourse.279 One of the foremost concerns of the group was to establish an "antithesis" to the dominant German-style composition of the time, mainly represented by Yamada. In addition, it seems that the association was conceived in opposition to the *Dainihon sakkyokuka kyōkai* (Great Japanese Association of Composers), founded in 1925, in which composers of popular and children's songs assembled (as elsewhere in the world, popular music reached an initial peak in Japan during the 1920s due to the advent of the recording industry).280 In its beginnings, *Shinkō sakkyokuka renmei* was associated with the concept of "avant-garde" that was concurrently imported into culture-related discourse, translated as *zen'ei* or transliterated as *avantgyardo*. <sup>281</sup> Although all composers of the group were oriented toward recent musical developments in Europe, it was only Noboru Ito (1903–1993) who actually employed such features as quartertones and polytonality by the early 1930s; in 1933 he wrote an article entitled "Tomorrow's Music" on recent European trends, including dodecaphony.282

Musical innovation was such an important objective of *Shinkō sakkyokuka renmei* that it was even codified in four guidelines of the association that urged the members to (1) use scales and modes from (Japanese) traditional music, (2) develop tonal systems oriented toward the quartal


<sup>275</sup> Ibid., 105.

<sup>276</sup> See Gottschewski, "'Poesie und Musik,'" 380.

<sup>277</sup> Pacun, "Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar *Yōgaku*," 24–25.

<sup>278</sup> Lehtonen,"'March from theAge ofImitation to theAge of Creation,'" 38–39. The founding memberswere Kunihiko Hashimoto (1904–1949), Yuzuru Ike (1902–1990), Gorō Ishii (1909–1990), Noboru Ito (1903–1993), Yasuji Kiyose (1900–1981), Heigorō Komatsu (1897–1953), Kiyoshi Komatsu (1899–1975), Yoritsune Matsudaira (1907– 2001), Shūkichi Mitsukuri (1895–1971), Meirō Sugawara (1897–1988), and Naotada Yamamoto (1904–1965); the critic Kamesuke Shioiri (1900– 1938); the pianists Hakujirō Kondō (1900–1932) and Kōkichi Oida (1902–1964); the cellist and conductor Hideo Saitō (1902–1974); and the cellist Fumio Suzuki (1900–1945). "The division into composers and performers was, however, originally not that strict; although listed as musicians here, Oida, Saitō, and Suzukicomposed someworks atthe early stages oftheircareers. And vice versa: practically allcomposerswere also musicians orconductors." (lbid., 39.)

<sup>282</sup> Ibid., 78. In 1934, Noboru Ito and Gorō Ishii founded the *Shin ongaku ha* (New Music Group), evidently because the support for their "avant-gardist" ideas within *Shinkō sakkyokuka renmei* waslimited. Another group founded during that period was *Prometeo*, started in 1937 by Shirō Fukai (1907–1959, like Ito a student of Meiro Sugawara), focusing on the reception of recent European music, mainly French neoclassicism. Fukaicriticized nationalisttendenciesin Japan and argued that"Japanese composersshould immerse themselvescompletely and unreservedly in the European tradition" (ibid., 79).

harmonies of the mouth organ (*shō*) in *gagaku*, (3) develop heterophonic textures inspired by the traditional chamber music genres *sankyoku* and *jiuta*, and (4) make creative use of instrumental "colors."283 Apart from the remarkable fact that a heterogeneous group of composers was willing to agree on such a detailed compositional program,<sup>284</sup> the four guidelines can also be read as a criticism of the limited means deployed in the music of established composers like Yamada, Kōsuke Komatsu (1884–1966), and Shinpei Nakayama (1887–1952) – although Yamada soon shared the group's aims and became a member in 1932.285 It is likely that Shūkichi Mitsukuri (1895–1971), as the oldest founding member, had a considerable inf luence on formulating these guidelines; his works of the same period, in particular his song cycle *Bashō kikoshū* from 1930/31, can be considered a compositional exemplification of most of these guidelines (see below).286

In 1935 the society renamed itself *Nihon gendai sakkyokuka renmei* (Federation of Contemporary Japanese Composers) and expanded considerably; thanks to the efforts of Mitsukuri and Saburō Moroi (1903–1977), it joined the International Society for Contemporary Music in the same year,287 representing Japan at the ISCM festivals in 1937 in Paris and in 1939 in Warsaw and Krakow. This considerably increased international awareness of composers from Japan.288

While the ISCM membership made Japanese composers part of an international community, the federation's invitation of international composers to Japan before 1935 was arguably even more important for stylistic developments within Japan: while Alexandre Tansman's (1897–1986) visit to Japan in March 1933 probably only had a limited effect (as on the young Yoritsune Matsudaira, 1907–2001, who obviously adopted the principle of tritone-related harmonies from Tansman289), the impact of Alexander Tcherepnin's (1899–1977) frequent visits in the mid-1930s (1934/35) was substantial and long-lasting, like his impact in China during the same period (→ III.1). Akira Ifukube (1914–2006) and Yasuji Kiyose (1900–1981) took composition lessons with Tcherepnin, who motivated them to remain independent from European music and supported their "moderately" modernizing approach toward folkloristic material. In 1935 Tcherepnin an-

<sup>283</sup> Herd, "The Cultural Politics of Japan's Modern Music," 44.

<sup>284</sup> Indeed, recent research has doubted that these guidelines were actually agreed upon by all members(Lehtonen, "'March from the Age of Imitation to the Age of Creation,'" 40).

<sup>285</sup> Ibid., 38.

<sup>286</sup> In 1934 the federation changed its name to *Kindai Nippon sakkyokuka renmei* (Modern Composers' Federation of Japan) asthe term *shinkō* had come to be associated with communist activitiesthat were increasingly subject to governmental repressions (ibid., 42). In 1935 the federation declared its objective to "work together to promote the progress of tomorrow's music." (Galliano, *Yōgaku*, 82.)

<sup>287</sup> Lehtonen, "'March from the Age of Imitation to the Age of Creation,'" 42.

<sup>288</sup> Ibid. and Galliano, *Yōgaku*, 82. In November 1940, all music societies were forced to unite in the Alliance to Promote the New Order in the Musical World (*Gakudan shintaisei sokushin dōmei*), replaced in 1941 by the Association for Japanese Music Culture (*Nihon ongaku bunka kyōkai*), operating until the end of the war (Lehtonen, "'March from the Age of Imitation to the Age of Creation,'" 43). Af ter the war, the ISCM-branch of Japan was re-founded in 1946 asJapan Society for ContemporaryMusic(JSCM;*Nihon gendai ongaku kyōkai*)withMitsukuri assuming the position of its firstchair (ibid.). Until its enforced dissolution in 1940 the federation had organized 39 concerts and severalradio broadcasts, mostly featuringworks by the federation's members,the number of which by 1939 had reached its peak with 116 composers (ibid., 42), but also at least once introducing new works by German composers (ibid., 40–41). The foundation of the new journal *Ongaku hyōron* (Music Review) in 1934 by Mitsukuri and other members also contributed to an increasing awareness of the group in Japanese musical life (ibid., 41). The founders of this journal apart from Mitsukuri were Heigorō Komatsu, Kiyoshi Komatsu, Saburō Moroi, Masao Ōki (1901–1971),Naotada Yamamoto, and Ginji Yamane (1906–1982) (ibid., 71).

<sup>289</sup> Galliano, *Yōgaku*, 83.

nounced a composition prize and works by Ifukube and Matsudaira were selected.290 Tcherepnin published the winning scores in his own publishing series and, back in Europe, introduced works by young Japanese and Chinese composers in his piano recitals.291

Both composers' federations adopted optimistic language at their outset. In the context of the foundation of the *Shin ongaku renmei* (New Music Federation) in 1934 in remote Sapporo, Fumio Hayasaka said: "Absolutely the only path that is open to us younger composers is to combine new methods and techniques with the venerable heritage of our traditional culture."<sup>292</sup> Aged 20, Hayasaka (1914–55) and his colleague Akira Ifukube had founded the federation two years after meeting in Sapporo, which was rather isolated from Tokyo-centered Japanese musical life during that period. Notwithstanding, the two young composers and the music critic Atsushi Miura (1913–1997), who had already been corresponding with European and American musicians and composers for about two years, started their activities.293 On 30 September 1934, they staged a one-day festival under the French name *Le festival de musique contemporaine* in Sapporo's Imai Memorial Hall.294 The festival featured Japanese premieres of works by Satie, Ravel, Stravinsky, de Falla, Casella, Erwin Schulhoff, and other European composers, including a version of de Falla's ballet music *El amor brujo* (1915/16) arranged for sextet by Hayasaka and Ifukube. The group clearly also regarded itself as an opposition (*nozai*) to Tokyo's academic establishment.295 This position was expressed not least in the group's dedicated internationalism and the composers' more rigorous and direct approach toward Japanese traditional and folk musics. Ifukube's orchestral piece *Japanese Rhapsody* (*Nihon kyōshi kyoku*) from 1935, awarded the Tcherepnin Price of the same year, became the foremost model of a neo-folklorist style dubbed *kokumin-shikyoku* (national tone poems) by 1938296 – adopting the national style of European composers around 1900 and painting an idealized picture of a pre-Westernized rural Japan. However, Hayasaka's more refined approach to the court music genre *tōgaku*, based on detailed structural modeling as realized in his 1937 orchestral work *Ancient Dance*  (*Kodai no bukyoku*), was probably closer to the approach originally envisaged by Mitsukuri and his colleagues in 1930, when they formulated the guidelines for the *Shinkō sakkyokuka renmei*.

Mitsukuri and Hayasaka were both participants in the controversial discussion on "Japanese harmony" (*Nihonteki waseiron*) that spanned the entire 1930s and continued into the 1940s.

<sup>290</sup> First prize: Ifukube, *Japanese Rhapsody* (*Nihon kyōshi kyoku*) for orchestra (1935); second prize: Matsudaira, *Pastorale* (1935) for orchestra; the jury of the competition in Paris included Jacques Ibert, Albert Roussel, Arthur Honegger, Alexandre Tansman, Tibor Harsányi, Pierre-Octave Ferroud, Henri Gil-Marchex, and Henri Prunières(Homenick, "Biography," III). In Shanghai, where he lived during the period 1934–37 as an advisor of the Chinese-Japanese admnistration, Tcherepnin had also organized a competition in 1934, in which the piano piece *Buf falo Boy's Flute*byHeLutingwonthefirstprize(→ III.1).DuringaconcerttourwiththeViennaPhilharmonic in 1937, its conductor Felix Weingartner (1863–1942) also awarded a composition prize; the prize winners in 1939wereMitsukuri(first prize for *Sinfonietta* [*Shōkōkyōkyoku*],1934), FumioHayasaka (*Ancient Dance*,1937), and Masao Oki (*Yoru no meisō* [Evening Meditation]) (Galliano, *Yōgaku*, 92–93). According to Lehtonen ("'March from the Age of Imitation to the Age of Creation,'" 71), Mitsukuri's *Sinfonietta* was also awarded the prize of the *Ongaku konkuuru* (Music Competition) in 1934; thiscompetition had been established in 1932.

<sup>291</sup> Lehtonen, "'March from the Age of Imitation to the Age of Creation,'" 42, 72, 98.

<sup>292</sup> Quoted in Galliano, *Yōgaku*, 81(no originalsource provided).

<sup>293</sup> Ibid., 79–81.

<sup>294</sup> Homenick, "Biography."

<sup>295</sup> Menzel, *Hōgaku*, 116.

<sup>296</sup> Ibid., 144–163 (here Menzel also provides close readings of Ifukube's and Hayasaka's folkloristic symphonic poems).

In 1929 and 1930, Mitsukuri first introduced a system of symmetrically ordered fifths, developed from Japanese scales and grounded in Hugo Riemann's dualism. The system was explicated again in some detail in an article in three languages (Japanese, French, German) in 1934, thereby addressing an international readership.297 In this system, the arrangement of fifths, a model of *gagaku* tuning and chord-building, results in two different six- (or seven-)note scales, one ascending (positive) and one descending (negative), which are largely identical to the Japanese *ryo*- and *ritsu*-scales of the *gagaku* system (positive: A-B-C#-[D#]-E-F#-G#-[A]; negative: E-D-C§-[Bb]-A-G-F§-[E]).298 Mitsukuri highlights the option to switch between the two systems that might be interconnected by either F§ and F# or Bb and B§. Assuming a Pythagorean tuning system, Mitsukuri argues that in Japanese music the major second would be considered more consonant than the (major or minor) thirds. In a system based on A, for example, the trichord A-B-E should be considered consonant.299 Also, the tritone should be applied consistently, as it occurs in both basic scales.300 Mitsukuri's song cycle *Bashō kikōshū* (Bashō's Travelogue) after ten *haiku* by Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) from 1930/31 for voice and piano (arranged for voice and chamber orchestra in 1937) exemplifies the theory's potential. Here, minor and major seconds significantly enrich the harmonic language based on fourths and fifths.301 Indeed, seconds here repeatedly seem to have the status of resolution sonorities.<sup>302</sup>

Following Lasse Lehtonen's analysis of this cycle, we can see that Mitsukuri did not apply his system mechanically. Indeed, it seems that he took the basic idea of switching between the pitches F§ and F# as well as between B§ and Bb as a starting point for a rather free alteration of the basic modes; moreover, the frequent switching between related modes creates a constant harmonic f lux. Song no. 2 "Uma ni nete" (I slept on my horse; Ex. 2.7)303 clearly establishes E as a pitch center throughout (it acts as the root in all measures except for 3 and 6–7 – built on A – and measure 9 – built on D – which here can be interpreted as a cadential major second below the tonic: E-D-E). The pitch content of the first three measures is E-F-A-B-D(-E), a fivenote variant of the *miyakobushi* scale, which cannot be derived from Mitsukuri's modal system. The mode E-negative would be E-F-G-A-Bb-C-D, so G and C are missing entirely and Bb is raised to B§, resulting in a combination of a *miyakobushi*-trichord (E-F-A) and a *min'yo*-trichord (B-D-E).304 Measures 4 and 5.1 now replace the B§ by Bb, resulting in a full five-note *miyakobushi*scale (E-F-A- Bb-D-[E]). In measure 5.2 the B§ again replaces Bb and in the next measure the F§ is raised to F#, resulting in a simple tetrachord in measures 6–7: A-B-E-F# which could be interpreted as a subset of the mode A-positive (the dualist relative of E-negative) in Mitsukuri's


<sup>297</sup> Mitsukuri, "Über japanischeHarmonie."

<sup>298</sup> Ibid., 2.

<sup>299</sup> Lehtonen, "'March from the Age of Imitation to the Age of Creation,'" 74.

<sup>300</sup> See ibid., 75.

<sup>301</sup> This cycle has received considerable attention in the literature; see Miyuki, "*Basho kikoshu* to Mitsukuri Shūkichi," Galliano, *Yōgaku*, 68–70, Herd, "The Cultural Politics of Japan's Modern Music," 50–51, Pacun, "Nationalism andMusical Style in Interwar *Yōgaku*," 28–31, and Lehtonen, "'March from the Age of Imitation to the Age of Creation,'"108–119.

<sup>304</sup> See Komoda and Nogawa, "Theory and Notation in Japan" for the theory of trichords and tetrachordsin Japanese musictheory, developed by Fumio Koizumi.

system. In measures 8–10 the original pitch content E-F-A-B-D-(E) is restored, focusing on the major second D-E (both as a "leading tone" in the bass and in creating tension between the final melody pitches in the voice (D5) and the piano (E5), as well as at the end of the concluding piano arpeggio). In general, the harmonic structure of this song suggests that Mitsukuri was concerned with deploying alterations to the standard *miyakobushi* scale rather than the consistent application of his own system.<sup>305</sup>

The situation is considerably more complex in no. 6 "Shizukasa ya"(The stillness; Ex. 2.8),306 a song that Mitsukuri claimed not to be able to understand fully himself.307 A continuous minor second ostinato in the right hand of the piano renders the chirping of cicadas, evoked in the final part of the *haiku.* This ostinato clearly alludes to the E negative scale (or varied *miyakobushi*) used in no. 2 and other songs of the cycle. Despite such an allusion, the left hand in measures 2–3 brings pitches E-F§-A-Bb-B§-C-Db, thus expanding and altering the E negative scale chromatically, as had already occurred in nos. 3 and 5. Then E is replaced by Eb in measure 4, when the voice enters, and the passage starting in measure 5 clearly establishes F as a recurring pitch center in the bass. Later Ab replaces A§ (m. 6) and Gb (m. 7) appears, temporarily raised to G§ (m. 9) but returning to Gb later (m. 10); thus the reference scale for this passage appears to be "F-negative" F-Gb-Ab-Bb-C-Db-Eb(-F) (with the fifth scale degree Cb raised to C§, analogous to no. 2). We can thus understand this song as a scalar extension of the two ostinato pitches E and F: while the first melodic segment in the piano (mm. 2–3) still appears to establish an E tonic, the remaining part of the song establishes the F center.308 The centrality of the pitch F is even more apparent in the adaptation of this song in the second movement of Mitsukuri's Sonata for Violin and Piano from 1935, where the violin's melodic line always returns to F (or F-C) toward the end of the phrases.

Mitsukuri had to defend his system and an originary Japanese approach to harmony in general against Klaus Pringsheim (1883–1972), who taught from 1931 to 1937 at the Tokyo Music School and demanded of his students a "submission to the fundamental law of our functional harmony" and to the "strict regulation of imitative-contrapuntal structure."309 In this debate, Mitsukuri pointed to a critique of Pringsheim's arguments that had been raised by Shōhei Tanaka (1862–1945), a former student of Hermann von Helmholtz and a leading musicologist in Japan during the 1930s. Tanaka's 1940 treatise *Nihon wasei no kiso* (Foundations of Japanese Harmony) proposed a group of 70 sonorities that were considered adequate for Japanese harmony, based on two heptatonic scales, stacked thirds, and the principle of just intonation.310

<sup>305</sup> Lehtonen's analysis(following the composer's own account)seemstoo theoretical in assuming three dif ferent modes in five dif ferent sections ("'March from the Age of Imitation to the Age of Creation,'" 108–112). Particularly the interpretation of measures 4–5.1 as A negative seems hardly to make sense, considering that E is clearly established as a tonicin the bass here, asin measures1–2.

<sup>306</sup> *Shizukasa ya / iwa ni shimiiru / semi no koe* / The stillness / seeping into the rocks / cicadas' screech (translation af ter ibid.,116).

<sup>307</sup> See ibid.

<sup>308</sup> My analysis here again dif fers from that of Lehtonen, who interprets measures 2–9 as based on C negative (ibid.,116–118).

<sup>309</sup> Quoted in Suchy "Deutschsprachige Musiker in Japan vor1945," 84,131("Unterwerfung unter das Grundgesetz unsererfunktionellenHarmonie"; "strikte Regulativ derimitatorisch-kontrapunktischen Satzweise"). See also ibid., 84–90 and Galliano, *Yōgkau*, 41–43.

<sup>310</sup> Tanaka, *Nihon wasei no kiso*;see Service, "Harmony Outside the Iron Cage."

Copyright © Shūkichi Mitsukuri / Tokyo: Zen-On Music1971

. . ˙˙

˙ œ

<sup>œ</sup> <sup>œ</sup> <sup>œ</sup> <sup>œ</sup>

*6 6* &

?

˙. ˙.

*Example 2.8: Shūkichi Mitsukuri, Bashō kikōshū (1930/31), no. 6: "Shizukasa ya" (The stillness)* 

Copyright © Shūkichi Mitsukuri / Tokyo: Zen-On Music1971

Such a systematic construction of Japanese harmony sparked criticism from Hayasaka who refuted a number of the sonorities introduced by Tanaka in an article from 1941 and in his 1942 treatise *Nihonteki ongakuron* (Treatise of Japanese Music). Hayasaka's complaint rested on Tanaka's reliance on stacked thirds, and in turn appended a number of Tanaka's chords by adding second- and fourth-intervals as well as excluding several chords entirely from the system of "Japanese harmony."<sup>311</sup>

Hayasaka's 17 short *Piano Pieces* (*Piano shōhin shū*, 1941) demonstrate this "modernist" approach to Japanese harmony while remaining indebted to traditional scalar and melodic structures312 – an approach which provided the point of departure for the young Tōru Takemitsu after 1945, who considered Hayasaka his most important mentor. No. 11 from this cycle (Ex. 2.9) clearly demonstrates what can be described as the main feature of Hayasaka's "corrections" of Tanaka's chord progressions: he always prolongs pitches of the first chord into the second "resolution" chord, resulting in major seconds (in few cases also minor seconds) and fourths. In the piano piece the pitch content is slowly expanded from Eb-F-Bb in measures 1 to 7 first by adding Cb and Ab, clearly establishing Eb (mostly combined with the simultaneous upper-second F) as a pitch center of a *ritsu*-type scale without a third scale degree (Eb-F-Ab-Bb-Cb). From measure 17 alterations are introduced, namely E§ and B§ as well as Gb and Fb (mm. 20–21), resulting in dissonant sonorities like E§-Ab-Eb (mm. 17–21) that can be understood as "verticalizations" of the *miyakobushi* trichord Eb-Fb (E)-Ab which is concurrently introduced in the bass line. A similar approach is applied to the *miyakobushi* tetrachord on Bb during the next section (mm. 22–27), resulting in a transposition of the dissonant sonority to Cb-F-Bb. The remaining two sections restabilize the simple modal situation of the beginning, the pitch content is restricted to Eb-F-Ab-Bb-Cb but now dissonant chords are added (mm. 28–31: Eb-F-Cb-Eb; mm. 34–35 Cb-Eb-F-Bb) that again are verticalizations of the mode's pitch content. The minor second Bb-Cb in the penultimate measure, resolving into Bb in the very last measure, makes this principle of simultaneous modal pitches evident.

The intimate writing style of Hayasaka's *Piano Pieces* marks a first step into the composer's "inner emigration" during the war years. The most impressive document of this period is the cycle *Four Unaccompanied Songs to Poems by Haruo* (*Haruo no shi ni yoru yottsu no mubansō kakyoku*) for solo voice, composed in 1943/44 on poems by Haruo Satō (1892–1964) and alluding to ancient unaccompanied vocal music genres of the court music *gagaku* such as *rōei*. Although no sliding by glissando is indicated, the constantly used fast figures result in slide- or portamento-like vocal articulations. Again, a mode-based writing with continuously altered scale degrees is evident. The first song (Ex. 2.10), evoking the unique singing of the Japanese Bush Warbler (*uguisu*), a bird repeatedly described in classical Japanese poetry of the *Man'yōshū* (compiled c. 759), is based on B with the second, fifth, and sixth scale degrees repeatedly switching between two variants (C/C#, F/F#, G/G#). Hayasaka's and Mitsukuri's techniques of harmonic writing are therefore much closer related than one might expect on first hearing.

\*\*\*

Wartime Japanese nationalism, as David Pacun has demonstrated, inf luenced the discussions on "Japanese harmony" in multiple ways, turning the debates on harmonic details into "ideo-

<sup>311</sup> Hayasaka, "Tanaka hakushi no*Nihon wasei no kiso ni oite no shiken*,"Hayasaka,*Nihonteki ongakuron*;see Galliano, *Yōgkau*, 69–72, 87.

<sup>312</sup> See Pacun,"Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar *Yōgaku*," 33–36.

Copyright © 1958 by Ongaku no tomo sha, Tokyo

logical hair splitting."313 Within a few years' time, Mitsukuri's or Hayasaka's refined harmonic elaborations were turned into tools of propaganda, culminating at the conference "Overcoming Modernity" in July 1942 (→ I.2, *Ref lexive Globalization*). At the same time, Delage turned away from the enthusiasm of his earlier periods and into "inner emigration" during the war, allegedly – similarly to Anton Webern – sympathizing with the German Nazi occupiers.314

Delage, Cowell, Mitsukuri, and Hayasaka considerably invigorated the internationalization and globalization of music in their respective countries of France, the United States, and Japan. A personal encounter between these composers is not documented. Delage and Cowell may have met at a private concert that Cowell gave in Paris in 1923 and for which Béla Bartók allegedly had assembled Ravel, de Falla, Honegger, Milhaud, Prunières, and Roussel as an exclusive audience.315 Cowell and Mitsukuri may have crossed paths at an ISCM festival in the postwar period or during Cowell's stays in Japan in 1955 and 1961 (→ II.5). The focus of my argument, of course, has not been the personal interaction or inf luences between these composers but the question of how their works may exemplify the "non-simultaneity of the simultaneous" in global music history.

Starting by summarizing the commonalities, we can highlight that all four composers were proactive founding members of composers' societies that were conceived in direct opposition to dominant conservative composers of older generations. These groups thus all ref lected critically on a hierarchical, paternalistic social system in the arts with strong nationalist tendencies and showed the necessity for the younger generation to establish itself by setting up their own institutional and artistic infrastructure: musicians, ensembles, concert halls, organization, and funding (in all societies, the founding composers also frequently acted as performers and, of course, as organizers, usually without receiving any payment). Naturally, this process had quite different implications in 1909 Paris, in 1924 California, in 1930 Tokyo, and in 1934 Sapporo.

While internationalism was employed in all these cases as a main counterdiscourse against the aesthetics of the dominating repertoire in concert life and compositional production, tropes of national style were not at all absent from the group's discourses. In 1930s Japan, a refined approach toward Japanese music was indeed the precondition for an emancipation from six decades of massive European inf luence on musical production, resulting in a type of modernity-related cultural confusion that had been described as early as 1912 as "complicated and intricate" (*fukuzatsu hansa*) by the writer Sakutarō Hagiwara (1886–1942).316 Similar to pre-World-War-I nationalism in France and the Great Depression in the United States during the early 1930s, the increasingly fierce political nationalism in Japan since the late 1930s inevitably puts the Japanese composers' activities during that period in a politically charged context. Moreover, the Parisian, Californian, and Tokyo societies had lost their vanguard status after a few years and turned into nationwide organizations, necessarily losing the initial rigor of their aesthetic programs. We can therefore say that the institutional context in which these four composers operated, and which was evidently crucial for the development of their aesthetic ideas, was deeply shaped and inf luenced by local politics and society. The world wars that followed interrupted the optimistic internationalism of the enthusiastic early periods.

As discussed earlier (→ II.1), the model of a "non-simultaneity of the simultaneous" might be expanded in two directions, either highlighting the entanglement of aesthetic ideas in a

<sup>313</sup> Pacun, "Nationalism and Musical Style in Interwar *Yōgaku*," 26.

<sup>314</sup> Gordon, "Discovering Maurice Delage," 298–299.

<sup>315</sup> Sachs, *Henry Cowell*,122.

<sup>316</sup> Menzel, *Hōgaku*, 47–49.

global context, thus suggesting an "entangled history," or rather their distinction and independence, thus suggesting Eisenstadt's "multiple modernities." Tobias Janz has recently discussed the option of multiple musical modernities as a music-historiographical model at length, choosing Japan as a case study.317 He outlines the difficulty of reconciling, on the one hand the close interaction between Japanese and Western music since the Meiji era and, on the other, the particular situation and "uniqueness" of Japanese music history, with its *yōgaku*-*hōgaku* separation and interaction. Adopting a skeptical position toward Japanese peculiarity such as that of philosopher Masao Maruyama (→ III.4), Janz arrives at the careful conclusion that "the imagination of an autochthonous, incommensurable musical culture of Japan gave way to a polyphony of completely different interests in Japanese musical modernity,"318 demanding a sensitive historiographical framework that can account for cultural difference without negating the highly entangled manner in which Western and Japanese modernities are cross-related. It seems therefore, that the "entangled history" model is ultimately a more useful approach, especially for a conclusion to the materials presented in this chapter: that Delage and Mitsukuri chose to set traditional Japanese poems (*haikai* resp. *haiku*) in extremely short pieces, with a harmony based on drone and ostinato structures and multiply chromaticized modes, might be considered a particularly evident case of entanglement. Of course, these two works have to be considered in broader contexts, such as the anti-Romanticist turn to aphoristic forms around 1910 shared by composers worldwide.319 More specifically, both Delage and Mitsukuri were indebted to Debussy's and Ravel's harmonic innovations as well as their experiences of Japanese *hōgaku*, aiming to reach beyond orientalist clichés. Despite such similarities, a quasiethnographical approach as documented in Delage's Indian-inspired works clearly contrasts with Cowell's attempt in the *United Quartet* to extract commonalities from diverse "primitive musics," necessarily eradicating distinguishing features of individual traditions. Still, these approaches are "entangled" by their intention, also shared by Mitsukuri and Hayasaka, to reconceive non-Western musics as a counterdiscourse to a European Classical-Romantic tradition that seemed to provide inappropriate tools for responding to the social and aesthetic problems of music-making in a globalizing modernity.

In the works of these four composers, we can therefore find surprising convergences that hint at the tentative beginnings of a transnational musical modernity. But the divergences, which can be attributed primarily to the institutional, social, and political contexts of their work, make it necessary to conclude that it was impossible for this transnational musical modernity to blossom and to develop before 1945. As the following chapter will demonstrate, even after 1945, institutional and political restrictions considerably obstructed balanced forms of transnational music-aesthetic exchange.

<sup>317</sup> Janz, "Multiple Musical Modernities?"

<sup>318</sup> Ibid., 301.

<sup>319</sup> See Obert, *Musikalische Kürze*.

#### **5. Re-Reading the Impact of the "Cultural Cold War" on Music History: Cowell, Mayuzumi, Berio**

#### Postwar Music History and the "Cultural Cold War"

The relevance of the Cold War for the music history of the decades after 1945, which serves as a master narrative for Richard Taruskin, remains controversial.320 First, it is certainly obvious that the lasting inf luence of (cultural) politics on music in Soviet-dependent countries on the one hand, and those under the inf luence of the United States on the other hand, can hardly be doubted. Second, there is no denying that the music-semantic complexity of the music of composers like Igor Stravinsky, Pierre Boulez, Dmitri Shostakovich, or Hanns Eisler cannot be grasped with reference to contemporary or political discourses alone – and this claim can be made without having to assume an "aseptic" sphere of aesthetic difference divorced from the sociopolitical. Certainly, Taruskin is right to say unequivocally that there is no such thing as "apolitical music"321 and, in particular, that there is a connection between the aesthetics of serial music in postwar Western Europe and the Cold War mentalities of the same period (often considered "apolitical" in the past – or conversely decidedly political).322 In addition, Anne C. Shreff ler has shown clearly that addressing the issues of control and freedom in the discussion of serial and aleatoric music cannot be understood as detached from the political ideologies of the time, in which these issues arose from battles between ideological camps.<sup>323</sup>

Ultimately, we must develop a perspective that can do justice to the complex relationships between music and society in the postwar era. In this respect, Martin Zenck suggests that Taruskin puts forward a "rather blunt equation of 'Cold War' and the strict and stringent organization of serial music, which is referred to as 'cold,' constructed and inhumane."324 Zenck rightly criticizes Taruskin's simplifying and distorting equation of the polemical aesthetic writings of René Leibowitz with Goebbels's propaganda and of Boulez's rhetoric with the "Communist journalism of his day," as well as the diagnosis of alleged "Nazi resonances" in Herbert Eimert's writings.325 There is no question, however, that an authoritarian rhetoric that spoke of the "worthlessness" of contrary aesthetic attitudes, or the "eradication" or "extinction" of certain residues of past styles, is found everywhere in the writings of the 1950s and 60s.

Artists were sometimes well aware of the historical burden of such rhetoric. In this situation, in the early 1950s, a young composer like Pierre Boulez tried to write music that was emphatically based on historical experience and knowledge, a music

which distances itself from the abuse of the body and its sensations in Nazi ideology and its relative,the Vichy regime in France, a music[...]thatcannot be used for any political machinations.

<sup>320</sup> See in summary, among others, Schmelz, "Introduction: Music in the Cold War" and Shref fler, "Cold War Dissonance." In German-language musicology, the Cold War has so far been addressed largely in reviews of East German music history af ter 1945/48; see Jungmann, *Kalter Krieg in der Musik* and Tischer, "Musik in der Ara des kalten Krieges."

<sup>321</sup> See Taruskin, "Af terword: *Nicht blutbefleckt*?," 276–277.

<sup>322</sup> Shref fler, "Cold War Dissonance," 54–56.

<sup>323</sup> See Shref fler, "Ideologies of Serialism," 221–225.

<sup>324</sup> Zenck, *Pierre Boulez*, 64 ("ziemlich plumpe[] Gleichsetzung von 'Kaltem Krieg' […] und der strikten wie stringenten Organisation derseriellen Musik […], die als'kalt', konstruiert und als[…] inhuman bezeichnetwird").

<sup>325</sup> See Taruskin, *Music in the Late Twentieth Century*,18.

In this sense, it is an eminently political music that, in its internal organization and expression, follows the concept of a "committed literature" in the sense of Jean-Paul Sartre, without being explicitly orcrudely connected to any external politicalcontent.326

And that the anti-communist cultural policy of the American occupying forces sometimes also promoted performances and institutions of the musical avant-garde327 – in the sense of a defense of artistic freedom, more *nolens volens* than with real conviction – does not make the resulting works simply "products" of the Cold War.328

Finally, following the observations of Ben Parsons329 and Zenck, the "changeability of the temporal core as inscribed in the musical work, which unfolds in its post-history,"330 must be taken into account. This aspect is ref lected above all in the performance history331 and changing public reception of serial music and other avant-garde music during the 1950s and 60s. This history might arguably be interpreted as a fruitful public dispute and continued revision of positions, rather than ideological "blindness."<sup>332</sup>


<sup>326</sup> Zenck, *Pierre Boulez*, 66 ("[…] die sich vom Missbrauch des Körpers und seines Gefühls in der Nazi-Ideologie und dem mit ihr verwandten des Vichy-Systems in Frankreich distanziert, also eine Musik […], die in keiner Weise politischen Machenschaf ten dienstbar gemacht werden kann. In diesem Sinne handelt essich um eine eminent politische Musik, die von ihrer inneren Organisation und vom Ausdruck das Konzept einer 'engagierten Literatur' im Sinne Jean-Paul Sartres sucht, ohne mit einem externen politischen Außenhalt ausdrücklich und plakativ verbunden zu sein."). Of course, Sartre's position is exactly characterized by this "external political content," which Boulez declined. In addition, Sartre expressed in public discussion with René Leibowitz a stressed skepticism regarding the possibilities of a *musique engagée*. See also Carroll, *Music and Ideology in Cold War Europe*,103–140 and Glaser, "René Leibowitz und die Idee einer 'musique engagée.'"

Considering the historical situation after 1945, in which the entire continent of Europe was at the center of a global conf lict between the new "superpowers," the United States and the Soviet Union, a tendency to view all manifestations of art or culture as having an implicitly global or international impact was particularly strong in Western Europe. The fact that the most inf luential trend in Western European postwar music, 1950s serialism, drew considerably on the idea of a "pure" (and therefore potentially "apolitical") structure is like the negative image of this all-encompassing public and political role often attributed to music and the arts in postwar societies. Indeed, the fact that music, and new music in particular, was part of this power struggle and was consciously conceived of as a medium or even "weapon" in the "Cultural Cold War" has been highlighted in a number of recent studies,<sup>333</sup> though the extent to which this explicit political context shaped aesthetic and stylistic developments and decisions remains contested.

The dedicated attempts of inf luential institutions such as the Darmstadt Summer Course to avoid overt political topics or inf luences can clearly be seen as a counter-reaction to the politicized artistic doctrines of Soviet "socialist realism" reimplemented by Andrej Zhdanov in early 1948 and in the Prague Manifesto of the same year, adopted by the Second International Congress of Composers and Music Critics (20–29 May 1948), modifying but also affirming the Zhdanov doctrine (→ II.2).334 In both Western Europe and the United States, the sometimes naïve idealization of scientific thought – clearly exemplified by serial music theory – and the optimistic image and use of technology for experimental means were further indications of a close relationship between Western new music and capitalist modernism, eventually resulting in a re-academization of musical composition, most famously instigated by Milton Babbitt's efforts to install a PhD program in composition at Princeton University.335 And while technological progress had equally positive connotations in the Soviet-dominated sphere, the aesthetic appropriation of the social prestige attached to the sciences in art music during the postwar period was unique to the project of the Western avant-garde.

The general politicization in large parts of the musical world during the 1960s and 1970s remained closely connected to world political events and developments, particularly in divided countries such as Germany<sup>336</sup> and Korea.337 More generally, the tremendous effect of the Cold War in East Asia with the Maoist revolution in 1949, the withdrawal of the nationalist Chinese forces to Taiwan, the Korean War, and the division of Korea, suggests that from an Asian perspective, cultural or musical statements in this region were considered implicitly political, all the more since a concept of "musical autonomy" had not been established in Asian countries


emerged)." (Shref fler, "Dahlhaus und die 'höhere Kritik,'" 256 ["Ein Symptom dieser 'Blindheit'war die implizite Annahme, dass die autonome Musik per se unpolitisch sei. Die serielle Avantgarde wurde dementsprechend alsInbegrif f der künstlerischenAutonomie verstanden.Dass die politischeUnterstützung künstlerischerAutonomie eherimVerborgenenbetriebenwurde, gehörtmit zudieser'Blindheit' undistinsofernsystemimmanent bedingt. So waren die Bestrebungen westlicher Regierungen, Kulturförderung als Instrument internationaler Politik einzusetzen, damals weitgehend unbekannt, wie zum Beispiel die Unterstützung der Darmstädter Ferienkurse durch die U.S.-Besatzung oder die Tätigkeiten des CIA-geförderten Congress for Cultural Freedom (woraus unter anderem die Zeitschrif t *Der Monat*sowie die Berliner Festwochen hervorgingen)."])

on a broader basis before 1945. This does not mean that musical works in postwar East Asia were explicitly political in general; on the contrary, the majority of Western-oriented East Asian composers, like most of their Western colleagues well into the 1960s, tried to remain aloof from political engagement.

Although global politics was thus obviously a considerable factor of synchronization and interconnection in postwar music history, "Cold War ideologies" remain too crude and inf lexible a framework for grasping the complex effects of musical works and performances on the diverse historical processes in different countries and regions of the world. Moreover, it seems inadequate and insensitive to the complexity of historical constellations and processes to place the aesthetic appropriation of scientific trends of the Cold War (even if they were based on or implied a certain authoritarian worldview) in (Western) serial music and the simultaneous control of composers and musicians in totalitarian regimes on the same level. In sum, "simultaneous" discourses or processes should not be simplified by attributing them to a common (in this case political-ideological) framework; rather, one must keep the "non-simultaneous" character of local music-related discourses in mind when trying to sketch the entanglements of global music-making in the postwar period. The following discussion will show that this is all the truer if one widens the perspective from the transatlantic situation to the global. For an appropriate music-historical account of the decades after 1945, nuance is required in order to avoid falling back into the polarizations that characterize this historical period.

#### Henry Cowell, Toshirō Mayuzumi, Luciano Berio and the Tokyo 1961 East-West Music Encounter

As demonstrated in Chapter II.2, both internationalism – as a form of composers', performers', and audiences' awareness of global interconnectedness and interdependence – and universalism – as the more or less open attempt to reach beyond the limitations of national or local musical confinements, guided by religious, technological, structural, or ethnic ideas and categories – may be understood as countermodels to the ubiquitous construction of composers as representatives of specific national or cultural identities by media, historians, and audiences. How, then, did the different facets of international and universal composition interact during the postwar period in such a way that simultaneous works and discourses reveal "non-simultaneous" preconditions and entangled histories? Three short case studies will address this question, focusing on the involvement of three prominent composers from different countries (United States, Japan, Italy) in a key event of the "Cultural Cold War."

The term "international" figured prominently in most activities and events hosted or supported by the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), a CIA-sponsored organization that existed between 1950 and 1967 and played a crucial role in enhancing international relations in music and other arts during the 1950s and 1960s, pursuing a decidedly anticommunist agenda.338

<sup>338</sup> The secret financing of the CCF, founded in West Berlin in June 1950, by the CIA, which was mainly carried out through the shell organization Farfield Foundation, was disclosed in a series of articles in the *New York Times* in April 1966 and led initially to the renaming of the CCF asthe International Association for Cultural Freedom (IACF), which was then funded by the Ford Foundation. In 1979, the organization dissolved. For basic information about the Congress for Cultural Freedom see among others Coleman, *The Liberal Conspiracy*, Hochgeschwender, *Freiheit in der Of fensive?*, Stonor Saunders, *The Cultural Cold War*, Scott-Smith, *The Politics of Apolitical Culture*, and Wellens, *Music on the Frontline*. Musical institutions, works, and developments connected to the CCF are discussed, among others, in Stonor Saunders, *The Cultural Cold War*, Carroll, *Music and Ideology in* 

By funding large music festivals in Paris (1952), Rome (1954), Venice (1958), and Tokyo (1961), the CCF aimed to demonstrate the unlimited freedom of style and expression in contemporary music in the West as counterexample to the Soviet bloc's "controlled music" ("gegängelte Musik").339 This is clearly documented in the introduction by the CCF's secretary general, the Russian-American composer Nicolas Nabokov, to the 1952 Paris festival:

During this coming arts festival, dedicated to l'Œuvre du XXe siècle, we will not hear any scores that do not owe their qualities, their very soul, to the fact that they are the music and the art of men who know the value of liberty. […] And those who live today know this value of their times better because they have seen it. […] If a music festival has a purpose and a virtue, it must be to combat hopelessness and discouragement. […] Totalitarian ideologies […] cannot diminish one inch the masterworksthatspeak forthemselves – and forthe civilization that gave them birth.340

A peak of the CCF's dedicated internationalism was the Tokyo East-West Music Encounter Festival and Conference in April 1961, co-funded by the *Ford Foundation*, purportedly aiming at closing the gap between the musical "East" and the musical "West." The festival and conference had been in planning since Nabokov's stay in Tokyo in 1955, but the realization had been delayed time and again due to political events and other factors.341 The CCF acted as the initiator and cofinancier, with funding mainly from the Rockefeller Foundation as well as the Japanese Society for International Cultural Exchange (KBK) and the Tokyo City Government.342 Both festival and conference attracted high-profile attendees from the United States, Europe, and East Asia (the conference program and a list of conference participants are provided in Table 2.2343). Elliott Carter, Colin McPhee, Lou Harrison, and Alan Hovhaness, among others, traveled from the USA alongside the 64-year-old Henry Cowell, while Luciano Berio, Iannis Xenakis, Bruno Maderna, and Boris Blacher, among others, came from Europe. Berio was in the process of moving his main residence from Italy to the United States, where he worked from 1962, initially at Mills College. In a concert on 5 May 1961 at the East-West Music Encounter Festival, Toshirō Mayuzumi's neoclassical orchestral work *Bacchanale* (1953) was performed under the direction of Seiji Ozawa by the New York Philharmonic; Cowell forwent the performance of his own work at the festival in Mayuzumi's favor (albeit not entirely voluntarily).344

*Cold War Europe*, Parsons, "Sets and the City," Shref fler, "Ideologies of Serialism," Beal, *New Music, New Allies*, Sheppard, "Continuity in Composing the American Cross-Cultural," and Giroud, *Nicolas Nabokov*.


<sup>339</sup> Adorno's essay "Die gegängelteMusik"waswritten in 1948 in immediate response to Eisler's PragueManifesto andwas first published in 1953 in the Berlin journal *Der Monat*,whichwassupported by the CCF (other journals supported by the CCF included *Encounter* in London and *Preuves* in Paris) (Stonor Saunders, *The Cultural Cold War*, 26, 85–87,138–158;see also footnote 332 above).

<sup>343</sup> The conference is discussed in Fukunaka, "Chinmoku suru 'seijin', chūshō ka sareta 'aika,'" Sheppard, "Continuity in Composing the American Cross-Cultural," 523–524, Borio, "Convergence Between West and East in 20th-Century Music," 109–110, Giroud, *Nicolas Nabokov*, 329–332, and Fukunaka, "World Music History and Interculturality."

<sup>344</sup> Sachs, *Henry Cowell*, 473–474.

*Table 2.2: East West Music Encounter Conference, Tokyo 17–22 April 1961, Program and List of Participants*<sup>345</sup>


<sup>345</sup> Executive Committee for1961 Tokyo East-West Music Encounter, *Music – East and West*.


Though largely obscured by the propagation and endorsement of "freedom" in the arts, the hidden political motives of the CCF's activities, mainly its aim to "contain" leftist or more explicitly pro-Soviet tendencies, were obvious to many commentators and participants in Tokyo346 as well as at the earlier European events, although the CIA funding was revealed only in 1966. In addition, there was a general anti-American sentiment in Japan, with the previous year's ratification of the Ampo Pact (Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan, 19 June 1960), in which troop postings on Japanese territory were prolonged, provoking student protests.

Many of the composers participating in the Tokyo conference ostensibly shared Euroskeptic viewpoints, envisioning a new "universalist" musical idiom independent from dominating European trends such as serialism, while arguing for "preserving" non-Western traditions, sa-

<sup>346</sup> Hayashi,"TwoOpinionsOverthe TokyoWorldMusic Festival: II." See Fukunaka,"Chinmoku suru 'seijin',chūshō ka sareta 'aika.'"

ving them from the threat of a contaminating Western inf luence347 – not least in order to subject them to compositional appropriation. Cowell was particularly clear in this regard:

[…] composers would like to feel that they have the freedom to draw on worldwide musical resources, so we would like to do more of what Dr. Mantle Hood is doing in Los Angeles; that is in training groups of American people to play oriental instruments from all nations, to sing in oriental languages and styles and composers would like to draw on the tone quality of certain oriental instruments. We would like to include this and to have a worldwide and international field by drawing on the musicwhich appealsto people all over theworld.348

During the conference, ethnomusicologists and composers therefore unanimously demanded the preservation of "non-Western" traditional musical practices, which to them appeared under acute threat in the rapidly Westernizing Asian countries.349 This focus on the preservation of musical traditions did not occur "by coincidence," but was part of a larger trend in US foreign cultural policy at the time:

Especially at the time when the Vietnam War,civil rights movements, and revelations aboutcovert CIA interventions in Africa, Asia and Latin America shattered faith in liberal universalism in favour of cultural relativism, [Ford Foundation] administrators considered investment in local heritages as a tactic ofsoothing those who criticised the American modernization programmes for being too one-sidedly focused on economic and political development at the expense of the indigenoustraditionsthey sought to sustain.350

A memorandum written at the end of the conference outlined the project of an "International Institute for Comparative Music Studies." Two years later, in 1963, when Nabokov was invited by the Mayor of Berlin, Willy Brandt, to act as advisor to the city government on cultural matters,<sup>351</sup> the Berlin International Institute of Comparative Music Studies and Documentation (iicmsd, in 1991 renamed International Institute for Traditional Music) was founded, financed through the Ford Foundation and directed by Alain Daniélou (the Institute was closed in 1996).352

Despite these connections, it would clearly miss the point to attribute the international or even universalist claims of both serial music and countertrends such as Henry Cowell's ethnically defined universalism exclusively to institutional and political history and denigrate these

<sup>347</sup> See Cowell, "Oriental Influence on Western Music," Sheppard "Continuity in Composing the American Cross-Cultural," 523–524.

<sup>348</sup> Henry Cowell in *"*Discussions. Music and the Listener,*"* in: Executive Committee for1961 Tokyo East-WestMusic Encounter, *Music – East and West*,183–201: 197.

<sup>349</sup> "Non-Western" within this conference denotes "Asian" exclusively, since African and Latin American music were conspicuously absent from the discussion.

<sup>350</sup> Langenkamp, "(Dis)Connecting Cultures, Creating Dreamworlds," 221.

<sup>351</sup> See Stonor Saunders, *The Cultural Cold War*, 295–296 and Giroud, *Nicolas Nabokov*, 341–371.

<sup>352</sup> "A Proposal by the Standing Committee of 1961 Tokyo East-West Music Encounter Conference," in: Executive Committee for 1961 Tokyo East-West Music Encounter, *Music – East and West*, 227–228. The Standing Committee included prominent namessuch as Yehudi Menuhin, Saburō Moroi, Alain Daniélou, and Hans H. Stuckenschmidt (see Giroud, *Nicolas Nabokov*, 332). The plan for such an institute went back to a meeting of Nabokov with AlainDaniélou inMadrasin 1955 (ibid., 346) andwas part of a comprehensive ef fort by the CCF to sustainably strengthen Berlin asthe location of "free"culture, especially af ter the Berlin Wall had been built; the Berliner Festspiele also emerged from this process. See Stonor Saunders, *The Cultural Cold War*, 295–296.

largely unpopular styles as corrupted by the ideologies of their day: "It is easy to dismiss the musical styles that we never liked anyway, if we can convince ourselves that they only existed as part of a CIA plot."<sup>353</sup> However, such contexts reveal the important insight that "advanced music is not neutral (autonomous) or even necessarily critical, simply by virtue of its idiom."354 A closer look at three composers involved in the 1961 conference and festival will elaborate on this point, while hinting at their "non-synchronous" motives and presumptions: Henry Cowell (1897–1965), Toshirō Mayuzumi (1929–1997), and Luciano Berio (1925–2003) participated in (or can be at least associated with) the 1961 Tokyo Festival and Conference, with the sixty-four-year-old Cowell being promoted as a major figure by the American co-organizers. The personal participation of Mayuzumi in the conference at present cannot be confirmed, as he was on a six-month stay in the United States around that time, although, as mentioned above, a piece by him was performed during the festival. Far beyond the conference, the "entanglement" of all three composers with Cold-War-related institutions was significant for their careers and artistic development, despite their different ages, social status, and roles in their respective countries' musical scenes. Thus, their unlikely "encounter" at the Tokyo 1961 conference and festival provides an apt example of the "non-simultaneous" impact of simultaneous events in postwar music history.

#### Henry Cowell and the Project of Hybridization

Henry Cowell's compositional approach, aimed at hybridizing global musical traditions, was particularly conducive to the "cross-national" impulse of the East-West Music Encounter Conference. Cowell had been studying non-Western music cultures since the mid-1920s (→ II.4). His program of transethnic universalism developed in the early 1930s, and remained surprisingly consistent over more than three decades despite all the political changes during that period. Cowell increasingly regarded his approach as specifically American:

In my own music I believe I coordinate […] musical means from all parts of the world, and from all ages of musical history. Into my inner creative needs I may feel the necessity of drawing on resourcesfrom any part oftheworld,folk orcultivated, and from any age,simple orcomplex. […] In away, Ithink ofthis astrulyAmerican, because America more than any othercountry, is made up of all the peoples of the world, and less than any other great composer-producing country doesit have any one specific old tradition of musicalcomposition.355

As shown in the previous chapter, Cowell systematically created works that deal with individual music cultures as well as culturally hybrid works.356 He simultaneously tended toward a more conservative idiom contrasted with his early "ultramodernist" experiments, an idiom which was certainly better suited for representative political purposes than, for instance, John Cage's concurrent ascetic purism (→ II.6), despite the two composers' shared ideas and orientation toward universalism.

As early as the 1930s, Cowell had grown acquainted with Japanese music. Of particular importance was his encounter with the *shakuhachi* player Kitaro Tamada, who taught Cowell the

<sup>353</sup> Shref fler, "Cold War Dissonance," 59.

<sup>354</sup> Ibid.

<sup>355</sup> Cowell, statement Tokyo, 1 May 1961, quoted in Sheppard, "Continuity in Composing the American Cross-Cultural," 507.

<sup>356</sup> See, among others, Nicholls, "Transethnicism and the American Experimental Tradition."

instrument from 1937 during Cowell's imprisonment in San Quentin Prison (1936–40).357 In 1946, Cowell dedicated the solo work *The Universal Flute* for *shakuhachi* to Tamada.358 Crucial to the context of the Tokyo conference in 1961 was Cowell's year-long trip to Asia between August 1956 and September 1957, which was generously funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the US Department of State. This trip took Cowell through Ireland, London, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Iran (for two months), Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea.<sup>359</sup> Comparable to the activities of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the Rockefeller Foundation had been actively involved in the "Cultural Cold War" since 1955 and saw Asia as a key region, not least as a result of the Korean War.360

While still in Japan at the end of this journey, Cowell began composing the orchestral piece *Ongaku* in June 1957. The work, commissioned by the Louisville Orchestra, was inspired by the Japanese court music *gagaku* and the urban chamber music *sankyoku*. Cowell completed this work in September 1957 after his return to the US.361 *Ongaku* was directly inf luenced by the music Cowell heard during his stay in Tokyo; this included rehearsals by court musicians, *gagaku* court music, and *shakuhachi* music. Cowell was particularly impressed by the chord structures of the mouth organ *shō* in *gagaku* music (→ IV.).362

The work was a prelude to a series of works by Cowell inspired by Japanese instruments and musical genres, including two concertos for *koto* and orchestra.<sup>363</sup> Cowell explicitly pursued an anti-European program, or, more specifically, a program directed against the contemporary serial avant-garde in Europe and the USA: "In 'drawing on resources' from nations such as Japan, Cowell's explicitly stated goal was to counter international serialism with a new musical universalism – on American terms."364 As part of the Tokyo conference, Cowell clarified that from his point of view, the interest in Asian music was primarily due to the diagnosis that Western music styles had already lost their "vitality" toward the end of the nineteenth century.<sup>365</sup> Undoubtedly, Cowell's universalistic transethnicism benefited US diplomacy at the time:

His universalism and attempts to synthesize East and West in his music, however benign in motivation, worked hand-in-hand with U.S. Cold War ef forts to form political bonds with Asian nations, particularly with Japan, much in the same way as state-sponsored radio broadcasts, lectures, and concerts of American music abroad […]. […] living "in the whole world of mu-

<sup>357</sup> Sheppard, *Continuity in Composing the American Cross-Cultural*, 500–506. For a broader representation of the reception of Japanese traditional musicin the twentieth-century USA see Sheppard, *Extreme Exoticism*.

<sup>358</sup> Sheppard, *Continuity in Composing the American Cross-Cultural*, 505–506.

<sup>359</sup> Sachs, *Henry Cowell*, 429–430. "For his 1957 tour, Cowell had been contacted by the U.S. Information Agency and asked to deliver lectures on contemporary American music with the explicit goal of promoting the image oftheU.S. as a cultured nation to counter Soviet propaganda."(Sheppard,"Continuity in Composing theAmerican Cross-Cultural," 507).

<sup>360</sup> Sachs, *Henry Cowell*, 469–470.

<sup>361</sup> Sheppard, "Continuity in Composing the American Cross-Cultural," 518.

<sup>362</sup> Sachs, *Henry Cowell*, 453.

<sup>363</sup> Concerto [no.1]for *koto* andOrchestra (1962) and Concerto no. 2 for *koto* andOrchestra (1965). The Concerto for Harmonica (1962) was created at the same time and originally bore the title *Haiku (Spirit of Japan)*, which was crossed out in the autograph (Sheppard, "Continuity in Composing the American Cross-Cultural," 518).

<sup>364</sup> Ibid., 508.

<sup>365</sup> Cowell, "Oriental Influence on Western Music," 72.

sic" and subsuming all musics under an American label do involve a certain problematic egotism that resonateswith U.S.covert imperialism of the past fif ty years.366

Naturally one must treat such theses, which suggest a kind of "complicity" between artists and cultural politics or diplomacy, with a degree of caution.367 Even though the Head of the American Center in Japan, E.J. Findlay, thanked Cowell after a week-long lecture and concert tour in Japan after the East-West Music Encounter Festival "for all you did in Japan to win the cultural cold war,"<sup>368</sup> one must at least consider that Cowell's universalism was not an immediate result of the geopolitical situations of the Cold War, especially since it had developed from the 1920s onwards. Certainly the Cold War provided additional motivation and encouragement for this perspective. Nevertheless, it is obvious that Cowell's approach, which, unlike John Cage's, gave up neither the concept of the work nor an essentialist concept of culture, was indeed suitable as a model for a diplomatic elite whose target group was a broad public.

How did Cowell's hybridized musical language actually materialize? In the introductory text to *Ongaku*, the composer wrote:

The foreign music strangest to Western ears is certainly that of the Far East: China, Korea and Japan. But the strangenessseemsto be largely superficial: a matter of tone color and technique rather than structure. The basic relationship between music East and West is attested, I think, by the fact that Western orchestra performers will find nothing particularly surprising in their individual instrumental parts [in *Ongaku*] […] in spite of the unfamiliar style in which the music iscouched. […] [the piece] is not an imitation of Japanese music, but an integration ofsome of its usageswith related aspects of Western music. […] all the thematic material is my own; there are no actual Japanese themes in the work. The themes are extended by means of techniques for melodic variation that are common to both cultures. Western techniques for thematic development are not applied to the material.<sup>369</sup>

It is remarkable in this note that Cowell implicitly refers to his own work as "Japanese music" – from the perspective of American musicians and listeners – while emphasizing that he had not quoted any Japanese melodies. Autograph materials, meanwhile, have revealed a close connection between the first movement with the pitch structure and instrumentation of the *tōgaku* repertoire of *gagaku* Japanese court music.<sup>370</sup> Cowell, however, chose the *miyakobushi*  scale for the first movement. This scale had played a significant role in nationalist music theory and composition in the 1920s to 40s and had been conceptualized as specifically "Japanese" as described in Chapter II.4. It does not, however, appear in the *tōgaku* repertoire, but rather in certain *koto* and *shamisen* traditions of urban music during the Edo period (1600–1867) as in the pieces of *sankyoku* (trio setting originally of *shamisen*, *koto*, and the knee fiddle *kokyū*, increasingly replaced by the *shakuhachi*). In addition, Cowell's scale on the pitch G (G-Ab-(A)-C-

<sup>366</sup> Sheppard, "Continuity in Composing the American Cross-Cultural," 507–508 and Sachs, *Henry Cowell*, 452–453.

<sup>367</sup> Cowell, like several other artists, was a consultant worker at the Of fice of War Information between the two world wars (OWI; United States War Information Of fice), where he was responsible for designing radio programsfor US soldiers. See Cowell, "Shaping Musicfor Total War" and Beal, *New Music, New Allies*, 8–11.

<sup>368</sup> Quoted in Sachs, *Henry Cowell*, 474.

<sup>369</sup> Cowell, program note to *Ongaku*, quoted in Sheppard, "Continuity in Composing the American Cross-Cultural," 508.

<sup>370</sup> Sheppard, "Continuity in Composing the American Cross-Cultural," 510.

D-Eb-G) includes the pitch Eb, which does not appear in the pitch system of *tōgaku* (Ex. 2.11).371 Likewise, the chords characterized by mild dissonances in high strings and woodwinds are not exact duplications or transpositions of the *shō*'s *aitake* chords, which determine the harmony of *tōgaku* (→ IV.1). Thus, on the one hand, Cowell may have felt a special affinity for the "oriental" sounding *miyakobushi* due to his engagement with Persian and Arab music, while on the other hand, the references to Japanese traditions are possibly intentionally set in an imprecise manner in order to avoid the implication of "cultural imperialist" plagiarism. The combination of *koto* and *gagaku* traditions, which are strictly separated in the Japanese *hōgaku* (traditional music) system, may also indicate a deliberate form of intra-Japanese hybridization, which is also suggested by the choice of the general title *Ongaku* ("Music" – in opposition to *yōgaku*, Western-oriented musical composition, and *hōgaku*, traditional Japanese music).372

Cowell was by no means the only composer fascinated by the musical traditions that Japan had institutionalized with great "success" since the Meiji restoration. Especially *gagaku* and the *shō* offered a point of attraction for many composers from both Japan and the West, including Iannis Xenakis, Olivier Messiaen, Benjamin Britten, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Tōru Takemitsu, Jean-Claude Eloy, and Toshio Hosokawa (→ IV.). Except for the "scenic music" of Stockhausen with *gagaku* instruments from the late 1970s,373 the public in Japan responded favorably to these approaches of Western composers, as in Cowell's case.<sup>374</sup> In all these cases, in the sense of

372 Thiswas also evidentin the performance ofthework in Japan:"some Japanese audience memberswere apparently disturbed by Cowell's juxtaposition of the sacred and ritualistic *gagaku* alongside the *sankyoku* genre of secular entertainment" (Sheppard, "Continuity in Composing the American Cross-Cultural," 511).

373 See Shimizu, "Stockhausen und Japan" and Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 148–153. In the 1970s, Stockhausen developed the concept of "Szenische Musik," culminating in his music theater cycle *Licht* (1977–2003). *Der Jahreslauf* provides an early example of this approach. See Wirtz, *Licht. Die szenische Musik von Karlheinz Stockhausen*.

<sup>371</sup> The modalsystem of *gagaku* has of ten been described in dif ferent ways and ischaracterized by some contradictions between theory and practice: "Gradually theory (even as rationalized in Japan) and evolving performance practice in *gagaku* diverged to a confusing degree" (McQueen Tokita andHughes, "Context and Change in Japanese Music," 19). Fundamentally, one starts from a nine-note pitch repository, the pitches available on the mouth organ *shō*: C-C#-D-E-F#-G-G#-A-Bb (i.e., without Eb, F§, and B§) (Garfias, *Music of a Thousand Autumns*, 60). In the mode classes*ryo* (major third over the central tone) and *ritsu* (minor third over the central tone)categorized in today's practice, or three mode types on it (see ibid., 61–63), there are no formationsthatcontain the typical *miyakobushi* trichord (C-Db-F). Although similar melodicformationssometimes occurin the context of the variable intonation of the leading reed *hichiriki* (see ibid., 133), Cowell, in the first movement of *Ongaku*, clearly uses the trichords C-Ab-G and G-Eb-D as a structural basis, not as intonational variants. Sheppard, in his account also referring to the compositionalsketches,statesthat only the second movement of *Ongaku*was oriented to *sankyoku*, while the first movement was (exclusively) related to *gagaku* (Sheppard, "Continuity in Composing the American Cross-Cultural," 510). There is no doubt that the main models of both movements are unequivocal in terms of composition and instrumentation (in the second movement the *gagaku* model is retaken in measure 90 in a reminiscentform). Itis, however, likely that Cowell, intentionally avoiding too close a reference to the original forms,consciously kept the modalsystem of the first movement "inauthentic," thus blending *gagaku* and *sankyoku* references in both movements.

<sup>374</sup> The *koto* soloist Kimio Eto (1924–2012), a student ofthe eminent *koto* reformer Michio Miyagi and soloist atthe premiere of Cowell's first *koto* concerto,said of Cowell's *Ongaku*, "The degree ofsuccess with which Mr. Cowell has caught the flavor of Japanese music is illustrated by the reaction of a Japanese audience to [*Ongaku*] in 1959. Itwas enthusiastically received by older members of the audience. Butsome of the younger ones,whose musical leanings and experience are increasinglyWestern,were puzzled. 'Frankly, it'stoo Japanese for us,'said

Andreas Meyer's "musical anthropology,"375 there is a tension between what is considered an "archaic," but in fact idealized, non-Western tradition (which, in the case of Japanese court music for example, was a construct of modern Japan) and the aesthetic demand after hybridizing such traditions under the conditions of musical modernity, where the forms of "synthesis" could by no means all be equivalent, but were subject to a controversial contemporaneous discourse.

#### Toshirō Mayuzumi: Reception of Modernism and Neo-Nationalism

In global music-political contexts, the polarization of "West" and "East" after 1945 made itself felt in a variety of ways, and also had a tremendous impact on postwar Japan. It may be too neutral to describe the development of Japanese music after 1945 as a "shared space" of European and Japanese musical culture (as Bonnie Wade does376), as a common ground prepared by the systematic adaptation of European music since the Meiji restoration of 1868. That such an adaptation had to be thoroughly reconceived after a period of fierce militarist aggression, war crimes, and the atomic catastrophe may be demonstrated by the example of Toshirō Mayuzumi, probably the most active and innovative Japanese composer during the 1950s. Mayuzumi presented a key work of a neo-national aesthetic in 1958 at the age of 29 with his *Nirvana Symphony* [*Nehan kokyokyoku*] for orchestra and male choir. The neo-national aesthetic, one that many artists in postwar Japan avoided or explicitly denounced, reminded many of the Japanese militarism in the Pacific War and its exploitation of traditional cultural symbols. Mayuzumi, born in 1929, was part of the composers' group *San'nin no kai* (Group of Three) founded

375 See Meyer, "Volkstümlich – primitiv – populär." (→ II.1, II.2)

376 See Wade, *Composing Japanese Musical Modernity*, 39–95.

one, 'it's way over our heads.'" (Daniel Webster, "An Interview with Kimio Eto." *Philadelphia Inquirer*, 18/12/1964, quoted in Sheppard, "Continuity in Composing the American Cross-Cultural," 511).

in 1953, which also included Yasushi Akutagawa (1925–89) and Ikuma Dan (1924–2001). *San'nin no kai* was the only one of numerous groups to emerge during the 1950s that attempted to connect to national or "pan-Asian" prewar trends. After a short period of study in Paris in 1951–52, Mayuzumi presented the earliest examples of *musique concrète* and electronic music in Japan, as well as orchestral and chamber works in different styles situated between neoclassicist and avant-garde idioms.377 Steven Nuss describes Mayuzumi's subsequent neo-nationalist turn as a "conscious decision in the late 1950s and early 1960s to reject or subjugate the considerable inf luence on him of contemporary Western (particularly French) compositional techniques and styles and to draw instead on his profound knowledge of Japan's traditional musical genres for musical inspiration" and thus as a "clear attempt to take what he saw as the West's insidious (musical) colonialism and f lip it on its head."378

Mayuzumi tried to continue nationally-oriented prewar tendencies using new studio technologies: in a remarkable anticipation of spectral tendencies, he took spectral analyses of Japanese temple bells (*bonshō*), as the harmonic basis for moving "sound-masses" in movements 1, 3, and 5 (*Campanology I–III*) of the six-movement *Nirvana Symphony*. Characteristically, he wanted to make a trace of the "Japanese" in the bell spectrum via two pentatonic modes.379 The modes, however, are largely presented in a decidedly "modern," textural reading of the national element and integrated into a system of "verticalized" serial rows.380 The result is fundamentally different from Cowell's traditionalist hybrid style study designed just one year earlier. A modernity-driven critique of tradition is linked to a novel interpretation of the national element. The textural technique continues in some passages of movements 2, 4, and 6 (*Śūraṅgama*; *Mahāprajñāpāramitā*; *Finale*). Here, the Buddhist recitation practices of various Japanese sects are taken up and dissolved into moving sound fields.

At the invitation of the Ford Foundation, Mayuzumi spent about six months in New York from the end of 1960, where he attended performances of his orchestral work *Bacchanale* (1953) by the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein at Carnegie Hall (13, 14, and 16 April 1961). He received a commission from the New York City Ballet and met with its director George Balanchine. Subsequently, he composed his two-movement orchestral work *Bugaku* (the score was completed on 23 March 1962 in Tokyo, and the world premiere was on 20 March 1963 in New York).381 Following on from his spectacular cello solo *Bunraku* (1960), Mayuzumi drew more and more explicitly on Japanese models – possibly also motivated by works such as Cowell's *Ongaku*, but maybe also by the Tokyo East-West Music Encounter Conference of 1961.382 In the context of

<sup>377</sup> Galliano, *Yōgaku*,166–168,185–186.

<sup>378</sup> Nuss, "Musicfrom the Right," 86–87.

<sup>379</sup> Mayuzumi, "Traditional Elements as a Creative Source for Composition."

<sup>380</sup> Shimizu, "Mayuzumi Toshirō no kanpanoloji efekuto."

<sup>381</sup> Mayuzumi, "Baranshin to barē 'Bugaku.'"

<sup>382</sup> Other similarly oriented works by Mayuzumi from the same period include *Sange* (Scattering) for male choir (1959),the*Mandala Symphony* (1960),the symphonic poem *Samsara* (Reincarnation)(1962), and the cantata *Geka (Pratidesana)* (Public Confession) (1963). "These compositions mirror his nationalist partiality through the use ofJapanese elements and in some cases overtly nationalist messages"(Cook,"Venerable Traditions,"105). Yoritsune Matsudaira (1907–2001), 22 years older than Mayuzumi, had sought since the 1930s to integrate Japanese traditional material into Japanese new music, presenting an orchestral work of the same title, *Bugaku*, the previous year(1961). Thisworkwas awarded first prize atthe competition ofthe annualfestival ofthe International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) in Italy, and thus received widespread attention (Galliano, *Yōgaku*,141). In contrast to Mayuzumi'sincreasingly explicitreference to Japanese models, Matsudaira tried to

*Example 2.12: Toshirō Mayuzumi, Bugaku, part 1, mm. 1–5 (vln. 2); the performance instruction written in the score reads: "Whole string should be played without vibrato through 11. All glissandi marked or are to be played in such a manner that starting note is lef t immediately, producing an even gliding sound until the following note is reached. Melodies played by solo string players are to be played in such a manner that each note is stopped by a single finger (preferably on index finger of lef t hand) without changing the finger even if the note is changed."*

Copyright © 1963 by C. F. Peters Corporation, New York

the reference to the dance genre of the court music *gagaku*<sup>383</sup> – a traditionalism characterized by the sliding notes of the beginning (Ex. 2.12) of the first movement transforming into a broad and affirmatively extended *tutti* – it seems clear how the *tutti* effect brutally overpowers the subtle study of the traditional style. In addition, it seems that besides a Western inf luence in the cyclic ostinato rhythms, we may also hear traits of *gamelan* structures, which had already provided a model for Mayuzumi since the early 1950s.384 In any case, the violent effect of the concluding *tutti* is symptomatic of Mayuzumi's neoconservative turn during this period, which – seemingly paradoxically – went hand in hand with a growing shift away from explicit references to the Japanese music tradition in the 1960s, although this process was not linear.

In Mayuzumi's works around 1960, one can retrospectively recognize an awareness of the need to strengthen the relevance of the national in order to counteract the questionable strategy of "catching up" with European developments, without – at that point – necessarily involving a "patriotic" or "narrow nationalist" outrage.<sup>385</sup> Cultural essentialism, however, was thus foreshadowed as a central discourse that would strongly inf luence Japanese music at least until the 1980s, coinciding with a general increase in nationalist sentiments in Japanese society as mirrored in the *nihonjinron* (Japanese discourses).386

combine serial methods and tentative elements of aleatoricism, first used in *Bugaku*, with the Japanese pitch system.


Mayuzumi's nationalism eventually became more politically explicit during the 1960s, conditioned by, among other factors, his encounter with the writer Yukio Mishima (1925–70), who had increasingly turned to nationalist ideas as a result of the protests against the *Ampo* Pact in 1960. As one of few Japanese composers, Mayuzumi combined the widespread cultural essentialism in the sense of *minzoku shugi* ("cultural tradition") with nationalist political ideology (*kokumin shugi*).387 Especially after Mishima's spectacular ritual suicide (following an "attempted coup") in 1970, Mayuzumi stepped up as a political activist and headed the nationalist organization *Nihon wo mamoru kokumin kaigi* (National Conference for the Defense of Japan; since 1997 *Nippon kaigi*, Japan Conference) from 1981–91.388 This group, which denied Japanese war crimes, set itself the goal of reviving the principles of the Japanese empire. During the same time, Mayuzumi's *Showa tenpyōraku* (1970) was the first work by a Japanese composer for traditional *gagaku* ensemble commissioned by the Tokyo National Theater, followed by many more.389

It is precarious to assert a direct connection between Mayuzumi's clearly positively accentuated reception of Western modernism and his political Japanese nationalism. It is as clear that both are closely related as it would be problematic simply to call Mayuzumi's highly virtuosic "synthesis" of European orchestral technique and substantial knowledge of Japanese pitch systems and practices "nationalist" – an approach that need not shy away from the comparison with Yoritsune Matsudaira or Tōru Takemitsu. Declaring Mayuzumi a musical nationalist *tout court* would ignore the tradition-critical impulse that found its way into Mayuzumi's scores along with his reception of modernity. It should also be considered that paradoxically, Mayuzumi, through the international context of the "Cultural Cold War," must generally have experienced support rather than obstruction for his neo-nationalist idiom, given that his specific combination of international postwar avant-garde and Japanese traditional idioms had resulted in a hybridity that coincided favorably with a politically motivated American cultural universalism. This was a universalism that Mayuzumi directly confronted during his stay in the USA (supported by the Ford Foundation) and at the 1961 Tokyo East-West Music Encounter.

#### Luciano Berio: Collage Technique with "Suppressed Political Overtones"?

The resistance to a culturally restrictive aesthetic approach in Europe, as represented especially by Karlheinz Stockhausen's works between 1958 and 1974 (not least triggered and reinforced by the composer's multiple trips to the United States and Japan, → II.2), was considerable from the beginning. This is ref lected not least in the widespread lack of understanding among his fellow European composers (and in part audiences), who were presented in the early 1970s with the musical minimalism of Steve Reich or Terry Riley (which was also interculturally oriented).390 Less explored in this context is Luciano Berio's tendency toward transethnicism in the context of the musical collage technique for which his spectacular *Sinfonia* (1968, rev. 1969) has become famous. For these tendencies in Berio's work, the American inf luence must again be assigned a key role. Berio's acquaintance with John Cage, who had created *Fontana Mix* in Berio's Milanese RAI studio in 1958 and composed his *Aria* for Berio's American-born wife Cathy Berberian, was just one of the jigsaw pieces among Berio's many contacts with the United States. In her 2011 dissertation, Tiffany M. Kuo has compiled a precise chronology of Berio's US stays

<sup>387</sup> See Cook, "Venerable Traditions,"100–101.

<sup>388</sup> Havens, *Radicals and Realists in the Japanese Nonverbal Arts*, 258.

<sup>389</sup> See Everett, "Mirrors of West and Mirrors of East,"182.

<sup>390</sup> See Kleinrath, "Minimalismus/Minimal Music," 378.

*Example 2.13: Luciano Berio, Sinfonia, rehearsal number AA* Copyright © 1972 by Universal Edition (London) Ltd., London

and their (cultural-)political backgrounds.391 As early as 1952, Berio had been in the USA for the first time with the support of a Koussevitzky Foundation scholarship and participated in a composition course with Luigi Dallapiccola at the Berkshire Festival in Tanglewood, Massachusetts. From 1962 to 1974 Berio lived mainly in the USA, where he taught at the Juilliard School from 1965, among other activities such as numerous trips and concerts including a prolonged stay in Berlin from the end of 1964, funded by the Ford Foundation.392

Berio's *Folk Songs* for mezzo-soprano and seven instruments from 1964 (arranged for mezzo-soprano and orchestra in 1973) can perhaps be seen as the composer's first approach to an emphatically multicultural concept that largely eschews any "structural" paradigm in favor of established "traditional" idioms. In the same period, Berio's experimental music theater works more strongly accentuated the political context of the time, in particular the "messa in scena" *Passaggio* (1961–62), based on texts by Edoardo Sanguineti, and *Traces* (1965) for two soloists, two actors, two choirs, and orchestra based on texts by Sanguineti and Susan Oyama, commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation (1961) and conceived for a premiere at the Library of Congress in 1965. The belated premiere in 1969 at the University of Iowa followed the rejection of the work by the head of the Music Division at the Library of Congress, Harold Spivacke. In response to the American Civil Rights Movement and President Lyndon B. Johnson's (1963–69) inaugural address (27 November 1963), with reference to J.F. Kennedy's testimony, which demanded that Americans "eliminate from this Nation every trace of discrimination and oppressions that is based upon race or color,"393 Berio's work shows how traces of racial discrimination were still ubiquitous in everyday American life.394 Thus, *Traces* can be understood as a musical analogy to the critique of the reality of President Johnson's "Great Society" model that appeared in Herbert Marcuse's 1966 essay "The Individual in the Great Society."395 Berio's work was conceived exclusively for an African-American ensemble, with the exception of the mezzo-soprano, in which one of the opposing groups was to wear white masks. This confrontational dramaturgy was inf luenced by Jean Genet's play *Les nègres* (1957/58), which had become popular in the USA at the time through an off-Broadway production under the title *The Blacks*. <sup>396</sup> In addition to the provocative libretto, this conception was found to be incompatible with the official line of "containment" and ultimately led to Spivacke's rejection.397 By contrast, *Passaggio* (which had caused massive public protests at the premiere in the *Piccola Scala* in Milan in May 1963398), a work committed to interaction and challenging the audience in the sense of Bertold Brecht's

<sup>391</sup> Kuo, "Composing American Individualism."

<sup>392</sup> Ibid.,13.

<sup>393</sup> Quoted in ibid., 33.

<sup>394</sup> The ratification of Kennedy'sJune 1963 Civil Rights Act,which banned racial discrimination and racialsegregation,was delayed by Congressfor almost a year andwas notsigned by Johnson until 2 July 1964.

<sup>395</sup> Herbert Marcuse, "The Individual in the Great Society" [lecture at Syracuse University, 12/11/1965]. First published in *Alternatives* 1/1 (1966), 14–16/20 and 1/2 (1966), 29–35. See Kuo, "Composing American Individualism," 102–104.

<sup>396</sup> See Kuo, "Composing American Individualism," 37–38.

<sup>397</sup> Ibid., 36–39.

<sup>398</sup> Ibid., 36;see also Ehrmann-Herfort, "Teatro per gli orecchi," 73–75.

epic theater and Erwin Piscator's political theater, largely benefitted from a distinguished public399 at the 1967 US premiere at the Juilliard School and Harvard University, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. In this work, the problem of discrimination was treated in a more generalized social sense,400 less directly confronting contemporary US politics.

Later works by Berio such as *Sinfonia* and *Coro* (1975–76) reacted to these conf licting encounters with *Realpolitik* insofar as they radically expanded the plurality of cultural associations and stylistic levels already laid down in the two aforementioned music theater works into a comprehensive collage, ironically undermining overt political statements. In the third movement of *Sinfonia*, Berio paraphrases a sentence from a separate essay published in the same year (1968) – interrupting the f low of a textual layer from Samuel Beckett's *The Unnamable* – shortly after the recapitulation of Gustav Mahler's Scherzo from the Second Symphony, which serves as a structural basis for the movement (rehearsal number AA, Tenor I, Ex. 2.13): "[…] all this can't stop the war, can't make the old younger, or lower the price of bread"401 (in the essay, there was talk of "music" at this point, which is replaced by "all this" in the score, that is to say, it points self-referentially to the previously heard "music"402). The context and the simultaneous layers of additional musical and textual quotations here create a clear distance from any form of political activism: there are quotations from Debussy's *La mer* and Schoenberg's *Orchestral Piece* op. 16, no. 1, alongside a quotation (evoking the sea) from Paul Valéry's poem "La cimitière marin." The distancing from the political content of Berio's own statement is even more explicit in its second appearance in varied form – at the request "Say it again, louder!" (three measures after rehearsal number BB, Alto I); here the movement becomes involved in an "absurd" chain of associations, "desparate[ly]" spoken by Tenor I (five measures after rehearsal number BB):

itcan'tstop thewars,can't make the old younger orlowerthe price of bread,can't erase solitude or dull the tread outside the door,we can only nod, yes, it'strue, but no need to remind,to point, for it is allwith us, always, except, perhaps atcertain moments, here among these rows of balconies, in a crowd or out of it, perhapswaiting to enter,watching.403

In addition, the two textual self-citations are separated by the intervening climactic chord (B minor over the bass note C) from Mahler's Scherzo, abstracting the content of the spoken statements further as part of a formal music-speech dramaturgy.

In his article "Meditation on a Twelve-tone Horse," from the same year (1968), Berio adds to the sentence quoted in *Sinfonia* the idea that "[n]ever before […] have responsible composers felt so compelled to challenge the meaning of and reasons for their work in relation to the world

<sup>399</sup> Kuo, "Composing American Individualism,"106–109.

<sup>400</sup> See Ehrmann-Herfort, "Teatro per gli orecchi," 73–75.

<sup>401</sup> "And when they ask, why all this, it is not easy to find an answer. For, when we find ourselves, face to face, now, here, and they remind usthat all thiscan'tstop thewars,can't make the old younger or lower the price of bread" (Berio, *Sinfonia*, 87–88, rehearsal number AA). Foundational research on Berio' groundbreaking work is provided in Altmann, Sinfonia *von Luciano Berio*, Osmond-Smith, *Playing on Words*, and Bandur, "'I prefer a wake,'" among others.

<sup>402</sup> "We all know that music can't lower the cost of bread, is incapable of stopping (or starting, for that matter) wars,cannot eradicate slums and injustice." (Berio, "The Composer onHis Work.") See Kuo, "Composing American Individualism,"135–137.

<sup>403</sup> Berio, *Sinfonia*, 89–91.

of events."404 In the second movement of *Sinfonia*, too, the political content is markedly reduced in comparison to the overtly political music of *Traces*: the textual material of this homage to Martin Luther King consists exclusively of the sounds of the name of the civil rights activist murdered during the composition of the work (4 April 1968; the second movement had already been composed in 1967). On this basis, Kuo diagnosed in *Sinfonia* "suppressed political overtones that would jeopardize a harmonious image of American freedom and democracy. […] I argue that Berio acceded to George Kennan's 1965 exhortation to artists to 'forbear' rather than to criticize directly America's failings."405 The historian and diplomat George F. Kennan, the inventor of containment policy, in a White House speech in 1965 called for such "tolerance" of American artists toward the government, in exchange for the unlimited freedom that he afforded them at the same time – in deliberate contrast to the concept of "art as a weapon," which was attributed to Soviet cultural policy.406 The concept of freedom underlying this attitude was emphasized several times by the generally art-friendly administration of the Johnson presidency. On the one hand, freedom was understood as a "negative" freedom from restrictions (freedom of speech, religion, and assembly), but on the other hand as a "positive" freedom for the responsibility of the artist in society, with the goal of peace and "strengthening the nation," as formulated by president Johnson in 1965.407 Kuo makes it clear how this specifically American concept of freedom, as represented by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, found paradigmatic expression in Berio's *Sinfonia*: the work individualizes the listening experience of each recipient, especially since the strategies of perception in relation to the complexity of this text-music collage are heavily dependent on listening background, level of education, age, political attitude, etc.408 In this respect, the work realizes a maximum of "negative" freedom on the reception level. By contrast, examining *Sinfonia* and the evidence of past and present listeners' reactions to the work409 make the relationship between the art world and reality particularly explicit – albeit with almost no direct reference to daily politics – thus also honoring the aim of "positive" freedom.

Was Berio really a "model composer for America's cultural Cold War battle," as Kuo put it? Does the following conclusion not fall short? – "As an Italian-born American resident who garnered financial resources in academia, from private foundations, and from performing arts organizations, Berio reciprocated his gratitude with a sanitized and apolitical text in the second movement of *Sinfonia* to prove his allegiance."410 Berio undoubtedly showed a considerable understanding of the precarious political situation in his adopted American home, and *Sinfonia* (for example, via the involvement of the Swingle Singers, long known in popular culture before the world premiere of Berio's work) may even be something like a "designed success" (Morton Subotnick411). Even so, we can clearly see that *Sinfonia* is by no means the result of a politically corrupted aesthetic, but draws on the achievements of serial music – the autonomy of the individual in the context of a still-related whole, as well as the treatment of the various text sources – in the tradition of the late 1950s and 1960s *Sprachkomposition* – the emancipation

411 Quoted in ibid.,163.

<sup>404</sup> Berio, "The Composer onHis Work." See Kuo, "Composing American Individualism,"137.

<sup>405</sup> Kuo, "Composing American Individualism," 31.

<sup>406</sup> George F. Kennan,"TheArts andAmerican Society,"WhiteHouse Speech 15/6/1965, quoted in Kuo,"Composing American Individualism," 150–151.

<sup>407</sup> Quoted in Kuo, "Composing American Individualism,"183–184.

<sup>408</sup> Ibid.,169–180.

<sup>409</sup> See ibid.,158–169.

<sup>410</sup> Ibid.

of the sound of language from the context of meaning. Therefore, the work participates in an essential development in compositional history. It was not until *Coro* – that is, after his return to Europe – that Berio resorted to an explicitly intercultural concept (music from Peru, Central Africa, and medieval and Romantic Europe are all incorporated into a pronounced structuralism412), pursuing the aim to find "relations between very distant points."413 Still, a comparable universalistic model in the sense of a concert music "world theater" had already been developed in a mature form in *Sinfonia*. That Berio in these works avoided unambiguous political statements – as Bernd Alois Zimmerman does at the same time in his *Requiem für einen jungen Dichter* (1967–69), which is comparatively nuanced in its political message414 – without giving up the connection to the present, should be considered a particular quality. The cultural and political present in this work is tangible for every listener and signifies a quality that cannot be adequately interpreted according to any model based on the polarizations of the Cold War, no matter how much these were undoubtedly involved in Berio's concept.

\*\*\*

In sum, the three case studies discussed in this chapter offer important historical insights: during the 1950s and 1960s, many composers consciously conceived of composing in a global political context; this awareness of "international" relations provided fertile ground for universalist concepts, even if they sometimes appeared in a "neo-nationalist" guise, as in Mayuzumi's case. However, Cowell's *Ongaku*, Mayuzumi's *Bugaku*, and Berio's *Sinfonia* respond to this situation with strikingly different and individual approaches that cannot be subsumed under any shared historical label. Cowell's American model of a "hybrid music," an idealized model of transethnicism; Mayuzumi's Japanese neo-nationalism, optimizing traditionalist structures by Western means; and Berio's politically abstracted form of universalist montage, to which we might add Stockhausen's emphatic "world music" ideas (→ II.2), occurred "simultaneously" on the historical stage but testify to radically different local, individual, political, and aesthetic preconditions of compositional craftsmanship, structural and timbral organization, performance, and reception. At the same time, all three composers were inclined to understand their music as particularly "public," linking their compositions to many of the other works mentioned earlier in this chapter, to which one might add idiosyncratic pieces like Luigi Nono's *Intolleranza 1960* (1960), Tōru Takemitsu's *November Steps* (1967), Bernd Alois Zimmermann's *Requiem für einen jungen Dichter* (1967–69), or Alfred Schnittke's First Symphony (1972). Despite the evident political impact of all these works, it seems a clear underestimation of their semiotic ambiguity to reduce them to mere (if partly unconscious) reactions to (or results of) political discourses. By continuously reframing and reconsidering established concepts of identity, all these composers ultimately contributed to challenging the global hegemony of established Western concepts of music. Despite the various non-synchronous processes involved in the political and musical layers of their musical aesthetics, the anti-traditionalist impulse of

<sup>412</sup> On the reference in Berio's *Coro* to the music of the Central African Banda Linda in Simha Arom'stranscription, see Scherzinger,"Luciano Berio's *Coro*" andDreyer,"Theorie aus der Ferne," 53–56. In *Sequenza XIV* for Violoncello (2002) Berio worked with information from the soloist at the premiere, Rohan de Saram, about traditional rhythmic modelsfrom Sri Lanka (de Saram's native country).

<sup>413</sup> Berio, *Two Interviews*, 23.

<sup>414</sup> For a comprehensive interpretation of this major work seeHiekel, *Bernd Alois Zimmermanns* Requiem für einen jungen Dichter.

the Western postwar avant-garde and its paradoxical allegiance to so-called "traditional" musics reveal a basic ambiguity in postwar music history that, in its best moments, provided impressive proof of a general public relevance of art music. Considering the worldwide marginalization of art music's role in later periods and in today's commercialized and digitalized societies, one cannot help but see this public impact as the primary quality that distinguishes the globalized music of the postwar decades from that of the present.

#### **6. Categories of Intercultural Reception in Western Composition**

This concluding chapter of part II attempts to draw a broader picture of intercultural composition in the West than the admittedly narrow focuses of the three preceding chapters. The intention here is to follow the development of basic aesthetic and technical paradigms from the immediate postwar period to the more recent decades of the late twentieth and early twentyfirst centuries. Although "transnational" perspectives certainly predominate in the following, the exclusive attention given to Western composers may appear at odds with the "entangled" perspectives developed in the preceding chapters. Of course, we must acknowledge that many compositional processes, decisions, and innovations since the postwar period were and are still deeply dependent on specific processes that Western music history has created. The impact of John Cage, explored at the beginning of this chapter, is surely a case in point. Also, as the final part of this chapter on compositions for the Chinese mouth organ *sheng* demonstrates, the migration of performers and composers tends to make a neat definition of the "West" increasingly arbitrary from the final period of the twentieth century onward – even though cultural essentialism (as we will see) was doubtless still relevant and inf luential for musical thought and compositional agency.

The self-referentiality of postwar serial "logic" and John Cage's conception of a music "free of likes and dislikes" shared a suppression of ethnic layers: it is no coincidence that Cage's transfer of the model of "unimpededness and interpenetration" (*wu ai yuan rong*), derived from Huayan Buddhism, to an intentionless continuum of sounds and silences<sup>415</sup> emerged in close dialogue with Pierre Boulez's early serial techniques.416 Both concepts can be equally understood as attempts to free music from any form of established grammar or idiom. Postserial *Sprachkomposition* of the late 1950s and 1960s,417 whose tradition is still alive today, continued to f lirt with a rigorous elimination of semantic components of language(s), as in György Ligeti's *Aventures* (1962), which (like Mauricio Kagel's *Anagrama*, 1957–58) was based on a meticulously organized system of asemantic sounds free from the rules of existing languages. At the same time, *Sprachkomposition* instigated a dynamics compensating for such a negation of language: Dieter Schnebel's *Glossolalie 61* (1961–65), distinguished by the inclusion of an abundance of language and articulation systems, and Karlheinz Stockhausen's universalism of the 1960s, which culminated in the controversial electronic works *Telemusik* (1966) and *Hymnen* (1965–67) (→ II.2), can be perceived as globally expanded attempts to recapture the ability of music to "speak" in different idioms and

<sup>415</sup> See Pritchett, *The Music of John Cage*, 74–78, Klein, "Gegenseitige Durchdringung und Nicht-Behinderung," and Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 78–84.

<sup>416</sup> SeeNattiez and Piencikowski, *Pierre Boulez – John Cage. Correspondance et documents*.

<sup>417</sup> See Klüppelholz, *Sprache als Musik* for an introduction into the key works of German *Sprachkomposition*, and Utz and Lau, *Vocal Music and Contemporary Identities* for a broader fewon intercultural tendenciesin twentiethcentury vocal music.

colors. A negative of these ethnicized attempts at a "universal language" appeared in Kagel's ironic deconstruction of intercultural music-making in *Exotica* (1971–72).418

Such an explicit universalism, based on a confrontation, connection, or (in Stockhausen's case) "intermodulation"419 between cultural idioms, and the proclaimed "universal" meaning of post-1945 concepts of language criticism in serial music, are only two sides of the same coin. Ultimately, both can only be understood in the light of specific movements in Western cultural and music history during the twentieth century. In this way, they are recognizable as a form of Western exceptionalism. Such universalism proves especially dependent on local discourses: the appropriation of cultural idioms, usually referred to as "foreign" or even "exotic," takes place solely within the specific logic of a single work, œuvre, or culture. The failure of these approaches, which has intensified criticism of appropriation strategies in the New Age movement and commercial world music since the 1970s (→ II.2), has turned the emphatic skepticism of culturally encoded musical idiomatics in European music after 1945 into a music-aesthetic mainstream – admittedly with significant exceptions and a new awareness of global interdependencies since the 1990s. In the following, a sketch-like representation of the essential paradigms of Western composers' intercultural reception since the postwar period is intended to break up and differentiate the "false polarity" between a compositional self-ref lexivity and the dissolution of culturalist paradigms.

#### Working on Myth

One way to distinguish intercultural musical composition is to look at precompositional stages and critically examine the written and oral sources used. Of course, it is often easy enough to dismiss such sources as inadequate and thus call into question the creative process as a whole. The vaguer the sources are, the more seemingly obvious the tendency to construct the Other as a myth in the tradition of musical exoticism, possibly with reference to archaic traditions that are treated ahistorically, without criticism of their interpretive tradition. This might involve a tendency to refer to conceptual aesthetic or philosophical positions rather than musical idioms or practices. John Cage's reception of Zen Buddhism on the basis of Daisetz T. Suzuki's writings and lectures and other sources<sup>420</sup> was criticized even by an otherwise well-meaning interpreter like Umberto Eco as a "mythological surrogate for a critical consciousness."421 In fact, the ambivalent institutional and political context of Zen in Japan was largely ignored both by its intercultural mediators and the American artists of the 1930s to '50s. "The irrationality and spontaneity" of Zen was "highlighted and played off against the prevailing conventions and rationalist forms of knowledge of industrial society."422 In a nuanced form, a similar criticism could also be made of the intensifying reception of the philosophy of the Kyoto school (the same circle from which Suzuki's interpretation of Zen emerged) in the early 2000s by Helmut Lachenmann, Hans Zen-

<sup>418</sup> A comprehensive analysis of Stockhausen's universalism and Kagel's ironic reaction, along with detailed analyses of *Telemusik* and *Exotica*, is provided inUtz,*Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*,136–171 and 172–186 respectively.

<sup>419</sup> "Intermodulation" wasthe term Stockhausen devised forsuperimposing audio material from diverse musical cultures in *Telemusik* and *Hymnen*. SeeHünermann, "Transkription und Intermodulation."

<sup>420</sup> See Patterson, "Cage and Asia" and Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 71–116.

<sup>421</sup> Eco, *Das of fene Kunstwerk*, 236 ("mythologisches Surrogat für ein kritisches Bewusstsein").

<sup>422</sup> Baier, "Of fenes Kunstwerk versus Kunst derOf fenheit," 48 ("DasIrrationale und Spontanewird hervorgekehrt und gegen die herrschenden Konventionen sowie die rationalistischen Wissensformen der Industriegesellschaf t ausgespielt.") See also Pepper, "John Cage und derJargon desNichts" and Pepper, "From the 'Aesthetics of Indif ference' to 'Negative Aesthetics.'"

der, and Toshio Hosokawa. In this context, nationalist and culturally essentialist aspects, especially in Keiji Nishitani's thinking, have hardly been discussed up to now (→ IV.2).423

Nonetheless, John Cage succeeded, through his undoubtedly selective reception of Zen and other Asian philosophies, in an eminently important music-historical emancipation from a dominant European aesthetic discourse, and in a comprehensive liberation of aural perception whose effect continues to this day. We can characterize his appropriation of Asian sources according to three factors: *pragmatism* (direct applicability, for example, by adopting only the "technical" tools but not the interpretive tradition of the ancient Chinese oracle book *Yijing*); *radicality* (heightening the received fragments within the scope of certain "intra-cultural" aesthetic objectives); and *utopianism* (for example, in the generalization of certain aspects of Zen and of Huayan Buddhism to construct an "infinite" continuum of sound and silence).424

A very important facet becomes clear: intercultural composition always serves to establish an *intracultural* position that clearly determines the handling and interpretation of the received elements. Criticism in the context of postcolonial perspectives on a falsely mythologizing or post-exotic projection of "sacral desires"425 is certainly necessary. On the contrary, as already explained (→ I.3), a distinction must be made between unref lexively mythologizing reception processes and a creative examination of myth, ritual, and spiritual experience as an open meeting space of cultures.

#### Pragmatism, Interpenetration, Difference

The example of Cage shows that mythologizing and pragmatic components of intercultural reception cannot always be clearly separated. The postcolonial critique aims at both components anyway: the mythologizing simplification of complex cultural systems as well as the instrumentalization of the Other for one's own purposes. A prototypical example of the latter tendency might be found in Steve Reich's quotes from the early 1970s:

Non-Western musicin general and African, Indonesian, and Indian musicin particularwillserve as new structural models for Western musicians. Not as new models of sound. (That's the old exoticism trip.)426

[O]ne can create a musicwith one's own sound thatisconstructed in the light of one's knowledge of non-Western structure. […] One can study the rhythmic structure of non-Western music […], while continuing to use the instruments,scales, and any othersound one has grown upwith.427


<sup>423</sup> Lachenmann's reception of the Kyoto school is discussed in detail by Hiekel, "Interkulturalität als existentielle Erfahrung," 77–82. A centralsource for Lachenmann (like Zender)in dealingwith East Asian philosophy is Elberfeld, *Phänomenologie der Zeit im Buddhismus*. For work on the historical role of Zen and the Kyoto school in Japanese wartime nationalism, see Heisig and Maraldo, *Rude Awakenings*. A nuanced critical view of the frequently used sources on "Japanese aesthetics" from the perspective ofcultural and political nationalism would, on the whole,be anecessary supplementto thediscussion;thisconcerns,for example, a critique ofwritingssuchasKikkawa, *Vom Charakter der japanischen Musik*, Tanizaki, *In Praise of Shadows*, orŌhashi, *Kire: Das "Schöne" in Japan*. As a counterpointto essentialistJapanese aesthetics,seeMaruyama, *Studies in Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan*.

<sup>426</sup> Reich, "Some Optimistic Predictions(1970) About the Future of Music," 51.

<sup>427</sup> Reich, "Postscript to a Brief Study of Balinese and African Music," 71.

Reich's separation of his own elements (sound, scales, instruments) and foreign ones (rhythm) may certainly appear categorical and simplistic, and his appropriation of non-Western idioms utilitarian – an aspect that may (among others) initially have contributed to the difficult reception his music encountered in Europe during the early 1970s.428 At the same time, the change of perspective accomplished through Reich's ethnological-critical and active learning engagement with West African drum music, Balinese Gamelan, and Jewish cantillation, is remarkable.429 The reception of North Indian art music in key works by La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass was equally based on comparatively detailed ethnological and practical knowledge, albeit with entirely different compositional and stylistic consequences.430

In Europe, in contrast to Reich's sober pragmatism, intercultural reception processes are usually integrated into comprehensive aesthetic conceptions, which can be conceived in the tradition of modernism as "heteroglossia,"431 as a self-ref lexive and complex multilingualism. In the process, a reception model of *interpenetration* is developed, in part even with explicit reference to Goethe's concept of a "world literature."432 The focus of composers tending toward this model is different, of course: György Ligeti's compositional method is in many ways akin to Reich's pragmatic approach. But his conceptual thinking is far more pluralistic: the reception of African genres – including the *ongo* [horn] ensembles of the Central African Banda Linda, songs of the Aka pygmies, and the *amadinda* [xylophone] music of Uganda (→ V.2) – forms only one link in an eclectic chain of associations between chaos theory, fractal geometry, Romantic piano music, Debussy, late fourteenth-century *ars subtilior*, and much more besides. Similarly, Hans Zender's pluralistic aesthetic cosmos, which like Reich's or Ligeti's includes the close reading of philological forms of intercultural reception, is associative and transformative, albeit focused on other areas:

Cultures are emerging as competing systems and the laws of aesthetic consciousness are intimately bound up with the dif ferent semiotic systems of the respective cultures. As world cultures began to take note of one an other, the idea of the absolute truth of their own semiotic systems was undermined. In the age of the interpenetration of allculturesthat we are entering, these ideas disappear more and more.<sup>433</sup>


<sup>428</sup> Thewell-known controversy between Reich and Clytus Gottwald in 1975, documented in the journal *Melos* and comprehensively interpreted by Beate Kutschke against the background of dif ferent traditions of thought in Europe and the USA, is one example. See Kutschke, *Neue Linke – neue Musik*, 260–287, and Kleinrath, "Minimalismus/Minimal Music."

<sup>429</sup> With regard toReich'sreception ofAfrican music,see, among others,Reich's essays"Gahu –ADance ofthe Ewe Tribe in Ghana," "Drumming," "Postscript to a Brief Study of Balinese and African Music," and "Non-Western Music and the Western Composer." A thorough source-based discussion of Reich's reception of African music is provided in Klein, *Alexander Zemlinsky – Steve Reich: Alternative Moderne(n)*, 107–153. See also Scherzinger, "György Ligeti and the Aka Pygmies Project."

<sup>433</sup> Zender, "Über dasHören,"179 ("Kulturen bilden sich als konkurrierende Systeme aus, und die Gesetzmäßigkeiten im ästhetischen Bewusstsein sind aufs engste verbunden mit den anderen Zeichensystemen derjeweiligen Kultur. In dem Maße, als die Weltkulturen begannen, voneinander Notiz zu nehmen, wurde die Vorstellung einer absoluten Wahrheit des jeweils eigenen Zeichensystems untergraben; im Zeitalter der Durchdringung aller Kulturen, in daswir gerade eintreten, verschwinden diese Vorstellungen mehr und mehr.")

#### *Example 2.14: Hans Zender, Chief Joseph, Act I, Scene 2b*

At the heart of Zender's music since the late 1990s (with first attempts in this direction since the 1970s) is a 72-tone system of a "harmony of opposing tensions" (*gegenstrebige Harmonik*) based on archaic Chinese and Pythagorean tuning theories. This falls firmly within the tradition of speculative music theory.<sup>434</sup> In addition, one must mention his engagement with the Buddhist concept of time since the early 1970s, primarily with reference to Japanese philosophy and the tradition of *nō* theater, which, along with the pitch system, is bound up in inexorably oscillating intercultural references.<sup>435</sup> Both dimensions, alternative concepts of tunings and of time, are explored extensively in Zender's last music theater work *Chief Joseph* (2003), which deals explicitly with the tension in (colonial and postcolonial) intercultural encounters.436

In *Chief Joseph*, as well as in Helmut Lachenmann's *Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern* (The Little Match Girl, 1990–96, → IV.2), an East Asian instrument assumes the function of the extraterritorial, the incommensurate. In Lachenmann's "music with images" this is the Japanese *shō* in the penultimate scene (no. 23). Its extraterritorial character is manifest above all in the fact that, following the example of the traditional *shō* instrumental technique of the *tōgaku* repertoire of Japanese court music, it forms a continuum of interlocking chords or Lachenmannian "cadential sounds." These contrast strongly with the non-linear "sound structure" of previous scenes, marking the *shō*'s sonic exclusivity through its cultural alterity. In Zender's *Chief Joseph*, the struck Korean zither *ajaeng* accompanies the lamenting chants of the main character (Ex. 2.14). Here, no reference is made to the accompaniment of shamanistic dances or folk songs by the *sanjo ajaeng* in the Korean context. Rather, as with Lachenmann, the instrument essentially serves as a "symbol of the Other" that consistently resists integration.437 If, on the one hand, a conception becomes visible here that attempts to emphasize the difference between music traditions, affording a respectful space for the aural effects of the Asian instruments, on the other hand, it is precisely this distillation of *aura* that can be seen as a continuity in the tradition of mythologizing forms of cultural representation.

Copyright © 2004 by Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden

<sup>434</sup> See Zender, "Gegenstrebige Harmonik." A number of studies have already been published on Zender's harmonic system. See, among others, Hasegawa, "'Gegenstrebige Harmonik' in the Music of Hans Zender" and Gerhardt "'GegenstrebigeHarmonik.'"

<sup>435</sup> See, among others,Hiekel, "Erstaunen und Widersprüchlichkeit," Gruhn, "Das andereDenken derOhren,"Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*,190–195, Revers, "Hans Zender: *Furin no kyo*," andHiekel, "Vielstimmig in sich."

<sup>436</sup> See Zender, "Das Eigene und das Fremde" and Schmidt, "Wegkarte für Orpheus?"

<sup>437</sup> PersonalcommunicationwithHans Zender, Berlin, 24 March 2006.

#### Case Study: Hans Zender's *Fūrin no kyō* (1989)

It is worth taking a closer look at a key work by Zender at this point. It seems characteristic of the nuanced, but at its core still culturally essentialist handling of difference among many European composers during the 1980s and '90s. As with Stockhausen (→ II.2), Zender's longstanding and intensive engagement with Asian cultures was triggered by a stay in Japan (in the early 1970s) that called into question a seemingly self-evident primacy of European culture.438 Yet Zender by no means retained this culture-pessimistic approach unchanged, but, as outlined above, instead embarked on a pluralistic universalism that cannot be attributed merely to the inf luence of postmodern philosophies. Zender claimed from the late 1980s on that all sound media, sounds, and the music of all eras could now be considered material for the creation of music. In approaching these sounds, he adopts Cage's principle that every sound should be respected in its individuality and peculiarity. For Zender, however, the musical forms that are transmitted through different cultures are not equivalent and interchangeable objects. Rather they are *media* that convey fundamentally different, often contradictory, messages.439

Zender has most forcefully implemented these ideas in *Fūrin no kyō* for soprano, clarinet, and ensemble (1989).440 Possibly the most notable feature of this work is the idea of opposing cultural "codes" in the multilingual arrangement of the underlying text, a poem by the iconoclastic Zen monk Sōjun Ikkyū (1394–1481). This text appears in sections I, II, and IV in the (Sino-)Japanese original, as well as in English and German translations, while the conclud-ing section V introduces a phonetic hybrid of these three versions and a Chinese version (section III is conceived as an instrumental interlude). Table 2.3 shows the four versions of the text, including the Chinese symbols and transliteration.<sup>441</sup>

<sup>438</sup> "The piece [*Muji no kyō*] is certainly inconceivable without the deep impression of ancient Japanese culture I received on my first trip to Japan. European intellectualism, technology, the hustle and noise of today's existence: all thisseemed more questionable than ever." (Zender, "Muji no kyō." "Das Stück [*Muji no kyō*] istsicherlich nicht denkbar ohne den tiefen Eindruck, den ich auf meiner ersten Japanreise von der alten japanischen Kultur empfing. Der Intellektualismus Europas, Technologie, die Hektik und Lärmentfaltung des heutigen Daseins: All das erschien mirso fragwürdigwie nie.")

<sup>439</sup> See Zender, "Über dasHören" and Zender, "Was kann Musik heute sein?"

<sup>440</sup> The following remarks appear alongside my analytical sketch of this work in Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 192–195. See also the analyses in Revers, "Hans Zender: *Fūrin no kyō*" and Hiekel, "Erstaunen und Widersprüchlichkeit," 90–91.

<sup>441</sup> The wordsin bold in the table dif fer from the spelling in Zender'sscore, which isindicated in square brackets. While the missing "i"s atthe end ofthe first and third lines are presumably typographical errors(the "i"in "mei" can be found in the autograph score, but not in the typeset score published by Breitkopf & Härtel; in both scoresthere is no "i" in "sui"),the reading of "kan" forthework "monk"seemsto be a clear mistake (with thanks to Ingrid Fritsch, Cologne, for linguistic information on the pronunciation of the Sino-Japanese text; in some cases a Sino-Japanese character may indeed be pronounced in various ways, but at this point the reading *sō* is clearly correct). The deviationsforthe *pinyin* transliteration in the Chinese version are probably due to Zender's desire to find away of writing that is asintuitive as possible for Western vocal performers. The spellings *zu* for *zhou* and *hei* for *he*, however, are rather misleading. Thus the available recordings with Julie Mof fat (Durian 1995, Kairos 2001) and Nancy Shade (col legno 1991) have several mistakesin the pronunciation of the Chinese text. The characters reproduced in this table follow the edition of the poem in Ichikawa, Iriya, and Yanagida, *Chūsei Zenka no shisō*, 306. The title of the poem is only given as *Fūrin* in this edition, and is the first of a pair of poems (the second does not appear in Zender's work). The two poems appear as no. 110 and no. 111 in Ikkyū's famous poetry collection *Kyōunshū* (Chinese: *Kuang Yun Ji*,"Crazy Cloud").Whileworking on *Fūrin no kyō*, Zender consulted Covell and Yamada, *Unraveling Zen's Red Thread*.

#### *Table 2.3: Hans Zender, Fūrin no kyō; four versions of the Ikkyū poem Fūrin in Japanese, English, German, and Chinese (standardized transliteration: Modified Hepburn and Hanyu Pinyin)*

Ikkyū Sōjun 一休宗純 **Fūrin [no kyō]** 風鈴[の響]


in stillness mute in motion sound is it the bell, is it the wind that has the voice? the old monk, terrified, wakes up from his day-time nap what need to sound the midnight watch at noon?

Stille Zeit: Nichtklang. Bewegte Zeit: Schall. Ist es die Stimme der Glocke – Ist es die Kraft des Windes? Erschreckt fährt er auf – der alte Mönch aus seinem Mittagsschlaf. Da! Was ist das? Jetzt zur Mittagszeit die Mitternachtsglocke?


In the fifth section of the work (mm. 182–250) the vocal soloist, as explained above, constantly jumps between four linguistic levels. The sounds of the different languages are associatively linked by means of alliterations and assonances (Ex. 2.15). Here, as in the preceding sections I, II, and IV, each language is assigned its own basic vocal technique: noisy inf lections in the Japanese; dramatic, high-contrast vocals in the English; articulated *Sprechgesang* in the German; and pitched speech glissandi and syllabic extensions in the Chinese. Of course, this setting is deliberately related to traditional vocal and instrumental techniques of the four "cultures" and also corresponds to different temporal models that Zender assigned to the five sections.442 For example, the emphasis on the consonants, inclusion of breath sounds, and constant inf lection

<sup>442</sup> See Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*,193.

of the pitch in the setting of the Japanese texts refer to the vocal delivery techniques of *nō* theater,<sup>443</sup> the breathy sound ideal of *shakuhachi* music, and the vocal quality of the narrative genre *gidayū bushi*, which may be grasped via the concept of *ibushi* (oxidation) (→ V.1). The four language layers in *Fūrin no kyō* should therefore remain clearly distinguishable, even where they follow in close succession. An interpenetration of the four language systems conceived as an approximation and combination of their phonetic differences – but not as its synthesis, merging, or leveling – thus becomes the productive microstructural impulse in the vocal part.

*Example 2.15: Hans Zender, Fūrin no kyō, mm. 182–193, soprano part (Copyright © 2003 by Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden) and schematic representation of the language structure of the first stanza*

These montages of musical languages, presented largely unaccompanied, become further gesturally interwoven and transformed into simultaneous textures in short instrumental interludes (first in mm. 194–197, Ex. 2.16). In this way, the speech gestures are "translated" into instrumental gestures: the "Japanese" idiom is found in noisy harmonics (violins) and drum sounds; the "English" in "dramatic" figures (e.g., solo clarinet, piano), the "German" in staccato figures (brass); the "Chinese" in glissando-like scales (violoncello, trombone, oboe), so that the hybrid language of the song produces a miniature "song without words."

Zender's clear intention to preserve cultural difference even where a tendency toward impenetrable mixture runs counter to that intention, undoubtedly comes up against conceptual, as well as psychological and perceptual, limits. While, in the vocal part of section V, the dramatic "European" articulation tends to mask the quieter and more subtle "East Asian" articulations, these differences disappear completely in the rather conventional polyphonic structures of the instrumental "reinterpretations." Zender's meticulous approach to cultural difference is certainly a significant step in the history of intercultural composition, but, in the end, remains trapped in a certain schematism of strongly culturally essentialist thought.

<sup>443</sup> Referencesto *nō* theater in Zender'swork are explored in Revers, "Hans Zender: *Fūrin no kyō*."

#### Cooperation and Dialogue

Among composers as diverse as Giacinto Scelsi, Jean-Claude Eloy, or Heiner Goebbels, we find a different weighting of elements from the previously discussed categories of intercultural composition. Their music contrasts with that discussed above, since non-Western sonic materiality and/or performers had a decisive impact on the compositional results in some of their work, and thus, at least temporarily, these composers allowed for drastic processes of stylistic transformation.<sup>444</sup> In this context, one must also mention Klaus Huber's engagement with Arab music and music theory, initially politically motivated by the Gulf War of 1990/91. This engagement resulted in the project *Die Erde bewegt sich auf den Hörnern eines Stiers [Ochsen]* [The Earth Moves on the Horns of a Bull (Ox), 1992–94], an "assemblage" for four Arab and two European musicians and fixed media. In this work, the composer not only put aside his authorial control in favor of elements of traditional improvisation practice, but also invited the European musicians to engage with the Arab modes and melodic formulas (*maqāmāt*) and rhythmic cycles (*auzān*). Basically, Huber's reception of Arab scales and rhythms, with the exception of this assemblage, does not seem to establish a strong sonic relationship with Arab music. Huber uses the *maqāmāt* in his works from the 1990s on almost exclusively as an abstract repository of pitches largely detached from melodic-rhythmic models (these models are essential for the distinction between *maqāmāt* in Arab musical practice).445 Insofar as the origin of the superimposed scales and modes remains largely concealed in the substructure of Huber's music, no *maqām* "effect" arises in the final score. Of course, this point would need to be discussed separately and possibly examined empirically, especially since there is by no means an ethnomusicological or music-theoretical consensus on the theory and practice of *maqāmāt*. 446 In any case, consideration should be given to how *maqām* tones deployed freely in pitch space, as in the first movement of Huber's *Miserere Hominibus* (2006),447 can still be understood as a meaningful reference to Arab music – even when detached from their scalar structure and placed in the context of complex harmony.<sup>448</sup>

<sup>444</sup> SeeUtz,*Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*,188–190 (Scelsi),195–200 (Eloy),Goebbels, *Komposition als Inszenierung*. Scelsi's intercultural aesthetics have been discussed repeatedly; see, among others, Reish, "The Transformation of Giacinto Scelsi's Musical Style and Aesthetic," 59–114, Baatz, "Resonanz des'weißen Unbewegten,'" and Utz, "Klang als Energie in der Musik seit1900."

<sup>445</sup> See Zidarić Györek, "Transformation und Polyphonie in KlausHubers *Die Seele muss vom Reittier steigen*."

<sup>446</sup> See Maraqa, "Auf der Suche nach den Anfängen der 'modernen' arabischen Musiktheorie."

<sup>447</sup> See Utz, "Morphologie und Bedeutung der Klänge in KlausHubers *Miserere Hominibus*."

<sup>448</sup> In an unpublished 2008 manuscript, the Jordanian composer Saed Haddad takes a decidedly critical position on Huber's reception of Arab music on the basis of his 2005 dissertation "The Abstraction of Arabic Musical Vocabulary, Spiritual and Cultural Values into Contemporary Western Music." A comprehensive and independent presentation of this problem is still pending (and will hopefully form a part of Petra Zidarić Györek's dissertation project at the Graz University of Music and Performing Arts, to be finalized in 2021). Admittedly, Günter Kleinen's contribution "Ausweitung harmonischer Räume durch arabische Tonarten" attempts to take a position independent of the composer's self-interpretation, but an analogical relationship between compositional intention and perception is arguably still ubiquitous in this article. To a large extent, Huber's own positions are referred to and elaborated in the articles Keller, "Impulse aus dem Orient auf Klaus Hubers musikalisches Schaf fen" (as well as various previous publications by the same author) and Mahnkopf, "Polykulturalität als Polyphonietypus." By contrast, Knipper, "Tonsysteme im kompositorischen Schaf fen von Klaus Huber" of fers a far more nuanced discussion of the topic.

*Example 2.16: Hans Zender, Fūrin no kyō, mm. 194–196*

Copyright © 2003 by Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden

We can certainly consider *Die Erde bewegt sich auf den Hörnern eines Stiers* a precursor of more recent tendencies, in which representatives of Western and non-Western instrumental and/or vocal practitioners and composers enter into direct dialogue. In East Asia, there have been strong initiatives from traditional instrumentalists to work with composers since the 1980s (in Japan, such tendencies date back to the *gendai hōgaku* [Traditional Japanese Music of the Present] movement of the 1950s and 1960s and earlier periods → II.4, III.1). For example, the *shō* soloist Mayumi Miyata encouraged numerous composers to write new works for her instrument (→ IV.1). Recent initiatives are so numerous that only the most important can be cursorily named here: Joël Bons's Atlas Ensemble (since 2002), Sandeep Bhagwati's "contemporary Xchange" and "Rasalîla" projects with Ensemble Modern and musicians or theorists of traditional Indian music (2001–06), and more recently Bhagwati's ensemble ɛkstʁaktə (featuring musicians from China, Germany, India, Korea, Bulgaria, Syria, and the USA), Dieter Mack's projects with Indonesian composers and gamelan ensembles, "Crossings," initiated by Asian-CultureLink with Klangforum Wien and China (Chai) Found Music Workshop Taipei (2003–04, → III.6), commissions by the Berlin Isang Yun Society for ensembles mixing Korean and Western instruments, Istanbul's Hezarfen Ensemble, or the Berlin Asian Art Ensemble, directed by the composer-percussionist Il-Ryun Chung (since 2007/09).449 These initiatives seek dialogic forms of musical interculturality – frequently facing common practical and financial obstacles – that encourage mutual learning and study of musical practices and theories. In this way they bring together the critical awareness and self-ref lexivity of art music traditions in and outside Europe, the potential for processual collaboration, and precise compositional thinking.450

The paradigms of intercultural reception discussed here offer a chance – in favorable conditions – to exist alongside one another without premature evaluation and, at the same time, to be exposed to a discourse that allows for new forms of "competence" among all participants. In this way, the traditional dominance of the composer's role can both be circumvented and revitalized. Like all substantive forms of dialogue, this process requires one thing above all else: an open way of listening that takes into account our own assumptions and prejudices; a listening that always leaves open the possibility to revise our understanding of contexts through new experiences and insights.

<sup>449</sup> In 2017, the Berlin festival and conference *Turbulences. New Roots for New Music* brought together a selected number of ensembleswith cross-cultural instrumentation including theOmnibus Ensemble Tashkent(https:// turbulenzen.wordpress.com).

<sup>450</sup> The potential and the dif ficulties of such problems are critically and practically reflected in Bhagwati, "Meistern, Warten, Vergessen, Finden" and Utz, "Interkulturalität in der neuen Musik."

#### Approaching the Chinese Mouth Organ *sheng*

I will now outline some of the results of such collaborations, using new works for the Chinese mouth organ *sheng* as case studies. Because of their unusual and multi-faceted sound and their archaic-mythological connotations, as well as the initiatives of virtuoso performers, a compositional examination of the East Asian mouth organs *sheng* (→ VI.1), *shō* (→ IV, VI.2), and *saengwang* (→ VI.2) has taken place on a relatively broad scale over the past four decades. The activities of the Shanghai-trained virtuoso Wu Wei (b. 1970), who has lived in Berlin since 1995, have played a crucial role in the compositional exploration of the *sheng* by Western composers. Wu, in addition to his work with composed scores, regularly participates in (semi-) improvisational contexts, including performances with the *zheng* player Xu Fengxia (→ III.5), the Berlin-based ensemble ɛkstʁaktə, and the Elision Ensemble, and thus opened up the *sheng* to entirely new possibilities that go far beyond its roles in traditional music. The *sheng* is one of the oldest Chinese instruments and dates back to the Shang Dynasty (1766–1122 BCE) (→ IV.1). Throughout Chinese history, the *sheng* has developed a wide variety of forms and constructions, including chromatically tuned instruments, though the use of these was presumably restricted to Confucian ritual music.451 Traditional instruments are used today in rural forms of ceremonial music, in *kunqu* opera, and *sizhu* (silk and bamboo) ensembles (→ III.1, III.3). These instruments resemble the Japanese *shō* insofar as they are largely tuned to diatonic scales and not all of the usually 17 bamboo pipes are equipped with reeds (some pipes remain "silent" – usually only 14, 13, or fewer pipes sound). As in other cases, *sheng* instruments, their organology, and their repertoire underwent significant changes in the course of modernization in the twentieth century (→ III.1). Several modern varieties of the instruments were developed, among them the fully chromatic *sheng* with 36 or 37 pipes, partly extended by means of metal attachments for dynamic reinforcement. The modern *sheng* is connected not least with a heavily Westernized repertoire of "conservatory style" (→ III.1), in which a highly virtuosic soloistic playing meets a simplistic appropriation of conventional Western major-minor harmonies.

Just as the largely "traditional" architecture of the *shō* stimulated the compositional imagination through its limitations, the extended possibilities of the modern *sheng* were heightened to the utmost complexity (see below as well as VI.1). In contrast to these radicalized attempts to "modernize" the instrument, a form of simplicity associated with the archaic was sought by the Swiss composer Heinz Reber (1952–2007) in his *Music for Sheng* (2003–04) for Chinese and Western instruments. This work was conceived with the *sheng* soloist Huang Lung-Yi from Taipei, who in this piece plays on a traditional 17-pipe instrument, acting as the central figure and a conductor of sorts in the ensemble. During a lengthy collaboration with Huang, Reber notated traditional chord progressions (presumably from the accompaniment of Confucian shrine music, *Jikong dianli*, which in Taiwan is performed only once a year). In his score, Reber carefully extended the traditional chords and allowed them to "fray out" in ensemble textures, where they mingle with a ubiquitous timpani tremolo. The piece ends with a juxtaposition of all individual layers presented during the approximately 13 preceding minutes: the timpani roll, a respiratory f low of constantly animated stacked fifths in the leading *sheng*, repetitions of simple patterns of the four strings, improvisational, jazz-phrased piano gestures, and freely chosen quotations of traditional playing styles of the Chinese two-stringed knee fiddle (*erhu*) all sound simultaneously. Only the points of entrance and exit of the parts are notated, with no exact synchronization indicated. This montage-like intensification lasts a little less than two

<sup>451</sup> See Thrasher, "The Chinese *Sheng*" and Thrasher, "Sheng."

*Example 2.17: Jorge Sánchez-Chiong, Teatro Shanghai – Bühnenmusik, second movement: Descarga for sheng and Chinese ensemble, mm. 911–913*

Copyright © 2000 by Jorge Sánchez-Chiong, Vienna

minutes before the *sheng* and, finally, only the timpani remain. By this setting, Reber tried to provide space for all the instruments in which they can "interpenetrate unimpededly." The abandonment of a clearly stated compositional structure in the Buddhist-inspired tradition seeks a Cage-like "immediacy of the now. Someone thinks, but he does not think. Someone sings, but he does not sing a melody. Someone is playing and his playing is based on nothing."<sup>452</sup>

Surely one of most virtuoso *sheng* parts to this day offers the utmost contrast to Reber's approach: *Teatro Shanghai – Bühnenmusik* (2000) for seven Chinese instruments and percussion, written by the Vienna-based composer Jorge Sánchez-Chiong (b. 1969), born in Venezuela to a Cuban-Chinese family. This part was also realized by Huang Lung-Yi, now on a modernized, 36-pipe instrument. The second movement, *Descarga für* sheng *und chinesisches Ensemble*, is derived from the energetic rhythms of the Cuban improvisatory genre *descarga* (discharge) and places the highest of technical demands on all instruments involved. Sánchez-Chiong's goal aims beyond a simple transfer of a Cuban model to Chinese instruments or tracing of

<sup>452</sup> Reber, "Music for Sheng" ("die Unmittelbarkeit des Jetzt. Jemand denkt, aber er denkt keine Gedanken. Jemand singt, aber ersingt keine Melodie. Jemand spielt und sein Spiel ist aufNichts bezogen.")

autobiographical hybridity. The composer instead intends to create a surreal atmosphere, inspired by the character of a theater director intoxicated by drugs as described in the novel *De donde son los cantantes?* (Where do the singers come from?) by the Cuban author Severo Sarduy (1937–1989): "We do not hear the music played by the instrumentalists, but what has already been digested by a 'subjective ear': a distorted music, as perceived by the director under the inf luence of drugs; his music, his own Descarga. An alienation that enters a new musical character and takes on a life of its own."453

After a dense *tutti* of the other six instruments of the Silk-and-Bamboo ensemble (*erhu*, *yangqin*, *zheng*, *ruan*, *pipa*, and *dizi*) driven by irregular beats and accents, the *sheng* first establishes a ten-note chord, which is enhanced by various vibrato techniques in a "very nervous" manner leading to a first culmination. Following a heterophonic passage without exact synchronization, the concluding section is filled with virtuoso gestures in highly complex rhythms (Ex. 2.17) that increasingly cover and "neutralize" the energetic pitch pulsations of the other instruments.

Sánchez-Chiong certainly does little to evoke an atmosphere of authenticity or archaic mythology. It is obvious in many cases that those composers who have experienced merging, hybridity, and anti-purism as a daily reality of life rebel against any thought of cultural "authenticity" in a most pronounced manner. Among them is the Indian-born Sandeep Bhagwati (b. 1963), who was educated and trained in Germany and now teaches in Canada. He developed pioneering concepts of intercultural composition, especially in the area of tension between Indian vocal and instrumental practice.<sup>454</sup> In his duo *Illusies van harder en zacht* (Illusions of Noise and Silence, 2003) for viola and *sheng* after a poem by Cees Nooteboom, dialogues of exciting rhythmic intensity oscillate between quasi-improvisational gestures and moments of sudden synchronization (Ex. 2.18).455 Here too, however, the boundaries of "established" playing technique are deliberately exceeded time and again, albeit not to the same extent as by Sánchez-Chiong.

An even increased density and complexity, compared to Sánchez-Chiong, is designed in Simeon Pironkoff's (b. 1966) duo *Fall/Wende* (2005–06) for the organologically related instruments *sheng* and accordion (→ IV.1). In this work, the mythological associations that both instruments carry are deliberately "deconstructed" by developing a model of permanent transition – perhaps in the sense of Mathias Spahlinger's well-known orchestral work *passage/ paysage* (2001). The traditionalist contemplative model of the *sheng* is situated in areas of "limited" predictability, during which the two instruments approach each other in several cycles before repelling each other. As Example 2.19, from the beginning of the first movement (top), demonstrates, it is clear how minutely conceived the sonic transitions are,<sup>456</sup> while the excerpt from the third movement (bottom) indicates a moment of maximum approximation in which, however, the instruments seem to be permanently "shifted" against each other. The quarter-

<sup>453</sup> Sánchez-Chiong, "Teatro Shanghai – Bühnenmusik." ("Wir hören nicht die vom Instrumentalisten gespielte Musik, sondern was bereits durch ein 'subjektives Ohr' verdaut wurde: Eine verzerrte Musik, so wie sie vom Direktor unterDrogenwirkungwahrgenommenwird;seineMusik,seine eigeneDescarga. Eine Verfremdung, die sich einem neuen Duktus einfügt und verselbständigt.")

<sup>454</sup> See Bhagwati's essays "Meistern, Warten, Vergessen, Finden," "Sein Zuhause komponieren," and "Imagining the Other's Voice."

<sup>455</sup> Bhagwati composed further works with Chinese instruments, including *Wörterbuch der Winde* (2002) for Chinese-Western ensemble and two conductors, further versions of *Illusies van harder en zacht* including a quartet for *sheng*, *zheng*, viola, and cello (2004–06) aswell as *Traces and Shadows* for *sheng* solo (2006).

<sup>456</sup> In both instruments, the decay phases are indicated in a tablature-like notation.

Copyright © 2003 by Sandeep Bhagwati, Berlin/Montreal

*Example 2.19: Simeon Pironkof f, Fall/Wende for sheng and accordion, I, mm. 1–5; III, mm. 40–42*

Copyright © 2006 by Simeon Pironkof f, Vienna

#### *Example 2.20: Wolfgang Suppan, Studie II for sheng and live-electronics, section 1*

Copyright © 2004 by Wolfgang Suppan, Vienna

tone tuning of the wrest plank of the accordion used here (developed by the soloist, Krassimir Sterev) contributes to establishing a fundamental "alterity" between the two instruments.

Wolfgang Suppan's (b. 1966) more cautious and delicate approach achieves, of course, no less startling sounding results in his *Studie II* (2004) for *sheng* and live electronics (controlled by the software SuperCollider). In close collaboration with Wu Wei, Suppan developed a catalogue of short sound impulses with and without pitch bends. These include advanced techniques of haptic exploration of the instrument and its construction (turning screws, blowing air over the pipes) or techniques that are characteristic of Wu Wei's playing style, such as polyphonic chord glissandos. During the rehearsal process, Wu Wei experimented with the highly responsive comb filter effect provided by the live electronics, for example by continuously varying the distance from the microphone. These experiments eventually culminated in a threephase formal process that gradually turns the initially isolated sound impulses into a continuous sound stream before returning to impulses. In the first section, the performer reads a semi-graphic score four times (Ex. 2.20), with more sound events made audible each time until all twelve sound events are performed in succession. The third section reverses this process so that the sounds are increasingly reduced to noisy impulses and "clicks" while previously, in the

second section, the continuity achieved at the end of the first section is sustained by an uninterrupted series of 49 sound events.

Similar to some works for *shō*, which are based on a tendency to explore the fingerings, organology, and sound possibilities of the instrument systematically (→ IV.1, VI.2), Reber and Suppan derive their structures from an inventory of playing and sound possibilities of the instrument. The f lexibility and openness of their approach allows the *sheng* soloist to act as a kind of co-composer. Of course, the more "prescriptively" conceived works of Sánchez-Chiong, Bhagwati, and Pironkoff are also inseparable from the almost "unlimited" performative possibilities of soloists like Huang or Wu, who have grown out of the much maligned "conservatory style." This leaves room for an independent interpretation by the performers at the seams of the tightly woven structure. The obvious objection that this approach grafts a "Western," "unidiomatic" model of virtuosity onto a "traditional" instrument must be countered. The recent history of East Asia demonstrates (→ III) how a self-confident appropriation of advanced "technicity" has long since given rise to a multitude of independent "hybrid formations," to which the works presented here merely add further facets. In these works' refusal to appeal to simple culturalist and essentialist oppositions, they take particularities, aspects of alterity, and incommensurability seriously. By implementing these elements in a compositionally nuanced way, these works incorporate the basic prerequisites of a deeper study and the acquisition of intercultural competencies in order to reach beyond established models of a purely technically or purely ideologically imprinted appropriation of cultural "Otherness."

# **III. Studies on the History and Analysis of New East Asian Music**

#### **1. The Reception of Western Modernism in the Music of China and Japan Since the Late Nineteenth Century**

From the mid-nineteenth century, the history of East Asian music is inextricably linked to the inf luence and spread of Western music in East Asia, though by no means reducible to this as the sole factor (→ II.1). Although the Japanese model of a coexistence of Japanese and Western music and the Chinese model of a reform of Chinese music and instruments by Western standards have been identified as two opposing and rather momentous paradigms in the response to Western inf luence, there were also revealing parallels in the reception of Western music in Japan and China. It is remarkable, for example, that even at the height of anti-Western tendencies – in Japan during the Second World War, in China during the Cultural Revolution – musicians unf linchingly clung to European instruments and the European symphony orchestra as the essential medium of sound.

The distinction made by Saburō Moroi at the "Overcoming Modernity" symposium during the Second World War between Japanese spirit and Western technique (→ I.2) revisited a model in the appropriation of Western culture in Japan and China since the mid-nineteenth century. This can be traced in neo-Confucian slogans distributed from the 1850s, first in Japan and shortly afterward in China, "Japanese Spirit and Western Technology" (*wakon yōsai*),1 or "Chinese thinking [Confucian ethics] as substance, Western thinking [administration and technology] as means of use" (*zhongxue wei ti, xixue wei yong*).2 Military music, school songs (Japanese *shōka*, these in turn serving partly as a template for the Chinese *xuetangge*<sup>3</sup> ), and political songs were often created by following Western models note for note. Early nationalist symphonic works were usually based on the constructions and inventions of national identity in late nine-

<sup>1</sup> The slogan was coined by Tadayasu Yoshikawa (1824–1884) in his *Kaika sakuron* (Questions and Themes on Progress, 1867) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamato-damashii). Similar slogans had preceded this formulation, such as Shōzan Sakuma's (1811–1864) "Eastern ethics, Western technical learning" (*tōyō dōtoku, seiyō gakugei*). Both were nineteenth-century re-phrasings of the Heian-period slogan *wakon kansai* ("Japanese spirit, Chinese technique"),credited to Sugawara no Michizane (845–903). See Josephson, *The Invention of Religion in Japan*,108.

<sup>2</sup> Geist, *Die Modernisierung der chinesischen Kultur*, 12–20. Thisformula was first formulated in 1898 by the moderate reformer Zhang Zhidong (1837–1909) and was provocatively turned over by the reformers of the 1980s in *xi ti zhong yong*, "Western assubstance, Chinese as means of use" (ibid.,13).

<sup>3</sup> See Gottschewski, "Eine Musikkultur auf dem Scheidewege," Galliano, *Yōgaku*, 27–63, Gild, "Early 20th Century 'Reforms' in Chinese Music," Liang, "Western Influence on Chinese Music in the Early Twentieth Century," 139– 144, Liu, *A Critical History of New Music in China*, 23–78, and Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 206–221.

teenth-century European "national schools," and combined this largely stylistically consistent idiom with Japanese or Chinese titles, texts, and paratexts. Indeed, the interaction between Japanese and Chinese tendencies of modernization was so complex that the whole epoch around 1900 can only be adequately understood as a "triangular relationship between Europe, Japan, and China."<sup>4</sup>

A concept of modernism as a progressive breach of the norm that finds itself in a tense and non-affirmative relation to societal processes may generally be of limited use with regard to East Asian countries in the twentieth century, as argued in Eisenstadt's theory of "multiple modernities" (→ II.1 *De-Nationalizing Music Historiography*). In China, the starting point for the reception of Western music was utilitarianism characterized by colonial constellations, which can be traced back to both the Opium Wars of 1839–42 and 1851–60 and the subsequent Westernization and Self-Strengthening Movement (*Yangwu ziqiang yundong*). In the musical realm, the aspects of Western tradition first received were basic materials that were always assigned clearly defined social functions: the arming of the military involved the adoption of Western military brass music, modernized school education involved the introduction of Westernoriented school songs, and – most prominently – the strengthening of national self-esteem involved creating songs, and soon also symphonic works, with nationalistically accentuated texts, titles, or melodies.<sup>5</sup>

In various Chinese reform movements of the 1920s and 1930s, a stronger focus on local traditions under the guiding idea of a mutual complementation of Chinese and Western cultures (*yi zhong bu xi*) was opposed by a radicalized demand for "total Westernization" as (a temporary) means of modernization.6 One of the most important reformers of this time in the field of music was Liu Tianhua (1895–1932), who founded the Society for the Improvement of National Music (*Guoyue gaijinshe*) in 1927 along with Xiao Youmei (1884–1940), which received strong impulses from the Western-oriented *Xin wenhua yundong* (New Culture Movement, 1915–22, better known as the May Fourth Movement), which had been instigated by writers and intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai (1899–1935), Chen Duxin (1879–1942), Hu Shi (1891–1962), and Chen Xujing (1903–1967). With his ten posthumously published studies for the two-stringed knee fiddle *erhu* (1918–32), Liu contributed significantly to the establishment of a modern solo repertoire for Chinese instruments.<sup>7</sup> Tuning, pitch, tonal system, notation (the cipher notation *jianzipu*<sup>8</sup> ), meter and rhythm (triple meter, march rhythm), and instrumental technique (bowing techniques, up- and down-bow, etc.) were standardized according to principles of Western music, while, at the same time, elements of Chinese instrumental practice and aesthetics, especial-


<sup>4</sup> Gottschewski, "Zur Rezeption chinesischerMusik in Japan um 1900," 616 ("Dreiecksbeziehung Europa-Japan-China").

<sup>5</sup> See among others Wong, "*Geming Gequ*," Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 21–32, Melvin and Cai, *Rhapsody in Red*,159–224.

<sup>6</sup> The slogan of "total Westernization" (*quanpai xifanghua*) wascoined in 1933 by the sociologist Chen Xujing (1903– 1967). In thewake of the May Fourth Movement until the 1930s, this demandwas also advocated byHu Shi (1891– 1962), and in the democracy movement of the 1980s by Fang Lizhi (1936–2012) and Liu Xiaobo (1955–2017) (Geist, *Die Moderniserung der chinesischen Kultur*, 14). While in the 1920s social changes were still almost entirely equated with "Westernization" (*xihua*), from the beginning of the 1930s the more neutral term "modernization" (*xiandaihua*) became prevalent (ibid.,13–14).

ly with reference to northern Chinese traditions, were maintained: sectional form, programmatic titles, iconographic musical figures (for example, for imitating birdsong), and *erhu* fingering patterns. The decisive factor was that the studies were conceived and published in fixed notation and, in contrast to the f lexibility of traditional music practice, assumed a largely exact rendering of this musical text in performance.

Eric Hobsbawm's concept of "invented tradition" (→ I.3, II.3) has been applied to the development of the new repertoire of that period, in particular to the solo literature of the Chinese bamboo f lute *dizi* after 1949. It is characteristic that there was originally no clear distinction in the practice of local Chinese genres between solo and ensemble repertoire. In the context of the Maoist "subversion" (*fanshen*) of the feudal class structure after 1949, the rickshaw driver Lu Chunling and the simple farmer Feng Zicun were able to rise to celebrated *dizi* soloists and were commissioned to create short characteristic solo pieces, which they derived from the *dizi* part of traditional ensembles and which were distributed to the masses via cassette recordings.<sup>9</sup>

With the emergence of the Chinese symphony orchestra from the 1930s, a development had already begun that made the problems of the separation of spirit and technique increasingly visible: while Liu's solo works, following the idea of a "national essence,"10 still testify to an appreciation of the aesthetics of traditional instrumental playing, the repertoire of the newly developed orchestras of Chinese instruments was commonly based on a naïve imitation of popular Western orchestral music. This made it abundantly clear that, in contrast to solos and ensembles, an independent Chinese tradition could not be used for orchestral settings. The development of the Chinese symphony orchestra, usually referred to as the "Modern Chinese Folk Orchestra," took decisive steps during the Second World War, the Chinese Civil War (1947–49), and the early Maoist period, and is thus intimately connected with the systematic invention of a national musical idiom.11 To be able to equip a symphony orchestra with exclusively Chinese instruments, many instruments had to be rebuilt, especially instruments in the bass register. The number of instrument types was systematically expanded until the 1960s. Liu Tianhua had already introduced the standardized procedure, unusual in traditional practice, of notating all parts of a heterophonic ensemble structure. This practice was now transferred to the symphony orchestra, and the use of precisely notated parts and a conductor were adopted largely unchanged from the Western model.

Of course, the translation of Eastern models to the Western orchestra created the acute question of harmony, since polyphonic models could hardly be derived from traditional heterophonic practice. While earlier pieces usually – in analogy to earlier European harmonization of East Asian melodies (→ III.3) – added simple major-minor tonal harmonies to Chinese melodies, a new method was developed in the 1950s by Wang Zhenya and Li Yinghai as *Hanzu diaoshi hesheng* (Han Chinese Musical Modes and Harmonies). In 1959 Li Yinghai presented a book with a similar title,12 based on Wang Zhenya's earlier *Wusheng yinjie ji qi hesheng* (The Pentatonic Scale

<sup>9</sup> Lau, "Forever Red." SeeHobsbawm, "Introduction: Inventing Traditions."

<sup>10</sup> The idea of a "national essence" (*guocui*, Japanese *kokosui*), taken from the Japanese discourse, had already triggered an intense debate on cultural identity in the framework oftheMay Fourth Movement(Geist, *Die Modernisierung der chinesischen Kultur*,14).

<sup>11</sup> See Jedeck, "Dif ferent Interpretations of Musical Modernity?" for a detailed discussion, and Tsui, "The Modern Chinese Folk Orchestra" and Tsui, "Ensembles: The Modern Chinese Orchestra" for a historical overview of the Chinese symphony orchestra.

<sup>12</sup> Li, *Hanzu diaoshi ji qi hesheng* (Han Modality and ItsHarmony).

and Its Harmonies) from 1949.13 In this system, the harmonies are composed almost entirely of the notes of the pentatonic mode that form the corresponding melody. The system has also been widely used in works by Chinese composers for Western instruments and is still employed in music for the Chinese symphonic orchestra to the present day, although chromatic alterations have been increasingly introduced since the 1980s.14 Only a few experimental works took advantage of the unique sound of the new orchestral apparatus, such as Lam Doming's (b. 1926) well-known sonorist piece *Insect World* (1979). In the dominant standard repertoire of the Chinese symphony orchestra, the problem remains unmistakable that with the alleged "modernization" and standardization of the instrumental playing, the very same subtle deviations, inf lections, and variations that constitute a style like the South Chinese "silk-and-bamboo music" (*sizhuyue*) (→ III.3) in the first place were suppressed.15 Formally, too, the f low of the melodic line that is essential for such forms is undermined by the effectively optimized dramaturgies of suspension and contrast in most works and arrangements for the Chinese symphony orchestra.

The combination of Asian and European instruments was not yet provided for in the musical concepts of the reformers, and, considering the institutional separation of Western and Asian musical practice, it would hardly have been feasible. The earliest step in this direction was probably the inclusion of Asian solo instruments in the context of Western-oriented orchestral settings, although some of these, as in the case of Xian Xinghai's (1905–1945) *Yellow River Cantata* (*Huanghe dahechang*, 1939), written in the structurally weak retreat of the Communist Party in Yan'an (Shaanxi), may have been merely material makeshift solutions.16 In a different context, Japanese instruments in Kōsaku [Kósçak] Yamada's (1886–1965) "grande opéra" *Yoake – Kuro Fune* (The Black Ships, 1929–39) merely contributed to a kind of "self-exoticizing" locality, that hardly found its way into the substance of the music. Finally, the combination of Western and Chinese instruments in the "model works" (*yangbanxi*) during the Chinese Cultural Revolution coincided with related pragmatic and political omens: the singing style of Beijing Opera was "tempered" and stylistically leveled due to a musical style based on Westernized Romantic orchestral textures.<sup>17</sup>

In creating musical identifications recognized by the masses, communist and nationalist-republican idioms differed primarily on the textual level. Xian Xinghai, who had studied with Vincent d'Indy and Paul Dukas in Paris from 1930 to 1935, produced perhaps the best-known piece of this genre in 1939, the *Yellow River Cantata* (*Huanghe dahechang*). In contrast to Liu Tianhua's works, Xian's style shows no signs of an intensive examination of Chinese music traditions. The harmony of the opening movement, built according to the traditional antiphonal pattern of Chinese rowing songs, characteristically combines pentatonic melody formation with simple diatonic harmonies reminiscent of the Italian (operatic) tradition in their repetitive and sequential patterns.

It is not insignificant that Xian's Cantata was characterized as late as 1984 – notably in an academic study in English – as follows:

<sup>13</sup> Wang, *Wusheng yinjie ji qi hesheng* (The Pentatonic Scale and ItsHarmony). A detailed explanation ofthissystem is provided by Cheong and Ding, "Sposobin Remains," 62–68. See also Kouwenhoven, "Mainland China's New Music(II)," 59–60.

<sup>14</sup> See Cheong, "Reading Schoenberg,Hindemith, and Kurth in Sang Tong."

<sup>15</sup> See among others Thrasher, "*Bianzou* – Performance Variation in *Jiangnan sizhu*" and Witzleben, *"Silk and Bamboo" Music in Shanghai.*

<sup>16</sup> See Kraus, *Pianos & Politics in China*, 56–59.

<sup>17</sup> See Clark, "Model Theatrical Works," Mittler, "Cultural Revolution Model Works," Melvin and Cai, *Rhapsody in Red*, 225–264, and Liu, *A Critical History of New Music in China*, 377–482.

Itis by farthe mostconvincing synthesis ofWestern and Chinese musical idioms. In a singlework it unitessuch diverse techniques and elements as, for example,the Chinese folk antiphonalsinging style called *duikou chang*,the Chinese fisherman'swork song called *haozi*, traditional Chinese percussive patterns and instrumentation,Hugo Wolf's declamatory recitative style (adapted to the Chinese language), the traditional Western contrapuntal technique of choral writing, and, finally, the atmospheric orchestral ef fects of the French Impressionisticschool.18

One could draw a clear line from Xian's cantata to works of the 1950s and 1960s as represented by Ding Shande's (1911–1995) *Long March Symphony* (*Changzheng jiaoxiangqu*, 1959–62). National identity and authenticity are suggested here through the use of folk songs, which geographically trace the approximately 6,000-kilometer route of the long march of the f leeing communist troops from 1934 to 193519 from southern Jiangxi to northern Yan'an. That folk songs of the Yao people and other minorities are also included here points to the claim of national music as an all-encompassing idea of a "Great China," especially in the second movement, where this claim is even made explicit in the title: "The Red Army, Loved by Many Peoples" (*Hongjun, ge zu renmin de qinren*).

It seems evident that in the contexts mentioned so far, the reception of aesthetic modernity in the narrower sense hardly caught the attention of musical protagonists. And so, from today's perspective, it is crucial to emphasize those developments in East Asia that did not fit into this ostensibly seamless lineage of deliberate and naïve iconographic appropriation of Western (programmatic) music. Decisive for this "alternative" lineage of East Asian music of the twentieth century is, on the one hand, the temporary residence and emigration of European musicians in the 1930s and 1940s, primarily in Shanghai, the center of encounter between Western and Chinese trends, and, on the other hand, independent dynamics within the East Asian composer scenes.

The Russian composer and pianist Alexander Tcherepnin (1899–1977) served as an advisor to the Chinese ministry of culture from 1934 to 1937 in Shanghai and Beijing as well as Japan, developing models for the integration of East Asian elements into a moderately modern style (→ II.4).20 He focused primarily on the modernist folklorism of Bartók and Russian composers, which was also ref lected in the music of the most important Chinese composers he mentored, including He Luting (1903–1999) and Jiang Wenye (1910–1983). Tcherepnin cites He Luting's piano piece *Buf falo Boy's Flute* (*Mutong duandi*, 1934, Ex. 3.1) as a possible model of a new Chinese music in his 1935 article "Music in Modern China."21 While in this piece a tonal-harmonic ambiguity is initially maintained by the consistent use of the pentatonic scale, the second part – analogous to examples cited above – is characterized by a pentatonic melodic line in the right hand and a diatonic accompaniment in the left. Contrary to Tcherepnin's appraisal, a serious reception of Chinese traditions or modern Western currents is hardly recognizable here.

<sup>18</sup> Wong, "*Geming Gequ*,"125.

<sup>19</sup> See Moise, *Modern China*, 78–82.

<sup>20</sup> See Chang, "Alexander Tcherepnin, his Influence on Modern Chinese Music," Melvin and Cai, *Rhapsody in Red*, 110–126, Winzenburg, "From 'Folk Cure' to Catharsis: Alexander Tcherepnin andNewChinese Piano Music."

<sup>21</sup> Tcherepnine, "Music in Modern China," 398–400. On this piece see also Kouwenhoven, "Mainland China's New Music(II)," 57–59.

#### *Example 3.1: He Luting, Buf falo Boy's Flute (Mutong duandi), mm. 1–11*

*(Kouwenhoven, "Mainland China's New Music (II)," 57)*

What is noteworthy is Tcherepnin's demand that the training of Chinese musicians should begin with the adaptation of Chinese melodies to a "modern style," oriented toward European music of the early twentieth century (Debussy, Stravinsky), not toward Classical or Romantic music.22 In Tcherepnin's argumentation, there is an implicit optimism based on the traditional non-reliance of Chinese musicians on Western tradition, as well as an enthusiasm about the potential of the most populous nation for a future independent Chinese music.

Like Tcherepnin, the composer, music theorist, violist, and lawyer Wolfgang Fraenkel (1897–1983), who lived in exile in Shanghai from 1939 to 1947 after f leeing from the National Socialists, saw the future of Chinese music in a combination of Western modernism with autochthonous Chinese music traditions, though his conception of modernism was shaped differently. Inf luenced by the Schoenberg school, Fraenkel conceived of new music as fundamentally different from the Classical-Romantic tradition in a specific music-linguistic sense, and in his text "Music Development?" he recommended that his Chinese colleagues develop just such an alterity: Chinese composers should absorb the "technical and sensory qualities of Western art," which would, however, only serve as a basis for making connections with traditional Chinese music without destroying its particularities. In the pronounced distance from a classical musical language, Fraenkel saw a possible connection between pre-Classical and modern European music and Chinese music (→ III.2).

Fraenkel and Tcherepnin brought a fresh perspective to the ongoing discussion on the future of Chinese music, as the basis for the controversy over the roles of Western music up to the 1930s had implicitly always referred to the nineteenth century as the source of tonaldiatonic musical language. Fraenkel's most important student at the Shanghai Conservatory,

<sup>22</sup> Tcherepnine, "Musicin Modern China," 398.

Sang Tong (1923–2011), wrote *Yejing* (Night Scenery, 1947, published in 1981) for violin and piano – the first Asian composition incorporating atonal and dodecaphonic structures23 – and *Zai na yaoyuan de difang* (In the Land, Far, Far Away, 1947) for piano. These works represent impressive outlines of what a new Chinese music might have looked like later if this development had not been abruptly ended by political and social upheavals such as the Civil War 1947–49 and the takeover by the Communist Party in 1949 (→ III.2). Dodecaphonic works did not appear until the late 1970s, with Luo Zhongrong's (b. 1924) *Shejiang cai furong* (Picking Lotus Flowers at the Riverside, 1979) for voice and piano playing a pioneering role. In a similar fashion to Sang Tong's early works, Luo synthesized pentatonic melody with twelve-tone technique.24 The changing political atmosphere in post-Mao China is expressed in the assessment of the musicologist Wang Ningyi, who wrote in 1981 that "Comrade Luo's courageous move into the prohibited zone of twelve-tone music should be looked upon as a meaningful exploration."25

Aaron Avshalomov (1894–1956) has been another important figure in the musical life of Shanghai during the 1930s and has received some attention in research recently. Avshalomov was born in Nikolayevsk-on-Amur close to the Chinese-Russian border. During his stay in China from 1918 to 1947 (Tianjin, 1918–31, Shanghai, 1931–47) and after a period of field research on Chinese folk music he became a much-respected composer and music teacher, sharing his Chinese colleague's search for new Chinese musical identities. His works exhibit a type of cultural "fusion" that in many respects seems to predate compositional concepts of both Cultural Revolution "model works" (*yangbanxi*) and the young avant-garde of the 1980s. Most notably, his "music drama" *The Great Wall* (*Meng Jiang Nü*, 1943–45)26 and his Piano Concerto (1935)27 exhibit the composer's conscious reaction to a sensitive, politicized environment. Labeling his *Great Wall*, premiered in November 1945 in a production requiring considerable resources and effort, a "Chinese Music Drama" (*Yinyue gewuju*) avoided obvious connections to a much-debated reform of Beijing Opera (*jingju*). Emerging from the concept of a monodrama, the musical idiom to a text spoken and sung in Mandarin Chinese is characterized by an "eclectic mixture of late-Romantic, impressionist, and early modernist styles to depict changes in the dramatic action and emotion from moment to moment."<sup>28</sup> While the blending of genres and styles in *The Great Wall* to some extent anticipated the *yangbanxi* aesthetic, Avshalomov's Piano Concerto in G major paved the way for the veritable sub-genre of the "fusion concerto," of which

<sup>23</sup> See Cheong, "Reading Schoenberg, Hindemith, and Kurth in Sang Tong," who notes that although Sang's work "is not based on any twelve-tone row, the twelve chromatic notes obviously constitute a main resource" (96). Af terthe opening of Chinese culture in 1976/78 Zheng Yinglie and the composer himself published two analyses of this piece in 1983 and 1991 respectively (Zheng, "Sang Tong de Yejing shishi" [A Preliminary Analysis of Sang Tong's *Night Scenery*]; Sang, "Yejing zhong de wudiaoxing shoufa ji qita" [Atonal and Other Techniques in *Night Scenery*]). Both analyses emphasized the use of traditional Chinese scales and modesin thiswork.

<sup>24</sup> See Zheng, "Letter from China: The Use of Twelve Tone Technique in Chinese Musical Composition," Kouwenhoven, "Mainland China's New Music (III)," 81, Zhang, *Akkulturationsphänomene in der gegenwärtigen Musikkultur Chinas*, 104–107, Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 154, Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 360–361, Rao, "Hearing Pentatonicism Through Serialism," and Cheong, "Reading Schoenberg,Hindemith, and Kurth in Sang Tong," 91–92.

<sup>25</sup> Wang Ningyi, "Farenshensi de tansuo: Ping Luo Zhongrong de 'Shejiang cai furong'" [A Thought-Provoking Experiment: A Critique of Luo Zhongrong's *Picking Lotus Flowers at the Riverside*], 45, translation quoted af ter Cheong, "Reading Schoenberg,Hindemith, and Kurth in Sang Tong," 92.

<sup>26</sup> See Winzenburg, "Aaron Avshalomov and New Chinese Music in Shanghai, 1931–1947," Winzenburg, "Musical-Dramatic Experimentation in the *Yangbanxi*," and Winzenburg, "Partneringwith the Shanghai Arts Community."

<sup>27</sup> See Winzenburg, "ANew Multivoiced World."

<sup>28</sup> Winzenburg, "Musical-Dramatic Experimentation in the *Yangbanxi*,"193.

John Winzenburg has currently assembled more than 400 representative examples.29 The second movement of this concerto, an adagio carefully incorporating a *kunqu* opera tune, hints at Chinese performance techniques such as sliding pitch lines. The movement was arranged by the composer for an ensemble of 14 Chinese instruments that enter into a dialogue with the solo piano. This arrangement was performed separately from the three-movement work at the premiere on 19 January 1936 in Shanghai,30 and, according to the composer, the confrontation between the two performances and settings was intended to demonstrate the key role of timbre for the understanding of musical identity:

Working on the modernizing of Chinese music, i.e., trying to bring it up to a standard acceptable to the present generation, one is confronted with the problem of losing, in the process, very much of what is typically and characteristically Chinese. Since it must be recognized that the Chinese instruments, in spite of the charm of their ton-colour [*sic*], cannot be yet ef ficiently employed to perform on them symphonic music on account of technical shortcomings, the only way out (the composerseesit for the present and until that time when the mechanical and technical possibilities will be improved) is to use the western orchestra trying the [*sic*] preserve *only* the spirit of Chinese music as expressed in the thematic material, not taking into much accountthe loss ofthat peculiarcolourwhich could not be obtained by using Chinese instruments. The present experiment […] is not a comparison: it is a desire to explain through actual music that although (as in the case of this "Adagio") the two versions are *entirely identical* as regard instrumentation, harmonization, form, and thematic material, the western orchestra does not – (perhaps cannot?) – sound as what is ordinarily called "Chinese music." Or doesit?? … Thisthe composer leavesfor the audience.31

During the same period, some – equally implicitly political – comparable approaches emerged in Japan, most notably in the orchestral works *Akebono* (1931) by Kunihiko Hashimoto32 (1904– 1949) and the *Nagauta Symphony "Tsurukame"* (1934) by Kōsaku (Kósçak) Yamada.33 In both works, a choral *nagauta shamisen* ensemble (an ensemble consisting of *shamisen*-accompanying singers in unison) and a Western symphony orchestra are connected in a variety of ways. These works emerged in a politicized context of increasing nationalism that had spread in the wake of Japan's occupation of the Manchurian peninsula in 1931/32. Hashimoto's 30-minute *Akebono*

<sup>29</sup> Winzenburg, "A New Multivoiced World," 222–223; see also Winzenburg, "Heteroglossia and Traditional Vocal Genres."

<sup>30</sup> Winzenburg, "ANew Multivoiced World," 224.

<sup>31</sup> Aaron Avshalomov, "Notes upon the Orchestral Works," in *The Shanghai Municipal Orchestra at the Lyceum, Fifteenth Sunday Concert Symphonic Programme* (19 January 1936), 4–5, quoted af ter Winzenburg, "A New Multivoiced World," 231.

<sup>32</sup> From 1934 to 1937, Hashimoto studied in Vienna with Egon Wellesz. On returning to Japan, with a stopover in Los Angeles, he metwith Schoenberg (Galliano, *Yōgaku*, 205). *Akebono*was performed again in 2005 atthe Tokyo University of the Arts (*Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku)* under the direction of Hiroshi Wakasugi to great acclaim. The text is by Tatsuyuki Takano (1876–1947), the underlying *shamisen* music was composed by Kosaburo Yoshizumi (1876–1972) and Rokeshiro Kineya (1904–1987).

<sup>33</sup> Yamadawasthe mostinternationally respected composerin Japan in the first half ofthe twentieth century.He had, among other teachers, studied in Berlin with Max Bruch and Karl Wolf (1910–12), and contributed significantly to the development of Japanese music life. During the Pacific War, Yamada of fered his services to the militarist regime, leading to fierce controversies in the immediate postwar period (Galliano, *Yōgaku*, 130–131). Some further information on Yamada has been provided in Chapter II.4.

(Sunrise), written for a huge ensemble, caused a scandal at its premiere on 14 November 1931, followed by harsh and politically charged press reviews that insisted on the basic incompatibility of the intimate character of Japanese music and the representational character of Western orchestral styles.34 The composer himself published an extensive list of harmonic strategies and ensemble combinations used in his work, concluding that he had "failed to achieve a synthesis, to combine these techniques into a single procedure."<sup>35</sup> Yamada's *Nagauta Symphony "Tsurukame,"* by contrast, was much better received, although it pursued an agenda similar to Hashimoto's, namely "the urgently needed overcoming of the opposition between Japanese and Western music with the aim of creating a Japanese national music."36 It is evident that Yamada's success was not least due to the allusions to nationalist tropes and symbols in the quoted *nagauta* material, and not merely to the astonishing inventiveness of how this material is technically interwoven, through considerable effort, with harmonic and contrapuntal structures.37

In both works, the melodies of the *shamisen* ensemble are integrated into the idiom of the orchestra by coloring and developing them with the means of major-minor tonality. At the same time, the composers claimed to have left the traditional idiom of the *shamisen* ensemble largely untouched. In this formalized dialogue, the juxtaposed ensembles describe a kind of coexistence of Japanese and European music that had been characteristic of the Japanese modernization model since the Meiji era (1868–1911) as a whole. While Hashimoto, a member of *Shinkō sakkyokuka renmei* (Federation of Innovative Composers, founded in 1930, → II.4), was the only composer of his generation to have studied both European and Japanese music, Yamada's music had initially been strongly inf luenced by Richard Strauss, but increasingly turned toward an integration of traditional Japanese instruments and genres. Already in Yamada's symphony "Inno Meiji" (1921) a *hichiriki* is used, which, however, – like the Japanese instruments in the opera *Yoake – Kuro Fune* (see above) – does not play a major role. The *Nagauta Symphony* is based on the play *Tsurukame* ("Crane and Tortoise," a story documenting imperial worship), adapted from the *nō* theater for *kabuki*. In sum, both symphonies ref lect increasingly nationalist tendencies of Japanese music of the 1920s and 1930s, with Yamada's work expressing a more explicit political undertone.

After early attempts to make structural use of the modes and timbres of Japanese traditional genres during the 1930s in the context of the *Shinkō sakkyokuka renmei*, Yoritsune Matsudaira (1907–2001) extensively linked current European developments from neoclassicism to dodecaphony, serialism, and aleatoricism with structural and tonal aspects of *gagaku*, during the postwar period.38 Matsudaira's *Theme and Variations for Piano and Orchestra* (1952) on the fa-

<sup>34</sup> See Menzel, *Hōgaku*,125–133.

<sup>35</sup> Hashimoto, "Nagauta shinkyoku 'Akebono,'" 45, quoted af ter Menzel, *Hōgaku*,127 ("Obwohl ich danach trachtete, die oben beschriebenen Techniken in Synthese zu bringen, zu einer einzigen Verfahrensweise zu verbinden, […] mussich leider bekennen, dass mit dieser entscheidende Schritt nicht gelungen ist.").

<sup>36</sup> Tsuyuki, "Nihon ongaku to yōgaku to no kōryū," 36, quoted af ter Menzel, *Hōgaku*,134 ("[Tsurukame] […] versteht sich als Schritt in Richtung der dringend nötigen Überwindung der Opposition von japanischer und westlicher Musik, mit dem Ziel, eine japanischeNationalmusik zu schaf fen.").

<sup>37</sup> See Menzel, *Hōgaku*,134–141.

<sup>38</sup> Yoritsune Matsudaira was one of Japan's most influential and internationally active composers; he became known in the West already during the 1930s af ter being awarded the Tcherepnin composition prize in 1935. He attended the 1957 and 1958 Darmstadt Summer Course (Caitano, "Intercultural Perspectives in the International Summer Courses for New Music," 336–342). In 1958 his orchestral work *U-Mai* (1957–58) was premiered in Darmstadt. Among his later works, the *Drei Arien nach Gedichten aus der "Geschichte vom Prinzen Genji"* (1990) for soprano, *shō*, flute, and *koto*, a preliminary work toward his late opera *Genji Monogatari* (1991–97), made use of

mous *gagaku* piece *Etenraku* (in the mode *banshikicho*) was awarded a prize at the ISCM festival 1952 and afterward conducted by Herbert von Karajan in Vienna (1952) and Tokyo (1954). In 1930, Matsudaira had been the youngest founding member of the *Shinkō sakkyokuka renmei*, which encouraged "the development of Japanese tonal systems suitable for primarily pentatonic and modal melodies, structured after the type of 'quartal harmonies' derived from the vertical tone clusters of the *shō* in *gagaku*" 39 in the second of its four guidelines (→ II.4). As outlined in Chapter II.4, this demand was met in particular by Fumio Hayasaka (1914–1955) in works such as *Kodai no bukyoku* (Ancient Dance, 1937) along with the second movement of Matsudaira's Sonatine for Flute and Piano (1936) that uses a *gagaku* melody in a predominantly neoclassicist context, "alienating it from its origins."40 As discussed in detail in Chapter II.4, in the 1930s, Japan's tendency toward cultural renewal, known as *shinkō*, had sparked an intense debate over "Japanese harmony," in which Shūkichi Mitsukuri, Shōhei Tanaka, and Klaus Pringsheim participated alongside Hayasaka.41 Hayasaka's and Matsudaira's works of the postwar period conveyed these principles to the younger generation. In his works of the 1950s, Matsudaira continued to explore specific concepts of Japanese harmony, such as in his adaptation of the mouth organ *shō*'s *aitake* chords in his central work *Saibara ni yoru Metamorfōzu* (Metamorphoses on Saibara, 1953/58).42

Reforms in traditional music were far less radical in Japan than in China. A central figure was the *koto* player Michio Miyagi43 (1894–1956), who became the protagonist of *Shin Nihon ongaku* (New Japanese Music), a movement that sought to gently integrate Western elements into traditional Japanese instrumental structures.44 The movement aimed to expand the performance techniques of traditional instruments, but also experimented with modifications (usually enlargements) of the instruments. Already before Miyagi, the *koto* genre *shinkyoku* (New Pieces) had been created during the Meiji Period (1868–1911) in Osaka, in which elements of Western music were included. Noboru Tateyama (1876–1926) played a significant role in the formation of that repertoire.45 After the Second World War, a broader trend toward the conf luence of Japanese and European musical traditions was not re-established until the 1960s, primarily by musicians who, following Miyagi (who died in 1956) adopted the term *gendai hōgaku* (Traditional Japanese Music of the Present). This notable group of distinguished soloists was able to arouse a new interest in traditional instruments among Westerneducated composers.<sup>46</sup> Most prominently, the "Group of four for traditional Japanese music"

41 Galliano, *Yōgaku*, 66–73, 79–82.

44 See especially Menzel, *Hōgaku*, 66–82.

Japanese instrumentsforthe firsttime.OnMatsudaira see, among others, Sawabe,*Neue Musik in Japan von 1950 bis 1960*, 48–51, Sawabe, "Der lange Weg zur 'Geschichte vom Prinzen Genji,'" Galliano, *Yōgaku*, 82–85, 137–144, 259–260, as well asthe essaysin Benítez and Kondō, *Gagaku and Serialism*. Some further information on Matsudaira is provided in Chapter II.4.

<sup>39</sup> Quoted inHerd, "The Cultural Politics of Japan's Modern Music," 44 (→ II.4).

<sup>40</sup> Lehtonen, "'March from the Age of Imitation to the Age of Creation,'" 181. Lehtonen (ibid., 167–185) provides a close reading of this movement and other prewarworks by Matsudaira.

<sup>42</sup> Ibid.,138–141.

<sup>43</sup> The blind *koto* player Michio Miyagi was one of the most important reformers of traditional Japanese music in the twentieth century. At the age of 18, he reached the highest rank (*kengyo*) with the traditional Japanese musician system. See Galliano, *Yōgaku*, 52–55.

<sup>45</sup> See Flavin, "*Meiji shinkyoku*" and Menzel, *Hōgaku*, 55–65.

<sup>46</sup> See Galliano, *Yōgaku*, 238–254.

(*Hōgaku yonin no kai*) and the *koto* player Kayoko Suzuki developed the rapprochement. In this context, Yoshirō Irino (1921–1980) wrote *Music for Two Kotos* (1957), the first dodecaphonic work for traditional Japanese instruments,47 and ten years later Tōru Takemitsu composed his seminal works for traditional instruments *Eclipse* (1966) and *November Steps* (1967) (→ III.4).

In China, Shi Yongkang's (b. 1929) concerto *Huanghe de gushi* (The Story of the Yellow Crane, 1955) represents an early example of a "fusion concerto" with a Chinese solo instrument, reversing Avshalomov's setting twenty years earlier. The solo instrument is the Chinese bamboo f lute *dizi*, but the piece almost entirely conforms to the conventions of the Western Romantic virtuoso concerto tradition.<sup>48</sup> An appropriation of Western virtuosity has generally acted as a determining factor in the repertoire of almost all Chinese instruments since the 1930s. The resulting style is marked by an integration of Chinese sound resources into an almost entirely European nineteenth-century idiom. This goes hand in hand with a considerable reduction in complexity at all musical levels and is generally summarized as "conservatory style" since it is closely linked with the establishment of academic music education institutions since 1927:49

Many virtuososin the conservatories or professionalstate-supported urban troupescome from the background of hereditary village "folk artist" families, but they have largely abandoned the traditional ethos in favour of a modernized, virtuoso and partly Westernized style, using a tempered scale, abbreviating pieces considerably and exaggerating dynamics and gestures for stage performance. This "conservatory style" is more accessible but of lesscomplexity than the traditional rural music-making.50

The use of Chinese solo instruments in orchestral contexts became significantly more sophisticated after the end of the Cultural Revolution in the 1980s and 90s. For example, the *dizi* in Zhu Jian'er's (1922–2017) Fourth Symphony (1990) represents a structurally looser principle, acting within a stylistically complex amalgamation of dodecaphony, sound masses, and Chinese percussion ensemble rhythms. This situation is similar to the role of the musical saw in Zhu's Second Symphony (1987). An obvious narrative interpretation is one that that understands the solo instruments in these two works as depicting the articulation of the individual in a repressive and coercively constrained society, thus processing the traumas of the Cultural Revolution, which were the explicit theme of the First Symphony (1977–86).51

Zhu Jian'er's ten symphonies were written between 1986 and 1999, and can be seen as an almost systematic undertaking to find a music differing in significant ways from the Western symphonic tradition by means of different experimental arrangements while upholding the emphatic aesthetic claims of the symphonic tradition (→ III.5).52 At the age of 50, Zhu, who

<sup>47</sup> Sawabe, *Neue Musik in Japan von 1950 bis 1960*, 47.

<sup>48</sup> The score ofthiswork is extensively discussed and fully reproduced inMittler,*Dangerous Tunes*, 321–323, 440–457.

<sup>49</sup> In 1927, the Shanghai Conservatory was opened. See Schimmelpenninck and Kouwenhoven, "The Shanghai Conservatory ofMusic" and Yang, "The Shanghai Conservatory, ChineseMusical Life, and the RussianDiaspora, 1927–1949."

<sup>50</sup> Jones, "China §IV. Living Traditions."

<sup>51</sup> See in particularBarbaraMittler'sinterpretation of Zhu's First Symphony in*Dangerous Tunes*, 97–105.On the continued importance of post-Cultural Revolution "scar music" for Chinese composers until the 1990s see Mittler, "Sound Patterns of Cultural Memory."

<sup>52</sup> The scores of Zhu'sten symphonies and hissinfoniettawere released, alongwith CDrecordings, in 2002 in an elaborate three-volume edition ofthe ShanghaiMusic PublishingHouse. See also Sun, "Zhu Jian'er's Symphonies."

had mostly composed unnoticed before and during the Cultural Revolution, attended composition classes at the Shanghai Conservatory with Chen Mingzhi (1925–2009) and Yang Liqing (1942–2013) to explore and appropriate new techniques, including the twelve-tone method in particular.<sup>53</sup> While the First Symphony, in its long formation and methodological eclecticism, aptly documents the difficulties of finding a new musical language in the years following the Cultural Revolution, the Second Symphony compresses the traumatic experiences into an extreme density. The two halves of the twelve-tone row (C–A–G# – F–E–C# – D#–F#–G – A#– B–D; all trichords being members of the same set class 014), similar in structure to Anton Webern's dodecaphonic symmetries, appear in the main theme permuted and simultaneously sharply accentuated by a whole tone (T<sup>2</sup> ) transposition, which articulates the Chinese speech rhythm of the question "Why?" (Ex. 3.2).54

*Example 3.2: Zhu Jian'er, Second Symphony op. 28, rehearsal number 16+3–6: main theme with the underlying words "weishenme, weishenme zheyang, weishenme zheyang dou" ("Why? Why so? Why is it such a struggle?")*<sup>55</sup>

In the broad introduction to the first movement, the fragile sounds of the musical saw continue in extensive solo fields of other instruments but are repeatedly cut off harshly by rolling tutti sounds. These spread out considerably in the second part of the work until, at the end, after a painful polytonal "apparent triumph" of the brass, an echo of the saw becomes audible – which can easily be understood as the barely audible, yet sustainably articulated voice of the individual.

In completely different social and historical terms, the treatment of the Japanese solo instruments *shakuhachi* and (*satsuma-*) *biwa* in Takemitsu's *November Steps* (1967) is also characterized by a much greater f lexibility of tempo, synchronization, and articulation when compared to the orchestral structures, resulting not least from the mostly unmetered, partly ambiguous notation for the solo instruments (→ III.4). Owing to the differences in tone and technique, the Asian instruments for Zhu and Takemitsu become carriers of an individualization process, and produce an autonomous music that disengages from the determinism of compositional ideas and penetrates open spaces removed from large-scale formal processes.

Reform, imitation, coexistence, integration, and individualization: these historical concepts in dealing with East Asian sounds, instruments, and genres make it particularly clear how closely composition in East Asia was, and still is, linked to broader sociocultural developments, but also how differently the responses to the challenges of aesthetic and political modernity could be conceived. In these conceptual constellations, a realm of absolute alterity (Hashimoto's and Yamada's dualistic orchestral settings, Zhu's and Takemitsu's contrasting time strata), rationalized mediation (Liu's and Miyagi's reforms), and stylistic leveling and appropriation (the Chinese symphony orchestra, Shi's virtuoso concerto, the conservatoire style) –

<sup>53</sup> Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 151.

<sup>54</sup> Kouwenhoven, "Mainland China'sNew Music(II)," 65 and Sun, "Zhu Jian'er's Symphonies."

<sup>55</sup> Kouwenhoven, "Mainland China'sNew Music(II)," 65.

was staked out along with substantial attempts at a re-invention of an independent Asian modernity filtered through the ethics and aesthetics of recent musical modernism (Avshalomov, Tcherepnin, Fraenkel). The potential for intercultural mediation and transformation in East Asian music history emerging from these fundamental concepts will now be further explored by the case studies in this chapter.

### **2. Triggering Musical Modernism in China: The Work of Wolfgang Fraenkel in Shanghai Exile**

The history of early musical modernism in East Asia has not yet been written with an adequate multiplicity of perspectives. Initial studies that have approached this topic56 confirm that European composers and musicians sometimes played important roles in the formation of a modern musical identity in East Asian countries. These European figures' roles, however, often remained ambivalent in a colonial, semi-colonial, or postcolonial situation due to the obvious tension between a sometimes obvious contempt for Asian musicians and a sensitive empathy for local circumstances and traditions. The Shanghai of the first half of the twentieth century offers a wealth of examples. The interactions, collaborations, and conf licts between Russian and Western European and Chinese inhabitants as well as colonial (Western and Japanese) administrators in Shanghai's internationalized music scene in the late 1930s and early 1940s were intensified by the presence of a significant number of Jewish musicians f leeing Nazi Germany and Austria. Only three of them may count among representatives of Western musical modernism: Alban Berg's German student and assistant Julius Schloß (1902–1972); the pianist Karl Steiner (1912–2001), also from Schoenberg's Viennese circle; and the Berlin composer, musician, and judge Wolfgang Fraenkel (1897–1983). All three arrived in Shanghai in 1939 as refugees from Nazism after being detained for a few months in concentration camps. The lives and artistic work of Schloß and Steiner have been documented as part of research on the history of the Schoenberg school57 and Fraenkel's case has only been studied since 2003. The following overview summarizes his work in Shanghai as a musician, teacher, and composer while attempting to identify essential starting points for research on Fraenkel.58

<sup>56</sup> See Sawabe,*Neue Musik in Japan von 1950 bis 1960*,15–33,Mittler,*Dangerous Tunes*, 21–32,Galliano, *Yōgaku*, 27–123, Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 206–222, Melvin and Cai, *Rhapsody in Red,* and Liu, *A Critical History of New Music in China*, 23–286.

<sup>57</sup> On Schloß see Krones, "Es waere die Erfuellung eines meiner ernstesten Wuensche und Pflichten, die LULU zu vollenden," Krones, "Julius Schloß," Fricke, "Ein saarländischer Vertreter der Zweiten Wiener Schule," and Fricke, "Julius Schloß." On Steiner,see Krones, "Karl Steiner – ein später Pianist der 'Wiener Schule,'" Gaub, "Karl Steiner," Baier, "50 Jahre danach: Julius Schloss, Karl Steiner, Jenö Takács," Steiner, "50 nian zhi hou," and Steiner, "Report About My Yearsin Shanghai, 1939–1949." In 2003 I published the first ofseveral articles on Fraenkel, on which this part of the chapter is based (see Appendix).

<sup>58</sup> The documents of the Fraenkel estate cited below are part of the musical estate of Wolfgang Fraenkel, Bavarian State Library, Music Department, Mus.ms. 19557–19828 (here cited as mus. est.), and the literary estate Wolfgang Fraenkel, Bavarian State Library, Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books, ANA 496, Sch[achteln] (boxes) 1–6 (here cited as lit. est.). So far, only two studies have dealt with Fraenkel's estate: Kellermann, "Kellermann-Verzeichnis der Werke von Wolfgang Fraenkel" and Fraenkel, *Afunktionelle Musik* (edited and with a commentary by Markus Köhler). Fraenkel's musicalworks are identified belowusing the Kellermann catalogue of Fraenkel's works (Kel.V.). There is also a rudimentary overview of the Fraenkel estate in McCredie, "Komponisten, die in denwestpazifischen Raum und nachOzeanien emigrierten" andMcCredie,"Die emigrierten euro-

#### Wolfgang Fraenkel's Development as a Composer and Path to Exile

Wolfgang Fraenkel was born in Berlin on 10 October 1897, the son of the respected lawyer Philipp and Agnes Fraenkel (née Krenz), and married Rosa Fraenkel (née Nebenzahl) in 1929. As a child and as young man, Fraenkel took violin lessons with Max Heinecke, a member of the Waldemar Meyer String Quartet, and Issay Barmas (1872–1946), and later violin and viola lessons with P. Saager, the principal viola player of the Berlin State Opera. He studied piano and music theory at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory59 and later, after being forced out of his position as a district court counselor (Amts- and Landgerichtsrat), conducting with Julius Prüwer of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. On graduation from high school, he studied law at Berlin University until the beginning of World War I, during which he served in the German army. After the war, Fraenkel completed his studies in law in 1923 and from 1929 worked as district court counselor until April 1933, when, as a consequence of Hitler's seizure of power, all Jews were removed from public office. From 1933 until November 1938, now "Landgerichtsrat a.D." (retired district court counselor), he worked as a freelance musician, composer, and conductor, taking part in a number of performances organized by the *Kulturbund Deutscher Juden* (Jewish Cultural League), which was a central instrument for the isolation and control of Jewish artists by the "culture officer" (*Kulturreferent*) Hans Hinkel and existed from June 1933 to 11 September 1941.60 An example of these activities is Fraenkel's direction of a series of performances of Stravinsky's *L'Histoire du Soldat* (1918)*,* which he conducted in 1936 and 1937.61

jüdischen Komponisten im ostasiatischen Raum." Additional information is drawn from the Archives of the Far Eastern Jewish Central Information Bureau (DALJEWCIB) Harbin-Shanghai at The Central Archives for the History ofthe Jewish People (PBC), TheHebrewUniversity ofJerusalem,DAL 1119 Fraenkel, Wolfgang (microfilmed for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 2007) (here quoted as DAL 1119). All material is quoted and reproduced herewith kind permission ofthe libraries and archives. For basicinformation on the life andwork of Jewish exilesin Shanghai in the field of music during and af terWorldWarII,see, among others, Cheung,"Divide and Connectionsin ChineseMusicalModernity," Fetthauer,"Das Far Eastern Jewish Central Information Bureau inHarbin und Shanghai," Eory, "Zur Rolle der Musik für zentraleuropäische jüdische Flüchtlinge in derDiaspora Shanghai,"Xu,"Youtai yinyuejia zai Shanghai,"Xu,"Nacuitudao xia de toushengzhe,"Xu,"The Influence ofJewish Refugees on the Musical and Intellectual Life of Shanghai," Xu, "Jews and the Musical Life of Shanghai," Xu, *Xunfang Youtairen*, Tang,"Musical Life in the Jewish Refugee Community in Shanghai," Tang,"Reconstructing the Vanished Musical Life of the Shanghai Jewish Diaspora," Tang, *Shanghai Youtai shequ de yinyue shenghuo*, Melvin and Cai, *Rhapsody in Red*,100–106, and Rosenson, "Jewish Musiciansin Shanghai."


In November 1938, Fraenkel was imprisoned at Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, near Berlin, as probably one of 6,000 Jewish males who were deported to Sachsenhausen following the "Reichskristallnacht" pogrom on 9 November. As his mother was considered to be "Aryan" and he promised to leave the country immediately, he was released from Sachsenhausen with the help of the *Kulturbund* after one or two months, probably in late 1938 or early 1939. In 1939, 12,089 German and Austrian refugees reached Shanghai as a "port of last resort," since the international city was the only remaining place worldwide that did not require visa or even a passport for immigration.62 Among the roughly 18,000 German and Austrian refugees who reached Shanghai in this period, a considerable number – 450 (2.5%) – were musicians.<sup>63</sup>

Fraenkel left for Shanghai on the *Conte Rosso*, a famous Italian Lloyd-Triestino liner, on 12 April 1939 and arrived in Shanghai on 7 May 1939.64 Deprived of most of their personal belongings and only allowed personal funds of 10 Reichsmark (4 US \$), the refugees arrived in Shanghai after a long and exhausting journey, mostly in poor material condition and without any preparation for living in a Chinese – albeit very international – city. The situation of the Jewish refugees was partly relieved by the activities of several self-founded Jewish assistance organizations, such as the Speelman committee (Committee for Assistance of European Refugees in Shanghai) of the Dutch businessman Michel Speelman, which provided housing and a monthly stipend for a certain period to the victims of the Nazi regime, and the Far Eastern Jewish Central Information Bureau in Harbin und Shanghai, which established contacts to local employers and provided advice.

During the eight years he spent in Shanghai, Wolfgang Fraenkel had at least six different addresses: in November 1939 he was registered at 372 Bourgeat (*Pushi lu*, today named *Changle lu*) in the French Concession (the part of the city where most Russian as well as Western European immigrants lived).65 Around 1941 he lived in *Chengdu lu* and by early 1943 in the "Cosmopolitan Centre" (*Shijie Xin Cun*) in *Tianping lu*. 66 On 18 February 1943 the Japanese government announced that all "stateless refugees" (designating all Jewish refugees who had arrived in Shanghai from 1937 onward) were to move to a marked-off area in Hongkou (a northern district of Shanghai) within three months. Fraenkel relocated to this Jewish Ghetto in Hongkou where, according to his former student Qin Xixuan, he first lived in *Zhabei lu*. 67 In the "List of Foreigners in Dee Lay Jao Police District" from 24 August 1944, he is registered as "Dolf-

in Breslau – if youwould like to know more aboutthe beloved *Kulturbund* I am happy to report butI have to stress that the *K[ultur]bund* behaved exceptionally well when I was in concentration camp and really did a lot for my early release!!")

<sup>62</sup> See Ristiano, *Port of Last Resort* and Messmer, *Jewish Wayfarers in Modern China*.

<sup>63</sup> Fetthauer, "Das Far Eastern Jewish Central Information Bureau inHarbin und Shanghai," 52.

<sup>64</sup> Letter from the *Hilfsverein der Juden in Deutschland* (Aid Association of German Jews) to the Far Eastern Jewish CentralInformationBureau(DALJEWCIB)Harbin14/03/1939 andFraenkel'slettertoDALJEWCIBfrom25/05/1939 (DAL 1119). On the Hilfsverein, which had been founded in 1901 and closed down by the Nazisin 1939,see Adler-Rudel, "Jüdische Selbsthilfe unter dem Naziregime 1933–1939."

<sup>65</sup> *Emigranten Adressbuch für Shanghai. Mit einem Anhang: Branchen-Register*, Facsimile reprint of the original edition (Shanghai: TheNewStar Company 1939),HongKong,1995. Fraenkel announced his activities as a private teacher of musictheory, harmony,counterpoint,composition, and instrumental practice in the *North-China Daily News* between December 1939 and October1940 under the address1434 Avenue Road, Room 25 (today Beijing Road) (information provided by Sophie Fetthauer).

<sup>66</sup> Personalcommunication from Fraenkel'sformerstudent Sang Tong, Shanghai,November 2002.

<sup>67</sup> Personalcommunication from Fraenkel'sformerstudent Qin Xixuan, Beijing, December 2002.

gang [*sic*] Fraenkel, Musician," age 48, together with his wife, Rosa Fraenkel, age 46, in 343/53 *Zangyang lu* (most likely an incorrect transcription of *Changyang lu*, formerly Ward Road/ *Huade lu*, one of the main streets in the Hongkou Ghetto).68 He probably moved again in 1946, to *Yuyuan lu* no. 1000 in the French Concession, where he was still registered in 1947.69

Fraenkel's artistic development before 1939 ref lects different trends of the early twentieth century, namely neoclassicism, free atonality, and twelve-tone technique. His most important works of this period include the opera *Der brennende Dornbusch* (The Burning Bush, 1926–28, Kel.V. 190) after Oskar Kokoschka and the cantata *Die 82. Sure des Koran* (1936, Kel.V. 112). The cantata was premiered on 9 November 1937 under the direction of Fraenkel by the Haarlem Orchestra Association and the alto Paula Lindberg in Haarlem (Netherlands).70 In addition, he composed two string quartets (1923–24, Kel.V. 19 and 20), *Musik mit konzertanter Flöte* (Music with Concertante Flute, 1930, Kel.V. 13), the cantata *Der Wegweiser* (also listed as *Musik mit obligater Oboe*, 1931, Kel.V. 110), as well as a violin sonata and a cello sonata (1935, Kel.V. 29 and 34).

The works from the mid-1930s onward in particular show a self-confident atonal style in the tradition of the early Schoenberg, largely without systematic use of the twelve-tone method, which Fraenkel had probably known since the early 1930s. Fraenkel's personal contact with Schoenberg during the latter's professorship at the *Akademie der Künste* (1926–33) or with Schoenberg's Berlin circle cannot currently be proven, however, and it seems likely that Fraenkel cannot be considered part of Schoenberg's "Berlin School" in the narrower sense. Nevertheless, his further development makes it clear that Schoenberg's music and compositional aesthetics played a central role for him, but he could synthesize them from a distance, in a very original way, with other inf luences from Paul Hindemith to Ernst Kurth, as documented in his theoretical main work *Afunktionelle Musik* (Afunctional Music, 1937–43, see below).

Like numerous other exiles from Shanghai, Fraenkel left Shanghai when the Chinese Civil War broke out and moved to Los Angeles in August 1947.71 In the remaining 36 years he was able to celebrate some successes as a composer despite his slightly advanced age, and his work was beginning to be noticed in Europe. Three of his works were awarded European composition prizes, and on 21 October 1966 Bruno Maderna conducted the premiere of his *Symphonische Aphorismen* (1959), a work oriented toward Webern, at *La Scala* in Milan. At the age of 60, Fraenkel followed the latest developments in European music, writings by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez can be found in his estate with notes and (sometimes critical) comments. In Los Angeles, Fraenkel also met Arnold Schoenberg and, on the latter's 75th birthday on 13 September 1949, directed a performance of the *Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte* (1942) op. 41 in the version for string quartet, piano, and reciter. For this birthday he also dedicated his (freely atonal, not dodecaphonic) *Music for String Quartet* (1948–49, Kel.V. 21; Fig. 3.1) to Schoenberg.

<sup>68</sup> ThelistispublishedonCD-ROMinArmbrüster,KohlstruckandMühlberger,*Exil Shanghai 1938–1947*.Unfortunately the facsimile of the page on which Fraenkel is listed (page 65) cannot be found on the CD-ROM (page 85 is wrongly provided instead).

<sup>69</sup> Personal communication from Fraenkel's former students Qin Xixuan and Zhou Guangren, Beijing, December 2002. This address is also listed in the *Shi sheng tongxun lu* (Record of Teachers and Students) of the National Conservatory of Music Shanghai, July 1947, 2.

<sup>70</sup> Program in lit. est., ANA 496, Sch. 5, "Programme"; newspaper reviews in lit. est., ANA 496, Sch. 5, "Zeitungsartikel und Kritiken."

<sup>71</sup> Fraenkel's journey from Shanghai to Los Angeles can be reconstructed from the autograph score of *Musik für großes Orchester* (1946–48, Kel.V. 8), on which the following place names are indicated: Shanghai (p. 1), Nanjing (p. 35), Kobe (p. 36), Yokohama (p. 39),Honolulu (p. 51), San Francisco (p. 53), Los Angeles(p. 55). See footnote 133.

*Figure 3.1: Letter from Wolfgang Fraenkel to Arnold Schoenberg, 14 September 1949*

*Copyright © by Arnold Schönberg Center Vienna*

Wolfgang Fraenkel died in 1983 at the age of 85. He left behind 193 works, 19 of which remained unfinished. Most of the scores have survived in Fraenkel's hand-written manuscript; only a few were published during his lifetime.<sup>72</sup>

<sup>72</sup> Most notably, the published scoresinclude *3 Impromptus* for Pianoforte, Ries&Erler, Berlin c. 1921(R 9175 E), *Die 82. Sure des Koran* for alto voice, string orchestra, and timpani, Universal Edition, Vienna c. 1948 (UE 11880), and *Variationen und Fantasien über ein Thema von Arnold Schönberg* for piano, Universal Edition, Vienna 1959 (UE 12549) (the theme onwhich the latterwork is based is no. 3 from Schoenberg's *Six little Piano Pieces* op. 19,1911).

#### Fraenkel's Activities as Musician, Pedagogue, and Composer in Shanghai

#### Fraenkel as a Musician and Conductor

In a letter to the Far Eastern Jewish Central Information Bureau written about two weeks after his arrival, Fraenkel stated that in Shanghai there would be "no prospects at all to earn money even to the most modest extent."<sup>73</sup> He was therefore prepared to move on to Harbin or other East Asian cities. Due to its large Russian population, Harbin was still viewed by many immigrants (possibly including Fraenkel) as a city characterized by a "European" cultural life. Russian immigration to Harbin (Russian: Charbin), the "St. Petersburg of the East," a city founded by Russia after occupying Northern Manchuria in 1898, had started in the early twentieth century with economic migrants and Jewish refugees f leeing poor living conditions and anti-Semitic persecution.74 Another wave of Russian immigrants f led to Harbin after the October Revolution in 1917. Russians contributed significantly to musical life in Harbin including a symphony orchestra, a music academy, and a string quartet.75 After Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931, a large number of Russian immigrants moved to Shanghai, which soon became the new center of internationalized cultural life, continuing despite the escalating Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), including the battle of Shanghai in 1937, and the Pacific War (1941–45).

The reply from the Bureau's manager Meir (Meyer Eliash) Birman76 to Fraenkel states that in Harbin too, "the opportunities for serious musicians have now begun to be very restricted." Birman recommends to Fraenkel to orient himself toward Tianjin (Tientsin), and regrets that Fraenkel had "come to Shanghai so late."77 In a letter to Fraenkel from 28 July 1939, however, the Bureau still offers to organize a position for Fraenkel at the Harbin Symphony Orchestra in autumn 1939.78

Wolfgang Fraenkel stayed on in Shanghai, however, and began work as a musician immediately after his arrival (Tab. 3.1). Two arrangements written in Shanghai, both for viola and piano, already date from June 1939 (G.F. Handel, *Passacaglia* in G minor HWV 432/6, Kel.V. 197; J.S. Bach, *Gavotte and Musette* from the English Suite in G minor BWV 808, Kel.V. 198) and were possibly performed at the first concert in which Fraenkel is documented the have participated on 15(?) June 1939. The next chamber concert in which Fraenkel is listed as the violinist of a piano trio is documented on 25 October 1939.79 Possibly on the recommendation of Otto Klemperer and Hidemaro Konoe, and maybe also due to the strong support by Fritz Segall of the Berlin *Künstlerhilfe der Jüdischen Gemeinde* (Association for the Support of Artists of the Jewish Community),80 Fraenkel became a member of the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra (SMO) in early

<sup>73</sup> Fraenkel'sletter to the Far Eastern Jewish Central Information Bureau, Shanghai 25/05/1939 (DAL 1119).

<sup>74</sup> Melvin and Cai, *Rhapsody in Red*,100–101

<sup>75</sup> Ibid., 101.

<sup>76</sup> On Birman see Messmer, *Jewish Wayfarers in Modern China*, 27–28. The Bureau had its of fice in Harbin and only in autumn 1939 moved its of fice to Shanghai (Fetthauer, "Das Far Eastern Jewish Central Information Bureau in Harbin und Shanghai," 60).

<sup>77</sup> Letter of the Far Eastern Jewish Central Information Bureau to Fraenkel12/06/1939 (DAL 1119).

<sup>78</sup> Letter of the Far Eastern Jewish Central Information Bureau to Fraenkel 28/07/1939 (DAL 1119).

<sup>79</sup> Lit. est., ANA 496, Sch. 5, "Programme."

<sup>80</sup> Otto Klemperer (1885–1973), who had emigrated to the USA in April 1933, recommended Fraenkel, primarily as a violist, in a letter to the influential Japanese conductor Hidemaro Konoe (→ III.1): "an Viscount Konoye. Lieber Herr Kollege! Darf ich Ihnen Herr [*sic*] Wolfgang Fränkel aus Berlin nachdrücklichst empfehlen. Er ist ein ausgezeichneter Musiker, der in vieler Hinsicht (vor allem als Bratschist) zu verwenden ist. Herzliche collegiale Grüsse

1940, which since 1919 had developed into a professional ensemble under the direction of Mario Paci (1878–1946; head of SMO 1919–42).81 The SMO gave weekly concerts every Sunday at the Lyceum in the French Concession.82 In the orchestra, Fraenkel usually played the viola, although there is evidence that he occasionally played both first and second violin as well.83 Fraenkel also arranged repertoire for the SMO (Table 3.1). Due to the Pacific War, the SMO officially declared its dissolution on 1 May 1942 and on 31 May gave a "farewell concert" in which Fraenkel participated. The orchestra, however, continued to give regular concerts under the name of the Shanghai Philharmonic Society from 1942 to 1945, controlled by Japanese military authorities, and officially resumed work on 18 November 1945, now mostly designated as the Shanghai Municipal Symphony Orchestra. 84 Fraenkel's estate contains sixteen programs that document

Ihr Klemperer, Jan 24. 39" (lit. est., ANA 496, Sch. 5, "Korrespondenz"). Klemperer wrote a similar short recommendation to Joseph Rosenstock (1895–1985), who at that time was principal conductor of the New Symphony Orchestra (which became theNHKOrchestra in 1951)(before his emigration,Rosenstock had been director ofthe Berlin orchestra of the *Kulturbund deutscher Juden* from1933 to 1936). Fraenkel had definitely considered the option of immigrating to Japan (Xu, *Xunfang Youtairen*, 75–76), andwaslikely also aware ofthe considerable influence of Japanese musiciansinHarbin, Shanghai, and other Chinese cities. Konoe (1898–1973),whowas probably in Berlin atthe time of Fraenkel'sdeparture,mayhave pavedtheway for Fraenkel into themusical life ofthe city inthe Japanese-administered Shanghai. Konoe was the brother of Fumimaro Konoe (1891–1945, Japanese Prime Minister 1937–39 and 1940–41).Hidemaro Konoe, a conductor, pianist and composer and an important figure in Japanese Mahler reception, had studied with Erich Kleiber in Berlin and wasin close contact with well-known conductors of the time such as Furtwängler, Stokowski and Klemperer; he conducted the Berlin Philharmonicseveral times during the 1930s. Togetherwith the Japanese composer KunihikoHashimoto, Konoe had helpedManfredGurlitt (1890–1972) emigrate to Japan in the same period (early 1939) (see Suchy, "Deutschsprachige Musiker in Japan vor 1945," 196). The strong support from the *Künstlerhilfe* is documented in a letter by Segall to the *Hilfsverein der Juden in Deutschland* (26/01/1939) and to the Far Eastern Jewish Central Information Bureau (10/03/1939)(DAL 1119).


*Figure 3.2: Fraenkel's portrait in the newspaper preview of the Shanghai Songsters' concerts, 18 and 20/2/1941 (The Shanghai Sunday Times, 2/2/1941)* 

Bavarian State Library, Abteilung Handschrif ten and Seltene Drucke, ANA 496

his activities as a musician (Table 3.1), but it can be assumed that he participated in many more concerts, especially in his role as a member of the SMO.

How did Fraenkel act and react in the Shanghai environment that was deeply affected by diverse and often contradictory political, economic, and cultural interests? Even if no documents have yet come to light that reveal his emotional reactions or his more personal considerations, the sociohistorical context suggests that the daily struggle for existence that characterized the life of most Shanghai refugees85 was an immediate challenge for him too, at least in the beginning. In this situation, a mixture of determination, foresight, clearly defined goals, and a certain pragmatism (which does not mean opportunism) surely helped him to survive, while his multi-faceted musical talent allowed him to find a broad range of music-related occupations. Within a relatively short time, Fraenkel worked as a violinist, violist, pianist, orchestral and choral conductor (Fig. 3.2, 3.3), teacher of music theory and composition, writer of theoretical essays, and ar-

ranger and composer for dance and film productions. Even though he knew how to settle in the European enclave of Shanghai and certainly had to come to terms with Japanese rulers or Chinese collaborators – although he undoubtedly tried to stay out of political entanglements<sup>86</sup> – he never did so at the expense of Chinese or European colleagues or students. On the contrary, his high level of commitment clearly went beyond what was necessary.

In 1939, Fraenkel encountered a situation in which a musical practice based on European tradition that went beyond mere colonial culture was still in its early stages, but had already been an object of heated discussion. It was not until 1938 that the SMO began to regularly

<sup>85</sup> See among others Armbrüster, Kohlstruck, and Mühlberger, *Exil Shanghai 1938–1947*.

<sup>86</sup> Activities related to Japan such as the arrangement of Japanese dances for Western orchestra (for a dance evening on April18,1940; lit. est., ANA 496, Sch. 5 "Programme") or film musicfor a Japanese sound film (1942; note in Shanghai Jewish Chronicle 9/8/1942; lit. est., ANA 496, Sch. 5, "Zeitungsartikel und Kritiken") may have been concessionsto the situation,whichwere dif ficult to avoid from an economic and political point of view.

appoint Chinese orchestral members.87 The music created by Chinese composers during that period mostly remained in the context of a simple tonal style accentuated by pentatonic scales at a low level (→ III.1). Still, the SMO supported works by Chinese composers; the first work by a Chinese composer, Huang Zi's overture *In Memoriam* (1929), was performed on 23 November 1930.88 After 1929, the SMO also began to feature Chinese soloists regularly.89

Under these circumstances, and in view of the difficult material and political situation during the war years, it was remarkable that Fraenkel was involved in building a youth orchestra (*Zhongguo Qingnian Jiaoxiang Yuetuan*) during and after the war, founded by his students Li Delun90 (1917–2001), who later became one of China's leading conductors, and his later wife, the violinist Li Jue (1924–2013). The China Symphonic Orchestra (*Zhongguo Jiaoxiang Yuetuan*), which Fraenkel conducted several times in 1945 and 1946 with very demanding programs, emerged from the same context (Li Delun and Li Jue also played here). A concert on 1 March 1946 with Fraenkel conducting Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto and Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony among other works (Fig. 3.3) was praised by the German critic Alfred Dreifuß (1902– 1993), who informed his readers that the orchestra had been founded during the war years "under difficult circumstances," adding the observation that Fraenkel, a "pedagogue wellknown in Shanghai's musical life," had made a "cultural effort […] that can hardly be overstated."91 The orchestra may have been closely linked to the conservatory, since Li Weining, the president of the conservatory, is listed on the program booklet as the orchestra's "advisor."

<sup>87</sup> Rosenson, "Jewish Musicians in Shanghai," 241 and Yang, "From Colonial Modernity to Global Identity," 58. An exceptionwas Tan Shuzhen (1907–2002),who had been violinist ofthe SMOfrom 1927 to 1929. Tan Shuzhen later became the head of the violin department at the Shanghai Conservatory and played a prominent role in the well-known documentary *From Mao to Mozart*(1979, directed byMurray Lerner). See also the extensive depiction of Tan'simpact in Melvin and Cai, *Rhapsody in Red*.

<sup>88</sup> Yang, "From Colonial Modernity to Global Identity," 53.

<sup>89</sup> Ibid., 54–57.

<sup>90</sup> See Melvin and Cai, *Rhapsody in Red*, 154–158 and Kraus, *Pianos & Politics in China*, 212–213. Li Delun was the principal conductor of the Central Philharmonic Orchestra (*Zhongyang Yuetuan*) in Beijing for many years and was one of the few musiciansin China to play a key role in Chinese musical life before, during, and af ter the Cultural Revolution. With his orchestra he contributed to the musical realization of the model works (*yangbanxi*, → III.1) during the CulturalRevolution and af terthe CulturalRevolution he conducted thefirst performance af ter more than ten years by a Chinese orchestra of a European orchestralwork (Beethoven's Fif th Symphony) on 26March 1977 (in September 1973 the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy had performed Beethoven's Fif th and Sixth Symphonies for the first time in China since 1963, during guest appearances in Beijing and Shanghai; see Melvin and Cai, *Rhapsody in Red*, 268–279). Li Delun became internationally known through the film *From Mao to Mozart* (1979, see footnote 87), in 1999 he conducted a "reunion" concert with Isaac Stern in Shanghai to celebrate the film's 20th anniversary (see ibid., 288–289, 296).

<sup>91</sup> A[lfred] Dreifuss, "Wolfgang Fraenkel dirigierte!" In *The Shanghai Herald. German Supplement* 1946, no. 2, 03/06/1946: 8, lit. est., ANA 496, Sch. 5, "Zeitungsartikel und Kritiken." ("Das 'China Symphonic Orchestra,' […] unterschwierigenUmstaenden schonwaehrend des Krieges gebildet und arbeitend […].[…]Derim Schanghaier Musikleben wohlbekannte Paedagoge Professor Wolfgang Fraenkel hat mit der Heranbildung und Erziehung dieses Klangkoerpers eine Kulturarbeit geleistet, die gar nicht hoch genug bewertet werden kann."). On Dreifuß see Fetthauer, "Alfred Dreifuß."

#### *Figure 3.3: Program booklet for the concert at the Lyceum Theater Shanghai, 01/03/1946; Fraenkel conducted the China Symphonic Orchestra*

*Table 3.1: Concerts 1939–1946, in which Wolfgang Fraenkel participated; lit. est., ANA 496, Sch. 5, "Programme" and "Zeitungsartikel und Kritiken"*



#### 178 Musical Composition in the Context of Globalization


(\* This program islisted in the catalogue of lit. est., ANA 496, Sch. 6, butcould not be found in the box; it iscited by Bickers, "'The Greatest Cultural Asset East of Suez,'" from the Shanghai Municipal Archives W-1-997)

The high esteem Fraenkel enjoyed among the Shanghai music community and the cultural conf licts of this musical life are documented in a handwritten letter in English addressed to Fraenkel, dealing with a young female pianist referred to as "Kwong Kwong." The writer clearly means Tung Kwong-Kwong (Dong Guang-Guang, 1927–2013), a Chinese pianist who left China for the USA in 1947 and was married to Ma Si-Hon (Ma Sihong, 1925–2009), brother of the wellknown composer and violinist Ma Sicong (1912–1987).92 Ma Si-Hon was the violinist who performed Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto under Fraenkel's direction at the concert on 1 March 1946. Although the signature of this letter is difficult to decipher, the writer can be identified as Mario Paci, who directed the SMO from 1919 to 1942 and was also a sought-after piano teacher (his pupils included the young Fou Tsung93 [Fu Cong, b. 1934] – the most prominent Chinese pianist during the 1960s and 70s). The letter was presumably written in 1943, since the writer refers to a period of "24 years" in which he has been working in China. Fraenkel apparently planned to perform a piano concerto with Tung Kwong-Kwong as a soloist with one of his orchestras, a project Paci seems skeptical of for reasons that are not entirely obvious:

<sup>92</sup> Tung Kwong-Kwong studied with Artur Schnabel in New York and, together with her husband, continued her career as a pianist and teacher in the USA. Ma Sicong was "the first Chinese soloist to play with the SMO" on 22 December1929 (Yang, "From Colonial Modernity to Global Identity," 55).

<sup>93</sup> See Kraus, *Pianos & Politics in China*, 70–99.

My dear Fraenkel,

I am terribly sorry thatcircumstances (the "circumstances" in which *they* (the Chinese) have put me) oblige me to deney [*sic*] my permission to Kwong Kwong to playwith your orchestra.

We have always been good friends, and I have always expressed my sincere appreciation and esteem for you as a very fine musician. I have alwayssaid to everyone that there is only one musician in Shanghai and that is you. And thisI repeat now. –

I don't want therefore that you may think that in denying to play to Kwong Kwong […]should be considered as anything against you. Personally – on the contrary – if I have something against somebody is not against you, but against the Chinese musicians who have failed to express a little appreciation to mewho for 24 yearsI have given so much of my Art for them. –

Theywant Kwong Kwong. Why? Because [she] isthe only good Chinese pianiste [*sic*]. – Why they don't come to me (they – not you) to ask me her collaboration which of course will make a success of theirconcert? –

Ifthey ask me to present her, and conduct her accompaniment, Iwill do itfree ofcharge andwith pleasure. You can [do (?)] better, you should conduct the whole programme. I don't want to do it. I will be the accompanist. – But Kwong Kwong is the only thing lef t to me of my long years of work in China and I don't give itwillingly to them. – If you don'tsee the point,try to come and see me<sup>94</sup> and Iwill explain stillclearer. –

*Your[s] M.[ario] Paci*<sup>95</sup>

It was not possible to reconstruct the outcome of this episode. The pianist Zhou Guangren (also Paci's student and Tung's colleague around 1946) pointed out to me that Tung had played Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in public before immigrating to the USA in 1947, but she was not sure whether this concert was conducted by Fraenkel.

#### Fraenkel as a Pedagogue, Publicist, and Theorist

Fraenkel was soon able to establish contacts with the conservatory, probably through the SMO, which had been founded in 1927 by Cai Yuanpei and Xiao Youmei as the first music academy in Asia based on the Russian model and successfully expanded in the following years (→ III.1).96 In the years of the Japanese occupation, the conservatory, which was then known as the "National Vocational School for Music" (*Guoli yinyue zhuanke xuexiao*), was in a very difficult situation. After war broke out between Japan and China in August 1937, the conservatory moved from its location in Jiangwan in the Northern part of the city to Xujiahui Street in the Southwest, and had to move again several times due to the exigencies of the war before it could

<sup>94</sup> Fraenkel noted down the address"Kings App. House 345 / Room 7" on the first page of the letter; asthis wasindeed Paci's address(see Paci Zaharof f, "TheDaughter oftheMaestro," 286),thisindicatesthat Fraenkel actually met Paci for a face-to-face meeting.

<sup>95</sup> Lit. est., ANA 496, Sch. 5, "Korrespondenz."

<sup>96</sup> See Schimmelpenninck and Kouwenhoven,"The Shanghai Conservatory ofMusic" andMelvin and Cai, *Rhapsody in Red*,106–117.

return to its original location in the Jiangwan district in 1946. In order to avoid any obvious connection with the Chinese government, the conservatory was even referred to as *Sili Shanghai yinyue yuan* (Shanghai Private Music School) for a period during the war.97

Fraenkel was appointed as a teacher of music theory and composition in the summer of 1941 by Li Weining, who had studied in Paris and Vienna in the 1930s. Li had headed the theory and composition department since 1937, had been a member of the SMO committee since 1939,98 and became president of the conservatory in 1940 after the founding president Xiao Youmei passed away (1884–1940). Li was dismissed from his position in 1946 as a "collaborator" (Li had already collaborated with the Japanese before the conservatory was officially placed under Japanese administration). After the end of the war, Fraenkel was also appointed to the National Music School Nanjing (*Nanjing guoli yinyue yuan*) on the suggestion of his student Ding Shande (1911–95). Ding himself was supposed to teach piano in Nanjing, but lessons only started in early 1947 owing to the destruction of the building. Therefore, Fraenkel only taught in Nanjing for two shortened semesters from January to July 1947,99 while at the same time continuing to fulfill his teaching obligation in Shanghai. In addition to his work at the conservatory, Fraenkel gave private lessons, which he sought to expand, since here he could charge a higher fee.<sup>100</sup>

Contrary to Fraenkel's strikingly progressive artistic stance, demonstrated by his affinity for the Schoenberg School, his music theory and composition lessons seem to have remained largely conventional, albeit at a high level. He began teaching harmony in September 1941, according to the curriculum, but subsequently also taught strict and free counterpoint, analysis, form, instrumentation, and composition.<sup>101</sup>

I have identified 24 Chinese students and one emigré student102 by name (Table 3.2), including leading representatives of their generation such as Ding Shande (1911–1995), Sang Tong (1923–2011), and Zhang Hao (1910–2003), as well as the renowned popular songwriter Chen Gexin (1914–1961).103 Three accounts by Fraenkel's former students Ding Shande, Sang Tong, and Qin Xixuan give detailed descriptions of his teaching methods and the content of the theory and composition lessons. <sup>104</sup> Fraenkel's estate contains extensive teaching materials from the Shanghai era, including several hundred pages of manuscripts on counterpoint, harmony, orchestration, and musical analyses of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Brahms, Richard Strauss, Reger, Hindemith, and Schoenberg.105 In fact, Fraenkel used both Schoenberg's *Harmonielehre* (1911, <sup>3</sup> 1922) and Kurth's *Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts: Bachs melodische Polyphonie* (1917, <sup>2</sup> 1922, <sup>3</sup> 1927) as teaching materials.<sup>106</sup> For pre-Baroque counterpoint he mainly referred to examples by Girolamo Frescobaldi, rather than to Palestrina.107 Fraenkel's appreciation of


107 Sang, "Jinian Fulanke'er yu Xu Luoshi,"10.

<sup>97</sup> Schimmelpenninck and Kouwenhoven, "The Shanghai Conservatory of Music," 68.

<sup>98</sup> Bickers, "'The Greatest Cultural Asset East of Suez,'" 862–863.

<sup>99</sup> Personalcommunicationwith Wang Zhengya, Beijing, December 2002.

<sup>100</sup> See "Ding Shande Festival," in: *CHIME* 5 (1992),144.

<sup>106</sup> Sang, "Jinian Fulanke'er yu Xu Luoshi," 10. See Schönberg, *Harmonielehre*, Kurth, *Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts*.

Frescobaldi is also documented in *Afunktionelle Musik* (1937–43)108 and in his arrangement of Frescobaldi's Five Organ Pieces (1957–58, Kel.V. 199).


*Table 3.2: Wolfgang Fraenkel's students in China*

In the memoirs of his students, Fraenkel appears as a precise and competent educator, as well as an unconventional and non-conformist spirit. Zhou Guangren, who later became one of the leading pianists in China, reports that Fraenkel asked her to determine the best harmonic progression using a coin toss instead of following conventional harmony rules.<sup>109</sup>

<sup>108</sup> See Fraenkel, *Afunktionelle Musik*, 262.

<sup>109</sup> Personalcommunication, Beijing, 4/12/2002.

Fraenkel's most important student, Sang Tong, began working with him in 1941, studying pieces by Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Zoltán Kodály, Béla Bartók, and Alexander Scriabin – and, last but not least, by Gustav Mahler, whom Fraenkel described as "our great Master."110 It seems, however, that Fraenkel only introduced the twelve-tone technique to a small group of his students (Sang Tong and Yang Yushi) between 1945 and 1947, presumably using his own *Drei zweistimmige Praeludien* for piano (1945, Kel.V. 80–82).111 Sang Tong's first composition experimenting with atonal and twelve-tone technique – and thus probably the first atonal work by an Asian composer – is *Yejing* (Night Scenery, 1947) for violin and piano (→ III.1), completed in February 1947 under Fraenkel's guidance (Ex. 3.3).112 Sang's next piece *Zai na yaoyuan de difang* (In the Land, Far, Far Away) for piano, completed later in 1947, was already written under the direction of Julius Schloß, Fraenkel's successor.113 Due to their original and technically sophisticated combination of Western and Chinese materials (the piano piece is based on a highly abstracted version of the folk song mentioned in the title), both compositions – far from naive folklorism – can be considered key works of Chinese musical modernity, even if political turmoil and Maoist cultural policy meant that they only slowly had an impact after 1978. They were premiered in 1948 at the United States Information Service in Shanghai by Karl Steiner as pianist and the violinist Zhang Guoling, who died shortly thereafter.

As outlined in the previous part of this chapter, a modernist-driven compositional treatment of folk song material based on the model of Béla Bartók, French, and Russian composers had been widespread in China and Japan since the inf luence of Alexander Tcherepnin in the mid-1930s (→ III.1). Sang Tong's *Zai na yaoyuan de difang* takes this concept to a new level through the inclusion of atonal harmony and "prose rhythms" analogous to Schoenberg's early piano pieces. The heptatonic folk song from the northwest Chinese province of Qinghai alluded to in the title is treated in five variations, to which Sang Tong assigs "longing states" ("deep," "sincere," "passionate," "intimate," and "excited" longing). It is striking that the central chords at the beginning are based on tritones and sevenths (Ex. 3.4) and are increasingly replaced by octaves from the third variation up to double octaves in the fifth, in which the folk song now appears clearly in apotheotic form. Despite this anticipation of the ubiquitous pathos of Chinese political music from 1950 to 1978, Sang's work gives an impressive outline of what new Chinese music could have looked like if this development had not been curtailed by political and social upheavals – the civil war from 1947 to 1949 and the takeover of the Communist Party in 1949. It was only after 1978 that a new generation of composers, the "New Wave" (*xinchao*), could resume this "short summer" of China's musical modernity (→ III.4).

<sup>110</sup> Sang,"Jinian Fulanke'er yuXu Luoshi,"10.According to Sang Tong, Fraenkel even brought aMahler"autograph" with him to Shanghai,which he showed to his masterstudent (ibid.,11).However, itseems unlikely that Fraenkel indeed owned a Mahler manuscript.

<sup>111</sup> Ibid.,10 and personalcommunication 29/11/2002.

<sup>112</sup> Detailed analyses of this work can be found in Zheng, "Sang Tong de Yejing shishi" and especially in Cheong, "Reading Schoenberg,Hindemith, and Kurth in Sang Tong," 95–97. See III.1, footnote 23, for further details.

<sup>113</sup> For a discussion ofthis piece,see Kouwenhoven, "Mainland China'sNew Music(I)," 85, Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 350–351, and Cheong, "Reading Schoenberg, Hindemith, and Kurth in Sang Tong," 88–93. During his one year at the conservatory, Julius Schloß (who lef t Shanghai one year af ter Fraenkel in 1948) wrote two *Chinesische Rhapsodien* for Violin and Orchestra (1947/48 and 1948/49) af ter he had to stop composing between 1935 and 1947 due to persecution, detention (Dachau Concentration Camp), and the hard life in Shanghai exile (Fricke, "Julius Schloß").

*Example 3.3: Sang Tong, Yejing for violin and piano, p. 1*

Copyright © 1947 by Sang Tong, Shanghai

From this perspective, although Fraenkel's contribution to musical modernity in China may appear rather marginal, one must take into account how his modernist-informed view of early – European and Asian – musics had a lasting impact on the musical thinking of an entire generation. In fact, many former students agree that of all the teachers and artists, Fraen-

Copyright © 1947 by Sang Tong, Shanghai/2005 by Shanghai Yinyue Chubanshe

kel had the greatest inf luence on their view of music.114 This appreciation seems completely plausible, not least with reference to Fraenkel's demand for an independent and self-assured development of Chinese musical modernity: Fraenkel's manuscript "Music-Development?," apparently edited and translated by his student Zhu Jian (1924–2008) in October 1945 under the title *Weilai de Zhongguo yinyue* (The Future of Chinese Music) in the first edition of *Music Weekly*,

<sup>114</sup> Personal communication with the Fraenkel students Sang Tong, Zhou Guangren, Wang Zhengya, and Duan Pingtai, Shanghai and Beijing, 29/11to 05/12/2002.

a short-lived weekly paper produced by the *Guanghua Daily*, 115 proves that Fraenkel ref lected in a forward-looking way on the current situation of Chinese music and took a very unusual view for a European at the time. He argued that the European musical tradition should not be adopted uncritically by Chinese artists, and that the main task for the formation of a meaningful synthesis fell to the Chinese musicians themselves, not the Europeans (Fraenkel's sometimes unidiomatic English and orthography have not been modified):

One of the most important problems regarding the future music-life in China is the relationship between chinese and western music. Combination of these both divergent branches of musicartseems advisable on account ofthe fundamentalcharacter ofwestern music:to conceive and write concerted music.

The western musician cannot shape a new development of chinese music, he only can prepare the way, perhaps try to exert some kind of influence; the completion must be carried out by chinese composers. It will be up to them, first to absorb the technical and sensational items of western art, and then to find out waysto form connexionsto the existing (old)chinese music without disturbing it'scharacteristic pecularities.

To judge the prospects of a development of such kind is rather dif ficult, as there are not made even beginnings yet. I am convinced that it will be of no use forchinese musiciansto create typical western music:such work means neither development nor progress; maybe it isremarkable and noteworthy, but it remains to be some kind of copy, as the innermost feeling is heterogeneous. The essential knowledge ofwestern musicshould be the basis only,which it is necessary to advance from, an advancewhich may in fact hold out incalculable prospects.

To my mind the technical starting-point for attempts of such kind is not the music of the classic period ofwestern music. The newest developmentin Europe demonstrated thatthe classic period issome terminated unit which hardly can produce new of fsprings of real value. The modern western music,which is developed since about 40 years, found it's point ofcontact in the events of the preclassic music and counterpoint which give more freedom and quite other possibilities of evolution. Here seemsto be the way to insert the fundamental princip ofconcerted musicto a system which isinwardly notconnectedwith thewestern music-ideas.116

This perspective, which added new elements to the discourse on new Chinese music established by figures like Avshalomov and Tcherepnin, did not see the future of "concertante" Chinese music in connection to the Classical-Romantic European tradition. This tradition, however, was the mainstream practice of Chinese composers during the 1930s and 1940s, and, despite many attempts at reform, it was largely retained until the end of the Cultural Revolution. Fraenkel's perspective, in contrast to this common practice, recommended that composers claim an alterity to this Classical-Romantic tradition in analogy to European new music, pos-

<sup>115</sup> Emailcommunicationwith Zhang Yi, Shanghai, 31/05/2003,who interviewed Zhu Jian on histeacher Fraenkel. The first and only edition of *Music Weekly* also included articles by Fu Cong and Shen Zhibai.

<sup>116</sup> Two-page typescript dated "October 1945" in lit. est., ANA 496, Sch. 3; handwritten draf tsin German and English under the sketches for the opera *Hölle, Weg, Erde* (mus. est., Mus.ms. 19605, supplement: unnumbered sheet and Mus.ms. 19605, 96 verso). Since Fraenkel counted the words in the handwritten version, one can assume that the textwasintended for publication.

sibly also in combination with pre-Classical European music forms, but certainly with a sustained orientation toward the Chinese music tradition.

As shown in part 1 of this chapter, several efforts had been made by Chinese reformers and researchers since the 1910s – like Wang Guangqi (1892–1936), Liu Tianhua or Yang Yinliu (1899–1984), who criticized the spreading inf luence of Western music in China – to ref lect on a synthesis of Chinese and European music in the wake of the May Fourth Movement (→ III.1). Criticism of Western music, however, usually had a nationalist angle and was commonly directed exclusively against the Classical-Romantic music tradition, not against Western modernism. In the same period, during his work on the inf luential *Zhongguo gudai yinyue shi gang* (A Draft History of Ancient Chinese Music, 1944), Yang Yinliu wrote in his article "Guoyue qiantu jiqi yanjiu" (The Future of National Music and Its Study), published in three installments from 1942 to 1944:

Western music has already had an af fect [*sic*] on Chinese culture, and we have encountered problems here which we have never met with before […]. Consequently, the development of Western music – unproblematicin its own context – is highly problematicin China,which hasits own history, life customs, and national background. […] Part of this problem with regard to Western music and national musicin China emergesfrom their mutualrelationship; itsfuture resolution must also be present in their interrelationship: the proper course of development of each, very probably, will be a common one […]. National music has so far followed its own path, but to develop further,Western music,ratherthan being swallowedwhole in China must be properly and naturally digested.117

Fraenkel's perspective under these conditions must therefore have seemed new and fresh to his readers, although most probably only a few had a very vague idea of the "newest development in Europe" or of "modern Western music" that he outlined as a model. Especially by suggesting the synthesis of traditional Chinese and modern Western music, Fraenkel was putting forward a vision whose time would only come in the 1980s (→ III.5), despite Avshalomov's pioneering works of the 1930s. Fraenkel thus implicitly criticized the era-defining style of (politically coded) pentatonic Romanticism, as represented by the works of He Luting, Huang Zi, Xian Xinghai, or Ma Sicong, a style which has remained a principal musical code for neo-bourgeois audiences throughout East Asia – even under changing and diverse political conditions.

In a broader context, it is evident that Fraenkel's ideas were part of a dedicated movement toward a balanced conf luence of Chinese and Western music that had been advocated by Avshalomov since the early 1930s (→ III.1) and had been supported by Paci and the SMO who in 1933 even introduced a "special grand Chinese evening" featuring Chinese ensemble music performed by *Datong Yuehui* (Union Music Club) and a *pipa* solo performance by Wei Zhongle, along with orchestral works by Avshalomov.118 Avshalomov's son, the composer Jacob Avshalomov (1919–2013), has documented a letter in which his father expressed sincere appreciation for Fraenkel, shortly after the latter's arrival in Shanghai:

<sup>117</sup> Yang, "Guoyue qiantu jiqi yanjiu" (The Future ofNational Music and Its Study), quoted in Shen, "Ethnomusicology in China,"14.

<sup>118</sup> Winzenburg, "Aaron Avshalomov and New Chinese Musicin Shanghai, 1931–1947," 60–61 and Yang, "From Colonial Modernity to Global Identity," 54.

There is no stimulus for work here, although there is much musical activity in Shanghai today (mainly of inferior quality). Many refugees from Austria and Germany. Of the numerous musicians two are outstanding. One a violinist, Adler by name. The other is a composer, Frankel, who is firstclass. A follower of Schoenberg,with many compositions, a very erudite man,skillful orchestrator and theoretician. Nice fellow, too, the only person except Grisha with whom it is possible to talk musicwith understanding.119

It is also documented that Fraenkel had an artistic exchange with the inf luential baritone and choral conductor Chao Mei-Pa (Zhao Meibo, 1905–1999), who had studied in Belgium and lived in the USA before returning to China in 1936 and serving as head of the conservatory's vocal music department.120 In 1937, Chao had published an article "The Trend of Modern Chinese Music" in which he had to some extent refuted the enthusiasm about Tcherepnin's impact, claiming an enhanced independence from Western ideas – in words clearly driven by a nationalist undertone (as well as by a skeptical position toward modernist Western tendencies):

Tcherepnine soon […]cursed the danger of Western influence. […] In hislectures he declared that Chinese do not have to learn from Bach,Handel, or Beethoven; and if Chinese do adopt Western music they should go directly to the impressionistic composers, such as Debussy or Stravinsky. […] Butwhether Mr. Tcherepnine's principle isworkable or notstillremains an open question, for af ter all Tcherepnine is a European himself.

In the field of composition, suppose we should follow Tcherepnine's idea, shall we be satisfied with a harmony based upon the pentatonic scale with modulations? Should we invent a harmony and a science of orchestration by ourselves? […] It is interesting to know that Chinese are inclined to counterpoint. Butwillcounterpointwithout harmony satisfy us?Mr. Tcherepninewas right in one way when he recognized the capacity of Chinese in counterpoint, and he did not agreewith our blind acceptance of Western ideas; but howfarcan hisstudy help? […]

If there is anything China is taking from the West, it is only for temporary use. In the long run, Chinawill always be Chinese, in style and in expression, and not lessso in her music.121

Fraenkel's position also agreed with that of Tan Xiaolin (1912–1948), who returned to China from studying with Paul Hindemith at Yale University in 1946, as Sang Tong testifies: "Like Tan Xiaolin, he supported the idea of a synthesis from the spirit of [Chinese] folk music and the new compositional techniques and saw this as an inf luential means of musical creation."122 It can be

<sup>119</sup> Letter from Aaron Avshalomov from 24/04/1940 (Avshalomov and Avshalomov, *Avshalomov's Winding Way*, 162). By "Grisha," Avshalomov meansthe Russian pianist Gregory (Grisha) Singer. The violinist Ferdinand Adler emigrated from Vienna to Shanghai in 1939 af ter being imprisoned atDachau concentration camp.He became a member and concertmaster of the SMO in 1939, and Professor of Violin at the conservatory in 1941. See, Fetthauer, "Ferdinand Adler."

<sup>120</sup> Since 1937, Chao had been involved in conducting masschoralsinging at rallies during Chiang Kai-Shek's New Life Movement (*Xin shenghuo yundong*) aiming at China's unification,started in 1934, and partly oriented toward National Socialist propaganda (Jones, *Yellow Music*, 49).

<sup>121</sup> Chao, "The Trend of Modern Chinese Music," 283, 286. See Winzenburg, "From 'Folk Cure' to Catharsis: Alexander Tcherepnin andNewChinese Piano Music."

<sup>122</sup> Sang, "Jinian Fulanke'er yu Xu Luoshi,"11(translated by the author).

assumed that Fraenkel was in contact with Tan, who on his return became head of the theory and composition departments at the conservatory. Similarly, Fraenkel may have exchanged views with Fritz Kuttner (1903–1991), who probably arrived in Shanghai as a refugee shortly after Fraenkel in May 1939 and worked as a music journalist (1948–49 for China Press) and teacher of music history and theory at St. John's University (from 1944). After moving to the United States in 1949, he continued to research ancient Chinese instruments and tuning systems.123

In his "Music-Development?" Fraenkel outlined the idea of a fundamental contradiction between new and classical (European) music, an argument which he had already proposed a few years earlier, based on the analogy of music and language and its limits, in his article "Grundprobleme der Neuen Musik: Der neue Tonsprachkreis und seine Begriffsbestimmung," published in Shanghai in 1941. The first part of this article was published in the sole issue of the journal *Der Kreis* in December 1941, while the second part, announced at the end of this article, has probably never been published.124 As in his main theoretical work *Afunktionelle Musik* ("Afunctional Music"), which Fraenkel continued to work on in Shanghai, this article makes it clear that Fraenkel saw language and music as related means of "presenting imagination and ideas"125 – as evidenced by the focus on the concept of "Gedanke," certainly shaped by the Schoenberg School. In the realm of music, however, the close coupling of the musical idea to the underlying "tonal language" makes this idea untranslatable, as it were: "Ideas and tonal language are so closely related that one must almost speak of interpenetration, of outer events rubbing off on inner events."126 For Fraenkel, classical and new music are both "musical languages" in this emphatic sense.

Fraenkel's comprehensive theoretical-aesthetic knowledge and interests were gathered together in his extensive theoretical work *Afunktionelle Musik*, written in 1937/38 and revised in Shanghai in 1942/43.127 This book-length study attempts to apply Ernst Kurth's music theory to the analysis of "afunctional" (atonal or post-tonal) music. *Afunktionelle Musik* can be understood as a nuanced examination of trends in new European music from 1910 to 1935 (with a focus on the Schoenberg School and Hindemith), and the theoretical discussion deals with a wide range of music theory writings, including those by Hugo Riemann and Joseph Yasser, but most prominently Ernst Kurth and his concept of musical "energetics." As other surviving documents show, Fraenkel engaged intensively with Kurth's writings.128 Fraenkel's term "afunctional music" implies a profound skepticism toward the nineteenth-century idea of musical "functionalism" as ref lected primarily in Riemann's inf luential theory of tonal functions in

<sup>123</sup> Fetthauer, "Fritz A. Kuttner," Rosenson, "Jewish Musicians in Shanghai," 243–245, and Schimmelpenninck and Kouwenhoven, "The Shanghai Conservatory of Music," 71–72. Kuttner's research into ancient Chinese musicis documented in Kuttner, *The Archaeology of Music in Ancient China*.

<sup>124</sup> Wolfgang Fraenkel, "Grundprobleme der neuen Musik. Der neue Tonsprachkreis und seine Begrif fsbestimmung," *Der Kreis* (December1941),13–18 (lit. est., ANA 496, Sch. 3).

<sup>125</sup> Ibid.,16 ("Darlegung von Vorstellungen und Gedanken").

<sup>126</sup> Ibid., 18. ("Gedanke und Tonsprache [sind] miteinander so eng verbunden, dass geradezu von einer gegenseitigen Durchdringung, einem Abfärben des äusseren Geschehens auf dasinnere gesprochenwerden muss.")

<sup>127</sup> An edition with a commentary on this work, based on the complete manuscript and notes from Fraenkel's estate, has been completed as an academicthesis by Markus Köhler in 1989 (Fraenkel, *Afunktionelle Musik*).

<sup>128</sup> Fraenkel had studiedKurth'sfourmajor publicationsin great detail, asrevealed by his notescollected in the 71 page file "KritischeNotizen über musikwissenschaf tliche Veröf fentlichungen" (March toOctober,1937),which contains commentaries on Kurth's books *Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts*, *Romantische Harmonik und ihre Krise in Wagners* Tristan, *Bruckner*, and *Musikpsychologie*.

harmony. Discarding the idea of functions, Fraenkel conceives of music as "kinetic energy" in Kurth's sense. In his introductory chapter, there are a number of inserts that show the inf luence of his exile experience. Writing about general musical principles, for example, he limits the concept of "music as a demonstration of musical ideas" to the "occidental musical area" and criticizes those who think that Chinese or Arab musical traditions cannot be labeled "music."129 In such passages (as in the adherence to this voluminous theoretical project as a whole), it becomes clear how Fraenkel consolidated his identity as a representative of musical modernism in exile, but also palpably incorporated his exile experience.

#### Fraenkel as a Composer

Even if no performance of Fraenkel's works is documented during the time in Shanghai, the papers in his estate prove that he was unusually active in composition during these years. His compositional activity only seems to have included "applied music" (arrangements for orchestra [see above], arrangements of traditional Chinese and Japanese music [see below], film music130) in a few cases, an area in which most other exiled musicians worked. In at least one case, Fraenkel's compositional activity shows a very interesting reaction to his exile environment: *Drei Orchesterlieder* (Three Orchestral Songs, Kel.V. 113–115), after Chinese poems from Tang and Song Dynasties, translated into German by Vinzenz Hundhausen (1878–1955).131 Composed between 9 May and 24 September 1941, it is the only major work that Fraenkel was able to complete during his time in Shanghai. In addition, only the aforementioned *Drei zweistimmige Praeludien* (Three Two-part Preludes, Kel.V. 80–82, 1945) for piano were completed, which were to be part of a planned cycle of twelve-tone inventions and preludes and were probably written along the lines of Bach as both compositional and pianistic studies (only one of the inventions was composed after the time in Shanghai, in 1951132). The *Praeludien* combine a relatively simple form of dodecaphonic technique with an imitative counterpoint based on Hindemith (Ex. 3.5). It was not until 1964 that Fraenkel collected the three completed preludes (without the invention) for a volume of his collected piano works to create the preserved three-movement series.

In addition to the orchestral songs and the *Praeludien*, Fraenkel worked on the following pieces in Shanghai: the Third Symphony (Kel.V. 3), begun on 4 December 1937 in Berlin, interrupted on 23 March 1940; the Fourth Symphony (Kel.V. 4), begun on 10 May 1942, interrupted on 6 May 1944; the opera fragment *Hölle – Weg – Erde* (Hell – Path – Earth, Kel.V. 191) after Georg Kaiser, begun on 19 September 1944, and *Musik für großes Orchester* (Music for Large Orchestra, Kel.V. 8), begun on 2 November 1946, interrupted on 12 September 1948.133 None of these unfinished works were completed later.

<sup>129</sup> Fraenkel, *Afunktionelle Musik*,16 ("Darlegung musikalischer Gedanken"; "abendländischen Musikkreis"),18–19.

<sup>130</sup> A German-language newspaper note in the *Shanghai Jewish Chronicle*(09/08/1942) mentionsthat Fraenkel was rehearsing the musicfor a Japanese film with the Shanghai Philharmonic Society (ANA 496, Sch. 5, "Zeitungsartikel und Kritiken").

<sup>131</sup> See Walravens, *Vincenz Hundhausen (1878–1955)*.

<sup>132</sup> See Kellermann, "Kellermann-Verzeichnis der Werke von Wolfgang Fraenkel," 92.

<sup>133</sup> The *Musik für großes Orchester* breaks of f in measure 208 of the second movement. As mentioned in footnote 71, entriesin the score showFraenkel'sroute from Shanghai to Los Angeles.

*Example 3.5: Wolfgang Fraenkel, Drei zweistimmige Praeludien, p. 1*

Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Musikabteilung, Mus.ms. 19804

The three poems that Fraenkel set in *Drei Orchesterlieder* likely came from Hundhausen's publication *Chinesische Dichter in deutscher Sprache, mit 2 Bildern nach Originalen des Wang Ting-Dsche* (Beijing/Leipzig 1926). All three poems evoke spring in their titles:


Hundhausen's German *Nachdichtungen* (free adaptations) of classical Chinese poems were generally based on word-for-word translations by his Chinese friends and students. Interestingly, this approach to the Chinese is shown in the appendix to Fraenkel's score. The Chinese characters are written on the score sheet and an English word-for-word translation is provided on an overlaid sheet of transparent paper (Fig. 3.4). This analogy to Hundhausen's work could indicate Fraenkel's personal contact with the Beijing-based poet and literature professor. It also proves that Fraenkel endeavored to gain an adequate understanding of the original versions of the texts set to music.

*Figure 3.4: Wolfgang Fraenkel, calligraphy from the appendix to the Drei Orchesterlieder; the poem "Spring Night" (Chun xiao) by Su Dong-Bo (Su Shi) is shown, which is set in the first movement;*<sup>134</sup> *lef t: the English translation of each individual character is placed on the Chinese characters using transparent paper; right: calligraphy without transparent paper*

Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Musikabteilung, Mus.ms. 19654, p. 50a

All three orchestral songs are based on the same twelve-tone row, which Fraenkel provides in the appendix to the score (Ex. 3.6). Fraenkel designed a quasi-symmetrical structure: songs I and III use only the four basic forms of the series (P, I, R, RI) as well as transpositions one fourth higher (I) and lower (III), while the second movement uses the tritone transposition and two related rows. While this systematic application of the dodecaphonic technique points to an intensified examination of the twelve-tone method in the context of his extensive theoretical writing in *Afunctional Music* (1937–43), the deliberate, sometimes almost "impressionistic" use of orchestral colors (e.g., no. 2 "Am frühen Frühlingstage," score, mm. 23–27, Ex. 3.7) certainly comes from an attempt to interpret the atmosphere of the Chinese poems musically in a (post-) exoticist manner. Despite such coloristic experiments, the quality of the work can be seen in that Fraenkel largely refrains from any kind of plain exoticism and instead tries to render the atmosphere of the texts with his personal (Western) means. The work was not performed during his time in Shanghai, but it seems that a premiere may have taken place after Fraenkel moved to the US, since the score has notes obviously made during rehearsals.135

<sup>134</sup> Fraenkel mistakenly identified this poem as no. 2 in the manuscript, but latercorrected this mistake.

<sup>135</sup> A recent performance of the work in Beijing (March 2019) has been co-organized by the Vienna organization exil.arte (e-mail-communicationwith Gerold Gruber, 25/05/2020).

*Example 3.6: Wolfgang Fraenkel, row analysis in the appendix of the score of Drei Orchesterlieder: first line: prime twelve-tone row; below: row forms and variants used in the movements 1 to 3* 

Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Musikabteilung, Mus.ms. 19654, p. 50d

Extensive transcriptions of recorded music show that Fraenkel also tried to understand traditional Chinese and Japanese music. Yet the transcriptions of works by the Chinese instrument and repertoire reformer Liu Tianhua (→ III.1), recorded on the LP *Chinese Classical Music* (Lyrichord LP, LL 722, 1956), may have arisen only some time after the stay in Shanghai, probably around the end of the 1950s. They formed the basis for the sketched *Chinese Song* (Kel.V. 35, c. 1960) for alto f lute and guitar, an attempt to find a "Chinese tone" in Liu's style.

The transcriptions of Japanese music,136 on the contrary, probably already largely originated in Shanghai in the context of a dance evening with Slavina-Brown and Indira Devi on 18 April 1940, where two arrangements by Fraenkel were performed under the direction of Aaron Avshalomov (see Tab. 3.1): *Ombacha* and *Three Masks (Improvisation on a Japanese Theme)*. Both arrangements were most likely based on transcriptions of pieces recorded on the LP *Om-bat-tha* (Victor-Records no. 52282-a [3740]). A transcription of the famous Japanese *gagaku* classic *Etenraku* is also preserved in Fraenkel's estate; he very likely transcribed it from the record *Music over the Sky* (Victor-Records, no. 13487 [8745/46]), and notes in the transcription suggest that an arrangement for Western orchestra was considered. It is still unclear whether this arrangement was carried out or indeed performed.

<sup>136</sup> Lit. est., ANA 496, Sch. 4, "Japanische Platten."

*Example 3.7: Wolfgang Fraenkel, Drei Orchesterlieder, no. 2 "Am frühen Frühlingstage," score, mm. 25–27*


Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Musikabteilung, Mus.ms. 19654, p. 21

#### Perspectives

Aside from the aspects summarized here, it is not easy to reconstruct Fraenkel's time in Shanghai in great detail. In many respects, we still have to rely on assumptions, for example, when trying to reconstruct the exact circumstances of his release from Sachsenhausen and his trip to Shanghai, but, most importantly, also his artistic and cultural impact during the exile years: how did Fraenkel make contacts in Shanghai? How did he find a connection to the city's music scene so quickly, gaining a comparatively privileged position in the impoverished immigrant community, in contrast to Julius Schloß or Karl Steiner, who had to make ends meet in bars as accordion and piano players?<sup>137</sup>

Further studies of his estate, a more comprehensive consideration of the oral history, which was only cursorily included here, and, last but not least, more precise analyses of his musical works could certainly help to answer these and other questions that arise. For the time being, it remains remarkable how sensitively Fraenkel reacted to the state of music in China and how this was partly ref lected in his writings and works.

From the perspective of Chinese music historiography, Fraenkel is a small but crucial building block. Without him, the early reception of musical modernism in China would probably not have taken place at all, and the sensational "second musical modernity" in China during the 1980s and 1990s (→ III.5) would not have found any point of reference in its own past. Fraenkel's work as a pedagogue, conductor, musician, and composer deserves to be further examined in China as well as in the West. Publishing his writings and performing his highly original and innovative musical works would undoubtedly be worthwhile, and would help to rescue an important mediator between Europe and Asia from oblivion.

#### **3. The Travels of a Jasmine Flower: A Chinese Folk Song, Its Prehistory, and Tan Dun's** *Symphony 1997*

The history of the Chinese melody *Molihua* (Jasmine Flower, also known as *Xianhua* [Fresh Flower]), which became famous through Giacomo Puccini's opera *Turandot* (1920–24), offers a manifold impression of the intricate and recursive intercultural processes that provided the background for composition in East Asia in the twentieth century and persist to this day. That Tan Dun quotes – and above all, how he quotes – this melody in his politically charged *Symphony 1997* requires us to look closer at this historic source of Chinese identities. We can compare its various versions here from a (music-)historical perspective. We can show how they have changed since the first written source for the melody in 1795 to the most recent contemporary version (summarized in Table 3.3; see also Examples 3.8, 3.9, and Table 3.4). It remains to be discussed in which ways these variations refer back to the changes in culture and environment that they record. From an ethno(musico)logical perspective, the different versions of the melody within the musical practice of China or Asia can be investigated and potential conclusions drawn about the transregional traditions of the melody. After all, through the musical analysis of the respective melodic figures and, if applicable, the harmonization, orchestration, or per-

<sup>137</sup> The remark in the Fraenkel entry in *Baker's Biographical Dictionary* that Fraenkel had enjoyed the protection of Chiang Kai-Shek, who had asked him to coordinate the musical training in Shanghai and Nanjing, should be followed up in this context. To the extent suggested here, it seems rather unlikely, at least before 1945, given the politicalsituation and the extensive control by the Japanese authorities. See Slonimsky, "Fraenkel."

formance practice, cross-connections, affinities, or opposites of the different traditional and modern versions and their musical meaning can be worked out.


*Table 3.3: Molihua, overview of sources, transcriptions, and editions*

The melody is first documented in Chinese in 1821 in a *gongche* solmization notation138 (Ex. 3.8g), although the text's origins, at least, possibly go back to the year 1566 (the substance mentioned in the text even refers back to the novel *The West Chamber*, which was written during the Yuan Dynasty around 1300).139 Today, versions of this tune are to be found in at least thirteen Chinese provinces and in Tibet, some of which differ greatly from one another and often reveal similarities only in the texts and titles.<sup>140</sup> Within the category of *xiaodiao* (little melodies), the song belongs to the *shidiao* (free-[time] melodies), some of which are also performed by (semi-) professional musicians. These melodies are predominantly performed in urban centers and public spaces, often with instrumental accompaniment. The most famous version comes from the southern central Chinese province of Jiangsu and is documented in various modern transcriptions and recordings141 (Ex. 3.8h). This version can be clearly traced to the earliest written source of 1821. Of course, the transcription of the melody in the five-line system (and likewise in the Chinese cipher notation *jianzipu*) does not capture the crucial blurring in intonation, the fine vibrato, and inf lections, as well as the heterophonic independence of the voice and instruments. These aspects of the music are associated with *sizhuyue* (silk and bamboo music), a main ensemble type of *Jiangsu* that is also used for the accompaniment of folk songs.142

Now, this intra-Chinese context is overlaid with an intercultural one. As part of the (ultimately unsuccessful) mission of the English diplomat Lord George Macartney to China in 1793 and 1794143 a melody entitled *Molihua* (spelled as *Moo*-*Lee*-*Hwa* and *Mu*-*Li*-*Chwa*) was recorded by the German teacher and writer Johann Christian Hüttner.144 Later, Hüttner acted as an important source of information for Goethe in London, where he was in contact with, among others, the renowned music historian Charles Burney.145 Although Hüttner does not mention

<sup>138</sup> This source is reproduced in Huang, "Zhongguo minge 'Molihua' de xizhuang yu donggui," 9. Qiao*, Zhongguo jingdian zhinan*, Vol.1,102 datesthissource to 1838.

<sup>139</sup> See Jiang, *Hanzu minge gailun*, 235–238 and Feng, *Zhongguo tongzong minge*,18–30.

<sup>140</sup> In an over 400-page monographicstudy, Chang Chi-Kuang meticulously researchesthe genealogy of the melody and systematically compares a variety of text and melody variants (Chang, *Minge "Molihua" yanjiu*). The standard work *Zhongguo minjian gequ jicheng* (Anthology of Chinese Folk Songs) lists variants of the tune in the provinces of Fujian, Gansu, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Hubei, Liaoning, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanxi, Sichuan, in the autonomous regions of Guangxi and Ningxia, and in Beijing. See also Feng, *Zhongguo tongzong minge*.

<sup>141</sup> Identical transcriptions of the Jiangsu folk song can be found in, among others, *Zhongguo minjian gequ jicheng* (Anthology of Chinese Folk Songs), Vol. *Jiangsu*, part 2, 726–727, Jiang, *Hanzu minge gailun*, 236, Qiao, *Zhongguo jingdian minge jianshang zhinan*, Vol.1,101, aswell asin Schaf frath, *Einhundert chinesische Volkslieder*,112–113.

<sup>142</sup> A well-grounded introduction to *sizhuyue* is Witzleben, *"Silk and Bamboo" Music in Shanghai*. The interpretation of *Molihua* by LuQingshuang can be heard at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yn3nxeGn6c.On the playlist http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA43962352597C895 there are twelve more recordings of the song, including, in addition to several interpretations of the tune from Jiangsu, the versions from Hebei, Shaanxi, and from the Manchurian northeast of China, but mostly in much less"authentic" arrangements.

<sup>143</sup> See among others Melvin and Cai, *Rhapsody in Red*, 78–82.

<sup>144</sup> According to Barrow, the song was transcribed from the song of a musician accompanied on some kind of guitar (possibly a *sanxian* or a *pipa*; Barrow, *John Barrow's Travels in China*, 315). Unfortunately, neither Barrow nor Hüttner provide information on where they heard this tune while traveling between Beijing and Canton (Guangzhou).

<sup>145</sup> See Proescholdt, "Johann Christian Hüttner." Hüttner was one of only a few Germansto participate in Macartney's diplomatic mission. He was the teacher of the son of Macartney's deputy George Leonhard Staunton. Hüttnersubsequently became a journalist and translator in London, where he also advised Charles Burney on a dictionary entry on Chinese music(see Burney, "Chinese Music").

the melody in the very revealing paragraph on Chinese music of his travelogue *Nachricht von der Britischen Gesandtschaf tsreise nach China 1792–94*, which appeared in 1797,146 his transcription had already been published in London in 1795 together with the Chinese rowing song *Higho high-hau* by the Saxon composer Karl Kambra, both in its supposedly "original" form (Ex. 3.8a) and in an arrangement for piano, where the melody is complemented by major-minor tonal harmonies. The edition advances the following remarkable explanation:

The following Chinese Songs were brought to England by a Gentleman of the late Embassy to China, who took them down upon the Spot. Their Originality, therefore, may be depended on, and Mr. KAMBRA, in of fering them to the Public, with the addition of a Bass, flatters himself to have rendered them more agreeable to the English Ear.<sup>147</sup>

In 1804, John Barrow, secretary to Lord Macartney during the legate mission to China, published his *Travels in China* in London, which Hüttner translated and published in German the same year. Barrow reproduces a transcription of *Molihua* (Ex. 3.8b) that differs markedly in some details from Kambra's version. Barrow justifies his version – in reference to Kambra's piano writing – with the astonishing reasoning that with the addition of an accompaniment, the music "ceases to be a specimen of the plain melody of China."148 A version slightly different from Barrow's, in turn, is reproduced in the first volume of August Wilhelm Ambros's *Geschichte der Musik* in 1862 (Ex. 3.8c), again with a tonal harmonization (in D minor); without making reference to his source, Ambros reproduces a version of the melody handed down by Eyles Irwin in 1797.149 An-

<sup>146</sup> Hüttner, *Nachricht von der Britischen Gesandtschaf tsreise nach China 1792–94*,179–183.

<sup>147</sup> Karl Kambra, *Two Original Chinese Songs, Moo-Lee-Chwa & Higho Highau, for the Piano Forte or Harpsichord*, London 1795,reprinted inHarrison, *Time, Place, and Music*, 213–219: 213. The same volume published the Chinese rowing song *Higho highau* and wasreprinted in 1796 in the January issue of the Weimar *Journal des Luxus und der Moden* with a commentary by Hüttner: Johann Christian Hüttner, "Ein Ruderliedchen aus China mit Melodie." *Journal des Luxus und der Moden* 11, no. 1(1796), 36–37.Hüttner'scommentary in the *Journal* is reprinted in Harrison, *Time, Place and Music*,188–189.

<sup>148</sup> Barrow, *John Barrow's Travels in China*, 315. In his translation of Barrow's text, Hüttner contradicts Barrow in a footnote with this assessment: "But if he [Kambra] immediately made a bass, then nothing was added to the melody itself. The bass could not change the melody; it remains as plain and Chinese as before. [translator's comment]" ("Aber ob er [Kambra] gleich einen Baß dazu machte,so wurde doch zur Melodie selbst nichts hinzugefügt. Der Baß konnte die Melodie nicht ändern;sie bliebtso einfach und Chinesisch wie vorher. Uebers.") (Barrow, *Johann Barrow's Reise durch China*, 380.)

<sup>149</sup> Ambros, *Geschichte der Musik*, Vol. 1, 34–36. Ambros'ssourcewasIrwin, "ChineseMusick," 343 (1797, here the tune is reproduced under the title *Tsin Fa*, alongwith another tune *Cheu Teu*; two further melodieswere published by Irwin in Volume 2 of *The Oriental Collections*, London 1798,148). EylesIrwin was an Irish poet and colonial of ficial working forthe EastIndia Company and spentthe years between 1792 and 1794 in China.Hewas also involved in theMacartneymission,so itcanbe assumedthathehadHüttner'stranscriptionofthe song towork from.Itcannot be ruled out that the dif ferences in details between the versions of Barrow/Hüttner and Irwin/Ambros are due to copying errors (the title *Tsin Fa* – in other sources spelled *Sinfa* – indicates the Cantonese pronunciation of the alternative title *Xianhua*,which is also named by BarrowandHüttner). In describing this melody, Ambros does not hesitate to voice his aversion to Chinese music as a whole. The melody "only too soon enters into the peculiar and grotesque, which is a family trait of all Chinese melodies" (Ambros, *Geschichte der Musik*, Vol. 1, 34, "sie geräth nur allzubald in das Absonderliche und Fratzenhaf te hinein, welches den Familienzug allerchinesischen Melodien bildet"). In a footnote, Ambros also refers to Barrow's version, which he considers "a little less barbaric"(ibid., 35,"etwasweniger barbarisch").Other melodiesintroduced by Ambrosserved Ferruccio Busoni as an important source for his opera *Turandot*(1905/17),see Lo, *Turandot auf der Opernbühne*, 257–266.

*Example 3.8: Nine Versions of Molihua, a. Kambra 1795 (based on Hüttner's transcription 1793/94), b. Barrow 1804 (Hüttner's transcription 1793/94), c. Ambros 1862 (source: Irwin 1797; \*: A4 instead of B4in third edition 1887, also in Irwin 1797), d. van Aalst 1884; e. Fassini-Camossi's music box (1920; recorded in the 1970s); f. Puccini, Turandot (1920–24), Act I, rehearsal number 19 (boys choir); g. gongchepu transcription (Chinese solmisation notation) from 1821 (af ter Qian, Zhongguo jingdian minge jianshang zhinan, vol. 1, 103), h. modern transcription of the folk song from Jiangsu province (af ter ibid., 101), i. Tan Dun, Symphony 1997, I. Heaven, mm. 129–143 (children's choir)*

other version was published by Jules A. van Aalst in 1884, a Belgian official who was acting in the service of the Chinese imperial customs authority, in his book *Chinese Music* (Ex. 3.8d). This version has the title *Xianhua* (Fresh Flower), which appears in very early Chinese sources as an alternative title for *Molihua*, as well as a Chinese *gongche* score reproduced by the author. Although this demonstrates that van Aalst had a Chinese source at his disposal, his version quite clearly differs from both the aforementioned 1821 *gongche* score and Barrow's and Ambros's versions.<sup>150</sup>

In August 1920, during a visit to Bagni di Lucca, Giacomo Puccini heard four Chinese tunes on a music box of his friend Baron Edoardo Fassini-Camossi (1871–1941), "a veteran of the 1900 campaign to suppress the Boxer Rebellion and of a military mission through China to Siberia at the end of the First World War in 1918–20 to reclaim Italian prisoners."151 The first of the four tunes was *Molihua*, in a polyphonic version whose main melody resembles that reproduced by Barrow and Ambros (Ex. 3.8e).152 Puccini made use of this version of the melody (along with two

151 Sheppard, "Puccini and the Music Boxes," 71.

Puccini's encounter with the Fassini-Camossi music box had been documented early on in a newspaper article by Luigi Gualtiero Paolini in the *Giornale d'Italia* on 19 August 1920 (see ibid., 70). A further indication of Puccini's source was given by Giuseppe Adami, one of the two librettists of *Turandot* and Puccini's biographer (Adami, *Puccini*,176). The Fassini-Camossi music boxwas discovered and recorded in 1965 by "Michael Rose and HansHammelmanninRomeatthehomeofFassini'swidowjustintimeforaBBCThirdProgrammeradiobroadcast about *Turandot* in the series 'Birth of an Opera'" (Sheppard, "Puccini and the Music Boxes," 72). William Weaver, who had joined Rose and Hammelmann, broadcast the music box tunes in a "Metropolitan Opera Intermission Broadcast" on 28 December 1974. I thank Jürgen Maehder for referring me to this broadcast and providing me with a copy of the program. The version of *Molihua* on the music box employs a simple counter-

<sup>150</sup> Aalst, *Chinese Music*,19. The relatively large deviationsin the version reproduced by van Aalst may indicate that the author either made mistakes in transferring the original *gongche* characters into his book, or when transcribing these characters into Western notation. The *gongche* notation reproduced by van Aalst deviates fundamentally from the *gongche* source of 1821. Van Aalst's transcription oddly contains the fourth scale degree, which occursin none ofthe other versions. Van Aalst may have mistaken the *gongche* sign 仩 (*shang*, the octave ofthe firstscale step) for凡 (*fan*, fourth scale step). Compare, for example, van Aalst's *gongche* depictionwith a *gongche* source of *Molihua* in the Japanese collection *Gekkin Gakufu*, Tokyo 1877 (https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/ File:Molihua1877.jpg).

<sup>152</sup> Themelodiesof Fassini-Camossi'smusicbox arediscussedinAshbrook andPowers,*Puccini's Turandot. The End of the Great Tradition*,94–96, Lo,*Turandot auf der Opernbühne*, 326–327,and,mostrecentlyandmostcomprehensively, inSheppard,"Puccini andtheMusicBoxes." Sheppardhasdiscoveredthat"Puccinihadalso turnedto amusic boxforexoticinspirationsome18yearsearlier,duringthecompositionof*Madama Butterfly*"(ibid.,43).Hepoints to the fact that music boxes with Asian melodiesfrom around 1900 were produced in Switzerland and France rather than in Asia; therefore, they testify to orientalistconceptions of Asian music and cannot be considered "authentic"sources. "The box appearsto have been manufactured in Switzerland and exported to China in the late nineteenth century. Baron Fassini returned with the box to Italy either af ter the Boxer War or in 1920 and brought the instrument to Bagni di Lucca,where Puccini encountered it in August1920." (ibid., 76)

&

h.

# #

œ œ œ œ. œ

œ œ œ œ œ

œ œ œ œ œ œ œ

<sup>œ</sup> <sup>œ</sup> <sup>œ</sup> <sup>j</sup> œ

œ. <sup>œ</sup> <sup>œ</sup> <sup>œ</sup> <sup>œ</sup> <sup>œ</sup>

<sup>œ</sup> <sup>œ</sup> <sup>œ</sup> <sup>œ</sup> <sup>œ</sup> <sup>œ</sup> <sup>œ</sup> <sup>œ</sup>

further melodies of Fassini-Camossi's music box) almost literally as a central motif in his opera *Turandot*, but re-designed the harmonic accompaniment and, of course, the tonal dimension in quite a different manner. At times he treats the melody as a symbol of child-like innocence (as in Act I, rehearsal number 19, boys choir, Ex. 3.8f, Act II, rehearsal number 42, Act III, five measures after rehearsal number 40), at times he introduces an imperially solemn, somewhat threatening, version of the melody (as in Act I, rehearsal number 48, Ex. 3.9; Act II, 16 measures before rehearsal number 63; Act III, two measures before rehearsal number 17). Puccini repeatedly alludes to the music box's specific timbre in his orchestration and the shaping of Turandot's "mechanical" character in the opera might equally have been enhanced by the rhythmically stiff version of the melody on the music box, thus perpetuating Orientalist stereotypes of the "mechanical" character of Asian people and their music.<sup>153</sup>

Both characteristics of Puccini's *Molihua* are explored by Tan Dun in his *Symphony 1997: Heaven – Earth – Mankind* (1997), composed for the return of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997: in the first movement, *Heaven*, the "imperial" version (mm. 115–122, Ex. 3.9) is heard first, and then the childlike innocent version (mixed children's choir, canonically complemented by solo violoncello, mm. 129–143, Ex. 3.8i). The references to and deviations from Puccini's version are informative: Tan Dun harmonizes the "imperial" version with slightly different chords, G– C–D–C/G–D–C/G–D–C (I. *Heaven*, mm. 115–122), while Puccini (at the first appearance of the "imperial" version in Act I, rehearsal number 48, later always analogously) repeats the two-measure harmonic model D-C–D-a7 . The resulting harmonic color is similar owing to the ubiquitous *sixte ajoutée*, seventh, and ninth chords as well as the mixolydian minor seventh (Ex. 3.9), referring to late European exoticism, not least represented by the harmonies of Gustav Mahler's *Das Lied von der Erde*, where the added sixth is derived from pentatonic collections and plays a central role throughout the work.

Tan Dun's undeniable familiarity with a wide range of Chinese musical practice has often been instrumentalized as a central factor in his notable success in the Western music world.<sup>154</sup> In fact, Tan comes from a generation that grew up after the Cultural Revolution in a climate that favored an enthusiastic reception of Western modernism, while Chinese symphonic writing from the 1930s to the 1970s was regarded skeptically by the younger generation. The main feature of Chinese symphonic music before 1978 was Western-based "pentatonic


melody; in Example 3.8e, only the melody voice isreproduced (although Weaver's broadcast rendersthe tune in D major, I have reproduced it in Eb major here, since "the Metropolitan Opera broadcast lowered the pitch of these three tunes by a semitone" (ibid., 75). It is clear that Puccini made use of this *Molihua* version and not the version reproduced by van Aalst, although he took four other melodiesfrom van Aalst's book that play an important part in *Turandot* (see Ashbrook and Powers, *Puccini's Turandot. The End of the Great Tradition*, 96–98 and Lo, *Turandot auf der Opernbühne*, 330–334). Most Chinese melodies reproduced by Swiss music boxes were probably based on transcriptions by the Swiss businessman Frederic'Fritz' Bovet (1824–1914) (Sheppard, "Puccini and theMusic Boxes," 83–88). The notation used for pinning *Molihua* on a Bovet music box is reproduced in Chapuis, *History of the Musical Box and of Mechanical Music,* 265.

*Example 3.9: Molihua – "imperial" version: harmonizations by Puccini (Turandot, Act I, rehearsal number 48) and Tan Dun (Symphony 1997, I. Heaven, mm. 115–119)*

Romanticism," which confined itself to heavily simplified reminiscences of traditional Chinese music. In many respects this repertoire set out from the legacy of European exoticism and the "national schools" of the nineteenth century (→ III.1). Tan Dun and his colleagues in China's "new wave" (*xinchao*), on the contrary, expressed their new path not least by referring to materials of Chinese music that could not be captured with such simplifications.155 Tan Dun, like no one else, had to feel the precarious consequences of such an approach, when being accused of acting as a "running dog of capitalism"156 during the first "Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign" (*Qingchu jingshen wuran*) from 1983 to 1984, and his music was banned from public performance for six months.157 Against this background, the connection to the formulas of exoticist power representation in the Symphony, which only arose thirteen years later, in the context of Tan Dun's glaring success story is all the more haunting.158

<sup>155</sup> Tan, for example, was very fascinated by the music of the Yao minority that he had encountered in the southern Chinese Guangxi province, not least because of their unusual melodicformationsin which tritone-like intervals play an importantrole, featuresthatcannot be represented in the context of a pentatonictone system; see Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 351–352, 361.

<sup>156</sup> Lu, "Ting Tan Dun xianyue sichongzou Feng – Ya – Song," quoted in Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 99,123.

<sup>157</sup> See Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 99,123–124 and Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 358.

<sup>158</sup> CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin issaid to have smiled approvingly as he recognized the melody of *Molihua* during the premiere of Tan's Symphony,see Yu, "Two Practices Confused in One Composition," 58.


*Table 3.4: Molihua, dif ferent versions of the song text (pinyin transliteration)*

159 Af ter Qiao, *Zhongguo jingdian minge jianshang zhinan*, Vol.1,102.


It remains clear that Tan, despite some efforts to suggest Chinese idiomatic sounds – for example, with the sliding melody in the strings or occasional ornaments<sup>164</sup> – clearly references Puccini or the Western appropriation of the melody and not one of the variants of Chinese folk music practice named above. The "innocent" version sung by the children's choir (I. *Heaven*; mm. 129–143, Ex. 3.8i) is imitated by the solo cello in canon, which points toward another intercultural context: as outlined earlier, the arrangement of folk songs based on Western principles and styles has played a pivotal role in Chinese music history since the end of the nineteenth century (→ III.1).

Now, indeed, the version of *Molihua* reproduced by Tan Dun is known and popularized today as a "national" Chinese folk song, and its relationship to the variations of Jiangsu folk music introduced above has not yet been fully explained by music research. A comparison of the song text in the various sources reveals significant differences between the version used by Tan Dun and the remaining variants, which are related to the altered number of pitches and phrase structure (Table 3.4). Regarding the historical origin of this textual alteration, one may glean some hints from the sources: the Jiangsu folk song was transcribed by the (then only 14-yearold) singer He Fang in 1942 in the Liuhe region of Jiangsu province from the song of an old master. Then, in 1957, He Fang set the text for female choir, an arrangement that was recorded and distributed throughout China, and finally, in 1959, it appeared with a new text at the Seventh World Festival of Youth and Students in Vienna, thus playing a politically representative part.165 It can be assumed that in the course of the 1950s, Puccini's opera had already become known in China, at least among musicians, although the opera was officially banned there and was first performed at the Shanghai Opera House only in 1990.166 In any case, Puccini's version of the melody may still have had an impact on arrangements such as He Fang's, which were in turn widely used in China, in keeping with Mao Zedong's new slogan issued in the 1950s, *gu wei jin yong, yang wei Zhong yong* (Making the past useful to the present and the foreign useful for China), based on a similar slogan by the official Zhang Zhidong from the late nineteenth century (→ III.1).167 The focus was therefore less on the preservation of regional or cultural peculiarities, but rather on the utilitarian adoption of Western techniques for mass dissemination and identity formation – for which Puccini's simplistic version was no doubt more effective than the folk song from Jiangsu, with its basis in complex oral traditions and performance practice. Finally, it should be noted that for Chinese researchers and musicians, the difference between the "European" and the (local) Chinese versions is not as blatant as it was presented here. On the contrary, in Puccini's version, some of them see another more "regional" variant of an only imaginarily existing framework material, to which all the other roughly 15 different melodies in China also refer, and in which, due to the regional styles, there are also sometimes intriguing changes to the text and the melodic structure.168 This rather original argument seems to

<sup>164</sup> Elsewhere, ef forts are made by Tan to add a special quality distinguishing hisrendition from Puccini's, asin the approach to the third bar ofthe melody (enhanced by dynamics,timpanitremolo, and cymbal accent) or by the "countermelody" in the ascending fif ths C4–G4–D5. All this, ofcourse, does notchange Tan's basicreliance on Puccini's"representation" of the melody.

<sup>165</sup> *Zhongguo minjian gequ jicheng*, 727. See also the quoted internetsourcesin footnote 163.

<sup>166</sup> He, "The Ambiguities of Chineseness," 551.

<sup>167</sup> See Geist, *Die Modernisierung der chinesischen Kultur*, 12–20. For the first time in 1898, Zhang formulated the slogan *zhongxue wei ti, xixue wei yong*: "Traditional (Chinese) learning [Confucian ethics] assubstance, New (Western) learning [administration and technology] as application." (→ III.1)

<sup>168</sup> Personalconversationwith Jiang Mingdun, Shanghai, 28/11/2002.

overlook that in both the Puccini and the Tan Dun China (or Chinese culture in the sense of the "myth paradigm," → I.3) is represented by this melody as an (imaginary) "entity," and the manner of its simplification by the Western musical context is conditional – something categorically different from transformations of a model owing to regional music practice.

It is not difficult to see in Tan Dun's *Symphony* an example of a postcolonial construction of cultural identity, which, incidentally, can be clearly demonstrated on various other levels of the work, and in concluding, I will brief ly discuss two such levels: The set of imperial bells *bianzhong*, which plays a central role in Tan's work, was first unearthed in 1978 in the Suixian region of Hubei province and quickly became a new symbol of Chinese "national culture," as one of the oldest known Chinese instruments. Of its 64 bronze bells, 45 were used for the courtly ceremonial music and 19 added only for tuning reasons. The instrument comes from the estate of Duke Yi from the state of Zeng (722–221 BCE) during the ancient Zhou Dynasty.169 The bells were used in various genres of court music. In the context of Tan Dun's *Symphony 1997*, the archaic instrument seems like a foreign body that is difficult to integrate, due in particular to the combination of the equally-tempered, mostly even diatonic orchestral structures and the specific "microtonal" tuning of the bells.170 The 2400-year-old imperial bell set thus serves only as a splash of color, its specifically unequally-tempered tuning is leveled in a largely diatonic music. In his study of the *Symphony*, Yu Siu Wah also elaborates on the significance and, above all, the ambivalent cultural symbolism of the bell set. His positive conclusion, however, is difficult to agree with:

Tan tackled the problem [ofconnecting the non-equally tempered bellsto the equally tempered Western symphony orchestra] by deliberately using the bells in solo for a long section; when used simultaneously with the orchestra, the bell-chimes are alwaysscored as percussion instruments, and the clash in temperamentwith the orchestra isthus undermined.171

In contrast to Yu's thesis, in the transition to the "imperial" *Molihua* reference in the first movement *Heaven* (mm. 114–115), the discrepancy between the bell's harmony and the abruptly occurring G major *tutti* chord is very obvious.

The program of the *Symphony*, subtitled *Heaven – Earth – Mankind*, also refers to the archaic world of the Zhou Dynasty. A symbiotic, transparent, and f luid relationship between *tiandi* (heaven and earth, which symbolize the entire cosmos) and *ren* (humankind) indeed plays an essential part in the worldview of ancient Daoism as it unfolded during the Zhou Dynasty. This worldview informed, among others, numerous religious practices, such as the worship of the "officials" of heaven (*tianguan*), earth (*diguan*), water (*shuiguan*), and humanity (*renguan*). But the two lines by the philosopher Zhuangzi (c. 369–286 BCE) quoted by Tan Dun at the climax of his *Song of Peace*, a short movement that serves as both introduction and coda to his *Symphony*, considerably distort the original meaning of the text.172 In the context of the "heroic" D major, to evoke unequivocal associations with the setting of Schiller's *Ode To Joy* in Beethoven's

<sup>169</sup> See Liang, *Music of the Billion*, 71–75.

<sup>170</sup> The CD recording of Tan's work made use of the originally excavated bronze bell set *Zenghouyi Bianzhong* unearthed in 1978, which has otherwise been kept under lock and key at theHubei Museum since the mid-1980s; for the premiere on 1 July 1997 and follow-up performances, a replica was used. See Yu, "Two Practices Confused in One Composition," 57, 65.

<sup>171</sup> Ibid., 67.

<sup>172</sup> See Gooi, "Making an Identity," Chapter 3.5.

Ninth Symphony, the phrases "Heaven, Earth, and I are born together, the 10,000 things [that is, everything in existence] and I am one" confirm associations with an emphatic assertion of the unity of heaven, earth, and humanity.173 In Zhuangzi's chapter *Qi wu lun* (The Adjustment of Controversies), however, these two lines are followed by two questions and a brilliant paradoxical conclusion that totally challenges the first statement about unity or the very idea of unity:

Heaven, Earth, and I were produced together, and all things and I are one. Since they are one, can there be speech aboutthem? Butsince they are spoken of as one, mustthere not be room for speech?One and Speech are two;two and one are three.Going on fromthis(in our enumeration), the most skilful reckoner cannot reach (the end of the necessary numbers), and how much less can ordinary people do so! Therefore from non-existence we proceed to existence till we arrive at three; proceeding from existence to existence, to how many should we reach? Let us abjure such procedure, and simply rest here.174

It is surely no coincidence that this passage does not find its way into Tan's representationalist music. The question of how to determine whether music represents cultural identity in an "essentialist" manner is answered in several ways by Tan's *Symphony 1997*. It characteristically abbreviates classical symbols of Chinese culture, neglecting their internal plurality, and this is a vivid example of an "affirmative" type of essentialism, which in this case also has strong political overtones.175 The "misunderstandings" of European exoticism and colonialism seem to be hardened in Tan's work, confirming its *mésalliance* with affirmative nationalist Chinese symphonic works of the twentieth century.

Tan Dun was not afraid to resort to the melody in a musical setting analogous to the Symphony in the music he arranged jointly with the People Liberation Army's composer Wang Hesheng for the 302 medal ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics 2008,176 and to characterize it as an "iconic piece," "almost a cultural symbol of China" and "a gift from the Chinese people to the world's athletes."177 The story of the melody took a turn when it was played in a version for solo violin by the American-Chinese violinist Lynn Chang at the ceremony for the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo in Oslo on 10 December 2010,178 and especially shortly afterward, when, following the example of the anti-regime protests in Tunisia, there were also broad anti-government protests in China in February and March 2011 referred to as the "Jasmine Revolution" (*molihua geming*): the term "jasmine" came under internet censorship, and even trade in jasmine f lowers was prohibited.179

<sup>173</sup> See ibid.,161–171.

<sup>174</sup> Zhuangzi, *The Writings of Chuang Tzu*.

<sup>175</sup> On political-cultural symbolism in the symphony and the reception of works in Hongkong, see Yu, "Two Practices Confused in One Composition."

<sup>176</sup> Cui, "Classical Piece Will Ring in Ears of Winners."

<sup>177</sup> Ibid.

<sup>178</sup> See *The Nobel Peace Prize Award Ceremony 2010*, http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1405, 48:45.

<sup>179</sup> Chou, "From Nation's Favourite to Populist Poison" and Sheppard, "Puccini and the Music Boxes," 91–92.

#### **4. Probing the Compositional Relevance of Cultural Difference: Key Tendencies of East Asian New Music Since the 1950s**

The most obvious compositional articulation of culturally encoded forms of alterity is the immediate juxtaposition of idioms or structures that are clearly "culturally charged," accentuating their uniqueness, their fundamental difference, perhaps their incommensurability (→ I.3). This model becomes particularly palpable if Western and non-Western instruments are placed in direct confrontation with one another – a tendency that has been mostly peripheral on a global scale since Tōru Takemitsu's *November Steps* for *shakuhachi*, *satsuma-biwa*, and orchestra (1967), but should be accentuated all the more in the studies presented here. Tan Dun's *Ghost Opera* (1994) for *pipa* and string quartet offers a relevant example of "composed-out" alterity, as do many works by composers such as Toshio Hosokawa or Toshi Ichiyanagi (→ III.5, IV.1). As outlined already in Chapter II.6, there are two key works of modern European music theater in which an East Asian instrument assumes the extraterritorial function of the "Other": the Japanese *shō* mouth organ in Helmut Lachenmann's *Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern* (1990–96) and the Korean arched zither *ajaeng* in Hans Zender's *Chief Joseph* (2003) (→ II.6). Thus, the staging of cultural alterity through the dramaturgical use of musical instruments can be found among composers of different nationalities and is not limited to the Asian context.

Meanwhile, within globalized art music, a clearly ambiguous discourse of cultural difference has become established. On the one hand, many authors sympathize with approaches that aim at independence from the aesthetic criteria of Western modernism, understanding cultural difference as a medium of incommensurability and thus adopting a substantial achievement of aesthetic modernity by working against its consolidation as a norm. On the other hand, this dynamic has been picked up by Western-dominated markets, such that concert promoters and the public often expect traces of cultural difference in works by Asian, African, or Latin American composers (→ I.3). Concurrently, the unspoken norms and formats of new music sometimes leave little room for deviation. This paradoxical situation is further confused by often polemically accentuated phrases in music journalism – especially in German-speaking countries – that sometimes still derogate cultural heterogeneity, ambivalence, and hybridity with epithets such as "dilution," "touristic appropriation," or "pastiche."<sup>180</sup>

This chapter sketches some of the historical and aesthetic conditions under which the compositional relevance of cultural difference in the Asian context has steadily increased since the 1950s. In particular, it can be shown how cultural difference has become a central aesthetic metaphor for composition in situations of cultural upheaval. But the following case studies also demonstrate that attempts to impose a simple dualism between cultural difference and cultural Westernization usually fail. On the contrary, in all cases an essential impulse emanates from the aesthetics and critical thought of Western modernism or postmodernism, although their basic sociocultural basic requirements obviously cannot be transplanted to other cultural contexts without friction. The most prominent Asian composers of the 1960s and 70s, Isang Yun (1917–1995), José Maceda (1918–2004), Chou Wen-Chung (1923–2019), and Tōru Takemitsu (1930–1996), were explicitly aiming at a compositional expression or integration of the culturally different. Their works are unthinkable without the indissoluble entanglement of local or national discourses with the impression and inf luence of Western politics, art, and aesthetics. These played into detailed compositional decisions but also into the way these composers

<sup>180</sup> Examples can be found in abundance; see, for example, Häusler, "Begegnungswege," Boehmer, "Globalisierung als heimischer Fetisch," andNyf feler, "Der Reiz des Fremdgehens."

communicated their compositional ideas and techniques to both Western and non-Western audiences or readerships.

#### Culturalist Polarization in Isang Yun's Music

This rings particularly true when the situation of migration is considered. The problem of (non-Western) national(ist) essentialism appears particularly troublesome when confronted with a (Western) cultural surrounding as the unsettling experience of otherness and alterity might be existentially perturbing or potentially traumatic.181 When considering this biographical context, it appears inevitable that Isang Yun (1917–1995), surely the most inf luential Korean composer worldwide to date, was concerned from the beginning of his stay in Europe (1956) with the problem of finding a compositional identity that can encompass both his Korean origin and past and his European/German present. The inescapable frame of reference of this search for identity can be found in the discourses of contemporary European music from the 1950s to the 1990s, a frame of reference of the highest importance for Yun's self-conception as a composer, as has been repeatedly shown.182 The cultural frame of reference during Yun's first 40 years in Korea, including his studies in Japan (1933–36 in Osaka, 1938–41 in Tokyo with Tomojirō Ikenouchi), on the contrary, was significantly more fragmented and inseparably linked to the modernization of East Asian societies oriented toward Western models, as well as repressive Japanese colonial rule in Korea. Against this background, I will first explore the question of how Yun constructed, polarized, or negotiated a cultural "self" and cultural "other." The basis of my ref lections is Yun's music before 1975, works in which references to Korean or East Asian traditions tend to play a more significant role than in later works, giving them immediate relevance to the discussion of interculturality.

How did Yun resolve the question of a cultural self and cultural other? First of all, it is noticeable that he always drew a very sharp contrast in his writings between "East" and "West." One of the numerous statements that point in this direction is the following: "The West is more work-related, Asia more intuition-driven, with all the little colors, melismas, and ornaments. The West accentuates the structure and the form, the East the underlying vitality of the music."183 A similar juxtaposition, here transferred to the more specific contrast between Korean and European music, can be found in the radio program "Musik und Instrumente des alten Korea"184 (Music and Instruments of Ancient Korea), which Yun made in 1963 for West German Radio in Cologne. Its main arguments are summarized in keywords in Table 3.5.

<sup>181</sup> See, among others, Gratzer and Grosch, *Musik und Migration*.

<sup>182</sup> See, among others, Eikemeier, "Ist Yun Isangs Musik koreanisch?," Howard, "Korean Tradition in Isang Yun's Composition Style," Sparrer, "Isang Yun und koreanische Tradition," Kim, "The Diasporic Composer," Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 222–254, Yun, *Zwischen zwei Musikwelten*, Howard, *Creating Korean Music*, 129–135, 140–153, andHan, *Interkulturalität in der neuen Musik Koreas*.

<sup>183</sup> Yun, "Über meineMusik," 305 ("Der Westen ist mehrwerkbezogen, Asien mehr von derIntuition getragen, mit all den kleinen Färbungen, Melismen und Verzierungen. Der Westen akzentuiert die Struktur und die Form, der Osten die tragende Lebendigkeit der Musik.").

<sup>184</sup> Yun, "Musik und Instrumente des alten Korea."

*Table 3.5: Polarization of Korean and European music in Isang Yun's radio program "Musik und Instrumente des alten Korea" (1963)*


The sweeping nature of this comparison catches the eye. The thesis, for example, that the tone in Western music is always "bound in functional contexts" follows the highly inf luential stereotype that for "all" European music at least since Beethoven, if not since Bach or earlier, a kind of musical discursivity can be assumed in which each tone has a clear and definite function in the hierarchy of the whole. This stereotype was not least established by the Hegel- and Neo-Kantian-inf luenced German-language music theory of the nineteenth century, which was often oriented almost exclusively toward Beethoven, and has most prominently resulted in the ideas of "harmonic functions" (Hugo Riemann) and "formal functions" (Arnold Schoenberg, Erwin Ratz).185 The fact that many works by Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, or Debussy cannot be adequately described according to such a concept was already recognized in the early twentieth century, but this did little to impede the "success" of this idea until today. Yet Yun's tendency toward stereotyping is even clearer in the statement that the Korean tone is "articulated in naive joy." Is the single tone in Korean court music – Yun refers here in particular to the wellknown piece *Sujech'ŏn*186 – not equally part of a structural framework, a network of heterophonic lines that have a considerable complexity? Without delving into this question here, we can say that Yun's words demonstrate a postcolonial pattern: his "native" non-Western tradition represents the "feeling," the "naive," the "decorative," while the Western, on the contrary, aims at the "sense of the whole" and at "abstraction," and therefore at rationality. It is a small step from this position to the sweeping comparisons of nineteenth-century orientalism,<sup>187</sup> whose evaluations Yun reverses simply by positively defining attributes formerly considered deficient. Overall, it is obvious that Yun constructs a largely homogeneous "self" and "other."

<sup>185</sup> A critique ofthe idea of musical"functions"isimplicitin many energetic and phenomenological approachesto music theory and analysis that tend to highlight the qualia of perceived sound at least in part independently from their functionality within a larger form orcontext. It isrelevant in thiscontext that Yun received instructions, among others, from Josef Rufer, an influential former student of Schoenberg, in Berlin in 1957 whose book *Die Komposition mit zwölf Tönen* (1952) he had studied in Japanese translation while still in Korea (Sparrer, "Isang Yun").

<sup>186</sup> Yun, "Musik und Instrumente des alten Korea,"15.

<sup>187</sup> See Wimmer, "Vom Umgang mit kulturellen Dif ferenzen in der Philosophie."

Of course, it would also be completely misleading to deny that certain fundamental differences exist between traditional Korean and modern European music, even if such differences might have lost some of their sharpness as a result of the extensive process of renewal in both traditional Korean and twentieth-century Western-oriented music. The decisive factor, however, is the observation that Yun's music does not make these differences audible in the sense of a polarized tension. His works appear to be – possibly in contrast to traditional Korean music – quite spontaneously comprehensible, and were well-received within a European frame of reference. This is often explained with the argument that Yun "integrated" these differences into his personal style in the process of composing. This argument is evident in the following assessment from the 1996 article "Korea" in the MGG encyclopedia:

In his music, Yun showsthat Korean origin and identity can also become recognizable in the musical language of avant-garde sounds, not only superficially, by deploying traditional rhythms, scales, or ornaments, or by incorporating historical instruments, but rather by an aestheticsensibility rooted in Eastern philosophies and intellectual contexts that lead to a distinctive style that is not Asian or European, but rather both at once. In this sense, Isang Yun became a teacher and role model for the following generation.188

On the face of it, this characterization seems plausible, yet I would like to draw attention to a point that strikes me as a key problem in the discussion of interculturality as a whole, namely the argument of a dualism between "surface" and "substance."189 The "surface" is supposedly "merely technical," here referring to elements from traditional Korean music or "historical" (meaning Korean) instruments. The "substance," meanwhile, lies in "aesthetic sensibility" and "intellectual contexts." In this simplistic separation of spirit and technique – a foundational discourse in the early reception of Western music in East Asia (→ III.1) – lies a core problem of intercultural reception generally. On closer examination, it quickly becomes clear that "surface" and "substance" in musical contexts are as difficult to separate as "mind" and "body" in the field of epistemology.

This becomes particularly obvious in light of traditional Korean instruments: instrumental "technique" cannot be separated from a particular mental attitude or condition with which the performers produce a sound; this becomes clear in aesthetic concepts such as *mat* ("delicateness") or *mŏt* ("taste").190 But conversely, the instruments themselves already contain the full potential of the (music) culture that produced and produces them (and which was and is produced by them), as evidenced, for example, by the connection between the construction of the instruments and the structural elements of the traditional repertoire, such as the varied heterophony based on constant inf lection. One could further specify this connection and ask how far the identity of Korean music can be communicated without its medium, the "historical instruments." Conversely, one might similarly pursue the question of how much of the "spirit"

<sup>188</sup> Bühler and Chu, "Korea" ("In seiner Musik zeigt Yun, dass koreanische Herkunf t und Identität auch in der Musiksprache avantgardistischer Klänge erkennbar werden kann, nicht nur vordergründig durch Verwendung traditioneller Rhythmen, Skalen oder Ornamente, oder durch Einbeziehung historischer Instrumente, sondern durch ein in östlichen Philosophien verwurzeltes ästhetisches Empfinden und geistige Inhalte, die zu einem unverwechselbar eigenen Stil führen, der nicht asiatisch ist oder europäisch, sondern beides zugleich. In diesem Sinnewurde Isang Yun Lehrer und Vorbild für die nachfolgende Generation.")

<sup>189</sup> See, more specifically, Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 43–49, 58–61.

<sup>190</sup> SeeHoward, "Dif ferent Spheres: Perceptions of Traditional Music and Western Musicin Korea."

of Mozart's music is preserved in recordings of *Eine kleine Nachtmusik* by Japanese *koto* ensembles?191 But this argument cannot be limited to the question of the instruments alone: fundamentally, one must question the possibility, often taken for granted, of being able to communicate cultural "substance" musically, without recourse to its structurally *and* timbrally defined idioms. Ultimately, this discussion points back to those polarizations between structure and sound, or form and sound, that are deeply ingrained in nineteenth- and twentieth-century music-aesthetic discourse (→ II.1).192

Yun's move to the allegedly "more substantial" level of reception of basic philosophical and aesthetic concepts, and his great reluctance about the use of concrete and recognizable Korean sources in his works in any case demonstrates, in a particularly clear way, that he operated within a European frame of reference. His view "back" on Korean and East Asian culture was prominently shaped by a "regionalist" European gaze.193 The unified image that he verbally painted of Asia and Europe ("We Asians," "in Europe," etc.194) corresponds to the vagueness of his compositional reception of Asian music and aesthetics from an ethnological perspective, which Keith Howard has discussed:195 the construction of basic aesthetic principles from archaic, Daoist, Buddhist, and shamanistic ideas as well as from different, scarcely compatible Korean music genres, yields on closer examination a complex of strongly divergent references that are only provisionally held together under the mantle of the "Asian."

This situation undoubtedly also means that ethnological authenticity was of secondary importance to Yun's composing, which of course was also a widespread attitude in his generation. With a stronger emphasis on authenticity in the details, a substantial counterdiscourse to the dominant Western concept of music might have developed – yet Yun avoided this possibility, not least through his insistence on the emphatic conception of the autonomous musical work, and perhaps also through the predominantly discursive macroformal design of his compositions. It was not until the 1980s and 1990s that such a counterculture took on a distinct shape in some works by younger Korean and other East Asian composers (→ III.5).

This is not the place for a detailed musical analysis of Yun's music, but on the basis of the previously discussed problems, some preconditions and objectives of such analyses may be suggested. First of all, it is obvious that only a small (though surely significant) part of the intercultural reception processes that preceded the writing of Yun's works are in fact deducible from his scores. A closer understanding of Yun's music therefore requires a research approach that connects source-oriented historical and ethnomusicological knowledge as equal poles of analysis. This of course requires a more extensive availability of written sources (translation of Korean writings by and about Yun, increased exchange of Western and Korean research,

<sup>191</sup> SeeTheNewKotoEnsembleofTokyo: *Koto Mozart!*, LPAngelS-37553 (1978,theLPalsoincludesone*koto* arrangement of the Symphony in G minor K. 550). Numerous similar productions have appeared, such as the CD Samurai Chamber Orchestra: *Samurai Mozart* (insideout 2007), which contains six arrangements of *Eine kleine Nachtmusik*, among others for *koto* ensemble, *shamisen* ensemble, and *shakuhachi* ensemble.

<sup>192</sup> See, among others, Janz, *Klangdramaturgie*, 32–39, Stollberg, *Ohr und Auge – Klang und Form*, and Utz, "'Liberating' Sound and Perception," 21–30.

<sup>193</sup> "Yun's Asian identity emerged in Europe, and was a reaction and accommodation to his migration into a new cultural environment."(Howard,"Korean Tradition in Isang Yun's Composition Style," 67.) See also Kim,"Migration im Wandel" and Kim, "'European music' outside Europe?"

<sup>194</sup> See, for example, Yun, "Über meine Musik," 298.

<sup>195</sup> Howard, "Korean Tradition in Isang Yun's Composition Style," 83–84.

collection and publication of Yun's writings and letters196) as well as the documentation of oral history (systematic interviews with contemporary witnesses, etc.). Finally, a precise presentation of the performance history and audience, press, and scholarly reception of Yun's music in Germany and Korea, and an explanation of how these performance and reception histories impacted Yun's work, would be required.

For a close reading of intercultural aspects in Yun's works, it seems necessary to put together a detailed chronology of Yun's encounter with Western and Korean or East Asian music and culture, in order to be able to establish his knowledge and perspectives regarding these areas during the composition of key works such as *Réak* (1966), *Glissées* (1970), *Piri* (1971), and *Gagok* (1972).197 It also seems imperative to reconstruct the creative processes of such key works through closer scrutiny. What were Yun's sources prior to, and during, these compositions? In what ways did information about Korean (or other Asian) musical genres f low into these works, and how did Yun bring this knowledge together with compositional techniques that he appropriated in Europe (serial technique, etc.)?

Similar issues could be proposed for research on other dominant Asian composers of Yun's generation who significantly contributed to the idea of intercultural compositions from the 1950s and 60s on, among them Chou Wen-Chung, Tōru Takemitsu, and José Maceda. While much has been written about their aesthetic approaches and, importantly, close analyses of their key works have been published, a precise philological account of their compositional processes that sheds light on the preconditions and dynamics of their intercultural reception process remains a profound challenge for a future global music historiography – especially since such a philological approach could substantially transform certain tropes and currently one-sided assessments of their work.

More than fifty years after Yun's *Réak*, numerous composers of various backgrounds still face the problem that the dominance of the Western cultural and aesthetic frame of reference in new music is difficult to escape, and that the potential for a thoroughgoing differentiation of musical "languages" in the context of cultural globalization is far from exhausted. This problem becomes pressing when composers aim to materialize aspects of fragmented or hybrid identities musically or – from the elementary experiential space of migration – feel the necessity or compulsion to address them (→ I.2). Yun may have guessed much of this when he wrote:

We Asians stayed in our tradition for much longer because we were satisfied, and now we are approaching Europe's traditional music in a hurried and careless way. But should this continue, orcanwe not find something in our own musicalcosmoswithwhichwe can enrich theworld?198

<sup>196</sup> Firststeps have been taken in the five volumes of the *Ssi-ol Almanach* of the Berlin Internationale Isang Yun Gesellschaf t(https://yun-gesellschaf t.de/die-gesellschaf t/buecher) and in the scholarlyworks mentioned in footnote 182. A majorstep for an updated viewon Yun's biography hasrecently been provided by Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer'strilingual monograph on Yun's"Life and Work in Pictures" (Sparrer, *Isang Yun. Leben und Werk im Bild*).

<sup>197</sup> Currently, there are significant analyses of all these works, but, owing to a lack of documentary sources, they remain largely speculative with regard to the objectives raised here. See, most importantly, Kabisch, "Klang, Ton, Geräusch, Exkurs," Choi, "*Réak* (1966)," Kim, "Musical Syncretism in Isang Yun's *Gasa*," Howard, "*P'iri*: Isang Yun's composition and the Korean oboe," and Turner, "Performing Cultural Hybridity in Isang Yun's *Glissées* pour violoncelle seul (1970)."

<sup>198</sup> Yun, "Über meine Musik," 300 ("Wir Asiaten sind viel länger in unserer Tradition geblieben, weil wir zufrieden waren, und jetzt nähernwir unssehr eilig und unvorsichtig der europäischen traditionellenMusik.Ob das aber soweitergehen soll oder obwir nicht doch in unserem musikalischen Kosmos etwas finden können,womitwir die Welt zu bereichern vermögen?").

#### *November Steps* **(1967),** *Distance* **(1972), and Tōru Takemitsu's Enactment of Alterity**

In East Asia, it became apparent already during the late 1950s that, after almost a hundred years of permeation by Western models (→ III.1), it was no longer possible to construct a simple opposition between Western and East Asian discourses of musical aesthetics as two homogeneous systems. Takemitsu's most famous work, *November Steps*, demonstrates a special awareness of this situation. The composer was inf luenced over many years by the intercultural aesthetics of John Cage, which was of great importance for a number of Japanese composers following guest performances by Cage and David Tudor in Japan in 1962 – although research sometimes overemphasizes this inf luence.199 Cage's "tactic" was to erase the cultural meaning of musical material in the process of composition – that is, to alter it beyond recognition, completely "deidiomizing" it until a "culture-free space" is reached, outside of cultural dialects and attributions, a position Cage supported by adopting the Huayan Buddhist principle of "unimpededness and interpenetration" (→ II.6). This tactic made all epochs and cultures seemingly coexist on an unlimited continuum of sound and silence, which the composer ultimately only had to "capture" and depict in his music, as Cage rigorously attempted in his "silent work" *4′33′′* (1952).

We see the inf luence of Cage on the conception of *November Steps* above all in the goal of avoiding an overly obvious interaction between Western orchestra and Japanese solo instruments (*satsuma-biwa* and *shakuhachi*); the concern is for Japanese and Western sounds to coexist without a constructed relationship, without a compositionally "forced" association. The intention to *enhance the dif ference* between Western and Asian principles was key to many of Takemitsu's works from the 1960s and 1970s, and his musical thinking thus shows clear traces of the systematic separation of both traditions since the Meiji era (→ III.1). Takemitsu comments on his concept of cultural alterity:

We have to spend much time in understanding each culture. And itseemsto take almostinfinite time. Therefore,ratherthanresolving the contradictionIhave inmymind,Iwouldlike to spenda long time making it greater, expanding it until it becomes my personalway ofrepresentation.200

And, with reference to *November Steps*, Takemitsu wrote:

A composer should not be occupied by such things as how one blends traditional Japanese instrumentswith an orchestra. Twoworlds ofsound: *biwa-shakuhachi* and the orchestra. Through juxtaposition, it isthe dif ference between the two thatshould be emphasized.201

A detailed analysis of the score does indeed show the subtle and carefully planned connection of both cultural layers in timbre, melodic design, and energy, and how logically and "organically" they merge with or evolve from each other.202The desired representation of difference thus

<sup>199</sup> See Sawabe,*Neue Musik in Japan*,103–128,Galliano, *Yōgaku*, 221–238, and especially the more detailed historical analysisin Fukunaka, "Re-situating Japan's Post-War Musical Avant-Garde through Re-situating Cage."

<sup>200</sup> Takemitsu, "Music and Culture" (translation adapted by the author).

<sup>201</sup> Takemitsu, "Notes onNovember Steps," 87.

<sup>202</sup> For more detail, see Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 296–299. For more comprehensive analyses of this work,see Burt, *The Music of Tōru Takemitsu*,110–131, Langenkamp, "Close Encounters of Another Kind,"186–188, and Menzel, *Hōgaku*, 287–294. In total, Takemitsu composed seven piecesfeaturing Japanese instruments: *Eclipse* (1966) for *shakuhachi* and *biwa*, *November Steps* (1967) and *Autumn* (1973) for orchestra with *shakuhachi* and

tends to lead to a balanced synthesis that was meant to be avoided. The difficulty of translating cultural difference into musical structures – as outlined earlier, for example, in Zender's *Fūrin no kyō* – becomes apparent. To be sure, unlike the radical "de-idiomaticization" of Cage, Takemitsu's aim was not a complete "abstraction" of cultural dialects, but their preservation in coexistent juxtaposition. The compositional sophistication of sonic rapprochement and connection in his music, however, at least partially obliterates the layers of meaning – not least those of the original sociocultural context – that might essentially underline a claim of the materials' cultural difference.

Takemitsu's work *Distance* for oboe and *shō* (1972) also explicitly addresses cultural alterity by the juxtaposition of instruments. The work shows comparable problems to *November Steps*, though its entirely pioneering character is beyond any doubt (it is probably one of the earliest works to use the *shō* as a solo instrument, → 4.1). That the composer gives the pragmatic option in the score's preface for the work to be performed without the *shō* part (i.e., as an oboe solo) makes it clear that the two instruments are not placed on the same compositional level. Whereas the European instrument is furnished with all the refinements of modern instrumental technique, thanks to the soloist and dedicatee Heinz Holliger, the *shō* is limited to an ebbing and f lowing harmonic background. This seems to derive from the – simplistic and historically dubious (→ IV.1) – traditional "background" function of the *shō* in the *tōgaku* repertoire of *gagaku*. The arrangement on stage also expresses this hierarchy: the *shō* soloist stands in the background, far from the oboist.203 Takemitsu's intention to use distinct Western and Asian categories by no means succeeds, as in *November Steps*. On the contrary, Asian and Western instruments are integrated into shared processes through clear relationships in pitch organization and *Klangfarbenmelodie*. For example, in the excerpt shown in Example 3.10, dissonant relationships (seconds and sevenths) between the pitches of oboe and *shō* (marked by arrows) predominate, creating musical tension that dissolves into unisons or octaves (marked by circles).

To what extent is cultural difference actually audible or comprehensible here? A critical analysis of interculturally conceived strata must, above all, problematize hidden hierarchies. The seemingly balanced coexistence of strata can prove to be a mere conceptual idea that is only fulfilled by the compositional design in a rudimentary way. As a composition, *Distance* may well be quite convincing on its own terms. As an intercultural situation, however, Takemitsu's polarization remains questionable, above all because of the culturalist reduction to which both instruments are subjected, and the consequent hierarchization of their interactions.

*biwa*, *Distance* (1972)for oboe and *shō*, *Voyage* (1973)forthree *biwas*, *In an Autumn Garden* (1973/79)for *gagaku*, and *Ceremonial* (1991) for *shō* and orchestra.

<sup>203</sup> See also corresponding stage arrangementsin Toshio Hosokawa's *Birds Fragments II* (1990) for *shō* with percussion ad libitum, *Birds Fragments III* (1990) for *shō* and flute(s), and in Yūji Takahashi's *Mimi no ho* (1995) for *shō*, viola, and speaker (→ IV.1). We can assume, in allcases, a direct reference to Takemitsu. Yet the compositional conception ofHosokawa (which is also close to Takemitsu in terms ofcompositional aesthetics) and Takahashi (which startsfrom a fundamentalcritique ofcultural essentialism) are to be regarded asclearly contradictory (→ III.5, IV.1).

Copyright

© 1984 by Editions Salabert, Paris

*Example 3.10: Tōru Takemitsu, Distance for oboe and shō, p. 5–6*

#### José Maceda's Sound Masses and the Search for an Anti-Causal Logic

The music of the Philippine composer José Maceda (1917–2004) creates unorthodox connections between aurality and written notation, a feature which evidences his double perspective as a composer-ethnomusicologist.<sup>204</sup> Maceda's historical position might be considered even more anachronistic than Yun's or Takemitsu's, as he worked within a generation that was heavily involved in the formation of affirmative national music after independence in 1946, relying, as in almost all other Asian countries, on the vocabulary of Classical-Romantic symphonic music (→ III.1). The Romantic idiom was enriched with folk melodies and rhythms, especially ones derived from the songs of the *kundiman* repertoire.205 Remarkably, Maceda's resort to pre-colonial forms of Philippine music did not lead to his claiming that it was "untouched" or "authentic." Rather, he tried to derive from these early practices general principles that he considered valid at least for Southeast Asian music, if not for Asian music as a whole. From these principles he sought to derive an anti-Aristotelian logic – as an explicit antithesis to cultural homogenization by Western standards, which was particularly noticeable in the Philippines after almost 400 years of colonial history.206 Maceda described the paradigms of this logic with the three key concepts of continuity, infinity, and indefiniteness.207

Maceda's turn – after training in Paris as a pianist – toward local forms of Philippine music was triggered by his discovery of the *kubing* jaw harp of the Hanunóo-Mangyan people on the West Philippine island of Mindoro during fieldwork in 1952. (Fourteen years later, in the composition *Kubing* [1966], this find was directly cast in a composition for five male voices, seven *kubing*, and other Philippine instruments.) As a result, Maceda studied the music of Southeast Asia in detail from 1957 to 1958 and from 1961 to 1963, graduating with a degree in ethnomusicology in the USA (PhD supervised by Mantle Hood at the University of California Los Angeles).208

Like several other non-Western and Western composers who turned to political and social issues in the 1970s, Maceda's work was initially based on social situations related to the fragmented experiences of cultural difference, as documented in the question he asked himself during a tour of his homeland as a pianist in 1947: "What has all of *this* got to do with coconuts and

<sup>204</sup> The most important source for the understanding of Maceda's work, personality, and aesthetics is Tenzer, "José Maceda and the Paradoxes of Modern Composition in Southeast Asia," an article on which much of the following is based. Maceda's estate is catalogued by the UP Center for Ethnomusicology at the University of the Philippines,Quezon City (http://upethnom.com/jmcollection/index.php/josemaceda). In addition,the encyclopedia MGG Online published a newentry on Maceda in 2019 (Kartomi, "Maceda, José").

<sup>205</sup> See Samson, *Die zeitgenössische Kunstmusik der Philippinen* and Santos, "ArtMusic ofthe Philippinesin the Twentieth Century."

<sup>206</sup> Magellan arrived in the archipelago in 1521, and Spanish colonialrule began in 1565, lasting 333 years until1898. The Philippineswas a US colony from 1898 to 1946.

<sup>207</sup> See Maceda, "A Concept of Time in a Music of Southeast Asia."

<sup>208</sup> A selection of the most important publications of José Maceda is listed here: "Chants from Sagada Mountain Province, Philippines," "Drone and Melody in Philippine Musical Instruments," "A Search for an Old and a New Musicin Southeast Asia," "A Concept of Time in a Music of Southeast Asia (A Preliminary Account)," "In Search of a Source of Pentatonic Hemitonic and Anhemitonic Scales in Southeast Asia," "Acculturation and Internationalization: The Philippine Situation," "A Logicin Court Music of the Tang Dynasty," "Bipolarity and the Fif th Interval in Gamelan and Medieval European Music," "Counts of Four and the Fif th Interval," *Gongs and Bamboo. A Panorama of Philippine Musical Instruments*, "Upland Peoples of the Philippines," as well as Maceda et al. "Philippines." Yūji Takahashi translated a selection of Maceda's articles into Japanese, published 1989 as Maceda, *Dorōn to merodī* / Drone and Melody.


*Example 3.11: Iannis Xenakis, Pithoprakta for string orchestra, two trombones, and percussion, p. 10*  Copyright © 1967 by Boosey & Hawkes, London

rice?"209 The sociopolitical reality of the Philippines seemed incompatible with the emphatic aesthetics of the Classical-Romantic work of art. His compositional thinking was subsequently clarified through the examination of Edgard Varèse's and Iannis Xenakis's concept of sound masses, as well as through Parisian *musique concrète*, which he encountered in 1958. In the aesthetic designs of Varèse and Xenakis, Maceda saw, in contrast to parameter-oriented postwar serialism, a path that pointed beyond the narrow limits of European music.210

In Maceda's works of the 1960s and 1970s, his exploration of social and societal contexts and the resulting compositions with large groups of performers converged with his interest in the sound masses of Varèse and Xenakis. These works are more directly bound to specific performance contexts than Maceda's later, increasingly precisely formulated scores. These earlier works include, above all, the ritual music *Pagsamba* (Adoration, 1968) for 241 performers, *Cassettes 100* (1971) for one hundred tape recorders and one hundred players, *Ugnayan* (Atmospheres, 1974) for 20 radio stations, *Udlot – Udlot* (Hesitations, 1975) for several hundred performers, and *Ading* (1978) for two hundred performers and public participation.211

Taking up an idea formulated by Michael Tenzer,212 it is constructive to compare three music examples to explore Maceda's music: the field recording of the Hanunóo *Kalipay* celebration made by Maceda in 1953 with Harold C. Conklin, the beginning of Iannis Xenakis' *Pithoprakta* for string orchestra, two trombones, and percussion (1955–56), and the beginning of the second part ("Gloria / *Luwalhati*") of Maceda's *Pagsamba*. In all three examples one can hear transformations between clearly separated "sound masses" or sound states: in the field recording of the *Kalipay* celebration, we can hear different sound qualities emerging successively from the regular basic rhythm: the gong *agung* played with wooden mallets, the small guitar-like *kudyapi*, and the three-string fiddles *gitgit* (possibly the highlighting of these instrumental parts might be due to the recording researchers moving in-between the groups of musicians). In Xenakis's large orchestral textures, one first hears a continuous agglomeration of low pizzicato sounds, and then an even transformation into short bowed glissandi with significant changes of register. This is followed by two more sound fields, first high pizzicato pitches in high density (Ex. 3.11), then sustained high harmonics, over which we hear Morse-code-like pulses of woodblocks and pizzicati. Maceda's *Pagsamba*, a Catholic mass set in the Philippine language Tagalog (originally a local language of the Manila area that later served as the basis for the official national language, Filipino), is scored for 241 performers. The "Gloria" (Ex. 3.12) opens with a small poly-

<sup>209</sup> Quoted in Tenzer, "José Maceda and the Paradoxes of Modern Composition in Southeast Asia," 94.

<sup>210</sup> See ibid., 97–99.

<sup>211</sup> To the best of my knowledge, the most comprehensive catalogue of José Maceda's works can be found in the "Living Composers Project" by Dan Albertson at http://www.composers21.com/compdocs/macedaj.htm (updated 02/01/2017), see also "Werkverzeichnis José Maceda." *MusikTexte* no. 102 (2004), 75. It should be added that it is extremely dif ficult at present to consult Maceda's scores for study purposes, as they have not been edited by a music publisher and the administration of the estate is currently unable to perform such tasks. At this point, I would like to thank Ramon P. Santos and Jonas Baes for providing excerpts and copies from Maceda'sworks.

<sup>212</sup> See Tenzer, "José Maceda and the Paradoxes of Modern Composition in Southeast Asia,"100–103.


*Example 3.12: José Maceda, Pagsamba for 241 performers, II. "Gloria / Luwalhati," Opening*

Copyright © 1968 by José Maceda, Manila

phonic setting in male choirs ("Luwalhati sa Diyos so kaitaasan" / Glory to God in the highest), followed suddenly by a large tutti outburst ("At so lupa ay kapayapaan at sa anga taong may mabuting kalooban" / and on Earth peace, good will toward men), after which the duct f lutes *ongiyong* (Huagao) and calling choir voices can be heard, then the buzzers *balingbing* (Kalinga, Luzon), passing into the rattles *palakpak* (Tagalog) and the wooden sticks *bangibang* (Huagao), with which the voices mingle again. At the end of the first section, the texture transforms into *agung* gongs (hanging nipple gongs, Maguindanao province) and *gandingan* (narrow-rimmed nipple gongs, also from Maguindanao) and back to the low male voices of the beginning. The sound masses are thus organized according to quasi-ethnomusicological classificatory principles. The performers are distributed in a circle around the audience, following an exact plan of the original performance space, the large circular building of the Catholic church Parish of the Holy Sacrifice in Quezon City. This aspect of the staging refers to the social component of Maceda's concept and thus to the ritual functions of pre-colonial music in the Philippines. The 241 performers are scattered around the auditorium according to a detailed f loor plan213 and located in the midst of the audience. Each of the one hundred instrumentalists uses five different bamboo instruments: in addition to the aforementioned duct f lutes, buzzers, rattles, and wooden sticks, these instruments also include *tagutok* (Maranao) bamboo scrapers. There are one hundred vocalists, five quintets of male voices, and two gong groups of eight *agung* and *gandingan* respectively.

In Maceda's work, cultural difference is conceptualized as having a dual function: on the one hand, the ethnomusicologist Maceda tries to find a new musical "grammar" through a comparative analysis of different local and superregional Asian genres, which is very deliberately opposed to a paradigmatic Western concept of art and at the expense of a certain essentializing tendency. On the other hand, the composer Maceda refers to the sound masses of Varèse and Xenakis, thus adopting a compositional technique of material organization that is decisively shaped by Western modernity and that must be understood, in the Philippine and Asian contexts, as a counterdiscourse to nationalist trends.

Maceda relates the participation of large groups of people to a special Javanese and Balinese concept of nature: "The participation of thousands of people in music-making in the open air is like their identification with nature, a concept manifest in Javanese and Balinese paintings, where men, plants, and animals are all treated as part of the jungle that envelops them."214 This perhaps naïve desire of Maceda's to include a harmonious interaction of man and nature in his music must surely be seen as the result of his ethnological research, which was accompanied by a critique of the often hasty and unref lecting form of Westernized cultural development in the region. On this basis, Maceda in 1984 formulated three basic principles of his ethnomusicological research, which can also be directly related to his compositional procedures:215


<sup>213</sup> The floor plan appears on the cover of the CD *José Maceda: Gongs and Bamboos*, Tzadik TZ 7067 (2001).

<sup>214</sup> Maceda, "A Search for an Old and aNew Music,"167.

<sup>215</sup> Maceda, "A Concept of Time in a Music of Southeast Asia." This text is based on Maceda's 1984 Charles Seeger Memorial Lecture for the Society for Ethnomusicology.

#### *Example 3.13: José Maceda, Udlot-Udlot for 6, 60, 600 or more performers*


By emphasizing such general principles, Maceda sought to find a solution to the conf lict between nationalism or localism and cultural Westernization. The confrontation with drone, ostinato, and a system in which timbres have more weight than pitch organization led to a compositional aesthetic concept that accentuates continuity, infinity, and indefiniteness. Maceda expands on this concept in his extensive article "A Concept of Time in a Music of Southeast Asia (A Preliminary Account)," in which the construction of a (Southeast) Asian concept of time and a (Southeast) Asian logic, clearly tending toward essentialism, derives a fundamentally postcolonial discourse from musical structures:

[…] the music of Southeast Asia fillstime along notions ofcontinuity, infinity and indefiniteness in a non-secular metaphysical world, and hierarchy in a secular world. The musical techniques used in musical forms prefer melodic ambiguity, repetition and dif fusion to identification and isolation of things asthese are brought about by a system of logic known ascausality.216

Maceda considers causal logic manifested in the hierarchy of major-minor tonality,<sup>217</sup> though here he implies, perhaps subliminally, the overly functional and reductionist interpretation of tonality by (the earlier writings of) Hugo Riemann.218 In addition, Maceda also claims to recognize a causal logic based on polarities in postwar serialism<sup>219</sup> – a certainly contestable interpretation, since parameter-based serialism is ultimately not based on polarities, but on gradations of all parameters. Overall, Maceda's juxtaposition of Western/causal and Asian/ anti-causal logic seems too dualistic and simplistic. His argumentation is more convincing elsewhere, when he applies principles of Southeast Asian traditions to his own music, which he ultimately describes as distilling a substance that he as an ethnologist cannot easily put into words and therefore intends to ref lect in his music:

I have spoken of elements such as repetition, drone, nature, time, the universe, scales, shamanism, rituals, timbre asfundamental musical elements, and of a thinking of what music may be – as these are present in the music cultures in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. These elements make up an imaginary world which is felt and understood by a village inhabitant, but they are too deep forwords and therefore are unexplainable by himself, a village guru, an anthropologist or by an ethnomusicologist. This world may be captured in a sound structure or in music, just as an eighteenth-century enlightenment iscrystallized in the music of Bach, and the clarity and discipline in Chinese thought are manifest in the music of a South Chinese ensemble.<sup>220</sup>

What do these principles imply for the creative process and the notation of Maceda's scores? In the 1970s, the principles of continuity, infinity, and indefiniteness could still be clearly derived from action scores, which describe sound constellations in a very precise manner, but ultimately leave the musical detail to the dynamic interaction between performers. In *Udlot-Udlot* (1975), more than 800 students performed three different ostinato patterns (Ex. 3.13, left column): percussionists repeat a five-part ostinato, to which they walk in rhythmic steps in a circle; the instrumentalists sitting in the center superimpose different timbres in the proportions 5:7, 5:9, 7:9, 7:11, etc. (middle columns); the chorus is set up in groups that sing long sustained notes followed by glissandi (right column).

In the 1980s, Maceda's notation became more precise. Rhythmic complexity became a necessity because it was the only way to realize the desired transcendence of a causal time structure in compositional terms, while microtonal melodic f luctuations are often left to the players. Whereas the open concept of Maceda's scores is obvious in the earlier works, his later attempts to treat the ensembles compositionally as a "body of sound" over longer periods seem to require

<sup>216</sup> Ibid., 46.

<sup>217</sup> Ibid., 47.

<sup>218</sup> One might argue thatrecent neo-Riemannian theories oftonality have contributed to an increasingly complex image of tonality as an expansive network-like system, inwhich linearcausality plays an increasingly subordinate role asthe system transformsinto late and post-tonal areas.

<sup>219</sup> Maceda, "A Concept of Time in a Music of Southeast Asia," 47–48.

<sup>220</sup> Maceda, "A Search for an Old and aNew Music,"166–167.

*Example 3.14: José Maceda, Suling, Suling, mm. 266–269*

a more systematic and more prescriptive approach to notation. In *Suling, Suling* (1984) for ten *suling* bamboo f lutes or ten (Western transverse) f lutes, ten *pakkung* / *balingbing* buzzers or *tagutok* scrapers, and ten *gangsa* (f lat gongs), the exact f lute types and pitches of the gongs are left to the performers, but the rhythmic framework is precisely written out and can only be performed with a conductor (Ex. 3.14). A constant that connects these works with the earlier concepts is the organization of the music in sound surfaces or masses, as can easily be seen from the score example.

The slow transformations of the 22-minute musical textures of *Suling, Suling* are not far removed from the ongoing transitional states developed by Morton Feldman and Giacinto Scelsi during the same period. Maceda's compositional discoveries have created a variety of "lessness" (see the section on Takahashi below) that, because of its complex ethno-philosophical background, is unique, but also converges with tendencies within the new music of the West that resulted from a liberation from the linear, teleological time frame formulated by different composers, often independently of each other, including Varèse, Xenakis, Feldman and Scelsi as well as Charles Ives, John Cage, György Ligeti, and Bernd Alois Zimmermann.221

Maceda's work ultimately shows that cultural difference need not be articulated as a conf lict of materials within a composition. Rather, it may attain significance in far more fundamental layers of compositional methodology. Cultural difference inf luences the instruments and languages used, the highly qualified significance of writing, and the tendency to eliminate the separation between audience and performer.

#### Ge Ganru's *Yi Feng* (1983) and the Liberation from Culturalist Categories

In Maceda's case we can observe sharply that ideas derived from Western musical modernism serve as a principal means in re-inventing local practices, putting them into a new context, and thus countering simplified and affirmative notions of musical as well as political nationalism. The following example demonstrates perhaps even more clearly how a confrontation with Western modernism might cause massive conf licts as well as provoke liberation. Confrontation may lead in productive directions toward the articulation of the culturally different.

Ge Ganru (b. 1954) belongs to the *xinchao* generation of Chinese composers who were severely restricted in their development by the Cultural Revolution. Later, this group of composers developed very independently at breathtaking speed, under a lasting impression of Europe's early musical modernism (→ II.3).222 During the Cultural Revolution, Ge secretly learned to play the violin. Then he was sent to Chongming Island for agricultural labor from 1971 to 1974, where, despite the extreme living conditions, he founded an ensemble that played variants and excerpts from the "model works" (*yangbanxi*, → III.1). Already in 1974, he was admitted to the violin class of the Shanghai Conservatory and began studying composition there in 1977. After he had acquired Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone method, stimulated by the important guest seminar with Alexander Goehr in Beijing in 1980, Ge fell into a compositional crisis. He felt an unbridgeable gap between his fragmented musical biography and the coherence of twelve-tone music.

Ge's *Yi Feng* (Lost Style, 1983) for violoncello solo was a radical move toward liberation and transformed the characteristics of Chinese music in a most unusual way, such as by focusing on the timbral and microtonal shading of a single note and colorations of unpitched noise. The percussive performance techniques and free rhythms are based on traditional drum ensembles such as those from Chinese opera (→ III.5). Yet Ge aimed for a purely imaginary archaic style (to which the title refers), a style intended to lie beyond clear culturalist identities. The instrument's strings are tuned in fourths and up to one octave lower than the original tuning (F#1–B1–E2–A2), thus also greatly expanding the possibilities of playing behind the bridge. The score is notated on six staves (Ex. 3.15). At the time of the composition, Ge hardly knew any works of Western new music after 1945, except for isolated pieces by John Cage, Tōru

<sup>221</sup> See Utz, "Paradoxien musikalischer Temporalität in der neueren Musikgeschichte."

<sup>222</sup> Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 173–177, provides biographical details and an overview of Ge's works up to the early 1990s. See also Kouwenhoven, "Mainland China'sNew Music(III),"109–111.

Takemitsu, and George Crumb. Though Ge's work may remind an "informed" listener of Lachenmann's *Pression* (1969), Ge remained unaware of Helmut Lachenmann's œuvre up to 2006.223

Ultimately, in Ge's case, it was not so much a matter of "countering" a massive Western inf luence by a "culturally different" object as of preserving, or even gaining, a stable artistic position at all within China's extremely ambiguous discourses after the Cultural Revolution. The cultural opening up of the 1980s, following the extreme restrictions between 1966 and 1976, was accompanied by a continuity of repressive discourses around suspected over-individualism, culminating in two so-called "Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaigns" (*Qingchu jingshen wuran*) in 1983 and 1987 (→ III.3).224 *Yi Feng* is, above all, a remarkable document of upheaval in recent Chinese music history, because it did not bow to those repressions. In the process, the characteristics of traditional instruments such as *erhu*, *pipa*, or *qin* (which were classified as deficient by the overwhelming majority of Chinese music makers) provided value. Their blurring and noise, and thus their cultural difference from the standardization of Western instruments, revealed great creative potential. Ultimately, this cultural difference in Ge's work served as one of several means of shaping an imaginary musical space beyond cultural and political categorization.

#### Yūji Takahashi: Attentive Listening and Social Interaction

To approach the compositional contexts of the Japanese composer and pianist Yūji Takahashi (b. 1938), the demand for attentive listening and hearing, which takes on a central position in Takahashi's conception, might be exemplified by reference to two idiosyncratic works: *Koto nado asobi* (2000) for *koto* and string quartet and *Tori mo tsukai ka* (1993) for *shamisen* and orchestra seem to design a music that knows no progression of time. Intersecting, presentist, rather than processual, sounds combine in an apparently free sequence, in varying character and density, not necessarily diverging, but moving as if in a free continuum in which they meet each other, seemingly incidentally. In his research on the music of Morton Feldman and John Cage, Martin Erdmann introduced the Beckettian concept of "lessness,"225 which seems to me to be very suitable for capturing a crucial quality of Takahashi's two works: "lessness" understood as the absence of clear, quasi-causal connections, conclusiveness, consequence, stringency – principles developed again and again in various ways in a range of new music during the twentieth century.

In fact, Takahashi's approach – similar to Maceda's – counters the concept of discursive musical logic that has had a lasting impact on European music since the medieval *musica theorica*. To hear his music exclusively as a counterdiscourse to Western aesthetic principles, however,

<sup>223</sup> "I was not aware of any notationslike what I did for *Yi Feng* when Icomposed that piece, as China was a closed society at that time. Prior to this piece, I focused all my energy on twelve-tone music. I had only heard John Cage's piano music once,sawGeorge Crumb'sscore once. Af tercompleting *Yi Feng*, I heard Takemitsu's*November Steps*. These three were the only avant-garde composers I knew of when I was in China. Forgive my ignorance, up to today, Istill don't knowwhoHelmut Lachenmann is. The above Western contemporary music materialsI had accesstowere lef tin China by someWesternerswho came to visit. They [were] eitherjustscores or tapes, never both. Our understanding of what was happening outside of China was very, very limited." (E-mail to the author,10/10/2006.)

<sup>224</sup> See, among others, Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 99,123–124.

<sup>225</sup> See Erdmann, "Zusammenhang und Losigkeit" and Erdmann, "Webern und Cage: Zur Genese der Cageschen Losigkeit." TheGerman term "Losigkeit"comesfrom Elmar Tophoven'sGerman translation of Samuel Beckett's experimental text *sans* (1969, English version: *Lessness* 1970). Beckett's text is based on chance procedures and wasinspired, among others, by the music of John Cage.

would be an ultimately ethnocentric and culturally essentialist understanding that fails to recognize how intensively Takahashi has been working since the late 1980s on a conceptual liberation from the Western/non-Western cultural dualism. Relying on elementary phenomena of hearing, music-making, and practice, working directly from the organology of the instruments and corresponding performance methods or from models of interaction between the performers, he opens up not only transcultural, but often also wide historical, societal, and social spaces. His basic attitude is already clear from the instructions in the score of *Koto nado asobi*:

Stay out of tune as [*sic*] possible. Instruments don't tune together. Don't play self-assertively. Sounds are uncertain, ambiguous, faltering, transient, and a little out of control. Listen attentively but at ease to your own sound, howit begins,sustains and ends.226

Copyright © 2000 by Yūji Takahashi, Tokyo

The music consists of two score pages for *koto* solo (*koto*) and a page with instructions for an ensemble of any instruments (*nado asobi*) (Ex. 3.16, 3.17). The *koto* score contains five different models, consisting of mnemonic syllables from *koto* practice, which date back to *shamisen* practice and are called *kuchi-jamisen* ("mouth shamisen"). In the Japanese version of the score (Ex. 3.16, left), model A appears in three columns: on the left are the *kuchi-jamisen* syllables in the *katakana* alphabet, in the middle the plucked string numbers in *kanji*, and on the right the Japanese transliteration of a Sanskrit *Dhārani* (mantra) which the performer recites. In the English version (Ex. 3.16, right), the *kuchi-jamisen* syllables are rendered in Romanized form and additionally transcribed onto five-line staff. Takahashi prescribes an irregular scale that deviates slightly from the traditional scales, and the performer is asked to decide "by ear" how large the microtonal deviations should be. The individual sounds or figures can either be fragmented, that is, framed by silence, or executed as repetitive loops. Similarly, the ensemble's instrumentalists respond very carefully to the sounds they hear, either adding slight microtonal alterations, playing in a distinct pitch register, or freely following the graphic symbols (Ex. 3.17).

<sup>226</sup> Takahashi, *Koto nado asobi*, preliminary remarks.

#### *Example 3.17: Yūji Takahashi, Koto nado asobi; "-- nado asobi" for any instruments; models*


Copyright © 2000 by Yūji Takahashi, Tokyo

In *Tori mo tsukai ka* (1993), the anti-teleological conception of time is also achieved by superimposing fundamentally independent parts, with listening attention again playing a major role. The stanza-like traditional form of the *shamisen* part is superimposed on models for the orchestra (Ex. 3.18), which are freely developed by the musicians in individual groups following the signs of the conductor. Takahashi here refers to a dense, irregular canonic texture derived from *gagaku*: this structure is found in the concentration of lines at the end of the introductory *netori* section in some pieces from the *komagaku* repertoire<sup>227</sup> and in the extended introduction to the *bugaku* repertoire called *chōshi*, in which the styles *omeribuki* and *oibuki* are known as forms of free or strict imitation.228 Due to the narrow, but not exactly fixed intervals between the voices, heterophonic structures arise in different density and arrangement. The desired blurring is ref lected in the type of notation in which dashed lines indicate heterophony. The resulting sound is described by Takahashi as follows:

And so I am using a conventional ensemble with a conductor and a soloist but their functions are completely dif ferent. The music should be like a rolling wave. The sound comes up to the surface and then goes down. The playersshouldn'ttry to be soloists, butcontribute theirsounds,

<sup>227</sup> See Malm, *Japanese Music and Musical Instruments*, 103. In the *chōshi* introduction, the imitation is strict among the *shō* players who enter first, whereupon the *hichiriki* players imitate another musical figure. An extended version of the *chōshi* designs an A-B-A' form with *kakebuki – netori* (solo by the *ryūteki* flute) – *oibuki*, whereby in the *oibuki* the distances between the imitative entries are denser than in the *kakebuki*. Takahashi pointed out (correspondence with the author) that he understands *kakebuki* as glissando appoggiatura notes on the *ryūteki*,while he considers *omeribuki* and *oibuki* as free and strict forms of canonic imitation in *gagaku*.

<sup>228</sup> See Garfias, *Music of a Thousand Autumns*, 76.

listening to [the] whole ensemble, not competing, but allowing others to come up af ter their own sound has been heard. They must also resist the impulse to synchronise, because it is a natural tendency.229

*Example 3.18: Yūji Takahashi, Tori mo tsukai ka, orchestra model 1*

Since the late 1980s, Takahashi's finely calibrated compositions have been produced mainly for a small circle of musician friends, with whom the targeted social-communicative experiments could be achieved more easily than with institutionalized larger ensembles. Takahashi probably received lasting inf luences from related models and intellectual constellations in the musical concepts of Cornelius Cardew (1936–1981) and Christian Wolff (b. 1934) – with whom he also shared fundamental political convictions – but, to my knowledge, this inf luence is not yet sufficiently documented. To portray the background of Takahashi's approach more systematically, his rigorous critique of postcolonialism and political power struggles since the 1970s is fundamental. In 1976 Takahashi argued that "So long as colonialism exists politically, economically, and culturally, music cannot be a universal language."230 Despite some phases of sustained politicization,231 Takahashi has always responded to an affirmative politicizing musical tone with skeptical eyes and ears. He has firmly rejected a "music for the entire human race" or a "music for everyone," as dictated by populist politics and the mass media.<sup>232</sup> Instead, he has demanded a skeptical attitude toward media abuse:

Music begins by doubting sounds. One tears oneself away from the charm of sounds, one cuts the stream by coming to depend upon musical elementsthat are not time-related. Eliminate all

Copyright © 1993 by Yūji Takahashi, Tokyo

<sup>229</sup> Takahashi, "Between Good and Evil,"10.

<sup>230</sup> Takahashi, "From Wordsto Music," 65.

<sup>231</sup> In 1978 Takahashi founded the group *Suigyū* (Water Buf falo), with which he sang East Asian political protest songs. See Galliano, *Yōgaku*, 234, and Takahashi, "The Resistance of the Asian Masses and Their Culture."

<sup>232</sup> Takahashi, "From Wordsto Music," 66–67.

unnecessary information and learn newtechniques;repeat one thing again and again instead of indulging in the traditional dramas of time.<sup>233</sup>

Nonetheless, Takahashi's work in the 1970s and 1980s focused on projects with distinctly political themes. These themes contributed to the increasingly transparent texture of his scores. His well-known piano piece *Kwangju, May 1980* (1980), for example, combines remembrance of the victims of the South Korean Kwangju uprising in May 1980 with echoes of various Korean folk songs, which, like the clearly referenced *Saeya, saeya*, have very specific coded meanings in the Korean context (→ III.5, VI.3).234 *The Song of the Blue Sword* (1980) also explicitly refers to a political theme; in this work, the political parable *Forging the Sword* (*Zhu jian*, 1926) by the Chinese writer Lu Xun (1881–1936) is performed by a choir of approximately two hundred students, implicitly referring to Maceda's mass settings.<sup>235</sup> Freedom in the design of the individual parts of the score, which is determined only in its basic features and based largely on French-Chinese number notation (Ex. 3.19, → III.1), and the request for the participants' initiative, were part of Takahashi's conception as well as the spatial disposition in which a larger group of choir singers on stage was supplemented by a second group, which was placed at the corners of the hall.

There seems to be a clear distance between the political actions of these years and the introversion of the later works. Yet both periods are connected by a rigorous effort to find sensitive compositional solutions that avoid simplistic extremes. In addition, the later works can surely claim an implicit political dimension in a similar sense to what Luigi Nono claimed of his late works.236 This dimension is evident in the works of the 1990s, which show an intense engagement with traditional Japanese and other Asian genres, based on continued collaboration with soloists of Japanese instruments.237 In this context, Takahashi's critical approach received a precisely formulated ethnological and performative accent. Even in earlier ref lections, aspects and paradoxes of instrumental practice – as pointed out in his article "Bach as a Failure" (1976) (→ I.1) – had been an important starting point for compositional considerations, and now they assumed primary importance: learning and deepening through the repetition of models – especially in the mold of traditional Asian learning methods – and ultimately the liberation of such models in their free combination, crucially determine Takahashi's approach to Japanese genres and instruments. A close long-term cooperation with the instrumentalists is a fundamental prerequisite for such an approach and also has an effect on how the results of these working processes are laid down in musical notation. This approach also implies a tendency to reach beyond nationally defined traditions in a manner not dissimilar to Maceda's:

Instead of basing one's music on aesthetic or philosophical ideas or metaphors or a vague feeling of"Japaneseness,"we can start directly fromtraditionaltechniqueswhich are transmitted orally. You copy your teacher's playing, so it is a transmission from one body to another. And this is a very strong kind of memory,compared to intellectual understanding and transmission through

<sup>233</sup> Ibid., 67.

<sup>234</sup> *Saeya, saeya* was the signature song of the revolutionary *Tonghak* movement in the nineteenth century – the most important of many movements against authoritarian systemsin modern Korean history (→ III.5).

<sup>235</sup> See Reynolds, "A Jostled Silence: Contemporary Japanese Musical Thought (Part Two)."

<sup>236</sup> See, for example, Metzger, "Wendepunkt Quartett?"

<sup>237</sup> The musicians Takahashi has worked with regularly since the late 1980s include the *shamisen* soloists Kazuko Takada and Yumiko Tanaka, the *shō* soloist Kō Ishikawa, as well as Yoko Nishi (*koto*) and Keiko Kanda (percussion).


Copyright © 1980 by Yūji Takahashi, Tokyo

abstract means, such as notes on paper or a discussion of theory. There are certain aspects of using instruments which are broader than one tradition of music. In tracing these techniques back to the original concepts we can find something hidden in these apparently very dif ferent traditions of Asia and [the] Pacificregion. […]

I'm interested to start from how you produce the sound, instead of how you classify the sound. You make sound by contacting an instrument through your hand, finger or breath. Then there is a movement, a patterned movement, and you can start to combine those movements into larger units. […]

Let's go back to the learning of music,the teacher and student, a one-to-one situation. The teacher plays a phrase, the student plays back a phrase. They play together. This is a copying, a synchronization ofthe movement oftwo dif ferentinstruments. Another principle isresponse – you

play that and I play this in response. This is also a learning process which can be developed into the next phase, asin gamelan, for example […].238

usually my approach to the traditional instruments is not from the written materials about register, timbres, playing method, etc., but through the actual collaboration with performers studying the hand movements, traditional disciplines. […] i am trying to go back to the origin by changing the habitual playing methods accumulated through traditions. you may call it […] anti-training. this is dif ficult without the cooperation of the performers for some period. also you cannot notate this part of the training on paper and send it […] to the performers wherever they live in theworld.239

These quotations make it clear how much the observational and ethnological approach helped Takahashi break away from the precarious polarities of cultural nationalism and cultural Westernization (to some degree represented by the position of the *gendai hōgaku* and preceding developments → III.1) as well as to liberate Japanese instruments from the widespread bias that assigns them a purely coloristic role: through careful observation and study of traditional performance practice, composer and performers reconstruct a kind of "physical archeology." The performative approach becomes more concrete in that standardized sequences of body movements (*kata*) in instrumental practice and the resulting sounds are considered complementary to each other. The confrontation with the most important musical instruments of bourgeois Edo culture (1600–1867), the arched zither *koto* and the long-necked lute *shamisen*, was the center of Takahashi's attention for many years. Especially for Kazuko Takada (who died in 2007), and later also for Yumiko Tanaka and Yoko Nishi, a large number of works, for both solo instruments and chamber music ensembles emerged.240 Takahashi wrote that the *shamisen* was his preferred model because it was least suited for "modernization."241 Through a tactile, sensualistic approach to sound production, Takahashi tried to overcome a fixed harmonic or tonal frame. His works, of course, do not spell out traditional forms. In *Sangen sanju* for *shamisen* solo (1992), for example, materials are eclectically combined from a variety of different genres to constitute the fictional genre "sanju" (the name refers to the well-known Korean semi-improvisational genre *sanjo* → III.5). With the help of a computer algorithm, Takahashi combined melodic variants of the *koto* repertoire, *ji* melodies from the narrative genre *jōruri* (→ V.1), elements from the repertoires of *gagaku* and *gamelan* as well as *rāga* and *taqsīm* models.242 The result does not sound eclectic at all, but suggests a close association of the traditional genres *jiuta* or *nagauta* with the *shamisen*'s

<sup>238</sup> Takahashi, "Between Good and Evil," 7–9.

<sup>239</sup> Correspondencewith the author,16/06/2001(original orthography has been retained).

<sup>240</sup> Takahashi'scompositionsfor orwith Takada include *Kaze ga omote de yonde iru* (The Wind is Calling Me Outside, 1986/94) for *shamisen* and voice, *Sangen sanju* for *shamisen* (1992), *Nasuno ryōjō* for *shamisen* and computer (1992), *Nasuno kasane* for *shamisen*, violin, andpiano(1997)(→ III.5), and*Tori mo tsukai ka* for *shamisen* and chamber orchestra (1993, see above). Takahashi's other works with Japanese instruments include *While I Am Crossing the Bridge* (1984), *Thread Cogwheels* (1990), *Bosatsu kangen dennōdate* (1992), *Yume*, *Tori mo tsukai ka II*, *Hiru wa moetsukita*, *Kagehime no michiyuki* (1993), *Mimi no ho* (1994 → IV.1), *Ongaku no Oshie* (1995), *Mono-Gatari, Insomnia* (1996), *Samushiro*, *Ne monogatari*, *Kanashimi o sagasu ut*, *Sōjō rinzetsu* (1997 → IV.1), *Three Pieces for Ichigenkin, Ware wo tanomete konu wotoko*, *Momoka momoyo*, *Tsuginepu to itte mita*, *Oinaru shi no monogatari* (1998),*Aki no uta*, *Kotsu no utau* (1999), *Aomori gaeru*, *Sangen*, *Koto nado asobi* (2000,see above), *Palindrome* (2001), *To-i* (2002), *Sinubi* (2007), *Hanagatami 1*  (2008), *Ariake* (2009), *Tabibito ka herazu* (2010), *Yūgao no ie*, *Kasuka ni* (2013), and *Bai gui yexing huijuan* (2014).

<sup>241</sup> Takahashi, "Two Statements on Music,"148.

<sup>242</sup> See Takahashi, *Tori no asobi*.

*Example 3.20: Yūji Takahashi, Sangen sanju for shamisen, beginning*

Copyright © 1992 by Yūji Takahashi, Tokyo

"incommensurable" timbre, which is hardly challenged by crosscultural melodic references (Ex. 3.20).

In addition, Takahashi has taken a radical "ethnological" approach to some instruments and their repertoire based on critical source study, as exemplified by his *shō* duo *Sōjō rinzetsu* (1997), in which he implicitly criticized nationalist tendencies in Japanese music research (→ IV.1). The great potential of Takahashi's basic attitude unfolds in his five works for archaic instruments, which were reconstructed in the context of a project led by Toshirō Kido (National Theater Tokyo).243 The interest in archaic instruments is consistent with Takahashi's basic approach: it enables him to (re-)construct an instrumental idiom from instrumental movements for instruments whose playing practice has not been handed down to today through an unbroken tradition.244 In *Unebiyama* (1992) for five-string zither and incantation, for example, various stages of a "discovery" of the instrument by the musician are composed out (→ V.1): starting from elementary movements of the hand and fingers – the individual strings are explored one after the other in a careful tactile manner – the arpeggio over all five strings is suddenly "discovered" as a combination of these individual sounds, and the player is led into a trance-like state – a reference to the shamanistic context of the original instrument.

For all his concentration on concrete aspects of performance practice, Takahashi's composition is, on the whole, rather pluralistic. This is evident not least in the variety of contexts invoked by his music: his cautious treatment of the re-composition of European and Asian music and text materials, his intense engagement with Buddhist philosophy and practice in the 1990s, as well as his identification with artists such as José Maceda, Ossip Mandelstam, Pier Paolo Pasolini, or Sofia Gubaidulina, with whom aesthetic affinities are visible and to whom Takahashi dedicated works.

The multifaceted relationship between aural tradition and writing in Takahashi's œuvre, the complexity and originality of his intercultural references, and his negation of the simplifications of cultural essentialism assign him a prominent role within an intercultural history of twentieth-century music. Not least, his procedures make it clear how complex the task can be to place non-written components or various juxtaposed forms of transcription in a balanced and appropriate relationship to one another in an intercultural context. His scores mix elements of traditional Japanese notation with five-line staff notation and various verbal and graphic instructions in hybrid score forms in which the prescriptive element of conventional notation takes a back seat in favor of a documentary, descriptive, or physical-haptic iconography. This implies an adequately "informed" interpretation with reference to the "aural practice" thematized by the composer.

#### Discussion

The examples discussed in this chapter point us to the insight that a break with an ethnocentric and one-sided historiographic model is inevitable in the analysis of social and music-historical developments in Asia – and has to be re-applied to the West as well, possibly following the model of entangled histories (→ II.1). Recourse to cultural difference, however, can be risky in this context, or even misleading for historiographical analysis, if based solely on stereotypes and an essentialist, post-nationalist concept of (music) culture. In contrast to Takemitsu's essentialization of musical sounds (to some degree characteristic of his generation), the construction of an imaginary archaic by Ge Ganru (in an entirely different context, less shaped by long-term entanglements with Western modernism) suggests a possible way of rejecting such stereotyping – along with other approaches to intercultural musical composition that we will

<sup>243</sup> See Kido, *Reconstructed Music Instruments of Ancient East Asia*. Takahashi's worksfor reconstructed instruments include *Zanshi no kyoku* (Gauze-Silk-Chant, 1988) for the twenty-five-stringed Chinese zither *se* and recitation, *Dream of Heaven* (1989) for *se*, *Unebiyama* (Mount Unebi, 1992) for five-stringed zither and incantation, *Tori no asobi* (Birds' Play, 1993) for seven-stringed instrument, and *Mangalasutta* (1996) for an ensemble of archaic instruments and voices. See also Takahashi, *Astray Among Decayed Strings*.

<sup>244</sup> For more detail,see Takahashi, "Two Statements on Music."

encounter in the following chapters (→ III.5–6, IV, V). To be sure, the compositional relevance of cultural difference cannot be denied. But we need to be aware that culturally coded idioms, instruments, or voices are subject to historical, political, and social change: they are unstable, and the form in which they confront us must always be open to discussion. For both Western and non-Western composers, the relevance of cultural difference is inseparably linked to a ref lection on the inner historicity, ambiguity, and provisional nature of musical cultures.

Certainly, an intercultural music history cannot ignore actors like Takahashi or Maceda. Their concepts are characterized by complex interventions in theory and practice aiming at a ref lection of performance situations in the compositional process. Further similarities in the approaches of the two composers may have become evident: the importance attached to fundamental ethnomusicological areas – although very differently accentuated – such as the practice of instrumental performance, the categorization of timbres, or the cultural encoding of sounds and instruments. This leads both composers to an intensive examination of the relationship between music and society, ref lected in highly individual compositional projects and approaches, and to the rejection of simplistic compositional solutions such as references to folkloristic material.

Yet, differences in their procedures have become clear. The primary difference seems to be that Takahashi ultimately rejects the principle of cultural essentialism as a whole and directs his attention to very specific detail phenomena, whose particularity he leaves untouched. By contrast, Maceda certainly claims a supra-regional, if not universal substance in an attempt to counter the causal logic of Western music. This difference may be explained by a difference of age, but certainly also by the very different social situations in the Philippines and Japan: Maceda's postcolonial discourse is illuminated by Takahashi from a postmodern perspective, as it were – a "postmodernism" that began in Japanese cultural criticism during the 1960s, if not earlier. The diversity and particularism of Takahashi's œuvre may seem analogous to Masao Maruyama's analysis of Japanese intellectual history. In 1961, Maruyama analyzed the history of thought in Japan, in opposition to the widespread construction of essential Japanese peculiarities, as an extremely plural discourse that "failed to form a spiritual tradition serving as a point of crystallization or coordinate axis," and thus brought about a situation in which a variety of "ideas, modes of thought, and worldviews remain historically unstructured side by side."<sup>245</sup> In contrast, the understanding of José Maceda as a "national" Filipino artist to this day shows that his attempt to construct such a coordinate axis, however open and complex, necessarily risks popularizing a leveling out of differences through cultural essentialism.246

It has become clear once again that an intercultural music history can no longer be satisfied with conventional methods of musical analysis if it is to deal with specific problems such as the relationship between aural and textual components of the compositional process. An exclusively "immanent analysis" of the works presented here must clearly remain insufficient,

<sup>245</sup> Maruyama, *Denken in Japan*, 23, 24 ("In Japan hat sich keine als Kristallisationspunkt oder Koordinatenachse dienende geistige Tradition zu bilden vermocht"; "Ideen, Denkformen und Weltanschauungen historisch unstrukturiert nebeneinander bestehen bleiben"). See Janz, "MultipleMusicalModernities?" for a contextualization of Maruyama'sthoughtwith Eisenstadt'stheory of "multiple modernities" (→ II.1).

<sup>246</sup> See the accompanying text to the VCD *Kuwadro – José Monserrat Maceda, National Artist for Music* (Cultural Center of the Philippines, 2002), in which, af ter a short presentation of Maceda's compositional and ethnomusicological achievements, one can read: "In all these, fiercely nationalistic aesthetics pervades the spirit of this music visionary,forward-looking and confident, burningwith a breath oflife into an idealspringing forth from the soul of the Filipino."

since, as we have seen, the musical text is often merely a documentary or mnemonic sketch, or represents an intermediate stage or plan (though sometimes quite precisely formulated) for execution. In addition, both composers very consciously and in a complex way manipulate cultural codes and meanings that can be deduced only through a correspondingly culturally "informed" hearing from the sounding result. For this music, new techniques of a "contextual analysis" must be found. There is no question that the works and conceptions of Takemitsu, Ge, Maceda, or Takahashi, and many other composers working on similar interfaces of cultural categorization, are decisive touchstones for alternative music historiographies.

### **5. Intercultural Narrativity in East Asian Art Music since the 1990s**

Can art music actually create such a high degree of differentiation between questions of recognition, alterity, or hybridity, as outlined in the first chapter (→ I.3)? Caution is generally advised when applying social, political, and literary concepts to musical contexts. The increasing difficulty for art music to claim social relevance was already mentioned at the beginning of this book (→ I.2). In contrast to more semantically and semiotically constricted literature and the symbolic reception processes instigated by visual arts, the communication of multi-coded messages seems fundamental to the medium of music and sound. Lawrence Kramer once described this quality of music as a "semantic chameleon."247 Even more recent tendencies of topic theory or research into musical metaphoricism rarely posit unambiguous principles of musical communication.248 Such ambiguity initially seems an advantage in the field of interculturality. In the sense of a conception of music (prominently described by Kramer) as a "cultural practice" (→ I.2), it should be emphasized that this ambiguity is limited through reception history and other mechanisms by a wealth of "meta-musical" dimensions such as genre conventions, their topoi, and connotation. These contexts may allow a construction of musical narrativity, which of course is always to be weighed critically against alternative cognitive processes and cultures of hearing, since they are profoundly socioculturally and historically encoded.

Robert Samuels – following Jean-Jacques Nattiez – distinguished between two basic assumptions that allow, or even require, speaking of musical narrativity: on the one hand, a musical process must describe a continuous, irreversible change over time, and on the other hand, it must bring together identifiable musical characters to create an overarching meaning. This meaning cannot be reduced to individual components.<sup>249</sup> In this chapter, I will present some striking case studies of works by East Asian composers since the 1990s for whom these criteria of musical narrativity undoubtedly apply. By focusing on works that combine Asian and European instruments, the following analyses to some degree reinforce associations of these instruments

<sup>247</sup> Kramer, "Hercules'Hautboys,"149.

<sup>248</sup> Zbikowski, *Conceptualizing Music*, Thorau, *Vom Klang zur Metapher*, and Mirka, *The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory*.

<sup>249</sup> Samuels, "WhenMustOne Speak ofNarrativity inMusic?"with reference toNattiez, "CanOne Speak ofNarrativity in Music?" and Abbate, *Unsung Voices*. Narratological concepts have received a great deal of attention in recent years, particularly in the interpretation of musicfrom the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, though hardly ever in reference to newer music, with the exception of the remarkable dissertation Meelberg, *New Sounds, New Stories*. Foundational studies from the past years include Maus, "Narratology, Narrativity," Samuels, "Narrative Form and Mahler's Musical Thinking," Imberty, "Narrative, Splintered Temporalities and the Unconsciousin 20th Century Music," and Almén, *A Theory Of Musical Narrative.*

with "characters." This should not be understood in the sense of a naïve programmatic dramaturgy, but instead in such a way that the semantic connotations of the "acting" instruments or instrumental groups are not only accepted by the composers, but often also reinforced by compositional decisions. Most of these examples introduce the separation, rapprochement, or even indistinguishability of "Western" and "Asian" instruments or sounds in a more nuanced manner than the works discussed in the preceding chapters. This increasing differentiation of narrative threads probably has to do with how these works are less tied to specific genres in European or Asian music, such as the solo concerto or symphony. This work emerged from significant activities among the younger generation of Asian instrumental soloists from the 1980s onward, which aligned with a continuously pursued traditional practice. Their activities were aimed specifically at a collaboration with composers of contemporary music, not least with the intention of developing a new repertoire for their instruments and thus aiming to avoid falling into an overly small niche in the economically oriented East Asian societies. These soloists have a high degree of specialization in, and familiarity with, the techniques of contemporary music, yet the collaboration with composers, who are usually educated exclusively in Western music, comes into – more or less productive – conf lict in the structure and sonority of the works produced. Although some of the following examples have been composed, performed, and discussed outside of Asia, and may thus only indirectly be relevant for analyzing processes of music history in the respective East Asian countries of the composers,250 the following discussion is organized around national music discourses, providing to some extent an opposing perspective on the transnational entanglements discussed in many other parts of this book.

#### New Chinese Music Between Essentialism and Cultural Conflict

The Tiananmen square massacre on 4 June 1989 and the already worsening political atmosphere before that proved a decisive turning point, following tentative signs of political liberalization in China during the post-Maoist period and the renewed efforts at an internationalization of Chinese music that this development implied. <sup>251</sup> Although more attention has commonly been paid to expatriates such as Tan Dun (b. 1957) or Chen Yi (b. 1953), several composers deliberately chose to remain in or, from the late 1990s, return to China. Certainly, as elsewhere, there may be talk of increasing aesthetic pluralism among Chinese composers. The problems created by China's state-controlled capitalism, however, and the aggressive nature of the market economy in general certainly have not only been advantageous for independent Chinese art forms. Art music is considered a "luxury item," the composer's situation is largely one of isolation and often limited to activities within the academy.252 It may also be this partial isolation from international trends that, during the late 1990s and early 2000s, encouraged certain tendencies to-

<sup>250</sup> It would surely be inadequate to continue claiming composers such as Tan Dun, Chen Yi, or Chen Qigang exclusively as "Chinese" composers, with their music considered in the framework of a (national) "Chinese music history" some thirty or more years af ter they have permanently lef t China for the United States or France. Rather,their unique contributionstoNorth American or European music historiesshould be acknowledged. As they retain a prominent influence and exemplary function for both the more of ficial cultural policies and the younger generations ofcomposersin China, however,theircases evidently enforce a transnational approach as outlined in Chapter II.1.

<sup>251</sup> A comprehensive historical overviewof recent music history in China, Taiwan, andHong Kong can be found in Utz, "China/Taiwan/Hongkong."

<sup>252</sup> Guo Wenjing, e-mail to the author, 03/01/2002. See also Guo, "Traditional Music as Material."

ward a radicalized emphasis on cultural difference. To be sure, in many of these newer Chinese works, there is a sharp distinction from the aesthetic requirements of the Western avant-garde, but without necessarily lapsing back into the Romanticism of the older generation, as Tan Dun did in his *Symphony 1997* (→ III.3). Characteristic features in these more recent works include a replacement of polyphony with heterophony, a focused use of microtones and inf lections, the deployment of Chinese texts and textures, structural references to Chinese or Asian genres, and, not least, the innovative use of Chinese instruments. This plurality of approaches is not synthesized into an affirmative unity of the music, but rather made audible as a coexistence of distinct qualities. Musical identities are self-ref lexive here as a refracted experience, and not forced into the mold of violent cultural optimism.

#### Polarizing Essentialism: Tan Dun

The simplistic recourse to culturalist stereotypes of an imaginary China in Tan Dun's *Symphony 1997* (→ III.3) seems particularly precarious and symptomatic of a broader societal tendency of a resurgence of nationalist currents in the People's Republic of China. As a result of targeted party politics, since the early 1990s, this nationalism has provided a welcome distraction from every kind of looming social conf lict.253

Of course, not every turn toward issues of Chinese identity should be interpreted as the result of this neo-nationalism, especially since many composers began to engage with culturally coded idioms as early as the late 1970s. In the case of Tan Dun, however, in a work such as *Ghost Opera* (1994) for *pipa* and string quartet, one can clearly identify a "tamed" idiom compared to the enhanced modernist manifestations of localism in his works of the 1980s (→ II.3): here, both European and Chinese culture become a sort of soft souvenir. Quotations from Johann Sebastian Bach's Prelude in C# minor BWV 849 (*The Well-Tempered Clavier*, vol. 1), reduced to a threepart skeleton, and from Shakespeare's *The Tempest* stand for European traditions, while the folk song *Xiao bai cai* (Little white cabbage, a *xiaodiao* folk song from the province of Hebei) and the ritualistic, folk-Daoist "ghost opera" stand for Chinese traditions.254 But the juxtaposition of Western complexity (polyphony, linguistic imagery) and Chinese simplicity (simple unanimity) or corporeality (ritual spirituality) seems to overly oblige culturalist stereotypes.

Even more problematically, the musical materials are deprived in their very first appearance of precisely those components that are undoubtedly crucial for the formation of their "cultural identity": owing to the three-part texture of the originally four-part Bach prelude, harmony notes are omitted several times, and the ornaments written out in the original, which give shape to the imitative polyphony, also disappear in Tan's rendering.255 The melody *Xiao bai* 

<sup>253</sup> Especially symptomatic of this is the publication of the book *China Can Say NO!* (*Zhongguo keyi shuo bu!* 1996); the more recent anti-Western nationalism goes back, among others, to the CCP's 1991 campaign of patriotic education (*Aiguozhuyi Jiaoyu Yundong*), which portrayed China's situation as a result of Western oppression: "The of ficial Maoist 'victory narrative,' which was superseded by a new 'victimization narrative' that blames the West for China's suf fering" (Wang, "National Humiliation, History Education, and the Politics of Historical Memory," 792). See also Barmé, "To Screw Foreigners Is Patriotic." In particular, this new nationalism had a significant impact on pop musicin the form of waves of nostalgia and popularization of "revolutionary"songs ("Red Songs"),see Steen, "Voices of the Mainstream."

<sup>254</sup> This example is also discussed inUtz,*Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 449–452. See also Young,"Reconsidering Cultural Politics in the Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Music" and the extensive analysis in Gooi, "Making an Identity,"115–139.

<sup>255</sup> The Kronos Quartet plays the Bach passages on the CD recording (Nonesuch 7559-79445-2, 1997) and in live concertswith a Romantic emphasisthat lacks any historicalsensitivity.

*cai*, in turn, loses the harmonic ambiguity of the pentatonic scale through the added drone in the viola; the characteristic inf lections of the singing voice in Chinese vocal practice are hardly taken into account. Instead, string *portamenti* producing conventional sighing motifs are added in the instrumental repetition of the melody (third movement, rehearsal number B, first violin) that have nothing in common with traditional Chinese vocal or instrumental practice. Tan Dun's narrative of opposing materials, which enter into a dialogue in a supposedly "natural" manner, is therefore hindered from the very beginning by his failure to recognize precisely those delicate asymmetries between these materials on which his conception claims to rely.

#### Pluralistic Essentialism: Qin Wenchen and Guo Wenjing

Many other composers by no means discarded cultural essentialism, but the concept has become more nuanced and pluralized through the more diverse experiences of younger generations. An example of this extension of the idea can be found in Qin Wenchen's (b. 1966) *He-Yi* (Merging, 1999) for the Chinese arched zither *zheng*, six Western instruments, and percussion. Qin's "pluralistic essentialism" is characterized by an ethnographically consciously "imprecise" hybridity that merges source elements from different genres of Chinese traditional music with a sufficiently abstract atonal pitch structure. Like many other Chinese composers since the early 1990s, Qin draws on the mnemonic syllables of *luogu dianzi*, the "gong and drum patterns" of the Beijing Opera percussion music *wuchang*, <sup>256</sup> but here combines the resulting evocation of Chinese opera with the withdrawn literary world of the *zheng* and the quasi-shamanistic singing of the *zheng* soloist (Ex. 3.21). This purposefully inaccurate form of intermingled reference to different Chinese genres and aesthetics seeks to find a general "Chinese tone":

The vocal lines […] [at rehearsal number 14] all resemble the speech voice of Chinese opera. The dif ferent vocal parts all follow dif ferent lines, and every part is enhanced with dif ferent ornaments and slides that are characteristic of operatic singing style. The cellist here strikes a Chinese opera gong (*jingluo*) and changes between sof t and hard strokes. All thisconveysthe atmosphere of Chinese operawithout actually quoting or imitating a certain piece of music.257

Qin's work also places special emphasis on a feature that characterizes much of newer East Asian music, described by Barbara Mittler as "radicalization"258: certain aspects of traditional East Asian musical practice are driven to extremes with the intention of highlighting their specific characteristics (Tan Dun explained that Chinese folk music often appeared insufficiently harsh to him, not "folky" enough, so he must exaggerate it all the time259). In *He-Yi*, for example, the sound-syllables of the *luogu dianzi* are structurally condensed in a way that would never happen in traditional *wuchang* ensembles.

While Qin Wenchen takes a middle position between abstraction and concretion, Tan Dun (b. 1957) and Guo Wenjing (b. 1956) can certainly be considered the two Chinese composers most explicitly associated with traditional non-Western, not necessarily exclusively Chinese material, with Tan Dun producing a particularly broad variety of compositional techniques

<sup>256</sup> See Rao, "The Tradition of *Luogu Dianzi*," Rao, "Chinese Opera Percussion from Model Opera to Tan Dun," and Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 468–470 for further examples of the use of *luogu dianzi* in contemporary Chinese music.

<sup>257</sup> Qin, "On Diversity,"145.

<sup>258</sup> Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 323–357.

<sup>259</sup> See Tan and Utz, "Tan Dun's Art for aNewGeneration,"148–149, Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 490.

Copyright

© 1999 by Qin

Wenchen/Sikorski

Musikverlage

Hamburg

*Example 3.22: Guo Wenjing, Ye Yan, Scene 1, entrance aria of Hong Zhu (soprano), accompanied by the pipa*

Copyright © 1998 by Universal Music Publishing Ricordi – Milan, Italy

dedicated to such combinations until 1996.260 An important one is the aforementioned use of "non-original" material instead of quotations, where a quite deliberate effect is to lure the listener onto the "wrong track": the idea of the idiomatic is removed from an affirmative character to an ambiguous, sometimes ironic context.

Guo Wenjing, in his second opera *Ye Yan* (Night banquet, 1998), took the treatment of such "quasi-traditional" Chinese material to extremes.261 With long stretches of only one unaccompanied musical line and the sound of the four-string lute *pipa*, the music is based on interlocking pentatonic modes. Thereby Guo creates an almost unbroken "Chineseness" idiomatically characterized by a special simplicity and economy (Ex. 3.22) and only temporarily broken up by sharply contrasting percussive *tutti* ensembles. This deliberately "Chinese" character is, of course, a construction that can only be justified with reference to a very restricted selection of Chinese musical forms, in particular the literary *wenren* aesthetic associated with the *pipa*, related to an idyllic concept of nature from which Guo has explicitly distanced himself.262 Yet, in addition to this strong identification with a Chinese musical language different from Western music, we can also see a degree of self-ref lexive irony in the work, which at times seems to create a necessary distance from its apparent essentialism. This tendency can be identified, for example, in the slight, barely perceptible, shifts in pentatonic modes, or from a ubiquitous "grotesque" instrumentation that reminds us of Dmitri Shostakovich's writing for wind instruments. These piercing sounds aptly communicate with the constant presence of percussion ensembles that here, as in Qin's *He-Yi* and many earlier pieces by Guo (→ II.3), emerge from the percussion patterns of *jingju* (Beijing Opera) and *chuanju* (Sichuan Opera).

<sup>260</sup> See Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 323–481.

<sup>261</sup> See Guo, "Traditional Music as Material."

<sup>262</sup> See ibid.

#### Interaction: Chen Xiaoyong

For many East Asian composers whose music was originally more strongly based on the compositional techniques of European modernism, the encounter and longer-term cooperation with Chinese instrumentalists led to an intensive examination of the problems associated with culturally hybrid ensembles. Works such as *The Prospect of Colored Desert* (*Mo motu*, 2000) by Jia Daqun (b. 1956) for *sheng* (mouth organ), *pipa*, violin, violoncello, and percussion, written for Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, or *Vacuité/Consistance* (1996) by Xu Shuya (b. 1961) for *zheng*, *pipa*, and chamber ensemble prove that such works do not necessarily have to represent "traditional" or essentialist aesthetics, but that the East Asian instruments are at once more than merely unusual sound generators for otherwise "Western" structures. This polarity is broken up in particular by the considerable inf luence the performers usually exercise on the sounding result. For example, Chen Qigang's (b. 1951) famous *Poème Lyrique II* (1991) for baritone and chamber ensemble,263 an important work for the international recognition of the *xinchao* generation, would be difficult to imagine without Shi Kelong's "performative" realization of the highly precisely notated vocal part. Chen Xiaoyong's (b. 1955) *zheng* solo *Circuit* (1996), in turn, was developed in close collaboration with the soloist Xu Fengxia, who contributed not only a wide range of vocal colors but also experiences of free improvisation – qualities that are also clearly manifest in the *zheng* part of Qin Wenchen's *He-Yi*, which was also written for Xu.

This is all the more remarkable in the case of Chen Xiaoyong, who studied with György Ligeti after graduating in Beijing in 1989, as Chen originally distanced himself from explicit references to Chinese traditions. A tendency toward abstraction and play with abstracted "cultural" colors is certainly still recognizable in a later work such as *Invisible Landscapes* (1998): in the final cadenza, the three solo instruments *zheng*, piano, and percussion, facing a small chamber ensemble of six instruments, attempt almost systematically to continue the piano's line along with drumming and *zheng* harmonics. These parts are only partially synchronized at first, and the passage takes on the character of an experimental arrangement through the alternation of different types of Western and Chinese drums and ever-changing, "evasive" rhythmic figures. As in Chen's earlier works, the focus is less on culturally specific musical idioms than on a persistent attempt to fathom the closeness and distance between the various instrumental timbres (Ex. 3.23).

Chen's works from the turn of the millennium show an increasing "looseness," motivated not least, by an intensified collaboration with Chinese improvising musicians including, besides Xu Fengxia, the *sheng* soloist Wu Wei (→ II.6). In addition, there is an increased conceptual orientation toward the enigmatic and often paradoxical formulations of archaic Daoist traditions of Chinese thought. *Yang Shen* for soprano, *zheng*, *sheng/xun* (Chinese ocarina), and small chamber ensemble from 2002, for example, develops a reading of the poem *Bei feng bo zhou* from the *Shijing* (Book of Songs, c. 600 BCE). The poem's linguistic sounds are mixed with fragments of texts by the "classical" philosophers Laozi, Liezi, and Confucius in German translation, as well as instrumental sounds colored with unpitched noise. The Chinese and German speech sounds (all instrumentalists also act as vocalists) as well as Chinese and European instrumental sounds approach one another.

This concept continues to develop in Chen's *Speechlessness, Clearness and Ease* (*Yin, xi, yi*, 2004) for a larger ensemble of seven Chinese, eight European instruments, and percussion. The ensemble forms a multi-layered sound field that, by adjusting the positions, playing techniques, and articulations, minimizes the tonal, gestural, and cultural differences of the instruments; a dense

<sup>263</sup> See particularly Rao, "The Role of Language in MusicIntegration in Chen Qigang's *Poème Lyrique II*."

*Example 3.23: Chen Xiaoyong, Invisible Landscapes for zheng, piano, percussion and ensemble, m. 42*

Copyright © 1998 by Chen Xiaoyong/Sikorski Musikverlage Hamburg

sequence of identifiable pitches and characteristic noise sonorities creates a complex overall system. Frequently, Chinese and Western instruments intermingle to form hybrid timbres (f lute/ *sheng* mm. 28/35, double bass/*erhu* mm. 36–39, piano/*yangqin* m. 36, *ruan*/trombone/violin m. 39, etc., see Ex. 3.24). Toward the end of the first section, the contours are increasingly resolved by the hissing noises already heard at the beginning (mm. 1–27); instrument-specific sound effects accelerate this process (*col legno*, rubbing of the *zheng* strings, *jiaoxian*: overlapping of three *pipa* strings with a metallic-sounding result, muted piano strings). In keeping with the quotation from the thirty-fifth chapter of Laozi's Daoist classic *Daodejing*: "One looks for it and does not see it" (*shi zhi bu zu jian*264), the composer wants to place the listener in a paradoxical situation "between delusion and reality, between sounds and noises, between real and artificial worlds of sound."265 The "cultural identities" of instrumental sounds in this interactive area are reduced to a minimum, if not abandoned at all. To some degree, however, such a potential leveling of identities seems to diminish the intelligibility of Chen's narrative of a paradoxical world experience.

#### Stratification and Conflict: Zhu Jian'er

Zhu Jian'er impressive symphonic œuvre, introduced earlier (→ III.1), only corresponds to the *xinchao* generation's achievements in some ways, but retains a distinct position in which a more pronounced independence from Western modes of reception is apparent. While the claim was put forward in Chapter II.5 that composers since the 1950s have increasingly addressed their work toward a potentially global public, the very real process of creating a particular work for a premiere at a specific location for a specific local audience surely has implications for many of the narratives addressed so far. Zhu's Sixth (1992–94) and Tenth (1998) Symphonies juxtapose field and studio recordings of traditional Chinese music with the symphony orchestra, played through loudspeakers.266 The Tenth Symphony features a free chant, recalling the stage styles of Beijing Opera, and recorded fragments of the literati zither *qin*, mostly in *senza tempo* sections that alternate with metrically stable orchestral sections. The three-movement Sixth Symphony, by contrast, creates a complex combination of orchestral sounds and a plethora of different regional styles played back as recordings, primarily of minorities from South-Western China.267 The third movement is initially dominated by a monophonic dance

<sup>264</sup> The completepassagequotedfromChapter 35 reads:[道之出口,淡乎其無味,] 視之不足見,聽之不足聞, 用之不足既 ([*dao zhe chu kou, tan he qi wu wei,*] *shi zhi bu zu jian, ting zhi bu zu wen, yong zhi bu zu ji*); "[But though the Dao as it comes from the mouth, seems insipid and has no flavour,] though it seems not worth being looked at or listened to, the use of it isinexhaustible." (Laozi, *The Tao Te Ching*; the bracketed part was not used in Chen'swork). Chen also quotesthe two basicconcepts ofthe *Daodejing ziran* (nature) and*wuwei* (non-doing) as well as the first sentence of the sixteenth chapter: 致虛極,守靜篤 (*zhi xu ji, shou jing du)*, "The (state of) vacancy should be broughtto the utmost degree, and that ofstillness guardedwith unwearying vigour."(Ibid.) Throughout the piece, only the initials ofsyllableswithout mid-vowels or finalsounds are used.

<sup>265</sup> Chen, "Speechlessness, Clearness and Ease," 285 ("zwischen Täuschung und Wirklichkeit, zwischen Klängen und Geräuschen, zwischen realen und künstlichen Klangwelten").

<sup>266</sup> See Mao, "Jianxi Zhongguo xinan diqu minzu yinyue sucai" and Yi, "National Cultural Memory in Late-Twentieth-Century East Asian Composition."

<sup>267</sup> A starting point similar to Zhu's symphony is found in Tan Dun's *The Map* (2002) for violoncello, orchestra and video playback. Thework juxtaposes video field recordings of minority musicinHunan Provincewith the cello soloist and the Western symphony orchestra. In the fif th movement *Feige*, for example, a girl from the Miao minority appears on the video and the cellist imitates her singing. To be sure, Tan Dun's concept, unlike Zhu's symphony,strivesfor a conflict-free complementation and an ef fective, virtuosicinteraction and integration of opposites, which places the composer in the paradoxical double role of both keeper of local tradition and

*Example 3.24: Chen Xiaoyong, Speechlessness, Clearness and Ease, mm. 32–39*

Copyright © 2004 by Sikorski Musikverlage Hamburg

*Example 3.25: Zhu Jian'er, Sixth Symphony, third movement, lef t: af ter rehearsal number 15; right: before rehearsal number 19; Tape I: upper system: song of the Yi girls; lower system: Naxi song (above: women, below: men)* 

song of Yi minority girls268 whose simple 6/8-metered singing is accompanied or answered in an imitative manner by the orchestra. Toward the end of the movement, however, we experience a considerable compression and complication of the structure. At the movement's turning point, the layer of Yi vocals is complemented by a recording of the well-known *Worere* song of the Naxi minority (also from South-Western China).269 It is superimposed on the Yi girls' dance song, which has meanwhile been placed in 4/4 meter, and triggers an orchestral texture that rapidly increases in dynamics and density (Ex. 3.25, left). These recorded Naxi songs are usually sung at funerals, with the female voices mimicking the bleating of sheep while the part of the male voices consists of loud, rhythmically free exclamations.270 The previously unambiguous metric structure collapses, and ultimately the recordings are crudely drowned out by a violent orchestral *tutti* (Ex. 3.25, right).

In the context of Zhu's symphonies, analogous to the Second and Fourth Symphonies (→ III.1), an interpretation in the sense of an oppressive force of the collective toward the individual or the minority is indeed obvious in this "anti-finale." The overall sound is stratified from the beginning: despite attempts at a careful structural incorporation of tape recordings and orchestral writing, the different sound qualities of orchestra and field recordings never really merge (this stratification is not only due to the poor sound quality of the recordings), with these two layers breaking apart in a moment of final crisis. The idyllic glorification of the alleged closeness to nature in the music of China's minorities has long been idealized among Han Chinese (especially among composers271). The "nationalist" aspirations of bringing minority music into a symphonic work, as in Ding Shande's prototypical *Long March Symphony* (→ III.1), are counteracted not only by the "artificiality" of the recordings, but also by the failure of the synthesis with the orchestra. Characteristically, some Chinese researchers largely overlook this musical-narratological collapse, interpreting the symphony as a "search for roots" and as an affirmative adherence to the ethnic character of cultural identity:

The concepts in Zhu Jian'er's work are a necessary result of an awareness of the current deep crisis of people'sculture. Precisely because Zhu sensesthe "loss" oftraditional value systems and the metaphysicalworld, hewants allthe more to seek the roots[*xungen*],to claim the identity of the traditional culture, and in doing so he especially emphasizes the national character [*minzuxing*] and the cultural heritage. As an outstanding representative of Chinese symphonism, he is fundamentally guided by the mission to heighten nationalself-esteem all the more, the greater this generalcrisis of people'sculture becomes.272

Such a visualization or making audible of cultural conf lict through the heterogeneity of sound layers is often viewed with suspicion as taking a superficial approach to musical phenomena, while conversely, coherent musical surfaces are presumed to contain an "internal struc-

symphonicinnovator. See Young, "The Voicing of the Voicelessin TanDun's *The Map*" and Yang, "Musical Phantasmagoria in the Globalized Age."

<sup>268</sup> Rees, "China, §IV: Living traditions 5 (i) (a)."

<sup>269</sup> Rees, *Echoes of History*.

<sup>270</sup> See ibid., 59. The dance song iscalled *O ssei sseil* in theNaxi language and is also known as *Remeicuo*.

<sup>271</sup> SeeUtz,*Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 352. The highly politicized context of Chinese music between 1949 and 1989 may have sustained the idea of the "purity" and nativeness of minority musics.

<sup>272</sup> Mao, "Jianxi Zhongguo xinan diqu minzu yinyue," 28 (translation by the author).

ture" that should guide the reception process.<sup>273</sup> It is obvious that this is an overly crude and, in many ways, questionable dichotomy. After all, there are probably two tendencies in almost every interculturally oriented musical concept: the desire for audible, comprehensible connecting threads, for elements that allow linking disparities as well as searching for the incompatible, incommensurable, different, for the residue that cannot be forced into synthesis. Perhaps Zhu's symphony is in some ways also a proof that – especially against the ambivalent background of nationalist tendencies in recent Chinese music – only a confrontation between heterogeneous, largely incommensurable elements can oppose the affirmative phrases of (national or artistic) unity, without having to abandon references to specific sounds from Chinese music.

#### New Korean Music: New Exemptions

In South Korea, in the late 1950s, after the turmoil of the Korean War and under the restrictions of an autocratic military government, the internationalization of musical life was only gradually beginning. In 1960 the western-trained composer Hoegap Chŏng (1923–2013) was commissioned by the Korean Air Force Orchestra to write a first concert for the Korean arched zither *kayagŭm* and orchestra. 274 This "Theme and Variations" (*Chujewa Pyŏnjugok*) for *kayagŭm* and orchestra (1960–61) largely resulted from the impetus of the then 24-year-old *kayagŭm* player Byungki Hwang (b. 1936), who performed the solo part and subsequently became a key figure in Korean new music history.275 The following year, Hwang assisted the American composer Alan Hovhaness (1911–2000) in his remarkable Symphony no. 16 for *kayagŭm*, an ensemble of Korean instruments, and string orchestra (1962), as well as playing the solo part in the Seoul premiere. Hovhaness, who undertook extensive research trips to Asia from 1959 to 1963, had already encouraged young Japanese colleagues in Tokyo in 1960 to keep East Asian music away from the "violence and destruction" of Western music<sup>276</sup> and was now celebrating traditional Korean music in Korea as "the most expressive, sublime and free in the world."<sup>277</sup> In addition to Henry Cowell (→ II.4, II.5), the idealization of Asian music as an "antidote" to European inf luences was mainly spread by Dane Rudhyar (1895–1985) from France, who had lived in the USA since 1916 and had considerable inf luence on his composer colleagues.278 In any case, such impulses were decisive for the young *kayagŭm* innovator Hwang, and he subsequently emerged with increasingly confident pieces for Korean instruments, developing the movement of *ch'angjak kugak* in analogy to contemporary tendencies in Japan ("Traditional Korean Contemporary Music," see *gendai hōgaku* → III.1).

During the same period, Isang Yun's life situation as a migrant (since 1956 in Europe, since 1957 in the Federal Republic of Germany) meant that he was much more directly confronted with Western tendencies. Yun had already gained recognition as a composer in his adopted home (→ III.4) when he was kidnapped by the South Korean secret service from Germany in 1967 and accused of acting as an agent, following a trip to North Korea in 1963 and his contacts with North Koreans in East Berlin. After torture and a life sentence, Yun was released under pres-

<sup>273</sup> Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 43–44, 58–62.

<sup>274</sup> A detailed and updated historical overviewon Korean new musiccan be found in Lee, "Korea."

<sup>275</sup> See Killick, *Hwang Byungki*.

<sup>276</sup> Quoted in Fukunaka, "Re-situating Japan's Post-War Musical Avant-Garde through Re-situating Cage,"192.

<sup>277</sup> Hovhaness, "Korean Musicisthe Most Expressive, Sublime and Free in the World," 29.

<sup>278</sup> See Ertan, *Dane Rudhyar* and Utz, "Klang als Energie in der Musik seit1900."

sure from the German and American public in 1969 and was able to return to Germany.279 From 1973, Yun was actively involved in Korean exile organizations for the democratization of South Korea and Korean reunification, which also had an effect on his music. While he had previously oriented his work toward traditional Korean music and the latest European trends such as serial music and sound composition, the search for political statements from the mid-1970s led to a clear realignment of models of (late) Romantic tonal language and the force of orchestral sound. One may observe these tendencies in works such as *Exemplum in memoriam Kwangju* for large orchestra (1981), a memorial composition to the victims of the massacre committed by government troops in South Korean Kwangju in May 1980,280 or in *Naui dang, naui minjokiyo* (My country, my people!) for soloists, choir, and large orchestra (1986–87), which Yun saw as an indictment of the persecution and oppression of South Korean dissidents. These two works in particular subsequently became welcome tools of propaganda against the South through multiple performances in North Korea from 1982 as part of the annual Isang Yun Music Festival,281 sometimes with Yun present. Even though Yun certainly did not follow "socialist realism" in the narrower sense in these works, his stylistic "willingness to compromise" and in some cases his highly illustrative idiom made such instrumentalization considerably easier: "Yun […] under-estimated the veracity of state policy."<sup>282</sup>

The specifically strained political situation in divided Korea increased the profound skepticism toward (neo-)nationalist tendencies in some of the outstanding compositional positions of (South) Korean music from the 1990s onward. In particular, this skepticism opposed composers such as Lee Geon-Yong (b. 1947) and Yoo Byung-Eun (b. 1952), leading members of the "Third Generation" (*Che Sam Sedae*), a composers' group founded in 1981. This group newly discovered traditional Korean music as source material for their affirmative patriotic style but still committed to a Western Romantic idiom. Political-historical topics in this context were often explicitly taken up. Lee's cantata *The Song of the Plain* (1994), written for the hundredth anniversary of the Tonghak peasant rebellion (Joseon period, 1894–95), quotes the famous children's song *Saeya, saeya, pahrang saeya* ("Bird, bird, blue bird"), which served as a secret identifying signal within the Tonghak movement (see also the section on Koo below and the section on Takahashi in III.4).283 Similarly, Yoo Byung-Eun uses the "Song of May" in his orchestral work *Shinawi no. 5* (1989) to commemorate the victims of the Kwangju massacre. In these works, the incorporation of traditional elements was not least a critique of the fact that the manifestations of Korea's traditional culture as a whole had been largely isolated from current social processes and considered museum artefacts from the 1960s to the '80s. This implied that traditional genres and idioms were not conceived as obvious or "natural" resources for composing, and had to be appropriated by composers on the basis of often inadequate secondary sources.284

<sup>279</sup> See the extensive documentation in Sparrer, *Ssi-ol. Almanach 2000/01 der Internationalen Isang Yun Gesellschaf t*, 139–248.

<sup>280</sup> See Yi, "National Cultural Memory in Late-Twentieth-Century East Asian Composition" and Heister, "Kollektivität und Körperlichkeit." The massacre was committed under General Chun Doo-Hwan, who came to power through a military coup d'etat in December1979 following the assassination of dictator Park Chung-Hee on 26 October1979.

<sup>281</sup> Choi, "Zur Rezeption des Œuvres von Isang Yun in der Republik Korea,"162.

<sup>282</sup> Howard, "Korean Tradition in Isang Yun's Composition Style," 98.

<sup>283</sup> Already in 1958, Isang Yun had incorporated this melody in a related sense in his *Fünf Stücke für Klavier*. See Lim, "Identity Performance and Performing Identity," 213–214.

<sup>284</sup> See Lee, "Reconsidering Traditional Vocal Practicesin Contemporary Korean Music,"136–137.

As in other cultural contexts, it was above all "multiculturally" competent performers, such as the singer Sin-Cha Hong (b. 1940), who nonetheless enabled substantial forms of intercultural hybrid-ity at an early stage.<sup>285</sup>

#### Sublation of Traditional Practice: Eun-Hye Kim, Jin-Hi Kim

An explicit focus on the idioms of traditional Korean music since the 1990s could refer to nuanced scholarly investigations and publications and, at the same time, increasingly rely on a circle of younger musicians of Korean instruments open to collaboration with composers. These musicians most notably came from the school of Byungki Hwang.286

Eun-Hye Kim's (b. 1956) composition *Kayagum* (2000) for soprano, 17-string *kayagŭm* and *changgo* (Korean hourglass drum) could hardly have been created without this context. Kim uses the vocal technique of the aristocratic genre *kagok* (sung by a soprano trained in European vocal technique) as well as two rhythmic models *changdan* from the well-known improvisation genre *sanjo*, where the patterns are further developed and varied in density and tempo as in the original *sanjo*, but in a complex way that is only possible through (Western) compositional and notational practice (Ex. 3.26).The composer, however, changes the rhythmic structure so much that only the basic character but not the shape of the *changdan* remains recognizable. For example, the strong accent at the beginning of a cycle (*hap changdan*) largely disappears in Kim's score, so that the sonic result has a high degree of idiomatic resemblance to *sanjo* and *kagok*, yet remains clearly recognizable as an independent compositional articulation. The precise and complex notation, which limits the dramatic emphasis of traditional *kagok* singing and draws more attention to structural detail compared to the improvised *sanjo*, also contributes to this feature of the music.

Kim's approach shows a focus on "fake traditions" that she shares with several composers of her generation. There is a demonstrative distancing from musical nationalism of any kind. At the same time, it remains unmistakable that we are dealing here with an intense examination of idioms that differ sharply from all facets of European music. Of course, it is only through compositional models from European modernism that one can reach a position from which the decades-old pitfalls of the discourse on "Koreanness"<sup>287</sup> can be avoided.

Musicians such as the *kayagŭm* soloist Ji-Young Yi288 or the *taegŭm* (bamboo f lute) soloist Jeong-Seung Kim have made a decisive contribution to shaping such a journey beyond polarizing extremes with the Contemporary Music Ensemble of Korea. The most renowned composer-performer in this field is the New York-based *kŏmun'go* (six-string arched zither) player Jin-Hi Kim (b. 1957). In contrast to the aforementioned composers, Kim has undergone extensive training in traditional Korean music and has made a basic principle of East Asian music – albeit in a specifically Korean accentuation – a "trademark" of her playing and composing: "Living Tones,"289 the detailed design of melodic lines in traditional Korean/East Asian music through techniques summarized as *ssigimsae*:

<sup>285</sup> See ibid.,143.

<sup>286</sup> See especially Killick, *Hwang Byungki* andHan, *Interkulturalität in der neuen Musik Koreas*.

<sup>287</sup> See, among others, Lee, "Korean Music Culture" and Howard, "Dif ferent Spheres: Perceptions of Traditional Music and Western Musicin Korea."

<sup>288</sup> YiJi-Young has proven her exceptional position notleastthrough hersystematicstudy *Contemporary Gayageum Notation for Composers*, Seoul 2011.

<sup>289</sup> See above allHoward, *Creating Korean Music*,143–147.

#### *Example 3.26: Eun-Hye Kim, Kayagum, III, mm. 14–19*

Copyright © 2000 by Eun-Hye Kim, Seoul

My bi-cultural compositional concept "Living Tones" is based on a sense of timing which is different from Western music. "Living Tones" function best in a slowtempowhere enough space is available to shape notes,which does notworkwell in a stricttime frame,such asin Western classical music. Therefore, I do notcompose pieceswith bars;rather, I finish thewhole piecewithout counting the beats and then I add bars to facilitate performance. The ensemble sound flows horizontally within a heterophonic melody in which each individual instrumentcreatesits own nuances and specific articulation. All this is happening slowly and within a calm space. "Living Tones" need time to take shape. During the rehearsals of my pieces I recommend that the performers use the score, notthe parts. Every performershould listen carefully to the other parts.290

Although Kim's concept has many essentialist traits and is in some ways reminiscent of the musical conceptualization of Korea by Isang Yun three decades earlier (→ III.4), and even though one of Kim's most important methods is the use of traditional Korean performance practice on European instruments – a concept explicitly criticized by other composers of the same generation such as Bonu Koo (see below) – her approach creates independent musical narratives that elude any form of stereotyping. The key work implementing Kim's "Living Tones" is her *Nong Rock* (1992) for *kŏmun'go* and string quartet, which was realized with the Kronos Quartet. The structures of the *kagok* genre in the first part (*Nong*, mm. 1–40) are transferred relatively precisely to the hybrid instrumentation (Ex. 3.27), where "Nong" refers to the characteristic vibrato *nonghyŏn* (vibrating or sliding by depressing the string with the left hand after plucking with the right hand). In the second section (*Rock*, mm. 41–129), this basic structure is developed

<sup>290</sup> Kim, "Living Tones,"127–128.

*Example 3.27: Jin-Hi Kim, Nong Rock for kŏmun'go and string quartet, I. Nong, mm. 1–5*

Copyright © 1992 by Living Tones, ASCAP

into a more improvisational and energetic situation, with individual instruments, especially the *kŏmun'go*, now increasingly appearing as soloists. The starting point for the conception of this work were Kim's observations while she participated in a traditional *kagok* performance:

In a *kagok* song the *kŏmun'go* is a leading instrument and accompanies the vocal line together with otherinstruments,such asthe *se-piri* (double-reed instrument),*taegŭm* (horizontal bamboo flute),*tanso* (verticalbamboo flute), *haegŭm*(fiddle) and*changgo* (hour-glassshapeddrum).When Iplayeda*kagok* suite, I had the feeling that the instrumental ensemble and the singer sounded separately. The instrumental parts have their own characteristic and function beyond accompanying the voice, and I thought that it would be wonderful to listen to the instrumental ensemble without the singer. Also, at first I had dif ficulties in counting the beats, because the *kŏmun'go* somehow does not directly follow the singer's beats. However, once I had memorized both the rhythmiccycle and the vocal part, I was able to play with the singer. I also heard that the *changgo* drummer did not keep absolute tempo.Hewasfollowing the singer,so that the overall timewas very flexible. These experienceswere an important motivation to compose*Nong Rock*. 291

Not all types of *ssigimsae* are recorded in traditional music sources, and Kim's score can therefore be understood to some degree as the translation of an aural practice into a largely fixed form of notation. Naturally, a complementary aspect is even more significant: the performers are repeatedly called upon to listen to one another and to react in the course of the piece, and the imitation of the *kŏmun'go* techniques regularly extends the conventional string sounds.

The tendency to idiomatically "imitate" a traditionalism reduced to the supposedly "essential" is certainly most evident in Kim's approach. It may also be the distance from the home culture and its politically charged discussions, as in the case of some Chinese immigrant composers, that fosters such fundamental cultural essentialism – at the risk of simplification and stereotyping. Kim's performance experience and practice, however, convincingly counters such skepticism on stage. In addition, the example of Eun-Hye Kim shows that even in today's

<sup>291</sup> Jin-Hi Kim, e-mail to the author, 8/1/2003.

Korea, with sufficient skill and nuance, a "Korean" idiomaticism can be sublated (in the Hegelian dialectical sense) in new music without evoking any form of nationalist pathos.

#### Liberation from Culturalism: Bonu Koo, Kunsu Shim

The incorporation of Korean traditions into works of the "Third Generation," which in part appears naïve when compared to later generations, was criticized in particular by Bonu Koo (b. 1958). Koo rejected a "cheap imitation" of Korean musical idioms and techniques, as he put it, and was equally skeptical of the (widespread) tendency toward timbral and technical imitation of Korean instruments by European instruments (or vice versa).292 Koo, who studied with Erhard Karkoschka at the Stuttgart Academy of Music from 1984 to 1990 and worked at the Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music (IPEM) in Ghent in 1990, opposes such tendencies with a psychoacoustically informed structuralism that avoids culturally encoded musical vocabulary by concentrating on the acoustic properties of the sounds employed and their compositionally structured convergence and/or divergence. A vivid example of this is offered by his work *nah/fern* for *kayagŭm* and string trio (1998):

What I then took as a point of departure for composing this work was *sound*. I tried to analyze and compare the quality of sound production by the *kayagŭm* and the Western strings. I found that a pizzicato of the strings and a plucked tone of the *kayagŭm* most dif fer in their release phase and therefore a muted tone (that has no or only a very short release) makesit possible to let them sound more alike. This was how Iconceived the title "nah/fern" (close/far): it is possible to let the instruments come close to each other, but it is also possible for either side to retain its identity. Later in the piece this happens when the *kayagŭm* "emancipates" itself from the Western stringswith the result ofsomething like a "faked tradition."293

The difference in the decay phase between the two instrument types is explored by Koo in a systematic, almost deterministic, manner at the beginning of the work (Ex. 3.28): the *kayagŭm* and the pizzicato plucked strings perform dyads from which individual notes are gradually prolonged, first almost imperceptibly by the *kayagŭm* (mm. 3–5) and then by the *kayagŭm* (mm. 7–9) and strings (cello m. 10, other strings from m. 11). Koo's intention to erase the differences in the timbre of the two instrument types at the beginning is apparent, the "identities" of the instruments only gradually surfacing.

At a key point later in the work, as described by Koo, the *kayagŭm* abruptly falls into an idiomatic playing style, identifiable by the characteristic strong vibrato *nonghyŏn*, which evokes associations with the *shinawi* genre. At the same time, the three string instruments play an almost pitchless pizzicato, hinting at a percussion pattern in the style of the Korean hourglass drum *changgo*, so that a "fake tradition" can indeed be experienced for a few seconds (Ex. 3.29). Immediately after that, however, the *kayagŭm* reintroduces a kind of sonic "hideand-seek" with the three strings in which the instruments tend to mask one another.

One might argue that coherence and dissociation meet here on a micro-level. What dominates is a rationalized, "psychoacoustic" approach (sound production and acoustic envelope, plucked vs. bowed notes, focus on single notes and minimal frequency deviations, etc.) that aims to avoid any "cultural" association. With this approach, Koo resolves the dilemma of trying to explore a musical position relevant to contemporary Korean society without making

<sup>292</sup> Koo, "Beyond 'Cheap Imitations,'"134.

*Example 3.28: Bonu Koo, nah/fern for kayagŭm (upper system) and string trio, mm. 1–14*

Copyright © 1998 by Bonu Koo, Seoul

*Example 3.29: Bonu Koo, nah/fern for kayagŭm (upper system) and string trio, mm. 154–160*

Copyright © 1998 by Bonu Koo, Seoul

use of an affirmative "traditionalism." The "illumination" of the traditional idiom is perhaps comparable to the role played by marches or folk songs in Gustav Mahler's symphonies, or to the German national anthem in Helmut Lachenmann's *Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied* (1979–80): the presence of the traditional material is perceived, on the one hand, as "foreign matter," as incompatible with the basic tone of the work, but, on the other hand, appears as a result of a consistently developed structural-narrative gesture.

A radicalized variant of this structuralist strategy is the conception of "synthesis by nothing," which may be described as a basis of John Cage's concept of musical interculturality (→ II.6).294 On the basis of a sound-silence continuum, the attempt is made here to arrive at a hierarchy-free and "culture-free" form of music by turning to individual sounds and silences as basic elements – an attempt at liberation from conventional concepts of culture as a whole,

<sup>294</sup> Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*,112,115.

Copyright © 1997 by Kunsu Shim, Düsseldorf

where "sounds are nothing but sounds." Undoubtedly, this project brings to the fore the paradoxes that are already apparent in structuralism, as they are only understandable in the light of specific tropes in North American cultural history of the twentieth century.295 The massive implied skepticism toward culturally encoded musical idiomatics, however, has been inf luential for a great diversity of artistic approaches beyond the immediate American context.

The scores of Kunsu Shim (b. 1958) surely endorse this principle most rigorously. *Cello/hören* for solo cello (1997), for example, consists of two sets of 45 minimal actions on two cello strings, each lasting two seconds, followed by six seconds of silence (Ex. 3.30). The player adopts the attitude of a listener; their movements are reduced to the bare essentials and follow an intuitively understandable action notation. In his essay "Richtungslosigkeit oder Denken der unbegrenzten Gegenwart," Shim meanders from Gilles Deleuze to Laozi, from Marina Abramović to the Korean poet Chi-Ha Kim, from Friedrich Nietzsche to John Cage, to outline this presence-focused sound perception.<sup>296</sup>

Shim's *Luf trand* (2000) for string trio (Ex. 3.31), which is to be played "placidly, with inner warmth and lightness,"297 consists, like most of the works of this period, of shorter sounds in both sections; sounds lasting three seconds each are followed by long silences (lasting for about six seconds in part A). After tuning down the strings by roughly an octave, part B introduces sound actions of f lexible duration that the performers should carry out "with the idea that the sounds occur for themselves in a timeless space: one should hear them instead of playing them."298 Again, the sound events are indicated through action notation, which also specifies fine nuances in the performers' movements.

The strict temporal isolation of sound events stems from Shim's view of the perception of music as analogous to a non-intentional listening to the acoustic environment of the natural world and everyday life. Silence, as the basis of sonority, is particularly important in this respect: it sharpens the perception of the smallest details and can contribute to the experience of the "things of life" beginning to speak. Prerequisites for this are patience, a willingness to play with one's memory and expectation, as well as a curiosity about an "in-between" time-space beyond everyday goal-directed thinking.299

Shim repeatedly refers to the traditional Asian, especially Japanese, theory of art. Among other sources, he quotes an anonymous short poem that also plays a prominent role in a standard text of 1930s nationalist Japanese aestheticism, Jun'ichiro Tanizaki's essay *In Praise of Shadows* (*In'ei Raisan*, 1933); Tanizaki quotes the poem in order to illustrate the fascination of the continuous changing of the elements in nature:

<sup>295</sup> See ibid.,112–116.

<sup>296</sup> See Shim, "Richtungslosigkeit oder Denken der unbegrenzten Gegenwart."

<sup>297</sup> Shim, *Luf trand*,score, Edition EarPort 2000, 2 ("gelassen, mit innererwärme und leichtigkeit").

<sup>298</sup> Ibid.,1("mit der vorstellung, daß die klänge fürsich selbst in einem zeitlosen raum auf tauchen: man höre sie, anstattsie zu spielen").

<sup>299</sup> See Leliwa and Stahl, *leise, frei. der komponist kunsu shim*.

Copyright © 2000 by Kunsu Shim/Edition EarPort, Düsseldorf

the brushwood we gather – stack it together, it makes a hut; pull it apart, a field once more.300

To be sure, Shim does not stop at a naïve naturalism, but sees naturalness and artificiality as interdependent; even the idea of the "artificial" is to him, paradoxically, a basic precondition for imagining the natural.

Of course, such a continuum between sound and silence, derived from nature and sound ecology, is strongly oriented toward the legacy of the American avant-garde, as evidenced by Kunsu Shim's performances, which take up elements of Fluxus in a concentrated, ritualistic form. Shim's provocations of perception are constructively condensed with the utmost precision, and in their dramaturgy they pursue precisely conceived experimental arrangements. His works are aimed at a critical moment when the perceptual-narrative modes of hearing, waiting,

<sup>300</sup> Tanizaki, *In Praise of Shadows*, 29–30. See Shim, "die kunst – verbunden und auflösen," 51 ("astwerk, / zusammengetragen und verbunden: / eine reisighütte. / aufgelöst:wie zuvor /wieder diewildnis." Shim quotesfrom the German edition Tanizaki, *Lob des Schattens*, 53–54).

remembering, and forgetting all come into conf lict with one another. His reference to Agnes Martin's structuralist constructivism,<sup>301</sup> which is endowed with extremely subtle subversive elements, describes an essential aspect of Shim's own concept of form. An archetype of his composition, as clearly demonstrated in *Sense of Measure* for four percussionists (1999), is found in a critical moment when the continuum of sounds and silences is abruptly interrupted by a very long pause at a certain point. After this pause, the continuum returns as a reminiscence of earlier material, but now suddenly new sound qualities "come to light." A central theme in Shim's music becomes particularly evident here: waiting and remembering.

#### Tendencies in Japanese Music Around the Millenium: Affirmation and Critique of the Essentialist Heritage

In Japan, too, the construction of an essentialist Japanese aesthetic, prominently elaborated, for example, in Tōru Takemitsu's middle period, inf luenced many Japanese composers, sometimes lacking critical (self-) ref lection on this essentialism and the associated culturalist polarization (→ III.4). Takemitsu himself thought deeply about this problem, but after a series of works with Japanese instruments between 1966 and 1973, finally became more and more involved in a tonally or modally oriented idiom, which suggested an institutional gravity of a Western-dominated international music business and discourse – the framework in which Takemitsu's works increasingly appeared (in and outside Japan).302

It is obvious that new Japanese music from the 1960s to the 80s cannot be reduced to a simplistic culturalist essentialism with national or nationalist resonances. Starting with Mayuzumi, a considerable number of Japanese composers have aimed at a transnational (or pan-) Asian idiom, with sources adopted from Southeast Asian musics (Akira Nishimura, Minoru Miki, Yūji Takahashi), while others have turned to particular variants of minimalism (Jō Kondō, Somei Satoh, Mamoru Fujieda). The internationalization of Japanese music was considerably promoted by transnational performance and ensemble activities that involved composers such as Maki Ishii (1936–2003) or Makoto Shinohara (b. 1931) from the 1960s and 70s onwards. It is also evident that since the 1980s and 90s, younger composers in particular increasingly no longer felt a need to face any issues of "Japaneseness" or employ material from traditional music – a kind of international "normalization" (if not standardization) that can be considered a broader characteristic of younger generations, and was discussed already in Chapter I (→ I.2).

Nevertheless, it should be noted that in Japan, since the beginning of the 1990s, a number of composers have still been very active in facing the challenges of the tension between European and Asian music cultures. The range of possibilities to act within this discourse cannot be addressed at adequate length here, and will instead be outlined in a brief comparison between the approaches of Toshio Hosokawa (b. 1955, → IV.1) and Yūji Takahashi (b. 1938, → III.4), whose work is discussed more comprehensively in other chapters of this book. The approaches of Hosokawa and Takahashi appear as two incompatible approaches to intercultural composition, yet in the sounding materiality of their works may not ultimately differ as dramatically as this conceptual divergence might suggest.

In a work representative of Hosokawa's music, such as *Landscape V* (1993) for *shō* and string quartet (→ IV.1), one can easily make out the essential characteristics of his composing that tend

<sup>301</sup> See Shim, "die kunst – verbunden und auflösen."

<sup>302</sup> Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 282–306.

*Example 3.32: Toshio Hosokawa, Koto-Uta for singer and koto, rehearsal number 4*

Copyright © 1999 by Schott Japan Company Ltd.

to solidify into a "style": the slightly roughened sound surface, for example, is composed with the concept of *sawari* in mind, which Takemitsu already singled out as a particularly cogent element of traditional Japanese music aesthetics,<sup>303</sup> and which can be experienced in the buzzing sounds of the *shamisen* or *biwa*; at the same time, Hosokawa's sound fields recall the sustained *aitake* chords of the *shō* in *gagaku* (→ IV.1). Sharp "vertical" accents are cut into this smooth surface, analogously to the beats of the ōtsuzumi drum in *nō* theater, in which the *ma*, that is, the gap between silence and sound, materializes clearly before the beat.<sup>304</sup> *Ma* exists, as it were, in the space between the hands and the drum surface. In short, therefore, Hosokawa aims to convey an abstraction of principles from different Japanese genres with the implicit claim of conveying a "core" of Japanese aesthetics.

In doing so, Hosokawa's works reveal a concept of time that is clearly derived from Japanese traditional music, involving much "blank" space between sound events, be they in the form of static textures, as in *Landscape V*, or complete silence. In his works for Japanese instruments in particular, this results partly in an overt idiomatic proximity to traditional Japanese genres, which is reinforced through collaboration with Japanese performers. In *Koto-Uta* (1999) for voice and *koto*, for example, Hosokawa explicitly refers to the traditional *koto-kumiuta* (vocal suites with *koto* accompaniment) and tries to imitate their gestures, such as a heterophony be-

<sup>303</sup> Takemitsu, "My Perception of Time." See Miyamoto, *Klang im Osten*, 131–132, Burt, *The Music of Tōru Takemitsu*, 238–240, Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 288–292, andNuss, "Hearing 'Japanese,' hearing Takemitsu."

<sup>304</sup> SeeHosokawa's discussion of *ma* quoted in Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 313–314.

tween voice and instrument as well as a loosely bound musical form (Ex. 3.32) that the composer compares to a walk in a Japanese garden, picking up another metaphor favored by Takemitsu.305

It is striking in Hosokawa's conception how he synthesizes Japanese thinking and contemporary Western aesthetics of composition so easily and without conf lict. By contrast, Yūji Takahashi's music, which, as shown in Chapter III.4, has also frequently featured Japanese instruments since the late 1980s, develops more critical and "unruly" methods in order to fundamentally oppose both the essentialist Japanese discourse and the standardizing Western discourse. In his works for reconstructed archaic instruments and for *shamisen*, for example, Takahashi has recreated an imaginary performance practice or imaginary genres by going back to elemental performance movements and instrumental practices (→ III.4; IV.1).306 In another concept, he has "overlaid" original traditional music, such as the *shamisen* and vocal parts of Yamada Kengyō's (1757–1817) classic *Nasuno* (written around 1800) in *Nasuno kasane* (*Nasuno* overlaid, 1997) for *shamisen*/voice, violin, and piano, which is based on *Nasuno ryōjō* (*Nasuno*  surrounded, 1992) for *shamisen*/voice and computer. Takahashi adds extensions, irritations, and inserts around Yamada's original *shamisen* and vocal lines, and creates a dense simultaneity full of unexpected interrelations (Ex. 3.33). In the instrumental version, the computer part is transcribed for violin and piano. The piano and violin parts are sometimes connected to the original layer, but also proceed independently at times. Wave-like emergence and retreat create a wider perspective on the original, simultaneously expressing closeness and distance.

As discussed earlier, the conceptualization of one's own cultural difference and uniqueness, including gross exaggeration and self-exoticization, has a long tradition in Japan,<sup>307</sup> and seems inextricably linked to the speed and perfection in the appropriation and consolidation of Western models of civilization in Japanese society since the Meiji restoration of 1868 (→ I.2, III.1).308 Japanese composers were often receptive to these conceptualizations of Japanese culture, so much so that many developed a great interest in Tsunoda Tadanobu's abstruse pseudo-physiological theory of a supposedly "Japanese brain" that would be more receptive to noise-suffused sounds, as represented by the *shamisen*'s or *biwa*'s *sawari* timbre.309 In Japanese modernity, orthodox Japanese aesthetics, with the key concepts of *ma*, *sawari*, *sabi*, or *yugen*, were frequently employed by cultural figures (as in the case of Toshirō Mayuzumi, → II.5) for right-wing nationalist political purposes. Takahashi, in contrast, was strongly committed to the left during the 1970s and 80s. As a consequence, he increasingly made social communication the subject of his composing, and developed a fundamental compositional critique of this new Japanese culturalism (→ III.4). Against this background, we can sense that the way in which Japanese composers contributed to the history and techniques of intercultural composition cannot be reduced to simplistic forms of appropriation, but is rather entangled in a web of cross-relations with political and cultural tropes within and beyond discourses on "Japaneseness."

<sup>305</sup> Hosokawa, "*Koto-uta*." See particularly Takemitsu, "Dream andNumber."

<sup>306</sup> See Takahashi, "Two Statements on Music."

<sup>307</sup> See, among others,Hijiya-Kirschnereit, *Das Ende der Exotik*,13–16.

<sup>308</sup> See Shimada, *Grenzgänge – Fremdgänge*.

<sup>309</sup> Tsunoda, *The Japanese Brain*. SeeNuss, "Hearing 'Japanese,' hearing Takemitsu."

*Example 3.33: Yūji Takahashi, Nasuno kasane, excerpt*

Copyright © 1997 by Yūji Takahashi, Tokyo

#### Conclusion: The Limitations of Musical Narrative in an Intercultural Context

The models of intercultural musical narrativity derived from the analytical snapshots discussed here seem generally plausible at the level of the musical "foreground": we hear "gestural types,"310 which are combined to form a chain of (pseudo-)causalities and thus narrative threads in an intercultural field of tension: tone color fusion or divergence, balanced dialogues or independent monologues, harmonization, conf lict, or even aggression between the instrumental or sound groups are comprehensible, and are extrapolated to more general cultural dimensions, often due to a bi- or multi-cultural instrumentation. We derive these mean-

<sup>310</sup> See Hatten, *Interpreting Musical Gestures* and Gritten and King, *Music and Gesture*.

ings above all from our "extra-opus" experiences with comparable gestural types in other works of Western or Asian music. The extent to which these meanings have to be conveyed or "translated" can hardly be answered in general terms. In our examples, the composers seem to want to ensure that the "gestural" narrative threads that are spun remain largely unequivocal. Yet the objection could be formulated that the semanticizations of musical material through structural abstraction and condensation (Qin Wenchen, Bonu Koo, Eun-Hye Kim), montage (Tan Dun, Zhu Jian'er, Yūji Takahashi), sound-silence enactment (Kunsu Shim, Toshio Hosokawa), or sound-noise boundaries (Chen Xiaoyong) cannot be called interculturally "narrative" to the same extent as purely gestural levels. This is countered by the cognitive principle that listening to music tends to correlate heterogeneous signals in an act of synthesis rather than recognizing a fundamental difference between them. This cognitive reasoning can also be extended to the question of aural-cultural hierarchies: a listening process without the formation of hierarchies between weaker and stronger "signals" is almost unthinkable, a phenomenon that the psychology of music classifies as "salience." While attempts to question cultural hierarchies in most of the works discussed here may be successful at first glance, this cannot prevent the new work, its key events, and its arrangement of sound elements from building new hierarchical environments that obscure the narrative threads of cultural identities to a considerable extent. This raises the question of whether harmonic, tonal, and rhythmic models, which refer to certain listening and intellectual traditions – such as contemporary, classical, traditional or popular Chinese/Korean/Japanese or Western music – do not, in turn, tend to establish new hierarchical discourses of power and exclusion (→ V.3, VI.4).

#### **6. The Impact of Traditional Music on Composition in Taiwan since the Postwar Period**

#### The General Conditions of Contemporary Music in Taiwan and the Implications of its Historical Development since 1950

During the frequently cited "Taiwan Miracle" of the 1970s (called "Ilha Formosa" by Portuguese seafarers in 1583311 and shaped by a changeable history since then) a huge wave of Westernization hit Taiwan. In light of the previous modernization during Japanese colonial rule (1895– 1945) and under the Western-oriented *Guomindang* (*Kuomintang*; Chinese National Party; KMT) since 1945, this "miracle" is mostly described today as a simple consequence of a state-controlled economic infrastructure.312 Although there was serious conf lict after 1945 between new "immigrants" from mainland China and "Taiwanese" (Han Chinese living in Taiwan before 1945 and their descendants) as well as the aboriginal peoples, the pro-Western attitude of the government was never seriously questioned in Taiwan, and was consolidated by Cold War politics in sharp contrast to the mainland's isolationism during the 1960s and early 1970s. As a result, American (pop) culture has been especially inf luential since the beginning of the postwar pe-

<sup>311</sup> Weggel, *Die Geschichte Taiwans*, 5.

<sup>312</sup> General representations of Taiwan's history are provided by Weggel, *Die Geschichte Taiwans* and Rubinstein, *Taiwan: A New History*.

riod, not least owing to the specific strained political situation in Taiwan during the Cold War period: its direct and irreconcilable confrontation with the political system of the mainland.313

The emphasis on a market economy, the utilitarian direction of government policies, and an all-encompassing business-like lifestyle have sometimes made it difficult for contemporary and traditional Taiwanese arts to prosper. Although a small number of Taiwanese artists – primarily film directors like Hou Hsiao-Hsien (Hou Xiaoxian) and Lee Ang (Li An) or choreographers such as Lin Hwai-Min, and to some extent also writers like Bo Yang and Li Ang – have found appreciation on the international scene, Taiwanese art music has been in a less privileged situation from the beginning.314 This is partly due to the difference between performance modes of contemporary music and traditional music in Taiwanese culture (genres of traditional music are mostly of Han Chinese origin), where music generally had a significant social, religious, or spiritual function in daily life. This gap appears to be more significant than the changes between traditional painting, poetry, or prose and their modern, Westernized successors.

Such considerations may shed light on why the visual arts and literature did not have the same problems attracting public interest as new Taiwanese music, despite a general public skepticism toward modernism in the arts during the postwar decades up to the 1990s. Of course, the "isolation" of new music is a social phenomenon that – partly in a targeted manner but partly also exaggerated in some research<sup>315</sup> – has shaped the situation of advanced music worldwide since 1945, including in the West. And yet some specifics of the situation in Taiwan can be pinpointed, which will become evident in the course of the following discussion.

A first overview of twentieth-century Taiwanese music may be obtained here by listing key proponents of three generations of Taiwanese composers in Table 3.5, which simplifies a division into six generations as outlined in some historical studies.316 The composers of the first group (born between 1900 and 1939) brought Western music to Taiwan. In the 1960s and 1970s, some of them were involved in a new exploration of traditional Chinese and Taiwanese music as sources of musical composition and in the founding of basic music institutions. The second group of composers (born between 1940 and 1955) was able to build upon this basic infrastructure, undertaking more comprehensive studies in Europe or the USA, and therefore represented a new kind of "professionalism" that often also extended to traditional non-Western music genres. The composers of the third, and presently largest, group (composers born between 1955 and 1980) have had the most comprehensive formal education, mostly in Taiwan and abroad. Many composers of this generation are predominantly Western-oriented, and a significant incorporation of traditional Asian or other non-Western art forms can be observed only in rare individual cases.

<sup>313</sup> A precise analysis of Taiwan's postwarcultural development and cultural influences on Taiwan can be found in Winckler, "Cultural Policy in Postwar Taiwan."

<sup>314</sup> For modern Taiwanese literature and film,see Martin, *The History of Taiwanese Literature*, Martin, *Taiwanesische Literatur* and Widmer and Wang, *From May Fourth to June Fourth: Fiction and Film in Twentieth Century China*.

<sup>315</sup> See Custodis, *Die soziale Isolation der neuen Musik*.

<sup>316</sup> See Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 126–268, Hsu, "Republic of China," and Liao, "Héritages culturels et pensée moderne," 307–320.


*Table 3.5: Three generation groups of Taiwanese composers*

Although the history of Western-inf luenced Taiwanese music certainly began early in the twentieth century during Japanese colonization, one can probably only speak of "new music" in Taiwan from the late 1960s onwards.317 Its early key figure is Hsu Tsang-Houei (1929–2001), who returned from his studies in Paris in 1959 and quickly became the defining personality of Taiwanese musical life. In Taiwan, the 1950s were long regarded as a "lost decade" in terms of cultural development which, of course, might also be said of developments in China and other Asian countries to some extent; the polemical term of the "cultural desert" (*wenhua shamo*) was only later included in the public discussion,<sup>318</sup> but dates from this period.

The activities of Hsu Tsang-Houei, who had studied in Paris with André Jolivet and Olivier Messiaen (1954–59), were decisive for the establishment of a Taiwanese musical identity. *Deux Poèmes* for soprano and chamber ensemble op. 5, which Hsu wrote in 1958 while still studying in Paris, demonstrates this search for an identity between Japanese, Chinese, and French cultures through the use of texts by a Chinese and a Japanese poet (Chen Xiaoxi and Yumiko Takada). The polymodal structure in the second song "En revenant de la mer, hier" (*Zuori haishang lai* / *Kinō umi kara*) is, given the tabula rasa in Taiwan's modern music at that point, a daring experiment that can be traced back to Messiaen's polymodal techniques. The soloist is entwined with a f luctuating modal network in the string quartet.

That even such a "soft" modernism led to some small scandals in the early 1960s (see below) demonstrates that Taiwan had, at that point, hardly been touched by modernist thought. Hsu subsequently gave decisive impulses for younger composers by organizing groups of compo-

<sup>317</sup> For basic studies on the history of Taiwan's twentieth-century music, see Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 187–229, Mittler, "Mirrors and Double Mirrors," Liu, *A Critical History of New Music in China*, 545–566, Lee, "Taiwan" ["IV. Musikpflege seit dem Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts"], Han, "4. Western art music," Chang, "Taiwan 'xiandai yinyue' 1945–1995," Hsu, *Taiwan yinyueshi chugao*, Lü, *Taiwan yinyueshi*, 149–207, 497–517, and especially Liao, "Héritagesculturels et pensée moderne."

<sup>318</sup> The writer Chen Ruoxi coined this polemical formulation in the 1960s before she remigrated to China during the Cultural Revolution (Martin, *Taiwanesische Literatur*, 55). It was already widespread in the 1950s, however (Winckler, "Cultural Policy in Postwar Taiwan," 31).

sers based on the Japanese model and establishing a Taiwanese ethnomusicology. The composers' groups were based on similar alliances of young Taiwanese painters such as *Dongfang huahui* (Eastern Painters) or *Wu yue huahui* (Painters of May). The most important composers' groups emerging in this period were *Zhi yue xiao ji* (Composers' Forum, 1961–72), *Wu ren yueji* (Five-Man Music Group, 1965–67), *Xin yue chu zou* (Music Premiere, 1961–62), *Jianglan yueji* (Jianglang Music Group, 1963–65), and *Xiangrikui yuehui* (Sunf lower Group, 1968–71). Above all, the Composers' Forum enabled younger composers to present their works to a limited public in the 1960s and early 1970s. The music composed, however, was still largely defined by a Romantic orchestral and song style seasoned with pentatonicism, oriented toward the prewar styles of composers such as Xiao Youmei (1884–1940) and Huang Zi (1904–1938), which had been "imported" by mainland Chinese musicians in 1949.319

How sustainable the artistic and institutional development of the 1960s was can be measured by a comparison to works of the early 1970s. Efforts to forge links with local traditions played an increasingly important part during the 1960s. An important prerequisite for these new links was the fieldwork conducted by the composers Hsu Tsang-Houei and Shi Wei-Liang (1925–1977) in 1966/67. Their work was part of the *Minge caiji yundong* ("Folk Song Collection Movement"), which placed a special focus on the music of indigenous peoples for the first time since Japanese colonial rule. Hsu's ongoing inf luence as a teacher at the National Taiwan Normal University (*Guoli Shifan Daxue*) and Shi's founding of the *Xiandai yuefu* (Modern Music Bureau) in 1973, which aimed to combine traditional and contemporary music, were crucial for promoting these activities further.320 The *Xiandai yuefu* – established while Shi was conductor of the Taiwan Provincial Symphony Orchestra (*Taiwan sheng jiaoxiang yuetuan*) and named after the famous music department at the Chinese imperial court of the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) – explicitly encouraged Chinese and Taiwanese to incorporate musical traditions into the compositional process. Although the music performed by the *Xiandai yuefu* probably did not depart much from the more conservative style of the time,<sup>321</sup> it had some impact on subsequent developments: it served as one of the starting points for the choreographer Lin Hwai-Min (b. 1947) to found his dance troupe Cloud Gate Theater (*Yunmen wuji*) at the end of 1973.322 In the following years, the dance productions of this group made it possible for a small avant-garde around composers such as Lee Tai-Hsiang (1941–2014) and Hsu Po-Yun (b. 1944) to perform larger-scale works at a time when such opportunities were still very limited.

The more experimental spirit of this period was supported not least by the rise of *Xiangtu wenxue* (Nativist Literature),323 which called for a ref lection on a local Taiwanese identity follow-

<sup>319</sup> Chang, "Taiwan 'xiandai yinyue' 1945–1995," 390. On Xiao Youmei and Huang Zi see Melvin and Cai, *Rhapsody in Red*, 92–115.

<sup>320</sup> Shi Wei-Liang returned to Taiwan in 1966 from studies in Vienna and Stuttgart. Hsu's and Shi's ef forts to document Taiwanese folk songs were initially supported privately by Fan Chi-Yun, as the government had refused to fund the project (Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 192). Hsu and Shi founded the Society for Chinese Folk Music Research (*Zhongguo minzu yinyue yanjiushe*) in 1967 and subsequently collected more than 2,000 songs (Chang, "Taiwan 'xiandai yinyue' 1945–1995," 394–395). A course in ethnomusicology was first established at Donghai University in 1971.

<sup>321</sup> Criticism of the *Xiandai yuefu*'s first concert in July 1973 is mentioned in You, "Taiwan jin sanshi nian 'xiandai yinyue'fazhan," 94 andMittler,*Dangerous Tunes*, 201–202. You also provides general information on the *Xiandai yuefu* ("Taiwan jin sanshi nian 'xiandai yinyue' fazhan," 91–102).

<sup>322</sup> Chang, "Taiwan 'xiandai yinyue'1945–1995," 395.

<sup>323</sup> See Martin, *Taiwanesische Literatur*.

ing the "Nixon Shock" in 1971 and the exclusion of Taiwan from the United Nations. For this reason, a distinction between Western and Chinese cultural models was increasingly sought. Writers such as Wang Tuoh (1944–2016) and Huang Chun-Ming (b. 1935) opposed the repression of the authoritarian KMT and developed an aesthetic alternative to the conservative "Cultural Renewal Movement" (*Wenhua fuxing yundong*) of the KMT government from 1966 and the restrictive cultural policy of the 1960s. Yet other groups, such as the Cloud Gate Dance Theater, tried to counteract polarization by highlighting similarities between archaic Chinese and contemporary Taiwanese culture.

In the realm of art music, however, it seems that the impact of the *xiangtu* movement was not as marked as is sometimes assumed. References to "indigenous" Taiwanese culture (as opposed to Mainland Chinese and Western culture) in compositions dating from the 1970s are very rare. Instead, there are frequent references to the legacy of (mainland) Chinese culture, most often to its much-revered archaic periods (for example, in Hsu Po-Yun's *Han shi* or in Lee Tai-Hsiang's *Da shenji*, see below). This tendency was partly due to the specific topics selected by Cloud Gate and other performance groups, which did, however, occasionally include more specific Taiwanese themes as well.324 On the threshold of songwriter and pop culture, by contrast, "root-seeking" led to a new wave of songs sung in the Taiwanese dialect that became very popular.

In any case, music in Taiwan was certainly a political matter during the 1970s. In particular, the use of folk songs from both China (suspected of communist sympathy) and Taiwan (interpretable as support for Taiwanese independence) was viewed with suspicion by the powerful. The Yayin opera group, which had set itself the goal of reforming Beijing Opera, was accused of imitating the model works of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.325 But the nervous energy that was set free at that time (peaking after the Formosa incident in 1979326) and the increasingly open criticism of authoritarian governmental rule had some effects on contemporary music. Among the results were the performance series New Environment of Asian Music (*Yazhou yinyue de xin huanjing*) by Hsu Po-Yun in 1977, and the Tradition and Prospect concert series (*Chuantong yu zhanwang*, 1978–90) organized by Lee Tai-Hsiang.

The establishment of state and private music institutions in the 1980s was a sign of increasing cultural responsibility and prosperity, which, however, did not necessarily improve the situation of new music immediately. These included the State Council of Cultural Planning and Development (CCPD, 1982; today Council for Cultural Affairs;327 cultural agendas had previously been taken over by the Ministry of Education), the National Institute of the Arts (*Guoli yishu xueyuan*, 1982; today: *Taibei yishu daxue*/Taipei National University of the Arts), the National Cultural Center (1987), and the Taiwanese section of the ISCM (International Society for Contemporary Music), founded in 1989 by Pan Hwang-Long (b. 1945, see below). The National

<sup>324</sup> Chang, "Taiwan 'xiandai yinyue'1945–1995," 394–395.

<sup>325</sup> Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*,191.

<sup>326</sup> The "Formosa incident," also known as the "Kaohsiung incident," refers to events that occurred in 1979 as a result of a demonstration by the non-partisan political opposition (*dangwai*). Activistsfrom the *dangwai-* founded *Formosa* magazine in May 1979 and demonstrated against martial law and human rights violations on International Human Rights Day (10/12/1979). Three days af ter this demonstration, 152 exponents of the *dangwai* movement were arrested, including many of the later leaders of the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party); see Weggel, *Die Geschichte Taiwans* 205–207 aswell as Reinhardt, *Politische Opposition in Taiwan 1947–1988*.

<sup>327</sup> The Council of Cultural Af fairs consists of a number of foundations, of which the National Culture and Arts Foundation (*Guojia wenhua yishu jijinhui*) isthe most important.

Concert Hall and the National Theater, representative new buildings in traditional Chinese architecture in the center of the capital Taipei, were opened in 1987, although at first they did not provide sufficient programming or audience attractions.328 While new radio programs and a growing number of composition commissions were beginning to stabilize the situation of new art music in the late 1980s, it remained socially marginalized.

#### Problems of Taiwanese Cultural Identity and the Two-Pronged Discourse of Traditional and Contemporary Music

This brief historical survey shows that the question of cultural identity has played an important part for most Taiwanese artists from the beginning, and that it has done so in various distinct ways. This question is charged with tensions for a number of reasons. On the one hand, they result from the mingling of ethnic and social groups in Taiwan, including the aboriginal peoples of Austronesian origin (*yuanzhumin*), the "Taiwanese" (Han people who lived in Taiwan before 1945), the "Chinese" (Mainland Chinese who moved to Taiwan from 1945 on, a large number of them – around one million – in 1949, along with Chiang Kai-Chek's troops, who f led communist troops after their defeat in the civil war), and the Hakka (*Kejia*). While the specific identity and unique traits of the aboriginal and Hakka minorities (often more in theory than in fact) has become largely accepted, the conf lict between "Taiwanese" and "Chinese" groups is unresolved, dating back to the "228-incident" of 1947, in which more than 10,000 native Taiwanese were killed by Chinese forces.329 Subsequently, there have been decades of authoritarian repression of a specific Taiwanese culture and language by the KMT government, which ruled solely by "martial law" for 38 years, from 18 May 1949 to 14 July 1987. Although there seem to be signs of reconciliation, this conf lict still cuts across Taiwanese society today and considerably complicates the question of Taiwanese identity, primarily because of its instrumentalization by political parties, regularly fueled by the mainland's "One-China policy" and threats to occupy Taiwan by military force.

It is clear that against this background, anyone who seeks to define "traditional music" encounters difficulties. Overviews make it clear that, with the exception of the music of the indigenous groups, which has caused a stir in the field of ethnomusicology at least since the copyright lawsuit against the pop group Enigma,330 all music genres practiced in Taiwan have come from mainland China at some point over the centuries. Of course, genres such as *beiguan*, *nanguan*, *gezaixi* (Taiwanese Opera), or *jingju* (Beijing Opera) have developed quite differently from their mainland counterparts during the past 70 years; one could surely argue that the way they are performed now is "typically" Taiwanese. The above-mentioned problems of social marginalization, however, equally apply to most forms of traditional music: they do not fit into the economically dominated Taiwanese society, and their future as part of a Taiwanese identity therefore is not secure at all. It is also unclear whether the growing institutionalization of traditional music can counteract this or is rather part of this marginalization process.

Against this background, one might assume that new art music and traditional music in Taiwan, in their incommensurability and alterity in relation to processes in society and to in-

<sup>328</sup> Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*,196.

<sup>329</sup> Weggel, *Die Geschichte Taiwans*, 95–98. Under the government of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and President Chen Shui-Bian (2000–2008), 28 February was declared a national holiday and a culture of remembrance began to establish a collective memory of this event.

<sup>330</sup> See more detail in Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 33–38.

dustrially marketed music forms, perform the critical function of a counterdiscourse. It must be taken into account here, of course, that a "pure" or "authentic" form cannot be constructed in either area, but that both – together with their more popular variants – are involved in a process of continued recontextualization and reinterpretation of musical-cultural artifacts, and they inevitably, owing to their institutionalization,<sup>331</sup> interact with societal processes as a whole. Mixed forms in particular are often under commercial pressure, and thus create a broad forum for, for example, aesthetically questionable arrangements of traditional music in a neo-Romantic guise, as evident from the tradition of the Chinese orchestra since its inception (→ III.1).

Baldly "conservative" arguments from both areas of course fall short. One cannot "preserve" a local performance tradition or a self-referential avant-garde idiom, because neither ever existed in a pure form. The advice to return to one's "roots" and to study one's "own" traditions was thus only sporadic among the composers born in the 1950s – a skepticism toward any form of instrumentalization of "tradition" prevailed as, in Taiwan, this term had been used too often as a nostalgic reminder of the Chinese "motherland" during the decades of the Cold War.

Against this background, it becomes clear that aesthetically independent art music can only be produced in this situation by a small avant-garde, which ultimately frees itself to some degree from local cultural-political and market-oriented needs without having to pay homage to an illusory concept of musical autonomy. Although the term "avant-garde" was dismissed in an earlier chapter of this book (→ II.1), it may have a certain relevance to the situation in Taiwan in the 1970s if one steps back to some degree from its transnational contexts: the term can be used to describe a form of musical creativity that self-confidently emancipates from dominant cultural discourses, a kind of creativity that – though often with limited international impact – eloquently challenges the global dominance of Western music as well as simplified forms of nationalist or folkloristic aesthetics.

#### Taiwan's Small Avant-Garde During the 1970s and After – The Works of Lee Tai-Hsiang, Hsu Po-Yun, and Pan Hwang-Long

Undoubtedly, some of the most remarkable connections between new and traditional music emerged in Taiwan during the 1970s, though this phase should certainly not be idealized,332 as the avant-garde achievements in this period faced massive social resistance, even among composer colleagues. I will examine the paradigmatic developments of Lee Tai-Hsiang, Hsu Po-Yun, and Pan Hwang-Long, who all began their careers in the 1970s. Despite their very different backgrounds, some of their works share the quality of exposing traces of the historical moment in a special way in their sound structures.

For Lee Tai-Hsiang,333 a member of the aboriginal Ami people, his relationship to the *bentu*  culture, the local culture of Taiwan, has evidently been of great importance from the outset.

<sup>331</sup> See ibid., 31–33.

<sup>332</sup> Chang Chi-Jen's excellent investigation (Chang, "Taiwan 'xiandai yinyue' 1945–1995") sometimes tends to do this.

<sup>333</sup> Basic information in this section comes from an in-depth personal conversation between the author and Lee Tai-Hsiang in Taipei (23/05/2000). An extensive biographical presentation in Chinese appeared in 2002: Chiou, *Li Taixiang*. For Lee Tai-Hsiang see also Mittler, "Mirrors and Double Mirrors," 16–17, Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 205–213, Mittler, "Li Taixiang," Ka, "Gaoshan liushui," and You, "Taiwan jin sanshi nian 'xiandai yinyue' fazhan," 48–49,157–165. Extensive information and documents about Lee are available as part of theNational

Although his family moved from Taidong to Taipei when he was only four years old, he regularly met *gezaixi* and *budaixi* (puppet show) performers, and their sounds and language formed a natural part of his childhood's acoustic environment. Western music dominated his youth: he was a talented violin player and received early support from his teacher Chen Ching-Gang. After graduation he became concertmaster of the Taipei Symphony, and from 1969 to 1971 he was conductor of the *Taiwan sheng jiaoxiang yuetuan* (Taiwan Provincial Symphony Orchestra).

Only when he was 17 years old did he return to Taidong and consciously listen to Ami music. At that time, he also entered the National Academy of the Arts (*Guoli yishu zhuanke xuexiao*, today named *Guoli Taiwan yishu daxue*/National Taiwan University of the Arts) to study printmaking and, later, composition. His earliest compositions were stylistic copies of Corelli, Mozart, Schubert, and Brahms. In 1964 he had a crucial encounter with Hsu Tsang-Houei, who essentially told him two things: first, he should draw his music from his own origins; second, his music should be "much newer… even newer than Bartók."334 As a result, Lee's series of works *Long Wu* (1970–72) was written for various Chinese instruments, a first, still quite simple attempt to use these traditional "sound media." A more mature step to incorporate traditional elements can be found in the short piano trio *Yunxing sanbian* (Evolution: Three Chapters), composed in 1971 and later integrated into a performance at the Cloud Gate Theater.335 The work captivates the listener with the multitude of extended, "performative" playing techniques (playing inside the piano, beating and scratching the strings, "toneless" sounds, etc.), which were a novelty in the Taiwanese context. The fact that Lee tried to combine these techniques with an adaptation of the *luogu dianzi* patterns from the Beijing Opera drum ensemble (*wuchang*) <sup>336</sup> (→ III.4) shows how consciously he was striving at the time for a synthesis of Western avant-garde and Chinese tradition. In the third part of the trio (Ex. 3.34), Lee develops a pattern based on the sequence of *jingju* percussive syllables *cang* (a firm beat on the *daluo* large gong, *xiaoluo* small gong, and *ba* cymbals) and *qi* (a firm clash of the cymbals), transformed into repeated chords (piano, later violin) and structured by irregular accents from the other instruments.

While Lee associated the scattered sounds produced by extended playing techniques with the calligraphic principle of *liu bai* (white space within and between the drawn lines is considered the essence of the calligraphic artwork), the melodic design in the first movement (Ex. 3.35) suggests the vocal inf lections of Beijing Opera's spoken and frequently sliding vocal style *yunbai* (→ V.1).

Lee's trio can be described as a remarkable experiment considering the historical situation in which it appeared. The time from 1973 to 1975 was decisive for Lee's musical development. He developed his principal aesthetic ideas based on a unique combination of American-inf luenced experimental art and traditional Chinese philosophy. Supported by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1973/74, Lee delved into the experimental approach during a stay at the Center for Music Experiment (CME) at the University of California, San Diego, which was founded in 1972 and directed by Roger Reynolds from 1972 to 1975.337 Here, Lee took part in weekly rehear-

Digital Archives Program, Taiwan: http://lth.e-lib.nctu.edu.tw/en/bio-1.htm. See also http://musiciantw.ncf ta. gov.tw/list.aspx?c=4&p=M020 and http://baike.baidu.com/view/1107817.htm.

<sup>334</sup> Personalcommunication, Taipei, 23/5/2000.

<sup>335</sup> You, "Taiwan jin sanshi nian 'xiandai yinyue' fazhan,"157–165; Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 208–209.

<sup>336</sup> On the reception of the *luogu dianzi* by Chinese composers,see Rao, "The Tradition of *Luogu Dianzi*."

<sup>337</sup> TheCMEwasfoundedin1972 asProjectforMusicExperiment andrenamedCenterforMusicExperiment(CME) in 1973; it was initially funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1993 it was renamed the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts(CRCA). Within the CME, among others, the Studio for Extended Performance, the

*Example 3.34: Lee Tai-Hsiang, Yunxing sanbian, III, staf f systems 1–2*

*Example 3.35: Lee Tai-Hsiang, Yunxing sanbian, I, staf f system 6*

Copyright © 1973 by Lee Tai-Hsiang, Taipei

sals and performances of new works, including his own, and, in line with the trend of the time, dealt with electronic music, Indian and Tibetan music, meditation, dance, photography, and multimedia performance concepts.

In linking these impressions back to the terminology of the Chinese philosophical tradition, he developed a compositional approach that he characterized with the terms *kenengxing* (potentiality), *budingxing* (indeterminacy), and *kebianxing* (variability). Another key experience was reading an article by the Japanese composer and pianist Yūji Takahashi (→ III.4) that Lee said he read in *Time* in December 1974.338 Takahashi's article made him realize that he was looking for an "abstraction" of his own tradition, that the coloristic representation of tradition, criticized by Takahashi, also appeared to be unsatisfactory and insufficient to him. Lee believed that Chinese or Japanese instruments should not be used because of their special "color" or by simply transferring modern playing techniques originally developed for Western in-struments onto them; rather, he insisted that composers truly appreciate them and study their proper traditions. Lee saw the particularities of Chinese elements in the fact that they are able to express the aesthetic concepts of *yun* (rhyme, phrase, inf lection) and *kongjian* (empty space), so that they ultimately lead to *xu yin* (empty sound), to silence. *Yun* finds its most concrete manifestation in the ideal of a steadily changing pitch and tone color inherent in almost all genres of Chinese music. The "music of the void" meanwhile serves as the foundation on which all "real, continuous sounds" (*shi yin*) rest, and they must therefore be perceived as symbols of cosmic forces. The idea that all sounds, or basically all acoustic phenomena, are a representation of a natural cosmic principle according to Lee was a crucial key to understanding the Chinese perception of music, especially as transmitted in Daoist aesthetics.

*Yu – Chan – Ximen ding* (Rain – Zen – Ximen Market, 1975), *Da Shenji* (Great Ritual, 1975), and *Taixuyin* (Sound of the Great Void, 1979/97), Lee Tai-Hsiang's key works of the 1970s, probably represent his most successful and ambitious attempts to synthesize these two major starting points, the experimental avant-garde and Daoist thought. *Yu – Chan – Ximen ding* is a rare example of Taiwanese *musique concrète*, and accentuates dynamic and atmospheric contrasts by combining silence in the second movement ("Zen") with the noisy acoustic environment of Taipei's *Ximen* district in the third. The piece caused confusion in the audience at the eventful Taipei performance of 1975, shortly after Lee's return from the USA, featuring four tape machines, two vocalists, and also the illustration of rain (first movement) by throwing torn-up newspapers into the audience.<sup>339</sup>

The large-scale work *Da Shenji* was commissioned by the Cloud Gate Dance Theater for the production *Wu Feng* (1976). It clearly shows Lee's engagement with American minimalism: the "gamelan-like" instrumentation and structure overlaps *ostinati* of different lengths, which are based on different basic time values (Ex. 3.36).

While the dominance of the percussion ensemble and the mostly "shouting" voices establish a general "tribal" atmosphere, the interlocked dialogues of solo voices and choir, with their fre-

Extended Vocal Techniques Ensemble (EVTE), and the KIVA Improvisation Ensemble were founded. In 1977, a department forcomputer music was opened under the direction of Pauline Oliveros. See https://library.ucsd. edu/dc/collection/bb10936072.

<sup>338</sup> Personalcommunicationwith the author, Taipei, 23/5/2000. Takahashi had returned to Japan from a nine-year stay in the USA, where he had contact with Roger Reynolds, among others, and Europe. During this period, Takahashi edited the magazine *TransSonic*(1974–76). Iwas unable to verify the article in *Time*.

<sup>339</sup> Ka, "Gaoshan liushui," 3–4, Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 210.

*Example 3.36: Lee Tai-Hsiang, Da Shenji, II, Chengren li (Initiation Ritual), mm. 37–45*

Copyright © 1986 by Lee Tai-Hsiang, Taipei

*Example 3.37: Lee Tai-Hsiang, Da Shenji, III, Qi ge (Worship), voices, mm. 55–63*


Copyright © 1986 by Lee Tai-Hsiang, Taipei

quently skipping and sliding qualities, demonstrate Lee's attempt to incorporate structures from Ami music in the third movement (Ex. 3.37).

Lee Tai-Hsiang's scores often resemble sketches; *Taixuyin* (1979) mainly consists of graphic notation and verbal instructions, which also relate to choreographic elements. The beginning of the work creates vocal sound from breath and buzzing noises.340 Performers of Lee Tai-Hsiang's music confirm that his works develop progressively during rehearsals, even when there is a more fixed score at the beginning.

The predominance of minimalist patterns in *Da Shenji* and *Taixuyin* can probably be linked to the choreography of the Cloud Gate Dance Theater. These inf luences make Barbara Mittler's claim that Lee "incorporated"341 Ami music in these works rather questionable. The music of the

<sup>340</sup> See Mittler, "Mirrors and Double Mirrors,"17.

<sup>341</sup> Ibid., 16.

#### 274 Musical Composition in the Context of Globalization

Ami actually contains few repetitive patterns and is characterized by its free and complex form of polyphony, which hardly allows for such minimalist music to be derived from it.342 Lee himself admitted that the Ami inf luence is not substantial in these works. He felt that it is much more difficult to synthesize Ami tradition and Western composition than to synthesize Chinese and Western aesthetics. There is no doubt, however, that something of the "atmosphere" of Ami music is preserved in Lee's thinking and musical writing, as the introductory text for the second part of *Taixuyin* (1997) puts it:

Thiscomposition isfundamentally an enormoussong.

The expression of the song consists of linguisticlinearity, aboriginalsinging, and various expressions progressing in dif ferent patterns.

This work originates in Chinese literature and painting, with the music flowing endlessly like a landscape and the calligraphicstrokesin a Chinese art masterpiece.

The composition is based on the structure of movement, and there are no architectural limits or frames of reference. It describesthe continuous movement of airflowand the phenomena of self-preservation and self-destruction; the longer the performance, the larger the composition.

It describesrelativity rather than absoluteness.

The audience iswelcome to participate during the performance.

If more elements are added in each performance, the outcome…343

Lee also realized similar projects in cooperation with the American percussionist Michael Ranta (b. 1942), who had worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Jean-Claude Eloy, and Helmut Lachenmann, and lived in Taiwan for seven years (1973–79).344 Ranta subsequently invited Lee Tai-Hsiang to Germany, where Lee participated in a concert in Vlotho in October 1979 and realized *Huanjing san zhang* (Three Fantasy Landscapes, 1979) for voices, Chinese instruments, and percussion together with Ranta.<sup>345</sup>

Lee had already begun writing pop songs in the mid-1960s to "change the atmosphere in society," to "raise the level of popular music," and to "build a bridge to serious music."<sup>346</sup> In these pop songs, which can be seen as part of a "songwriter movement" at Taiwanese universities, there is now a much more conscious construction of local Taiwanese identity. In the 1970s, some of these songs caused political controversy, for example because Lee used the image of the sun in *Yi tiao riguang dadao* (A Sunbeam Path into the Future), which was heavily loaded as a symbol of China's Mao Zedong propaganda.347 His most famous song *Ganlanshu* (Olive Tree,

<sup>342</sup> Loh, "Tribal Music of Taiwan," of fers a fundamentalstudy of Ami music.

<sup>343</sup> Lee Tai-Hsiang, program booklet, March 1998; Lee Tai-Hsiang Private Archives, translation by the author.

<sup>344</sup> See Ranta, "Zeitgenössische Musik in Ostasien – vier Regionen," 38–39, 42–44.

<sup>345</sup> A recording of the third movement was published on the LP *Weltmusik – Resonanz* (Feedback; Telefunken / Decca 1980).

<sup>346</sup> Ka, "Gaoshan liushui," 2–3. Translated by the author.

<sup>347</sup> Mittler, "Mirrors and Double Mirrors," 16.

1976) was criticized for its "nonaffirmative" language.348 Even if the boundaries between Lee's pop songs and his "serious" music seemed to be largely blurred, the shift toward songwriting led to a significant decline in Lee's avant-garde compositions. Lee, who never held an academic position, justified this change not least by economic necessity, which was also ref lected in his activities as a film music composer.349

Hsu Po-Yun350 grew up in a cosmopolitan environment and was involved in internationally oriented cultural-political activities early on. He was active in the composers' groups of the 1960s and founded a number of cultural organizations, in particular the New Aspect Cultural and Educational Foundation (*Xin xiang wenjiao jijinhui*, 1978); he was also involved in the founding of the Asian Composers League (ACL) in 1973 in Hong Kong together with Hsu Tsang-Houei and four other composers from Taiwan. He has traveled extensively within Asia since the early 1970s. Against this background, his tendency toward pan-Asian aesthetics takes on a clear autobiographical dimension.

Hsu Po-Yun's works, like those of Lee Tai-Hsiang, require a close form of collaboration between the composer and performer; in contrast to the precision of serial or postserial scores, the often sketch-like design usually leaves some room for interpretation, which should of course be "culturally informed." Against this background, Hsu inserted a variety of references to Asian vocal models, including details that are rendered in a precisely notated approximation, for example by molding the speech melody meticulously with graphic lines (see Ex. 3.39). It is characteristic that the identity conf lict for Hsu, who was born in Japan and became acquainted with different musical traditions in Asia at an early age, resolves itself in a decidedly hybrid conception. As sources of inspiration for his vocal style – which he also transfers to the instrumental level – he names Beijing Opera (his father was in close contact with the legendary Beijing Opera actor Mei Lanfang), the local Taiwanese genres *beiguan* and *nanguan*, the Japanese *nō* theater, Korean *p'ansori*, Indonesian *kecak*, and Mongolian ritual chants:

For example, you will find the typical feature of a steadily sliding voice in *nō* as well asin *p'ansori*. The latter is distinguished by very sharp *sf f fz*-attacks followed by a *subito piano*. As a composer, I feel free to play with these dif ferent elements, and while composing I think of myself being an actor on the stage. In the process of a composition however, I do not attempt to copy these elements, but to derive something newand original from them.351

Of course, Hsu also combines this thinking with compositional techniques of Western provenance. Partly self-taught, he took courses in music theory and analysis with Hsu Tsang-Houei for a time in 1960. Since the early 1970s, he has organized multimedia projects with Lee Tai-Hsiang and worked with the Cloud Gate Dance Theater and other performance groups. A remarkable series of works emerged in the mid-1970s (1973–75), after which he largely gave up composing in favor of his extensive work as a cultural manager.

The few works by Hsu from this period, however, are certainly among the most successful attempts to approach identity tensions productively in Taiwan. In *Zhongguo xiqu mingxiang* (Meditation on Chinese Theater, 1973) he transfers the vocal characteristics of the Asian genres

<sup>348</sup> Ibid.

<sup>349</sup> Ka, "Gaoshan liushui," 4.

<sup>350</sup> On Hsu Po-Yun see Mittler, "Mirrors and Double Mirrors," 28–29, Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 206–207, 336–337, and Mittler, "Xu Boyun."

<sup>351</sup> Personalcommunicationwith the author, Taipei,18/3/1998.

#### *Example 3.38: Hsu Po-Yun, Zhongguo xiqu mingxiang, p. 27*

Copyright © 1973 by Hsu Po-Yun, Taipei

detailed in the above quotation to the "abstract" surface of a piano quintet. Similarly to what Lee Tai-Hsiang achieved at the same time in his piano trio, Hsu uses a wide range of advanced playing techniques but integrates them into a far more dramatic process of formal shaping. The vocal models lead to a large number of glissando variants, often combined with abrupt dynamic contrasts (Ex. 3.38).

*Han shi* (Cold Food, 1974) for male voice and chamber ensemble, based on a well-known legend from the Spring and Autumn Period (722–481 BCE), then applies these principles directly to the human voice, and the singer moves between toneless whispers and forceful calls within a highly dramatized instrumental environment (Ex. 3.39). The instruments are used sparingly but build up locally intensified textures. The resulting mood of ritual and the archaic, achieved by reducing the artistic means, prefigured the approach taken by Chinese composers of the *xinchao* (New Wave) in the 1980s (Tan Dun, Qu Xiaosong, → II.3; III.4–5) more than ten years in advance.

Hsu's *Pipa suibi* (Pipa Essay, 1975) for the Chinese *pipa* is based on the principle of an interrupted pulse, which is generated by guitar-like rather than traditional *pipa* playing techniques.352 This creates an atmosphere of restlessness comparable to the traditional repertoire of the *wu* genre,<sup>353</sup> whose most famous repertoire piece is *Shimian maifu* (Ambush from Ten Sides, 1818), but without quotations and based on a "reinvention" of the instrument. Although Hsu argues that he used the classical three-part form of the *daqu* (*xu – po – ji*) from the ceremonial music *yayue* performed at the imperial court of the Tang Dynasty (618–907), it is possibly more

<sup>352</sup> SeeHu, "Zur Musik der Pipa im 20. Jahrhundert,"132–136 and Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*, 347.

<sup>353</sup> Traditional *pipa* compositions are mostly based on programmatic concepts and usually entitled with a *timu* (motto-like subject). An increasingly virtuosic performance practice developed in the nineteenth century. Particularly noticeable are onomatopoeic noise ef fects, which occur particularly in the pieces of the "war repertoire" (*wu*) (e.g., the clinking ofweapons or the removal of armor),such asin *Shimian maifu*. The literary*wen* repertoire, on the other hand, developed gentlersonorities and is of ten associatedwith descriptions of nature and landscapes.

#### *Example 3.39: Hsu Po-Yun, Han Shi, p. 2*

adequate, due to the mere nine-minute duration, to conceive the form of the piece as a single continuous process.

Finally, *Sheng – si* (Life – Death, 1974) can be described as Hsu's principal work. With a duration of over 30 minutes, the piece not only uses an variety of instrumental groups (including the Chinese instruments *xiao*, *zheng*, *huqin*, *yangqin*, *sheng*, and *xun*, as well as nine Western string instruments and four Western wind instruments), but also features an electronic soundtrack that can be considered advanced in the historical context. Even if Hsu claims that only simple technical means were available (including an echo unit and a wave oscillator), the development of the electronic part leads to spectacular sound situations, especially in the first part of the piece. Despite the large-scale setting, the structure is kept simple, with the last section focusing on an intensification of events. As in his other pieces, Hsu's international professionalism here takes priority over any form of localist identity construction.

Pan Hwang-Long, born in 1945 in Nantou County, is a significantly different case compared to Lee and Hsu.354 He stayed in Europe from 1974 to 1982 and had apparently been little involved with the spirit of optimism during the early 1970s. This was probably due to the fact that he had not belonged to the "inner circle" around Hsu Tsang-Houei. He had studied at the National Taiwan Normal University with Liu Te-I ("Pietro," 1929–1991), who came from the Chinese province of Hebei and had studied in Germany with Paul Hindemith, Harald Genzmer, and Gün-

Copyright © 1974 by Hsu Po-Yun, Taipei

<sup>354</sup> An extensive discussion of Pan's music is provided by Sung, *Pan Hwang-long* and Sung, "Interkulturelles Komponieren in der zeitgenössischen taiwanesischen Kunstmusik." Further basic information on Pan is provided in Liu, *A Critical History of New Music in China*, 554–556, Mittler, "Pan Huanglong," Lee, "Pan Hwang-Long," Zhao, "Renshiwomen de zuoqujia: PanHuanglong," and Lo, *Gu jin xiangsheng yinyue meng*.

ther Bialas.355 Pan was strongly inf luenced by his studies with Helmut Lachenmann in Hanover between 1976 and 1978. Intense personal sessions temporarily resulted in a close proximity to Lachenmann's musical conception. Pan's String Quartet no. 2 (1977), created in the spirit of Lachenmann, caused public protests at the premiere in Hanover on 26 January 1978.356 The young composer here followed the principle of *musique concrèteinstrumentale*, which Lachenmann had been developing since the late 1960s. The physical conditions of sound production are exposed compositionally, and thereby undermine established listening habits. The barren structure in Pan's string quartet is dominated by largely isolated noise sounds. In the later String Quartet no. 3 (1981–83), a gentler, more contemplative idiom is already hinted at, without disavowing the aesthetic of the earlier work. The fourth part develops a concentrated study in *col legno* techniques and harmonics, resulting in an exceptionally rich sound spectrum (Ex. 3.40).

Pan was aware that he had reached an extreme point with his second quartet, and subsequently turned, certainly encouraged by the far more moderate approach of his next teacher Isang Yun, with whom he studied at the Berlin University of the Arts (1978–80), toward the archaic Asian and Daoist thought to which Yun had repeatedly referred (→ III.1). With *Wandlungsphasen* for eight performers (*Wu xing sheng ke*, 1979–80), Pan developed a compositional concept of tension and resolution that refers back to the archaic Chinese teaching of the five elements (*wu xing*: metal, water, wood, fire, earth) that continuously destroy and re-create one another. The design of musical tension and resolution places great emphasis on timbre. The basis for this is Pan's idea of a "sound cadence" (*yinxiang zhongzhishi*), probably linked to Lachenmann's sound typology, from which the principle of "sound content" (*yinxiang yijing*) later emerges as a central principle of composition.<sup>357</sup> In *Transformation* for f lute, clarinet, percussion, and two cellos (*Hudie meng* [Butterf ly Dream], 1979), Pan applies similar principles to the famous butterf ly parable of the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi's philosophy subsequently gained special significance for Pan; it was fundamental to a whole series of works from the key year 1979, including *Ursache und Wirkung* (*Yinguo sanzhongzou* [Cause and Effect]), *Kausalnexus* (*Yinguo muguan sichongzou* [Causal Nexus]), and *Erleuchtung* (*Qishilu* [Illumination]), all scored for small chamber ensembles with three to five instruments.

Back in Taiwan, Pan became professor of composition at the newly founded National Institute of the Arts and was in charge of the Taiwanese section of the ISCM from 1985 to 1989. Although his wide-ranging international activities were now beginning, his compositional idiom, which he established around 1979/80, did not fundamentally change. He continued to adapt concepts from Chinese thought, such as in his *yin-yang* cycle (from 1992). From the middle of the 1970s on, Pan started organizing his works in cycles, one of the most extensive being the *Migong daoyaoyou* (*Labyrinth* – *Promenade*) cycle begun in 1988, which so far includes more than fifty different chamber music pieces. In this cycle, Pan pursues concepts of a mobile form, leaving the elaboration of the score to the performers, who can select from several predetermined sections.

Although Pan grew up in a very traditional environment and even played the *xiao* and *dizi* while still a child, he only started to write for Chinese instruments late on. He worked with the ensemble *Caifeng Yuefang* (China Found Music Workshop Taipei, today: Chai Found Music

<sup>355</sup> Mittler, *Dangerous Tunes*,199.

<sup>356</sup> See Sung, *Pan Hwang-Long*, 44.

<sup>357</sup> See Pan, "Yinxiang yijing yinyue chuangzuo de linian."

*Example 3.40: Pan Hwang-Long, String Quartet no. 3, IV, mm. 144–147*

Copyright © 1983 by Pan Hwang-Long, Taipei

Workshop Taipei358). This ensemble specialized in new works for the Chinese *sizhuyue* ensemble359 (silk and bamboo music). Of course, this also led to a more intensive examination of specific musical aspects of the Chinese-Taiwanese traditions in Pan's works. Previously, Pan had only employed highly indirect allusions, such as hints of *nanguan* melody in the two orchestral works *Taiwan fengjing hua* (Formosa Landscape, 1987–90, 1987–95). Pan states that the literary and musically refined genre *nanguan*360 played a key role for him, not least because he was familiar with it since childhood. The first work for *Caifeng Yuefang* was the five-movement sextet *Shi – Dao – Ru* (Dialogue, 1991), in which Pan deals with the relationship between traditional and modern culture, alluding to the Confucian form of learned dialogue. What function should

<sup>358</sup> Further information on this still active ensemble, which was frequently hosted in Europe, can be found at http://cfmw.com.tw.

<sup>359</sup> *Sizhu* music is the predominant ensemble form of traditional music practice in southern China and is still cultivated in teahouses by amateur ensembles. Since the fourteenth century it has been irreplaceable for the accompaniment of opera music, musical dramas,chants, and dance theaters, but above all it hasincreasingly spread as an independent ensemble. The most common forms of *sizhu* music today are *Jiangnan sizhu* (in the area of Shanghai), *Guangdong yinyue*(Canton), and *Fujian nanqu* (Fujian, Taiwan). For a thorough study of *Jiangnan sizhu*,see Witzleben, *"Silk and Bamboo" Music in Shanghai*.

<sup>360</sup> The genres *nanguan* and *beiguan*, which were brought to Taiwan with the Holo population from the southern Chinese province of Fujian about three hundred years ago, have received particular attention in Taiwan from the very beginning, also in ethnomusicological research. The Taiwan entries in Grove Music Online and MGG Online provide basic information: Lü and Lu, "3. Han Chinese traditional music" and Lee, "Taiwan" ["III. Volksmusik derHan-Chinesen"].

traditional instruments serve today? How could a music sound that brings out the qualities of traditional Taiwanese and Chinese music yet also participates in international developments? Pan lists several techniques he uses to find the answers to these questions: first, the use of single notes as an impulse for the entire musical development; second, the oppositions of emptiness and realism, movement and solidification, light and dark, etc. as a way to clarify the individuality and the similarities of the instruments; third, the contrast between fixed structures (movements 1, 3, 5) and mobile structures (movements 2, 4). The three Chinese characters of the title stand for the three great philosophical-religious traditions of Asia and the potential for their interpenetration: Buddhism (*shi*), Daoism (*dao*), and Confucianism (*ru*).

In his quartet *Wujing*, *qingjing, yijing* (Matter, Expression, Substance, 1995–96) for *dizi*, *pipa*, *erhu*, and percussion instruments, the writing for the Chinese instruments seems more confident and idiomatic (Ex. 3.41). Pan again refers to a (in this case lesser-known) topos from classical Chinese aesthetics, the balance sought in Buddhism between matter (*wujing*), expression (*qingjing*), and substance (*yijing*), as conceived in a poem from the Tang Dynasty by Wang Changling (689–756). By alternating standard notation and variably notated sections (developing the mobile principles from the *Migong daoyaoyou* series), Pan aims at f luid, continuous transitions between "spiritual and real" and between "limited and limitless." Like Lee Tai-Hsiang, Pan also cites the aesthetic topos of *qiyun*, which he associates with a "light, introverted character, sometimes broken with a thundering strength."361

In the Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra (1996–97), Pan tried to transfer the extremely sophisticated plucking techniques of the Chinese *qin* zither to the European solo instrument, while the binary rhythmic structure in *East and West* (*Dong nan xi bei* [East, South, West, North], 1998), Pan's first work for mixed Chinese-Western instrumentation, alludes to the ceremonial court music *yayue* of the Tang Dynasty as well as the European tonal musical tradition.

In all these approaches, it is always clear that Pan assumes an even stronger abstraction of tradition than Lee or Hsu. In addition, it becomes apparent that, much like these two colleagues, he never tries to construct a specific, local Taiwanese identity, but rather operates mainly on the – politically safe – terrain of ancient Chinese thought. Pan's approach is thus characteristic of an internationally oriented professionalism that was gradually established from the early 1990s among Taiwanese composers, who were well aware of the distinctness and qualities of Chinese and Taiwanese (music) traditions, but rarely gave them a prominent role in the musical structure.

The path of development taken by Lee, Hsu, and Pan since the 1970s also makes it clear that the "avant-garde" tendencies of their early work were not maintained, despite a changing and gradually liberalizing cultural and political climate. In this process, all three became personalities in Taiwanese cultural life in different ways and, not least, important cultural "ambassadors" and mediators for Taiwan on the international stage.

<sup>361</sup> Pan, "*Wujing*, *qingjing, yijing*," 90 ("Die ungeradzahligen Abschnitte verwenden variable Notation und haben einen leichten, introvertierten Charakter, ab und zu durchbrochen von einer donnernden Stärke, erfüllt mit der Ästhetik des abstrahierten Reims (*qiyun*) […]. Das ganze Stück vereint somit in sich das Geistige und das Reale, das Begrenzte und das Grenzenlose […].)

*Example 3.41: Pan Hwang-Long, Wujing, qingjing, yijing, mm. 27–29*

Copyright © 1996 by Pan Hwang-Long, Taipei

#### Conservatism and Reinvention of Traditions since the 1980s

An avoidance of significant connections to "sounding" traditional music is unmistakable among the composers of the following generations, often accompanied by a conservatism brought back from academic education in the USA. Although traditional music was included as a compulsory subject in the training (also for composers) at several Taiwanese universities,362 it rarely seems to have had a far-reaching impact on the compositional work, not least because of the lack of informal, non-academic contact with traditional music genres and their performers. In the 1980s, a growing number of Taiwanese composers were trained in the USA, where an clear departure from the "experimental tradition" of Ives, Cowell, Cage, Partch, or Tenney had taken place since the late 1970s (anticipated early on by some of their representatives, for example in Henry Cowell's late work), involving increasing trends of popularization and commercialization. The institutionalization of compositional training at universities, the frequent isolation of academic composers from social, cultural, or political discourses, and the orientation toward the repertoire of early musical modernism, as evidenced by the success and spread of Allen Forte's set theory since the publication of *The Structure of Atonal Music* (1973), led most of the Taiwanese composers who were trained in the USA in the 1980s to return to Taiwan with an idiom that was technically advanced but lacked striking or visionary dimensions.

The slow political liberalization of Taiwan, which led to the abolition of martial law in 1987, seems to have been largely accompanied, at least temporarily, by a growing lack of interest in questions of cultural identity and an often uncritical adaptation to Western standards – in contrast, for example, to the filmmaking of Taiwanese directors. The issues of the *Xiangtu* movement were increasingly brought into the center of society by the political opposition, but seem to have inf luenced art music discourse only in few cases. The decline in personal, direct contact with traditional music practice, which was associated with the progressive urbanization and institutionalization of traditional music genres, had ramifications for Taiwan's mu-

<sup>362</sup> Lee, "Taiwan" ["IV. Musikpflege seit dem Ende des19. Jahrhunderts"].

sical "landscape," as Lee Tzyy-Sheng (b. 1965), one of the leading Taiwanese composers of the current middle generation who studied with George Crumb, among others, argues:

The alienation of the young generation from Chinese or Taiwanese traditionsisrelatively strong. Our education is almost completely Western-oriented. During my studies at the National Institute of the Artsin Taipei we had some "antidote" in the form ofclassesin traditional music. But, except for a few composers, no one was interested in it. I found considerable inspiration in this preoccupation, however, and it was very inspiring to learn about these traditions [*nanguan* and *beiguan*] from the old masters. My musicsurely showssome traits of thisfascination, but mostly only as a conceptual background and not in a very explicitway.363

Despite the last restriction, Lee Tzyy-Sheng's *Wang guo shi I* (Poem on the Country's Demise I, 1991) clearly shows how the heterophonic structure between soprano and instruments (Ex. 3.42) relates to the characteristic structures of traditional Chinese practice, for example the comparable adornment of the vocal parts by the knee fiddle (*jinghu*) that leads the instrumental ensemble in Beijing Opera (*jingju*).

Lee used a political reference rarely found among Taiwanese composers with a claustrophobically suggestive work for Chinese instruments entitled *Mr. DE ---- ath* (1990), composed in memory of the victims of the Tiananmen massacre of 4 June 1989. Together with composers such as Wu Ting-Lien (b. 1950) and Pan Shyh-Ji (b. 1957), Lee Tzyy-Sheng belongs to a group of outstanding composers with American training whose idioms shift between structuralist and dramatic-performative dimensions but clearly point beyond mere academicism. However, at the end of the 1990s, shifts toward a more pleasing idiom also seem unmistakable in this group, as becomes apparent when comparing Pan Shyh-Ji's complex and strictly atonal *Quartet* (1988) for guitar and string trio with her soft colored orchestral sketch *Raining Night* (1999).

For many representatives of the younger generations, "traditional music" may be an abstract concept from another era. Here too, exceptions confirm the rule, and this is especially true for those composers who have lived outside Taiwan for longer periods of time, sometimes permanently. Tung Chao-Ming (b. 1969) is undoubtedly one of the most original representatives of this generation. His personal "rediscovery" of native aboriginal music and Buddhist music at the end of the 1990s was accompanied by a light-footed synthesis somewhat indebted to the approaches of his teachers in Germany: the irony of Mauricio Kagel and Nicolaus A. Huber's "critical composition." In *Formosa* (1999), scored for two pianists who play "in and on" the instrument, Tung develops striking sonorities such as a "reinvention" of the jaw harp (*lubung*) of the Atayal and Bunun indigenous people and the wooden pestle of the Bunun and Tao groups in the second movement *Wudao* (Dance). An insistent rhythm and an increase in tempo and density lead to an ecstatic finale (Ex. 3.43).

The first movement, *Fangwu luocheng ge* (Song for Housewarming), refers on the one hand to the melodic structures of the song form mentioned in the title of the aboriginal Tao people (formerly known as Yami) who live on the island of Lanyu (Orchid Island) on the East coast of Taiwan; but the music here also ref lects more generally the process of oral tradition, as Tung emphasizes in his introductory note:

Af ter focusing for a long time on European music culture, I began to engage with the musical tradition of my mother's ancestors – the natives of Taiwan – and to learn and analyze their mu-

<sup>363</sup> Personalcommunicationwith the author, Taipei,16/3/1998.

*Example 3.42: Lee Tzyy-Sheng, Wang guo shi I, mm. 80–83*

Copyright © 1991 by Lee Tzyy-Sheng, Taipei

*Example 3.43: Tung Chao-Ming, Formosa, II. Wudao, m. 63*

Copyright © 1999 by Tung Chao-Ming, Taipei

sical thinking in order to be able to combine this with my own music. […] The four-handed piano piece *Formosa* […] consists of three parts and deals with the music of Taiwan, which was once called "Formosa" by the Portuguese. The first part is a representation of the [orally transmitted] music-making of the aboriginal Taiwanese. The second pianist usesthe duration of their breath to determine the duration of the individual phrases, so that the first pianist becomes familiar with the phrasing of the second pianist through repeated "practice," and thus the two of them make musictogether.364

This interactive and communication-based setting, comparable to Yūji Takahashi's approach to Asian instruments (→ III.4) and not unrelated to Lee's or Hsu's semi-open forms of the 1970s, leads to a cautious, fragile texture that builds up tension through the process of mutual listening and imitation (Ex. 3.44). By integrating the oral transmission process and a specific tonality into the musical structures, Tung clearly points beyond the simplistic contrast between "coloristic" and "structuralist" appropriation.

*Example 3.44: Tung Chao-Ming, Formosa, I. Fangwu luocheng ge, p. 6*

Copyright © 1999 by Tung Chao-Ming, Taipei

<sup>364</sup> Tung, "Formosa" ("Nach einer langen Phase der Beschäf tigung mit der europäischen Musikkultur begann ich mich mit derMusiktradition der Vorfahren meinerMutter – derUreinwohner Taiwans – auseinanderzusetzen und ihr musikalisches Denken zu lernen und zu analysieren, um dieses mit meiner eigenen Musik zusammenbringen zu können. […] Das vierhändige Klavierstück *Formosa* […] besteht aus drei Teilen und beschäf tigt sich mit der Musik Taiwans, das von den Portugiesen einst 'Formosa' genannt wurde. Der erste Teil ist eine Darstellung [des oraltradierten]Musizierens dertaiwanerUreinwohner.Der zweite Pianist bestimmt durch seine eigene Atemlänge die Dauer der einzelnen Phrasen, so dass der erste Pianist durch mehrmaliges 'Üben' die Phrasierung des zweiten Pianisten kennenlernt, und somit beide zusammen musizieren.")

*Example 3.45: Tung Chao-Ming, Die Gesichter des Buddha, p. 20*

Copyright © 2001 by Tung Chao-Ming, Taipei

In *Die Gesichter des Buddha* (The Faces of Buddha, 2001) for an ensemble of eight Chinese instruments, composed for *Caifeng yuefang*, Tung deepens this connection between structuralist and performative reception. The work is based on a structural treatment of the Daoist *faqu* melody *Nishang yuyi qu* (Song of the Rainbow Skirt and Plumage) from the Tang Dynasty.365 Whereas the melody notes in the first part are extremely drawn-out and colored by a dense network of noises inspired by the image of a "snoring Buddha," the melodic line in the second part (Ex. 3.45) gradually becomes more audible: Buddha awakes.

It is evident from the score and the sound result that the organization of this complex mixture of noise and pitched sound becomes an independent dimension in the first part, which develops its own dynamic from the underlying melodic and temporal organization. Culturally coded musical vocabulary is here secondary to concentrating on the acoustic properties of the instruments and sounds used, and increasingly gives way to a unique quality of sound.

The significantly growing number of female Taiwanese composers who are or were continuously active outside of Taiwan includes Wang Ming (b. 1963, based in Vienna), Wang Sue-Ya (b. 1965, temporarily based in Paris), Liao Lin-Ni (b. 1977, based in Paris), and Li Yuan-Chen (b. 1980, based in Chicago and Portland). They are often more respected on the international stage than in Taiwan, where patriarchal structures still shape many parts of academic life today.366 Wang Ming was trained as a performer of Chinese instruments (*zheng*, *pipa*) at the Chi-

<sup>365</sup> The imperial music group *Liyuan* (Pear Garden) wasfounded under the Emperor Xuanzhong (reigned 713–755) and was under the direct command of the music-loving emperor, who primarily used it to study the "magical music" called *faqu*. The *faqu*was also part of the greatcourt musiccalled *daqu*.

<sup>366</sup> See Liao, "Héritagesculturels et pensée moderne,"140–141.

nese Culture University, Taipei (*Wenhua daxue*) before studying composition and electroacoustics at the Vienna Academy of Music. From the beginning, she worked closely with her fellow students from *Caifeng yuefang* and often composed for Chinese instruments, for example in her remarkable work *Ballade* (1999). She searches for connections between the performance situation, natural elements, and autonomous musical structures, and combines these levels with a sensitive use of electronic media.

The composer-musicologist Liao Lin-Ni studied, among other teachers, with the Paris-based Japanese composer Yoshihisa Taira (1937–2005), who, since the 1960s, had developed a very individual synthesis of Japanese and French structures and sonorities. Liao has created a series of works emerging from synesthetic experiences which she has also discovered in poems by Emily Dickinson (1830–1886). The latter's late envelope poems provided a starting point for the trio *one bird, one tree*… (2017) for *erhu*, accordion, and piano, a set of five *bagatelles* to be played in any selection and order. As in earlier pieces, poetic language is transformed into spatialized sound, guided by impressions of light and shadow. Liao's *Time of Trees II* (2017) for finger gestures by two pianists, shadows, and sound installation, again consisting of five *bagatelles*, is based on a choreography of the pianists' hands emerging from Bach's "Goldberg Variations." Sound/silence and light/shadow are conceived as inseparable, the pianos' sound, intermingled with prerecorded "tree sounds," creates constantly changing audio-visual situations.

After completing a well-informed and well-researched dissertation on contemporary Taiwanese music at the Sorbonne in 2011,367 Liao embarked on a remarkable international artsbased research project into the Chinese and Japanese mouth organs (*sheng* and *shō*) and their applicability in contemporary music, in cooperation with IRCAM and other prestigious French research institutions.368 Such transnational and interdisciplinary contexts provide increasingly powerful means for the younger generation to emancipate itself from Taiwanese cultural impasses and polarizations and to contribute substantially to an internationalized new music community.

A natural accentuation of cultural difference, as developed by Tung Chao-Ming, has meanwhile become increasingly rare in Taiwan itself. Although there is no shortage of cases in which, depending on the context, broadly Chinese or local Taiwanese concepts, languages, or musical idioms are incorporated into the works of composers of all generations, this incorporation is generally conceptualized and "hidden" to a far greater degree than with some mainland Chinese colleagues – though the situation has clearly changed and diversified in China too since the neo-traditionalist concepts of the *xinchao* during the 1990s (→ III.4).

#### Outlook

The relationship between brain drain and brain circulation is, in the complex intersection with migration, repression, and cultural criticism, key to understanding compositional work in twentieth-century China. With some modifications, this can also be said of the situation in Taiwan, which has become the model democracy of Asia alongside South Korea. The migration of the best minds among composers and musicians to (Western) foreign countries has long since become a brain circulation through which international experience is used effectively to establish a contemporary music life in their own country. Nevertheless, in some respects an "internal" brain drain remains, shaped by the danger of drying out independent creative

<sup>367</sup> Ibid.

<sup>368</sup> http://www.tpmc-paris.com/sheng-research.

forces in a somewhat utilitarian, economically oriented society – a tendency increasingly felt in many areas of the West as well. In addition to the need to support and champion new art in general, the preservation of aesthetic independence and the development of culture-critical compositional concepts seem to be decisive in this context. Despite all trends in society as a whole, the diversity of traditional musical forms in Taiwan continues to play an important part. The examples discussed here, often in a generation-based manner and sometimes with a certain hesitance and caution, show the great potential of a connection between specifically local Taiwanese, Chinese, Asian, and international ways of thinking, listening and composing, in the best case resulting in art music of the highest international standing, but with unmistakable individual qualities beyond cultural stereotypes. From this perspective, Taiwan's cultural and ethnic diversity appears as a unique opportunity, not just a source of never-ending social conf lict.

Even if a difficult situation has continued to the present day owing to international political isolation and internal identity dispute, the idea of Taiwan as a "cultural desert" is definitely a thing of the past (leaving aside the fact that this was an ideologically charged phrase in the first place369). In the 1990s, Taiwan gradually discovered important ways to free itself from a long history of suffering through (cultural) imperialism, authoritarian state power, and decades of political censorship, economic commercialization, and nepotism, turning into a vibrant and largely well-functioning democracy.370 Against this background, it becomes clear that advanced art music must also function as an indicator of political liberalism and international connectivity. Thus the responsibility of cultural policymakers to continue supporting the representatives of Taiwan's vibrant musical life in building an infrastructure is obvious. Taiwan's music from the 1960s to the present must be seen as a small but valuable piece in the mosaic of cultural diversity in which global and local tendencies are constantly intertwined.

<sup>369</sup> See footnote 318.

<sup>370</sup> Winckler, "Cultural Policy in Postwar Taiwan," 41.

# **IV. The** *shō* **Context**

#### **1. Transformation and Myth Criticism in Works for the Japanese Mouth Organ**

In Chapter 1, "intercultural composition" and related terms were understood as a ref lection on the basic question of identity formation in the conf lict zone of cultural "hypolepsis" (→ I.3): how is a balanced reference to a globalized cultural memory possible when caught in the tension between diverse musical cultures, and to what extent do the incommensurable cultural idiomatics of those cultures allow for interchange among themselves or intermediate action spaces? Hypolepsis, in the ancient theory of rhetoric, is the connection of a statement to a previous speaker's words and their free development; transferred to intercultural contexts, it can signify the further development and (inter-)cultural transformation of texts and practices. We will use a concrete example to study this concept in practice, and we find an excellent case study in recent works for the Japanese mouth organ, the *shō*. The *shō* is a particularly apt example when debating these issues, because its sound is culturally coded like no other and it is therefore an excellent measure of the narrow gap between "culture-free" sound and simplistic culturalism, between incommensurability and the potential for hybridity. One might ask: where and how do composers continue to write about cultural memories while engaging with this instrument? What role is played by the construction of a "canonic" or "classical" tradition that is connected to this instrument (that Jan Assmann separates from the hypoleptic process → I.3)? How are the symbolic-connotative elements of the *shō*, what we could call the myth of the instrument, approached in newly written compositions? And what significance can be ascribed to a – possibly historicocritically-based – ethnomusicological expert knowledge in the compositional process?

#### The Japanese Mouth Organ in the Traditional Context

The multitude of new works with *shō* created since the 1980s is due in large part to the activities of soloist Mayumi Miyata, who, since 1983, has presented the *shō* as a solo instrument on the international concert stage. Her former student, Kō Ishikawa, has also helped to promote the instrument considerably since the early 2000s. All works discussed below were premiered either by Miyata or Ishikawa. Before I discuss individual compositional approaches, I will brief ly outline the mythological content, history, and manner of playing of this instrument.

The *shō* consists of 17 bamboo pipes embedded in a circular wind chamber. Metal reeds vibrate when the finger holes are covered and produce 15 mostly diatonic pitches between A4 and F#6 (the 13 pitches of the A major scale with G5 and C6 added, Ex. 4.1) – two pipes remain mute and contain no reeds.<sup>1</sup> Modern instruments – the majority of the instruments found in works after 1990 – have reeds added to both the muted pipes which produce the pitches F5 (*mō*) and Bb5 (*ya*). The metal reeds inside the bamboo pipes vibrate during both exhalation and inhalation, so that it is characteristic for the *shō* to produce a continuous stream of sound.

*Example 4.1: Pitches playable on the shō; the diamond noteheads indicate the pitches that are only available on the modern instrument and are not used in traditional music.*

The *shō* came to Japan as a court music instrument in the eighth century during the Chinese Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE). Its Chinese precursor, the *sheng*, was an ancient instrument that can be traced as far back as the pictograms of the Shang Dynasty (1766–1122 BCE) (→ II.6). The construction of the instrument is mythologically attributed to a goddess at the beginning of time, and it was supposedly played by an "immortal" at the foot of a mountain on a moonlit night.<sup>2</sup> The character 笙 (Chin. *sheng*, Jap. *shō*) consists of the bamboo radical and the character for "to be born." Together they symbolize emergence, becoming, and passing away. It is associated with the mythological bird, the phoenix, which is reborn from its own ashes. Also, the character's shape and construction are modeled on the phoenix. In an archaic Chinese classification, the ordering of the eight sounds, *ba yin*, the *sheng* is likewise attributed to a process, namely the transition from winter to spring.<sup>3</sup> The tuning of the *shō* is based on a cycle of pure fifths, which can be traced back to the ancient Chinese treatise *Guanzi* (Guan Zhong, died 645 BC); the eleven *aitake*, the *shō*'s basic chords in the *tōgaku* repertoire of the Japanese court music genre of *gagaku*, are constructed from superimposed fifths (Ex. 4.2).4

By the middle of the nineteenth century, in the early era of Meiji restoration, for political reasons, the current form of the *tōgaku* repertoire was unified and codified, making *gagaku*  music – most often represented by the *tōgaku* repertoire – the principal representative of Japan's "traditional music."<sup>5</sup> From the same period, *gagaku* was actively promoted to Western audiences (starting with presentations at the Paris world exhibitions in 1867 and 1878), its repertoire repeatedly being transcribed into Western notation.<sup>6</sup> With the exception of the free introductory sections, *chōshi* and *netori*, which resulted from tuning into the mode and partly contain canonic techniques (→ III.4), the *shō* part in this newly codified repertoire was limited

5 See, among others, Tsukahara, "Aspects of *gagaku* in the LateNineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries."

<sup>1</sup> The mute pipeswere originally (during theNara period, 645–794 CE) alsofittedwith reeds andwere interchangeable; they were able to produce up to four more pitches: *ya* (G4), *mō* (D#5), as well as *to* (Bb4) and *boku* (F5), see Harich-Schneider, *A History of Japanese Music*,126–128.

<sup>2</sup> See, ibid.,131.

<sup>3</sup> In the *ba yin* classification, the *sheng* is associated with the material *pao* (calabash) from which the wind chamber was originally made, as well asthe direction northeast. Moreover, the *sheng* wasconsidered a symbol of *yin*. See Liang, *Music of the Billion*, 64–70 and Schwörer-Kohl, "Mundorgel," 617.

<sup>4</sup> See Garfias, *Music of a Thousand Autumns*, 65–66.

<sup>6</sup> See Tsukahara, "State Ceremony and Musicin Meiji-era Japan."

exclusively to eleven different chords, known as *aitake* 合竹 (literally "united bamboo"). The *aitake*'s "central pitches" (marked with black noteheads in the first row of Example 4.2; with the exception of the *jū*- and the *hi*-chords they are always the lowest note) follow the melodic scaffold of the *tōgaku* pieces which were heterophonically elaborated in on all other melody instruments, particularly the dominant reed oboe *hichiriki* and the bamboo f lute *ryūteki*. In these pieces, the characteristic micro-glissandi *embai* were used extensively in the other wind instruments to connect the pitches of the basic melodic line.<sup>7</sup>

*Example 4.2: Schematic presentation of the eleven aitake chords of the shō in traditional tōgaku repertoire; the black noteheads (row 1) represent the basic pitches of the chords; the numbers above the first row describe the interval structure of the chord in semitones; the second row breaks the chords up by the system of pitch-class set analysis; row 3 represents the (partly incomplete) underlying sequences of fif ths*

In the utterly characteristic manner in which the *shō* (usually three *shō* perform in a group) is used in the *tōgaku* repertoire (which emerged from the court music of the Chinese Tang Dynasty), the mythological symbolism is aptly ref lected. The swelling and receding of the *aitake* are strictly regulated (Ex. 4.3). Some 90 changes of position, as well as the corresponding changes of breath (*ikigahe*) must first be memorized by the *shō* pupil (as mentioned, the reeds vibrate during in- and exhalation, creating a continuous sound).

<sup>7</sup> See Garfias, *Music of a Thousand Autumns*,112–113,131.

*Example 4.3: The beginning of the shō part in the famous piece Etenraku (in the mode hyōjo) from the tōgaku repertoire with the characteristic position changes known as te-utsuri (Miki, Nihon gakki hō, 79)*

The character of *gagaku*, frequently described as "unmistakably Japanese," is significantly indebted to the slow swelling and receding curve of the *shō* part within the slow basic tempo, which is common today. *Gagaku* music thus appears particularly suitable to illustrate essential Japanese aesthetic principles, such as the sadness of transience (*mono no aware*) or the rusted austerity of old things (*sabi*). On the other hand, there is the objection that *gagaku*, as it was generally understood and conceptualized (in Japan and in the West) until recently, is thoroughly a result of Japanese nationalist sentiment since the nineteenth century and, as such, must be considered a product (rather than an *a priori* model) of such a culturalist aesthetic. In the Heian Period (794–1185 CE), not only was the basic tempo of *gagaku* music presumably substantially faster (arguably around eight to 16 times faster) than in most modern performance practice, but the *shō* was also a leading melodic instrument alongside the lute *biwa* and zither *gakuso*, and its character was not at all limited to today's "solemn" manner. Its performance practice was likely similar to today's *chōshi* sections with the enlargement of a basic melody through parallel fifths or fourths.8 Also during the Heian Period, the vocal genres *saibara* and *rōei* began to include the *shō* as the main melodic instrument playing in heterophony with the vocal line. The critical revision of the popular understanding of *gagaku* music as Japan's "cultural legacy," as a pivotal element in the authority of Japanese antiquity, and as evidence of an unbroken tradition of Japanese identity provides a central subject of debate for current *gagaku* research (→ II.6).9

<sup>8</sup> Picken and Wolpert, "Mouth-Organ and Lute Parts of *tōgaku* and Their Interrelationships" as well as numerous other essays on the interpretation of old *gagaku* sources by Picken and his school, among others, in the series *Music from the Tang-Court,* ed. Laurence E. R. Picken and Noël J. Nickson, vol. 1 (1981), vol. 2/3 (1985), vol. 4/5 (1990), vol. 6 (1997), vol. 7 (2000), Cambridge 1981–2000. Picken's Tang Music Project provided the basis for the reconstructions of Chinese court music ofthe TangDynasty underthe direction of Chinese musicscholar Chen Yingshi (published in 1989 on the CD *Zhongguo tangyue*).

<sup>9</sup> See the contributions to the round table "*Gagaku* and Studies on *Gagaku* in the 20th century" at the International Congress of the Musicological Society of Japan in Shizuoka 2002: Tsukahara, "Aspects of *gagaku* in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries," Marett, "The Present State of Research on Early Notations," Endō, "The Revival of Lost Repertoire," and Terauchi, "Future Perspectives:NewPossibilitiesin Research on *gagaku*."

#### The Reception of the *shō* in Contemporary Music

Despite all historiographical criticism of essentialist discourses on identity, it is easy to understand why the *shō* (and, increasingly, the Chinese *sheng* → II.6) have become popular media for interculturally accentuated composition in the West and in Asia. It is hard to negate the aura of these instruments' sound and it seems to be the ideal embodiment of the auratic component of compositional material, to which Helmut Lachenmann attributed essential functions in new music as the "bearer of familiar experiences of existential reality"<sup>10</sup> (it is no coincidence that one of the earliest new instruments, produced at the beginning of the nineteenth century on the model of the *sheng* – which was first sent to Europe by the Jesuit Joseph-Marie Amiot in 1777 – was called "Aura"11). Added to this are particular instrumental techniques that provoke compositional thinking: the limitation of available pitches on the instrument and the unorthodox finger positions based on a largely fixed assignment of the seven active fingers to individual holes/pitches (Ex. 4.4; → IV.2, Ex. 4.13). These limitations allow only a reduced number of sound combinations between one and six or seven pitches (→ VI.2) and condition the peculiar changes of finger positions, *te-utsuri*. A further characteristic is the high degree of fusion between chord notes, due to the richness of overtones and the high register of the instrument. It is precisely these idiosyncratic properties of the *shō* that pose extraordinary compositional challenges: at first glance, they seem to leave little room for "interventions" by composers. Nevertheless, some fundamentally distinct approaches to these characteristics and the traditional contexts of the *shō* can be identified in the tension between myth reception and myth criticism.

*Example 4.4: Fingering table of the 17-pitched shō (Kō Ishikawa)*

<sup>10</sup> Lachenmann, "Vier Grundbestimmungen des Musikhörens," 61("Trägerin von vertrauten Erfahrungen der existentiellen Wirklichkeit").

<sup>11</sup> The mouth-blown Aura (with 15 steel tongues) was designed by Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann in Berlin in 1821 and was a direct forerunner of the accordion, which was patented in Vienna in 1829 by Cyril Demian (1772–1847),seeHarrington and Kubik, "Accordion" and Schwörer-Kohl, "Mundorgel."

#### Myth and Aura

Of course, the reception of *gagaku* music since the 1980s is not without historical precedents; composers attracted by the *shō* before this period include Benjamin Britten, Olivier Messiaen, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Jean-Claude Eloy, and a group of Japanese composers who had begun to link current musical developments with structural and tonal aspects of the *gagaku* as early as the 1930s (→ II.4; III.1). Britten, who had brought a *shō* from his trip to Japan to England in 1956, uses a chamber organ in his church parable *Curlew River* (1964) to evoke, especially in the frame parts, the aura, structure, and function of *shō* chords in *tōgaku*, which are sometimes quoted verbatim.12 Olivier Messiaen, in the fourth movement of his *Sept Haïkaï* (1962), limits himself largely to a timbral reproduction of the *shō* sound (eight solo violins imitate the chords of the *shō*), while rhythm and pitch organization remain entirely within Messiaen's systematic approach.13 Stockhausen quoted the best-known *gagaku* piece *Etenraku* several times in an electronic piece written in Tokyo, the universalist *Telemusik* (1966, moments 3, 6, 20, 31) (→ II.2) and attempted, by electronic glissando effects produced by a "*gagaku* circuit," a double ring modulation, to transform characteristic microtonal slides in *gagaku* melody by electronic means.14 Stockhausen also wrote *Der Jahreslauf* (1977) for a complete *gagaku* ensemble that was later included in *Dienstag aus Licht* and met with harsh criticism in Japan.15 Jean-Claude Eloy likewise composed an extensive work for *gagaku* orchestra, augmented by *bugaku* dancers and the Buddhist chanting style *shōmyō* (*A l'approche du feu méditant*, 1983, duration: 150 minutes). Eloy's central work is the four-hour *Anāhata I–III* (1986–90) for soloistic *shō*, *hichiriki*, *ryūteki*, two *shōmyō* singers, *bonshō* (Japanese temple bells), and electronics. Both works exude a pronounced ritualistic character and incorporate the "stretched" concept of time of *gagaku*. Eloy's methods are based on extensive knowledge of traditional music practice, and he developed special forms of notation in collaboration with the *shōmyō* singers.<sup>16</sup>

The following part of this chapter focuses less on *gagaku* music in general than on concepts that place the *shō* as a solo instrument at the center of the compositional interest.17 Tōru Takemitsu's pioneering work *Distance* for oboe and *shō* (1972) acts as a starting point for a soloistic treatment of the *shō* (→ III.4). Similarly important are Takemitsu's works *In an Autumn Garden* (1973/79) for *gagaku* orchestra and *Ceremonial* (1991) for *shō* and (Western) orchestra.18 Toshio Hosokawa also provides a particular wealth of works for *shō*, <sup>19</sup> which were performed

<sup>12</sup> See Cooke, *Britten and the Far East*, 112–189, Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 116–136, and Crilly, "There's No Theatre likeNoh Theatre…"

<sup>13</sup> See Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*,187–188 and Bispo, "Olivier Messian's SeptHaïkaï."

<sup>14</sup> See Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 153–165, Kohl, "Serial Composition, Serial Form, and Process in Karlheinz Stockhausen's *Telemusik*," and Erbe, "Karlheinz Stockhausens'Telemusik.'"

<sup>15</sup> See Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*,151–153 and Shimizu, "Stockhausen und Japan."

<sup>16</sup> See Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*,195–200.

<sup>17</sup> Also, newworksfor *gagaku* ensemble are not discussed below,since here the *shō* isstrongly influenced from the outset by its context within the ensemble. The huge number of new compositions for *gagaku* ensemble could hardly be adequately dealt with in this chapter. For the compositional reception of the *gagaku* see especially Everett, "Mirrors of West and Mirrors of East" and Menzel, *Hōgaku*,100–119,181–194.

<sup>18</sup> See Burt, *The Music of Tōru Takemitsu*,139–141,160–167, 224–225.

<sup>19</sup> The followingworks byHosokawa require a *shō*:theworksfor *gagaku* ensemble (partlywith *shōmyō* vocals) *Tokyo 1985* (1985), *Seeds of Contemplation (Mandala)*(1986),*New Seeds of Contemplation (Mandala)*(1995), and*Garden at First Light*(2002/03);*Utsurohi*(1986)for harp and *shō*, *Utsurohi-Nagi*(1995/96)for*shō* and string orchestrawith harp,ce-

by Mayumi Miyata throughout, and composed partly under the unmistakable inf luence of Takemitsu.20 Especially since the 1990s, Hosokawa has taken the reference to orthodox Japanese aesthetics, following Takemitsu, to an extreme, referring in almost every one of his works to the relationship between sound, breath, nature, and silence, as well as pointing to central culturalist concepts like *ma*, *sawari*, or principles of calligraphy, gardening, or landscape painting.<sup>21</sup> His characterization of the *shō* remains firmly and seamlessly attached to the mythical aura of the instrument:

The mouth organ *shō* is awonderful instrument.When itstartsto play, itssound spreads out and fills the whole room, and one does not know where the sounds come from. The actual melody, as the pattern of this music, is immersed in the chords of the *aitake*,the background sounds, and isforgotten. This meansthat one does notclearly recognize its boundaries. These sounds make me think of theway cicada sounds penetrate theworld.22

Hosokawa calls the *shō* chords in *gagaku* the "mother's womb" or the "mother's chord" from which the lines of the *hichiriki* and *ryūteki* develop.23 Hosokawa also transfers this relationship of chord and line to cosmology and compares it to the relationship between humans and nature. His works with *shō* are characterized by the constant f low of inhaling and exhaling and draw directly on the *gagaku* model sketched above. In particular, earlier pieces rely almost exclusively on this model of inhalation and exhalation. Particularly elementary in this regard, for example, is a work for *shō* solo *"Wie ein Atem im Lichte"* ("Like a Breath in the Light," 2002), whose title is borrowed from a poem by Rudolf Steiner. The religiously tempered natural mystique of the poem seems to find a logical equivalent in the harmonies based on quintal/quartal chords reminiscent of the *chōshi* introductory parts of *tōgaku* (Ex. 4.5). The *aitake* chords are quoted throughout, sometimes in complete form and sometimes fragmented: the sonority E5– A5–B5–E6 at rehearsal number 1 contains the basic structure of the chords *kotsu*, *bō*, and *otsu*; rehearsal number 2, with D5–E5–F5–A5–B5–E6, features five of the six pitches of the *bō* chord (with F5 replacing the original F#5); rehearsal number 3 introduces G#5–A5–B5–C6–D6–F#6, an exact quotation of the *bi* chord, and rehearsal number 4 quotes the *ge* chord with the pitches F5–F#5–G#5–A5–B5–D6–F#6. At rehearsal number 7, the quintal harmony is pointedly brought to the foreground and the fifth F#5–C#6 is twice repeated *f f*. Some more dissonant passages

lesta, and percussion; *Birds Fragments II* (1990) for*shō*with drums ad libitum, *Birds Fragments III* (1990) for*shō* and flute(s), *Birds Fragments IV* (1991)for violoncello, percussion, and *shō*; *Landscape V* (1993)for*shō* and string quartet; *Cloudscapes – Moonlight* (1998) for *shō* and accordion; *"Wie ein Atem im Lichte"* (2002) for *shō* solo; *Cloud and Light* for *shō* and orchestra (2008); *Sakura für Otto Tomek* for *shō* solo (2008); *Two Japanese Folk Songs*, arrangements for mixed chorus and percussionwith/without *shō* (2008).

<sup>20</sup> One can assume that all three of Takemitsu's works with *shō* had a great influence on Hosokawa; in particular, compare *Distance* with *Utsurohi* and the *Birds Fragments*, *In an Autumn Garden* with *New Seeds of Contemplation (Mandala)* and *Garden at First Light*, and *Ceremonial*with *Utsurohi-Nagi*. See alsoHosokawa's notes on Takemitsu's *Distance*inHosokawa, "Aus der Tiefe der Erde," 52.

<sup>21</sup> See particularlyHosokawa and Sparrer, *Stille und Klang, Schatten und Licht*.

<sup>22</sup> Hosokawa,"Aus der Tiefe der Erde," 51.("DieMundorgel*shō* ist einwunderbaresInstrument.Wenn sie zu spielen anfängt, breitet sich ihr Klang aus und füllt den ganzen Raum, und man weiß nicht, woher die Töne kommen. Die eigentliche Melodie als das Muster dieser Musik wird in die Klänge der *aitake* eingetaucht, in die Klänge als Hintergrund und gerätinVergessenheit. So kommt es dazu, dassman ihreGrenzlinie nicht deutlich erkennt. Ich stelle mir bei diesen Klängen die Art und Weise vor,wie die Zikadenstimmen die Welt durchdringen.")

<sup>23</sup> See ibid. ("Mutterschoß," "Mutterakkord.")

eventually lead to the remaining highest pitch F#6, before a reprise-like return at rehearsal number 12, where the fifth A4–E5 f lows into the fifth A5–E6, an octave higher.

*Example 4.5: Toshio Hosokawa, "Wie ein Atem im Lichte" for shō solo, opening*

Copyright © 2002 by Schott Japan Company Ltd.

The *shō* myth here tends to turn into a regressive ideology of nature. The naïve devotion to the order of nature culminates in a fifth-octave harmony in which the few "wrong notes" appear as mere "decoration." Above all, this appears to be a development of the early 2000s, as an analysis of the harmony of Hosokawa's earlier *shō* works show.24 *Landscape V* (1993) for *shō* and string quartet (→ III.5) emanates from the microtonally colored tetrachord G#5–A5–B5–D6 (a subset of the *ge* and *bi aitake* chord), which, as a "mother chord," pervades most harmonic formations in the piece (Ex. 4.6). The "vertical" cuts (the principle of the "vertical" for Hosokawa is based, among others, on the energetic preparations of strokes of the drum *ōtsuzumi* in *nō* theater25) at

<sup>24</sup> *Cloudscapes – Moonlight* (1998) for *shō* and accordion occupies an intermediate position where the restriction of inhalation and exhalation islikewise unbroken and exclusive, but the harmony is more similar to *Landscape V*, in that it is much rougher and more dissonant.

<sup>25</sup> See Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 313–315.

rehearsal numbers 14a/14b, dividing the composition into two halves, spread the frame intervals from a narrow position of continuously increasing intervals (1–2–3 semitones, pitch-class set 0136) to extreme registers at the very end (rehearsal numbers 19/20). The complex structure of the intervening development can be consistently traced to the mother chord and reveals its potential in the extension of a semitone-whole-tone sequence to the modified octatonic scale (rehearsal numbers 13, 14b). Only in the very last sound field is there a complete *aitake* chord attained, embedded in a complex spectrum (and it hardly seems by chance that it is just that *bi*-*aitake*, as an excerpt from it had already appeared in the "mother chord").

Hosokawa's music thus shows that the world of the *shō* can develop considerable compositional density while also demonstrating the aesthetic pitfalls to which an unconditional surrender to the "*shō* myth" can lead. All in all, Hosokawa, to return to Lachenmann's words (→ I.3), only communicates the "conjured magic" of *shō* music, but hardly its "broken magic." Yet Helmut Lachenmann himself seems to use the *shō* in the penultimate scene of his "music with images" *Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern* (The Little Match Girl, 1990–96) exclusively to evoke a state of mythical rapture, a dimension that the sonic structure of the two-hour music otherwise rarely approaches (→ IV.2).

In this regard, a short comparison of Hosokawa's works for *shō* with a seemingly contradictory work of art like Matthew Barney's film *Drawing Restraint 9* (2005–06), shot on the Japanese whaling ship Nisshin Maru, might be revealing. The music used in this film was produced by Björk, and the *shō* occupies a dominant role in three pieces (played by Mayumi Miyata, who also appears in the film). On the one hand, the film could easily appear as merely another example of the much-cited post-exotic Western fascination with Japan, but on the other hand, it may also achieve a hybrid in its sometimes abstruse mixture of *shinto* rituals, bathing culture, rebirth, *nō* theater, and *shō* music – a hybrid quality that Hosokawa's monistic sound blocks sometimes seem to lack. According to the film's press release, "the performance practice of the instrument itself ref lects the organizing thematic of *Drawing Restraint 9*: the relationship between creativity and resistance."<sup>26</sup>

#### From Myth to Myth Criticism

Of course, there are also a number of compositional ways to deal with the myth and canon of the *shō* in a "critical" way, implicitly or explicitly. Klaus Huber's *black plaint* (1995) for *shō* and percussion may perhaps go the furthest in terms of an organological "reinvention" of the instrument: twelve of the 17 pipes are retuned to sixth- or third-tones,27 which is very difficult due to the fragile design of the instrument. Working with thirdtone and three-quartertone tunings has had a lasting impact on Huber's work since the 1990s, with an interest in old European tuning systems (especially 19-tone divisions of the octave from the sixteenth century) and the *maqamāt* in Arab music (→ II.6).28 Of course, in the traditionally Pythagorean-tuned *shō*, such a re-tuning has less of an archaizing, but rather a strongly alienating effect. In contrast to this break with a "traditionalist" approach (Huber states that he wanted to cut off the "tradition of Japanese music," as it were29), the gestalt and the atmospheric concentration on the inhalation and exhalation are strongly related to a *tōgaku*-oriented model. The five-note *shō* chords were

<sup>26</sup> http://bjorknet.altervista.org/restored/dr9.

<sup>27</sup> Huber and Mahnkopf, *Von Zeit zu Zeit*, 95.

<sup>28</sup> See, among others, Knipper, "Tonsysteme im kompositorischen Schaf fen von KlausHuber."

<sup>29</sup> Huber and Mahnkopf, *Von Zeit zu Zeit*, 95.

created by a permutative principle and are blended into one another using *te-utsuri*-like techniques: Huber emphasizes the richness of detail of these transitions by a notation reminiscent of Robert Garfias' transcription of the *te-utsuri* on four staves30 (Ex. 4.7). An extremely slow basic tempo (q = c. 32), continuous *pianissimo*, and the quasi-ritual conception of the drum part (the instruments include the *shoko* gong and the *kakko* coordinating drum from the *tōgaku* orchestra as well as the *rin* temple bell in addition to a stone slab and a roof tile) reinforce a quasi-ritualistic archaic atmosphere. This evocation of "shadows of millennia-old backdrops cast into the barbarism of our century"31 is further supported by the two performers' quiet recitation of two mourning poems from the oldest Japanese poetry anthology *Man'yōshū* (Collection of 10,000 Leaves, Nara Period, c. 759), as well as fragments from the Hiroshima novel *Black Rain* (*Kuroi ame*, 1965) by Masuji Ibuse. In addition, characters from the texts are inscribed with mallets on the instruments and even carved into the stone slab. Clearly, the authority of the archaic is conceptualized as an "unspeakable" that is ideally opposed to the political and social conf licts of modernity. Especially in the alignment of the third-tone system (which refers to the history of European music) with the "Japanese" basic structure of sound composition, tempo, and color, Huber's work can be understood as an attempt to migrate into a global cultural memory beyond an explicit hybridization, but also with a clear recourse to mythologizing discourses.

*Example 4.7: Klaus Huber, black plaint for shō and percussion, p. 8*

Copyright © 1995 by G. Ricordi & Co, München

An atmospheric archaism was also a promising middle ground for many Asian composers, as shown in several examples in this book (→ III.4, III.6, V.1). This middle ground helped to keep nationalist tendencies at arm's length while retaining a degree of cultural and personal independence from the European mainstream. Of course, as already discussed (→ I.3, II.6), the archaic discourse can always turn into an uncritically mythologizing one. Gerhard Stäbler, who, like Huber, Lachenmann, and many others, strongly relied on the politically committed

<sup>30</sup> See Garfias, *Music of a Thousand Autumns*, 48,177–188.

<sup>31</sup> Huber, "Black Plaint" ("Schatten jahrtausendealter Hintergründe, geworfen in die Barbarei unseres Jahrhunderts").

tradition of "critical composition" that had emerged since the late 1960s, clearly addressed this boundary when he introduced his 33-minute *shō* solo *Palast des Schweigens* (1992–93) by writing that the world of *shō* had remained "strangely alien" to him, "perhaps because in the traditional music of Japan it musically traces phases of becoming and decaying – as if following nature. This style of music does not seem to cope with impurities, external disturbances, 'worldly' interventions."32 Stäbler consequently sought "rough and chapped, sometimes even aggressively and intrusively charged" sounds in an attempt to "renounce" traditions.33 As a study for Stäbler's Christa Wolf opera *CassandraComplex* (1994), the isolated, harshly juxtaposed blocks of sound in *Palast des Schweigens* are also to be understood as a musical correspondence to Wolf's archaic language and a ref lection on different forms of silence in the novel.34

Also, in more recent works by Stäbler for *shō*, an analogy between archaic Greek and Asian elements forms an important starting point for the conception. In *]LIFE[* (2004) for *shō*, *hichiriki* (the short doubled-reed oboe that leads the *tōgaku* orchestra), and glass chimes, the *shō* and *hichiriki* soloists alternately whisper fragments of Sappho, while the other instrument unfolds strictly monophonic lines. The underlying scale B–D–E–F#–A, to which later C# and G# are added, can be understood both in the context of *tōgaku* modality and as an allusion to archaic Greek scales. Especially in the third movement, analogously to the earlier solo work, extremes of dynamics are increasingly sought, culminating in a dense series of *aitake* chords at high volume. Example 4.8 shows the *aitake ku*, *otsu*, *ge, jū*, *kotsu*, and *jū* (second version without F#5) in the second system as well as the *aitake ku* (the missing D5 is added by the *hichiriki*) and *bi* (with D6 instead of D5) in the fourth system. After a distant *hichiriki* line grows out of the last chord of the second system, the last Sappho fragment is whispered ("with a bright voice") along with bright glass sounds. For the two closing *aitake* sounds in the *shō*, the *hichiriki* is pushed "beyond its limits." In contrast to the uncompromising criticism of tradition in *Palast des Schweigens*, the peak of Stäbler's "anti-traditionalism" here translates into a quotation of traditional harmony, which, of course, extends almost "shamanistically" and thus appears in a refracted form.

The basic idea of an unbridgeable gap, which is related to this concept, is at the center of Chaya Czernowin's *Die Kreuzung* (1995). The composer starts from the paradox of constructing a "super instrument"<sup>35</sup> out of an *ū* mouth organ (a bass *shō*, pitched an octave lower), an alto saxophone, and a double bass, the instruments being related to one another only as opposites and by the curious attraction of the basically incompatible. As in Franz Kaf ka's short prose fragment "A Crossbreed" [*Eine Kreuzung*] (1917) about an animal that is half-cat and half-sheep, the mix-ture of repulsion and attraction results in a "net of impossible relationships between the micro and macro levels."<sup>36</sup> Czernowin exacerbates these kinds of relationships through the extensive fragmentation of the structural building blocks of the piece (→ V.3): the fragmented structures are layered and coupled in an unsystematic way. Especially in the first part of the work (sections A–C), this can easily

<sup>32</sup> Stäbler, "Palast des Schweigens," 8 ("seltsam fremd"; "vielleicht weil sie mir zu eng mit der des kaiserlichen Hofes liiert schien, wahrscheinlich aber mehr, weil sie in der traditionellen Musik Japans – gleichsam der Natur folgend – Bögen des Werdens und Vergehens musikalisch nachzeichnet; ein Musizierstil, der Unreinheiten, äußere Störungen, 'weltliche' Eingrif fe nicht zu verkraf ten scheint.")

<sup>33</sup> Ibid., 8–9 ("rauh und rissig, manchmalsogar aggressiv und aufdringlich," "Traditionen zu kündigen").

<sup>34</sup> Ibid., 9–10.

<sup>35</sup> This is a very probably a conscious reference to Helmut Lachenmann, who has repeatedly spoken (especially with reference to his Second String Quartet) of producing a "super instrument" in the process of composing (Lachenmann, "Über mein Zweites Streichquartett," 232).

<sup>36</sup> Czernowin, "Die Kreuzung."

*Example 4.8: Gerhard Stäbler, ]LIFE[ for shō, hichiriki and glass chimes, III, ending*

*Example 4.9: Chaya Czernowin, Die Kreuzung for ū, alto saxophone, and double bass, beginning of section C*

Copyright © 1995 by Chaya Czernowin

be recognized in the score: a constant alternation of homorhythmic and polyrhythmic passages, frequent changes in tempo, and continually changing figures express sameness through difference. Instrument-specific extremes of technical possibilities seem to be the object of the work, in dynamics (*ū*), registers (double bass), and timbre (alto saxophone). The density thus achieved in section C (Ex. 4.9) and the virtuosity of the *ū* part lack any reference to the mythical-canonical *shō* tradition. The cultural identity of all three instruments seems to be reduced to that minimum that ultimately does allow for a connection of their difference, counteracting on the "gap" between their contexts and, in this way, repeatedly tending toward leveling and neutralization.

The break with the myth of the *shō* is attainable here only at the expense of a complete "anti-idiomaticization" of the instrument. A different approach to myth criticism is found in John Cage's composition *One9* (1991) for solo *shō*, one of the late "Number Pieces."37 In order to determine the selection of chords within the time windows, Cage started from a table of all possible chords and made a random selection (between one and seven notes), which can be repeated<sup>38</sup> and may contain *aitake* chords as well as major or minor triads:39

Cage approached composition by determining a number of possibilities for an instrument and then using chance to select which of these possibilities would appear, and at what point in the composition. Among his musical sketches archived at the New York Public Library are copious notes indicating all individual notes and clusters (*aitake*)thatthe *shō* could play, both familiar and unfamiliar. Audiences and performers of his music who are intimately acquainted with the *shō* would surely recognize some of these combinations, but the unusual ones would defamiliarize the olderchords and allowthem to be experienced asfresh and novelsoundsin their own right.40

Through pauses and caesuras, the f low of sounds is broken again and again – and thus the music maintains a clear distance from traditional *shō* performance practice. Sounds and silences are contained in an infinite continuum that Cage designed in the early 1950s, based on the maxim of "unimpededness and interpenetration" derived from Huayan Buddhism (→ II.6). Of course, this form of myth *negation* (to speak of myth criticism would arguably be inappropriate here) is characterized by a sharp paradox. By making instrumental technique, the playable sounds as delineated by traditional fingering, the sole basis, Cage replaces the canonical myth of the *shō* with the factual myth of playing technique: "The composer folds his hands in front of his sounds […]" – "[…] the mythology that in play was expelled as semblance is more than ever reproduced […]."<sup>41</sup>

40 Haskins, "The Extraordinary Commonplace."

<sup>37</sup> Coupledwith *One9* is *Two3* (1991),which combinesthe *shō* part of *One9*with a part forconch shells; in *Two4* (1991) for violin and *shō*, the *shō* part is newly composed (whereby the *shō* can also be replaced by a piano). In addition, *One9* can be combinedwith *108* forlarge orchestra (1991). Some basicinformation aboutthese piecesis provided by Haskins, "The Extraordinary Commonplace" and Drury, "Variation Pitch Structure Time." Toshio Hosokawa also mentions Cages *Two4* in Hosokawa, "Aus der Tiefe der Erde," 53. For Cage's Number Pieces in general see Haskins, *Anarchic Societies of Sounds*.

<sup>38</sup> Compare, for example, the seventh chord af ter 4:45 in no. 6with the firstchord af ter 2:00 in no.1.

<sup>39</sup> Examples of *aitake* chords are the first chord af ter 4:00 in no. 2 (*ku*) or the fourth chord af ter 7:45 in no. 2 (*jū*, second variant). The first major triad appears asthe fourth chord af ter 0:00 in no. 3.

<sup>41</sup> Adorno, "Anton von Webern," 122 ("Der Komponist faltet vor seinen Tönen […] anbetend die Hände."); Adorno, *Philosophy of New Music*("im Spielreproduziertsich […] erstrechtjeneMythologie, die man als Schein vertrieben hat." Adorno, *Philosophie der neuen Musik*, 67n). These statements, inwhich one could see the essence of Adorno's critique oftwelve-tone technique, especially in its application by late Webern, might make a fundamental aporia of Cage's aesthetics visible.

*Example 4.10: Yūji Takahashi, Mimi no ho, score pages shō (lef t) and viola (right); under the instructions for the viola player (section C) one finds the final shō glissandi with which the piece ends*


Copyright © 1994 by Yūji Takahashi, Tokyo

A probably more productive form of myth criticism via recourse to the physical-technical basics of *shō* performance practice is offered by Yūji Takahashi's *Mimi no ho* (Sails of the Ears, 1994) for *shō*, viola, and speaker. In many of his works, Takahashi "twists and turns" (Western and Asian) performance traditions back to their elementary beginnings through close observation and study of traditional performance practice (→ III.4). To be sure, Takahashi's goal is neither a historical reconstruction of tradition nor its negation, but the almost playful discovery of a place beyond these extremes. These techniques, however, are by no means limited to Japanese instruments, but open up new possibilities of intercultural rapprochement, such as in the transfer of the kinaesthetic, haptic treatment of *shō* and viola in *Mimi no ho*. Just as the 15 or 17 sounding pipes of the *shō*, which are not arranged in a scale (see Ex. 4.4), require a specific haptic orientation from the player, the fretless fingerboard of the viola is predestined to connect pitches by sliding lines. This is particularly elaborated in Section B, where the viola repeats a model several times, each time setting it a little higher, but maintaining the "physical" distance of the first played figure, creating slightly "stretched" intervals (Ex. 4.10, viola part). In *Mimi no ho*, as in many of Takahashi's other works, these two distinct performance modes, resulting in two fundamentally independent textures, are superimposed in a mode of attentive listening to one another. To this situation, the speaker adds a recitation of an early poem by Ossip Mandelstam that welcomes emptiness ("Sluh chutkij parus naprjagaet…," [Ears stretch sensitive sails…,] 1910). The final section is held together by a drone on A4 in the viola part, above which

the viola follows the pitches of the *shō* in a free manner, connecting them with glissandi. The glissando gesture is in turn taken up by the *shō* in a concluding gesture, creating a model of subtle communication between the two soloists.

If in *Mimi no ho* the "organological" dimension of the instrument, its physical properties and their implied gestural performativity, is the starting point for overcoming its "canon," Takahashi, in *Sōjō rinzetsu* (1997) for one or two *shō*, takes the path of a more philologically accentuated myth criticism, not least against the background of an intensive study of old

*gagaku* manuscripts.42 The composer uses elements of the archaic notation in this work (Ex. 4.11), which contained special signs for adding and removing individual fingers revealing a "haptic" playing logic increasingly lost in modern notation,43 and he also picks up on aspects of the archaic style that Laurence E. Picken and his colleagues have reconstructed. The thesis of the researchers, among others, was that, in the context of early *tōgaku*, the *shō* was not required to play those contemplative sound surfaces of the interlacing chords *aitake* for which it is known today. Rather, together with the *biwa*, it was used as a melodic instrument and integrated into a heterophonic structure.<sup>44</sup> In addition, the melodies were supposedly played at a much faster tempo than today.

*Example 4.11: Yūji Takahashi, Sōjō rinzetsu for one or two shō, part 2; right: transcription in Western notation by the composer*

Copyright © 1997 by Yūji Takahashi, Tokyo

<sup>42</sup> The sources used by Takahashi are, among others, *Taigen shō* (1512), ed. Toyohara no Muneaki, and *Gaku ka roku*, ed. Abe no Suehisa (1690), as well as a comparison of the three sources *Shinsen shōteki fu* (1302), *Kofu ritsu ryokan*  (1201), ed. Toshiaki Toyohara, and *Hōshō ryo ritsu kan* (1345), ed. Tatsuaki Toyohara (1630?) by the *shō* soloist Kō Ishikawa. Takahashi also explicitly refersto the research tradition of the Laurence E. Picken school. He studied, among others, volumes 4 to 6 of the series *Music from the Tang-Court* and essays by Allan Marett and StevenNelson, especially in connection with his composition *Bosatsu kangen dennōdate* (Computerized Music for a Bodhisattva) for *gagaku* ensemble und electronics(1992). Correspondencewith the author 21/3/2006.

<sup>43</sup> Takahashi calls this a "digital" notation method, in the double sense of the word, alluding to the Latin term for finger, "digitus." (Correspondencewith the author 21/3/2006.)

<sup>44</sup> See, for example, the transcription of *Sendai-en* in Wolpert, "The MensuralNotation,"128–129.

Takahashi's *Sōjō rinzetsu* is surely more than a mere historical reconstruction of the *tōgaku* style during the Heian or Kamakura Periods. He also tries to include elements of oral tradition in his score (to which the second term of the title "*rinzetsu*" refers,<sup>45</sup> while *sōjō* merely indicates the [G-] mode of the piece). In the second part of the piece, Takahashi extends the historico-geographical scope of his references to southwest China. Here he refers to a tradition of the Chinese Miao minority,<sup>46</sup> possibly dating to an early historical period, in which the *lusheng* mouth organ is played by young men during courtship dances. It is no coincidence that this social practice stands in stark contrast to the solemnity of the courtly *tōgaku* as we know it today.

The pseudo-archaic notation derived from the study of ancient *shō* manuscripts here helps to reconstruct a *shō* style in which the instrument shows a way of playing that has at best survived in the *chōshi* introductions of the *tōgaku*, but is here introduced in different tempi and enriched by ornamental gestures. The paradoxical effect of *Sōjō rinzetsu* lies in the fact that the authority of the archaic attributed to the *shō*, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is overcome precisely by a meticulous, source-critical philological reconstruction of archaic *shō* music. Takahashi's composition is certainly more than mere archeology, as he refers above all to those improvisational parts of *shō* performance that do not appear in the written sources. Thus Takahashi also explicitly criticizes those nationalist currents of Japanese ethnomusicology that had negated such a view of the (early) history of the *shō* for a long time.

"Music begins by doubting sounds"47: Takahashi's work aptly characterizes the far-reaching and complexly transformative approach that the composer has developed on the subject of cultural difference. Concentrating on specific case studies and historical sources, he refrains from any sort of pseudo-authentic historicism. Rather, his music permits the transformational and unpredictable on a large scale, which also manifests in the fact he gives much space to the personal responsibility of the performers. This approach can lead to individualized situations in which essentialist, political, or ideological definitions of culture become f luid.

\*\*\*

New music for *shō* is more than a compositional confrontation or appropriation of a novel/ancient instrument with novel/archaic sounds; it is always especially a demonstration of a "world-

<sup>45</sup> "Iconsiderthose old notations[a] personal memorandum by amateurs orstudents of oraltransmissions devoid of extempore variations and ornaments, rather like some reconstructed performances of European Medieval dance tunes." (Correspondence with the author 7/6/2006.) According to Takahashi, *rinzetsu* refers to improvisational practices in the context of the historical *gagaku*.More commonly the term designates a freercomposition style within the *koto* tradition, which dates back to the repertoire of Yatsuhashi-ryū of Yatuhasi (Yatsuhashi) Kengyō.

<sup>46</sup> The *lusheng* (among the Miao in Guizhou and Guangxi) and *hulusheng* (among the Yi, Lahu, and other minorities in Yunnan) may be the descendants of one ofthe oldest demonstrable forms ofthe Chinese mouth organ *sheng*. This would support the theory that the mouth organ originated in the Southeast Asia region independently, or even before,central Chinese variants(thissimilarly appliesto the mouth organ *khaen* in Laos and Thailand). For details of the history of the mouth organ,see Schwörer-Kohl, "Mundorgel."

<sup>47</sup> "Music begins by doubting sounds. One tears oneself away from the charm of sounds, one cuts the stream by coming to depend upon musical elementsthat are nottime-related. Eliminate all unnecessary information and learn new techniques; repeat one thing again and again instead of indulging in the traditional dramas of time." (Takahashi, "From Wordsto Music," 67.)

view" – a word that appears repeatedly in Toshio Hosokawa's statements with good reason.48 But not only that extensive reference to the canon and myth of the *shō*, designed by Hosokawa's own music, produces a worldview, the term also applies to the myth-critical counter-positions described above, especially to those that implicitly pretend to have overcome the dimension of worldviews entirely, such as John Cage's Number Pieces, instead submitting to the facts of the sounds in the attempt to escape the myth.

A way out of this polarization between a reproduction of canonized repertoire or mythological aura on the one hand, and the mythology of a "pure sound" on the other, is suggested by those ref lective positions outlined here, which critically take up the myth of the *shō* but neither negate its cultural historicity nor absolutize it aesthetically. Of course, it is inevitable that they, too, internalize the "myth" of the instrument, historically shaped in the unification of the *gagaku* repertoire since the mid-nineteenth century and its aestheticist essentialization. What is decisive, however, is that they allow this myth to be experienced in perspective, while deforming, perhaps distorting previous practice, continuing to rethink and transform the *shō* in a "hypoleptic" manner. Perhaps this is a measure of intercultural composition as a whole, which is certainly attained by the following, more thoroughly discussed example of *shō* reception.

#### **2. The** *shō* **as a Medium of Alterity and Self-Referentiality in Helmut Lachenmann's Music**

#### Aura and Alterity

When the chords of the Japanese *shō* sound in the penultimate scene of Helmut Lachenmann's *Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern* (The Little Match Girl, 1990–96), or when we hear the breathy wind chords in the final section of his large ensemble work *Concertini* (2004–05), these moments undoubtedly bring about what the composer has often described in his listening phenomenology: a conscious *hearing-in* ("Hin-Hören") takes place, a moment that makes the act of listening conscious and makes it possible, perhaps even inescapable, to listen sensuously for the sake of listening itself, to break out of the "listening grammar" that seemed unproblematic a few seconds earlier. When *hearing-in*, one questions the rules of this grammar, and with it the aesthetic and cultural agreements on which it is based (→ I.1).49

Such an overt break with the directly preceding sound world refers in particular to that auratic component of the musical material, which Lachenmann accords a central position as the

<sup>48</sup> "And to paint or sing this vivid line – I always need that mother chord and it can be like a very tight silence. – And for me this is like a worldview: there must always be something in the background and there must be two dif ferent layers. That can be silence, that can be flowing sounds – and a line. Analogously, one can call these layers: universe and human, nature and human."("Und um diese lebendige Linie zu malen oder zu singen – dazu brauche ich immer diesen Mutterakkord und der kann auch wie ein sehr dichtes Schweigen sein. – Und das ist für michwie eineWeltanschauung: Es muss auch im Hintergrund immer etwas da sein, und es müssen zwei verschiedene Schichten entstehen. Das kann Schweigen sein, das können fließende Klänge sein – und eine Linie. Analog kann man diese Schichten nennen: Universum und Mensch, Natur und Mensch." Hosokawa quoted in Sparrer, "ToshioHosokawa," 8.)

<sup>49</sup> A theory of "hearing-in" as an oscillation between metaphorical and non-metaphorical listening has been developed by Andy Hamilton in correspondence to Richard Wollheim's theory of "seeing-in" (see Hamilton, *Aesthetics and Music*, 95–111 andHamilton, "The Sound of Music,"171).

"bearer of familiar experiences in existential reality,"50 whose significance for his work he emphasized early on (→ IV.1). In his studies on "event and aura," Dieter Mersch has shown that a perception of the auratic in the arts is closely linked to the principle of alterity (→ I.3) as developed by Emmanuel Lévinas, among others.51 Mersch attempts to understand auratically qualifiable processes of perception by an "ek-static" basic principle, by "encountering an 'outside of me,' which is part of the tendency to limit or confuse my concepts and signification schemata and to overthrow them."52 It is thus central to this understanding that, on the basis of the principle of alterity, this form of perception retains a fundamental riddle-character (in Lévinas: "enigma"), thereby "letting the form suspend itself in favor of the act of appearance."53

This connection between breaking with an established and dominant state, the resulting discontinuity, and the categorial otherness of the newly emerging state can be experienced again and again in Lachenmann's music and serves the composer as a means of advancing to the concrete utopia of a "liberated perception."54 It quickly becomes audible and visible that, however this alterity is enacted (e.g., through musical structure, timbre, tempo, polyphony/density, sound-to-sound relationships, cultural and narrative contexts), polarities that initially seem "incompatible" emerge as "dialectical" in the further unfolding of events. Thus the aspect of the auratic and magical is successively captured by refractions and critique that Lachenmann considers key to an understanding of the European concept of art.55 Not least, these forms of mediation presuppose the awareness and the possibility of musical self-referentiality, in which musical language skills constantly question themselves rather than being simply "set."56 So it is hardly coincidental that, in *The Little Match Girl*'s *shō* scene, the initially "solemnly" enacted unbroken sound field (stretched to 76 quarter notes) – at whose center is the perfect fourth B4–E5 – is contradicted in the second half of the scene by its "negative," a sound field that is only two quarters longer in length, in which the *shō* is completely silent and which is dominated exclusively by "perforated" string sounds created by increased bowing pressure. Similarly, it can be argued that the music of this scene from the beginning is subjected to a double (cultural and historical) coding, and therefore the musical material, in addition to a constant self-interrogation (on the "intra-opus" level), continuously refers to different con-texts (or "extra-opus" levels).57 Therefore, this music deliberately bypasses a simplistic construction of alterity.


<sup>50</sup> Lachenmann, "Vier Grundbestimmungen des Musikhörens," 61 ("Trägerin von vertrauten Erfahrungen aus der existentiellen Wirklichkeit").

<sup>51</sup> Mersch, *Ereignis und Aura*,14–15, 50–52, aswell as Lévinas, *Alterity and Transcendence*.

<sup>52</sup> Mersch, *Ereignis und Aura*, 27 ("Begegnung mit einem 'Außer-mir', das in der Tendenz steht, meine Begrif fe und Signifikationsschemata zu entgrenzen oder zu verwirren und umzustürzen").

<sup>53</sup> Ibid., 50–51("wo sich die Form zugunsten des Erscheinensselbstsuspendiert"). See Lévinas, "Phenomenon and Enigma."

<sup>54</sup> Lachenmann, "Zum Problem des Strukturalismus," 90 ("befreite Wahrnehmung"). See also Lachenmann, Gadenstätter, and Utz, "Klang, Magie, Struktur,"19.

<sup>55</sup> See Lachenmann, Gadenstätter, and Utz, "Klang, Magie, Struktur," 27–28 and Lachenmann, "East meets West?," 87–90.

The "staging" of the Japanese instrument follows a general aural dramaturgy that Lachenmann has repeatedly implemented and developed in a wide variety of situations and with the most diverse sound resources. Thus the staging seems, at first, to have little to do with the fact that the instrument has a different cultural context (Japanese *gagaku* court music) than other instruments and voices (of European origin) "deconstructed" by Lachenmann. At first sight, this assessment is supported by several statements made by the composer in recent years, which demonstrated a sustained and fundamental skepticism about the possibilities of musical "interculturality" (→ I.3, II.6).58 Legitimate doubts, however, can be raised against the assumption that the treatment of the *shō* here is little more than a tried and tested means of extracting a new "effect" via Lachenmann's fundamental strategy of "refraction," supposedly merely serving as the negation of the negation of a sound ideal, which can be represented very aptly by the unbroken, "pure," fusing sound of the *shō*. In fact, Lachenmann himself hinted that he had resorted to the "scale" of the *shō* not only in his "opera" but also at the end of his ensemble work *Concertini*, <sup>59</sup> implying that connections with traditional repertoire and the performance practice of the instrument (→ IV.1) – and not just a celebration of its sounding aura – are intended.

Against this background, this chapter pursues the goal of analytically reconstructing structural and narrative contexts in which the principles of alterity and self-referentiality, as well as "extra-opus" and "intra-opus" references, materialize in the final stages of *The Little Match Girl* and the ending of *Concertini*. The discussion follows a series of short, loosely interconnected ref lections on "sound organization," "split sound and structural sound," "temporal sections," "narrativity," and "interculturality."

#### Sound Organization

In the 1970s, Lachenmann critically remarked that the dialectic between consonance and dissonance was "infinitely expandable," and that it would be possible that

any musical experience, even if it iscompletely alien,can be attributed to the tonal principle as an experience of dissonance whose excitement increases as it moves away from the tonal middle towardwhatever periphery. In otherwords,there is nothing thatcannot be graspedwith the categories of tonality and iscorrespondingly usable.60

In compositional terms, Lachenmann has addressed this "claim to totality" of the concept of tonality by entering the "lion's den" and constantly picking up, deconstructing, and reinventing genres, style characteristics, pitch structural models, and music-theoretical fundamentals of tonal music – analogously to the "traditionalism" in the institutional contexts of his composing (chamber music, orchestra, opera). In the same vein, Daniel Kötter has shown how, in *The Little Match Girl*, starting from a distanced, quasi-quotational treatment of the "debris field" of tonal

thatis,to more orlessconsciousreference formationsin the context ofthe compositional process. SeeUtz,"Das zweifelnde Gehör."

<sup>58</sup> See particularly Lachenmann, "East meets West?"

<sup>59</sup> Ibid., 84.

<sup>60</sup> Lachenmann, "Vier Grundbestimmungen des Musikhörens," 55 ("jegliche Musikerfahrung, und sei sie noch so fremdartig, dem tonalen Prinzip zuzuordnen als Dissonanzerfahrung, deren Spannungsreiz in dem Maß noch zunimmt,wie sie sich von der tonalen Mitteweg inwelche Peripherien auch immer entfernt. Anders gesagt: Es gibt nichts,was mit den Kategorien der Tonalität nicht erfaßbar und entsprechend nutzbarwäre.")

*Example 4.12: Above: beginning of the shō part of Etenraku (in the hyōjō mode; transcription af ter Miki, Nihon gakki hō, 79); below: Helmut Lachenmann, Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern, scene 23: Shō, shō part, mm. 544–556*

"f lotsam," elements from the world of tonality become more and more "self-evident means of composition."61 Lachenmann has emphasized in this context that his basic compositional techniques of such a game of culturally familiar material layers, such as musical intervals ordered according to constant (equidistant), continuous (successively increasing), or cyclical (symmetrical) principles, were developed as early as the 1960s.62 With his "Kadenzklang" (cadential sound), Lachenmann bases his "sound types," conceived in 1963–66, on a musical archetype whose simple progression from calm to motion to calm, in addition to the acoustic transientdecay process, also associates common "primordial models" of tonality, as developed, among others, by Adolf Bernhard Marx or Ernst Kurth.63 In contrast to the monistic concept of tonality, Lachenmann's post-structural cosmos of music, of course, constantly changes the system of reference and thus the imaginary "middle ground" from which movement emerges, and to which it f lows back.

<sup>61</sup> Kötter, "Die Irreführung der Oper," 45 ("Trümmerfeld," "Hörreste," "selbstverständliche[] Mittel[] der Komposition").

<sup>62</sup> Lachenmann, Gadenstätter, and Utz, "Klang, Magie, Struktur," 46.

<sup>63</sup> See Lachenmann, "Klangtypen der Neuen Musik," 1–8; Marx, *Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition*, vol. 1, 23; Kurth, *Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts*, 43. Both theorists start from the major scale to exemplify their model of motion. In Marx, the octave (e.g., C3–C4) represents the principle of calm, the intermediate stages (e.g., D-E-F-G-A-B) the principal of motion. For Kurth, who subdivides the octave into the tetrachords C-F and G-C, F represents a first target and resting point, anticipated by the intermediate leading tone E; with G, a new ascent begins. Overall, the upper tetrachord is more tense than the lower tetrachord for Kurth because of the leading tone B.

In the *shō* scene, one of these systems of reference is undoubtedly the instrument itself, whose uniqueness is underlined not least by the fact that it does not appear once in any of the preceding 22 scenes. It is unmistakable that Lachenmann starts from the traditional playing style of this instrument: the gentle rise and fall of the sound follows the rhythm of the breath, as in the *tōgaku* repertoire of *gagaku*. Thus, Lachenmann brings a significant organological characteristic of the *shō* to the listener's awareness – its ability to create an uninterrupted sound field. At the same time, an "intra-opus" layer is emphasized, in that this continuous sound takes up the model of a "potentially infinite song" that was introduced in previous scenes, in particular by the soloistic vocal parts.<sup>64</sup>

The finger position changes (*te-utsuri*) between the chords and the changes between inhaling and exhaling (*ikigahe*) in traditional *shō* performance practice strictly follow codified rules, as shown above (→ IV.1). A comparison of the *shō* part from the most famous *tōgaku* piece – *Etenraku* – with a section of Lachenmann's *shō* part (mm. 544–556) clearly reveals as a common principle the successive addition or removal of individual tones during the swelling and decay process (Ex. 4.12). "Cadential sound" and traditional *shō* phrasing thus here form a double coding of Lachenmann's sound design.

While the changes of color – and thus the chords – in *tōgaku* are intimately connected with the complicated arrangement of the 15 pitches on the instrument and the traditionally codified assignment of fingers to tones – every *te-utsuri*-change seems to emerge from this haptic performance feel (→ IV.1) –, Lachenmann has obviously taken little account of the traditional fingering technique in constructing his sounds, as a conversation with soloist Mayumi Miyata confirmed.65 Example 4.13, top line, shows the sequence of the chords *otsu*-*bō*-*jū*-*ge*-*otsu* from *Etenraku* including a schematic representation of the underlying fingering, and the bottom line shows Lachenmann's *shō* chords in measures 516 to 518 and 540.66 To play these chords, Mayumi Miyata needed to replace the C6-tone bamboo tube to have what is normally an inside hole on the outside of the instrument, as well as developing many unconventional fingering techniques, including the non-standard covering of several holes with the same finger. Lachenmann calls for a similarly radical change in the playing habits of the Japanese instrument as he usually does for European instruments, but leaves its familiar traditional timbre intact.

The Pythagorean tuning of the *shō* is based on a cycle of perfect fifths, which also forms the structural basis for the *aitake* chords (→ IV.1). A structural reduction of the *shō* sounds in Lachenmann's composition (Ex. 4.14) also reveals numerous quartal and quintal structures (shaded in gray), culminating in the aforementioned "celebrated" fourth B4-E5 (mm. 518–532), in which oboes, violas (later clarinets) and trumpets are added to the *shō*. This fourth acquires special meaning, since it is played for 57 quarter notes without any accompaniment. Later, the quintal-quartal structures even allow a purely pentatonic chord to emerge that can be regarded as a slightly "compressed" variant of the *bō*-*aitake* (m. 622, based on the pentatonic scale E-F#-G#-B-C#; instead of D5-E5-A5-B5-E6-F#6 [*bō*-*aitake*], Lachenmann uses F#4-G#4-B4-C#6- E6-F#6). This pentatonic harmony, introduced after the aforementioned expanded field of "per-

<sup>64</sup> See Kötter, "Die Irreführung der Oper," 41.

<sup>65</sup> Personalconversationwith Mayumi Miyata, Tokyo, 29/3/2008.

<sup>66</sup> The fingerings are given by means of the usual abbreviations l1: lef t thumb, l2: lef t ring finger, etc. Small vertical arrows next to the finger symbols indicate raised finger holes. Arrows between finger symbols represent the finger movement from the preceding chord (*Etenraku*). Dashed framed finger symbols denote fingerings in which several holes must be covered by the same finger (Lachenmann). The bamboo tube for the tone C6, which isto be replaced due to thefingering structure in the chords of Lachenmann, is also shown in the diagram.

*Example 4.13: Above: chord progression otsu-bō-jū-ge-otsu from Etenraku; below: Lachenmann, Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern, scene 23: Shō, shō chords, mm. 516–518, 540, each with a graphic representation of the fingerings and fingering changes* *Example 4.14: Helmut Lachenmann, Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern, scene 23: Shō, analysis of the shō-sound fields; upper line: chord progression (gray highlights: quartal/quintal structures); lower line: analysis of the sounds according to pitch-class sets (white noteheads: whole tone segments)*

forated sounds," which entirely dispenses with the sound of the *shō* over a total of 78 quarter notes, has a special auditory-psychological significance.

In addition, one can detect formations of interval structure in the *shō* chords and in the orchestra characteristic of Lachenmann's harmony during the 1980s and 1990s,67 such as triadic stratifications at the interval of the (major or minor) second or tritone (indicated in brackets under the chords in Example 4.14), "continuants" (continuous 5-4-3-2 semitones in measure 532), "constants" (such as the numerous fragments of the whole-tone scale, marked in the score example by white noteheads), and cyclic interval arrangements (2-3-2-3-2 in measure 622). Such configurations can already be partially found in the *aitake* chords (→ IV.1, Ex. 4.2). For example, continuous interval sequences are found in the chord *ge* (2-1-2-3-4) and the chord *bi* (1-2-[1-2]-4 [→ 1-2-3-4]); the chords *gyō* (2-3-2-2) and *hi* (2-1-2-2-2) contain whole tone segments; triads superimposed by seconds are contained in the chords *jū* (D major/E minor) and *hi* (A minor/B minor); and a cyclical structure in particular can be found in the chord *bō* (2-5-2-5-2).68 In the harmonic structures, therefore, one can equally speak of unmistakable double codes that permit two or more different interpretations.

This ambiguity of sound design is intensified if one includes the orchestral part in the analysis, which, according to Lachenmann, forms a "'court' around the silvery removed sound of the 'Shō'"69 and is to be understood as complex, quasi-spectral extension of the *shō* sounds. The orchestra also establishes an echo-like sound processes continuing from the preceding scene (no. 22: *Himmelfahrt* [Ascension]) and, toward the end of the scene, where increasingly noisy structures are developed, transforms into the sparse sonority of the final scene (no. 24: *Epilog ["Aber in der kalten Morgenstunde"]* / Epilogue ["But in the cold dawn"]). In the interplay of *shō* and orchestra, in particular until around measure 608, there is an abundance of additional harmonic layers of meaning (Ex. 4.15–4.17).

By adding the orchestra, the first sound field of the *shō* (mm. 508–509) is interpreted in the sense of a D major cadenza (A(7)-D), while the second sound field (mm. 511–514) is characterized by an intertwined sequence of fifths B(7)-E-A (Ex. 4.15). At the same time, however, these orchestral additions are to be understood as deformed overtone spectra, in keeping with another basic harmonic technique frequently used by Lachenmann. The following enharmonically-mediated (G#-Ab, D#-Eb) echo of two quartal chords C-F-Bb / Eb-Ab-Db (mm. 513–516), stratified at a distance of a minor third, points to the large quartal field from measure 518 (the fourth is probably the most conspicuous interval from the beginning, since the second *shō* phrase enters on the fourth F5-Bb5, m. 511, anticipated by the piano in the same octave, m. 509). The fourth Ab5-Db6 in the *shō*, which marks the end of the quartal field in measure 532, thus refers back to the echo of measures 513–515. The resonances of bowed cymbals (mm. 514–519), which appear for the first time with that echo, also return here and add a long decay to the quartal field (mm. 532–540).

<sup>67</sup> See, among other, Zink, "Strukturen," 39–41 and Cavallotti, *Dif ferenzen*,114–124. See also footnote 62.

<sup>68</sup> Interval data here and subsequently are provided in semitones.

<sup>69</sup> Lachenmann, "A Musical Plot," 16 (see the section *Narrativity* below).

In measure 540 (Ex. 4.16) the cymbal resonances transform into a C8 in the violins, which remains as a reference pitch over 20 measures and frames a series of descending interval sequences, starting from the impulsive F major/F# major/G major progression exposed in the *shō*. These descending interval chains in celesta, electric organ, and vibraphone are prefigured in the preceding scene 22, starting again from intervals of a fourth (first F7-Bb7 in measure 544, a remote echo of the fourth F5-Bb5 in measures 509 and 511) and swirling downward in a cyclical sequence twice at the beginning, before the intervals gradually decrease, starting from the middle position, down to the harp's low-pitched noise-like second B#1-C#2. This second resonates in the reference tone lowered to C(5) (Viola) and then in the toneless strings. The entire progression is embedded in continuously narrowing interval sequences:70 5[-1-]4[-1-]3[-1-]4 // [-1-]5[-1-]4[-1-]3[-1-]4 // [-1-]5[-1-]4[-1-]5[-1-]4[-1-]3[-1-]2[-1-]1; mm. 544–548 / 549–552 / 556–561). The fifth sound field of the *shō* (mm. 544–556) sets up a highly complex harmonic relationship with the reference pitch C8, the air resonances of the brass (which according to the score are to be "exactly synchronized with the *shō*"), and the interval chains of the bell-like instrumental sounds. Thus, for example, the intervallic structure of the *shō*'s six-note chord completed in measure 549 – 4-1-1-2-5 (or including the celesta's A5-D6 4-1-[1-2-]1-4) – may be interpreted as a variant of the symmetrical interval chain 4-1-3-1-4 of the celesta group; and the second six-note chord of the *shō* completed in measure 552 thus may appear as a compressed variant of this interval chain (**2**-1-3-1-**2** vs. **4**-1-3-1-**4**), with the celesta's third E5-G#5 (m. 551) being implied in the *shō*'s harmony.

Once again a pulsating, rapid sequence of triads in measure 565 (G major/F# major, with the triad's thirds supplied by the f lutes) ruptures the music, opening up into the glaring high fourth C6-F6, probably as an echo of the last phrases of the vocal solo parts from the previ-

<sup>70</sup> Bracketed intervals indicate the step to the next interval, 5[-1-]4 denotes a fourth followed by a major third, where the upper pitch of this major third is a minorsecond belowthe lower note of the preceding fourth.

ous scene, in which a high F6 had been reached the first and only time (no. 22: *Himmelfahrt*, mm. 465–466: B-D#/E-G#/A-C/Db-F or measure 477 unison F6 in *fff*). From this impulse, the fourth Bb4-Eb5 emerges, with the pitch Eb5 (later Eb6) remaining as a new reference pitch over the following 17 measures. The high F echo returns in the oboe a few measures later (m. 572), accompanied by rustling wind sounds played from the tape. The complex seventh sound field

*Example 4.16: Helmut Lachenmann, Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern, scene 23: Shō, simplified score reduction, mm. 540–582*

Copyright © 2001 by Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden

of the *shō* (mm. 570–577) again brings intertwined combinations of fourths (F5-Bb5, G#5-C#6, G5-C6, Ab5-Db6, E5-A5, see also Ex. 4.14).

In measure 583 (Ex. 4.17) we hear, for the first time, a long and sustained low pedal tone (Bb2 in contrabassoon and trombones), followed by more pedal tones in measures 600 to 603 (Bb2, double bass clarinet) and 606 to 608 (A2, piano and tuba), as if it were a signal of the overall pitched sound passing completely into noise. Consequently, the next triad impulse of the *shō* (mm. 588–589), this time with strings and piano added (*shō*: Db major/C# minor; orchestra: Ab major/D major, G major/Db major), is followed only by resonances of the rubbed Japanese temple bells (*rin*) instead of further pitch processes,71 over which the plain fifths, fourths, and triads of the *shō*'s tenth sound field are unfurled (mm. 593–597, C major/Bb major/D minor). This comes before, in measure 600, the "perforated" strings enter simultaneously with the eleventh *shō* sound field. The *shō* seems to react to this new sonority with sharper second- and tritone-dominated sounds (by means of the symmetric interval structure 6[4-2]-5-6).

<sup>71</sup> The resonances through continuous circular rubbing of the *rin* bells were first used by Lachenmann in *Air* for a percussionist and orchestra (1968–69);see Lachenmann, "East meets West?," 84.

The long decaying fourth C#5-F#6 after the end of the large perforation field (mm. 608–621), echoing the three large "Ritsch"72 scenes of the work (12, 16a, 20a), returns together with the aforementioned pentatonic twelfth *shō* sound field in the vocal ensemble and orchestra. Here the fourth C#4–F#7 is spread out even further (mm. 622–624), which unfolds a powerful resonating effect and markedly breaks with the perforation field. The F#6, which remains as a reference pitch, leads to a quasi-symmetrical *shō* harmony (mm. 626–630), whose second intervals, analogous to the eleventh *shō* sound field (m. 600 onwards), now initiate a fabric of "toneless" sounds with integrated Morse-code-like impulses of the two highest piano keys played *ppp*; until the end of the subsequent final scene (no. 24) this texture extends into a 77-measure permutative structure designed by mechanical means.73 The last two extremely short *shō* sound fields produce echo-like reminiscences, whereby the closing octave D5-D6 may have an "imaginary" resolution function in relation to the opening octave C#5-C#6.

Significant in terms of the pitch relations shown is therefore their multiple referentiality. The "intra-opus" dimension plays in particular with references to scenes 22 and 24 that frame the *shō* scene: from the beginning to the oboe's piercing F6 impulses, the sonority and downward direction of the *Ascension* resonate in many ways. As a result of the perforation field, especially from measure 626, the "toneless" structure of the final scene and the permutation sequence on the two high piano keys begin. This "external framework" corresponds to the analogy between the two central sections within scene 23, the quartal field and the perforation field, which on the "intra-opus" level, however, have rather opposing functions: while, in the quartal field, the harmony established by the *shō* reaches its imaginary center and thus places

<sup>72</sup> "Ritsch!" is the onomatopoetic word for the lighting of the matches used by Hans Christian Andersen in the fairy tale on which Lachenmann's work is based. This sound is explored through a particular abundance of orchestral-vocal constellations and timbres throughout the entire opera. Of the four scenes entitled *Ritsch*, no. 14: *Ritsch 2 "gedeckter Tisch / Hauswand 3*" [Ritsch 2 / Set Table /House Wall 3] eventually was notcomposed but kept in the order of the scenes(so that no. 15a immediately follows no. 13).

<sup>73</sup> See Lachenmann, Gadenstätter, and Utz, "Klang, Magie, Struktur," 61–62, particularly note 63.

*Example 4.18: Helmut Lachenmann, Concertini: analysis of the central sounds in the final section; first row: pitch sum with interval structure in semitones; second row: sequence of entries (below in brackets: included triads or four-note chords); third row: pitch content (pitch-class sets); fourth row: fif th/fourth structures*

lasting emphasis on the principle of alterity, the perforation field goes far back to the three "Ritsch" scenes and thus adds a particularly lasting self-referential emphasis. These two basic referential gestures can also be clearly understood on the "extra-opus" level: while the manifold references to musical layers that form the traditional context of the *shō* introduce an element of categorial, cultural alterity, the music of this scene simultaneously remains understandable also as a phenomenon of "cultural self-referentiality," considering the deformations of European tonality traceable in the *shō*'s sound processes, which are generally characteristic of Lachenmann's harmonic design.

Lachenmann suggests in his essay on sound types that (post-)tonal models such as the "cadential sound" can be decisive not only in the compositional microstructure, but also for largescale formal trajectories.74 This thought has been taken up variously in the exegesis of his works. Against this background, it is possible to derive factors from the close structural linkage of the last three scenes of *The Little Match Girl*, which allow us to interpret this series of scenes as a closing cadence – a cadential sound – of the entire two-hour "Music with Images." Evidence for this interpretation can be found, for example, in the fundamentally (self-)referential character of the pitch processes shown, but also in the extreme contrast between unbroken, seemingly "elevated" sound magic and an extremely barren "toneless" – or at least "pitchless" – environment on the threshold of silence. In "cadencing," after all, these properties present the entire diversity of sounds in this "opera" once again in condensed form.

Lachenmann's large ensemble work *Concertini* pursues a somewhat related formal model: broad exposition-like areas (mm. 1–275), in which both the ensemble as a collective and individual "concertante instruments" such as trombone (mm. 7–19), guitar (mm. 178–209), and harp

<sup>74</sup> See Lachenmann, "Klangtypen derNeuen Musik," 20.

(mm. 210–275) are acting in a "soloistic" manner. Three intensified zones follow, determined by an increasing urge to movement; repeatedly interrupted (mm. 276–417, 418–489, 490–610/614), these zones are characterized by ostinato figurations, changes of tempo, and general pauses that serve as structural markers. After this sequence of intensifying zones there is, analogously to the formal model of the *Little Match Girl*, a broad "cadencing" section (mm. 615–701), lasting about a quarter of the total duration, characterized by a distinctly slower tempo (q = 38) than the basic tempo that initially dominated for a long time (q = 56). In this "cadential sound" a "verticalization" or calming of the musical texture is evident; only a few isolated virtuoso figures reminiscent of the preceding sections remain.

At the "harmonic" level, this final section fulfills its cadential function insofar as the pitch configurations scattered over the entire duration, usually fragmentarily distributed, building up on a pitch organization that basically grows out of beating seconds, are consolidated – if only temporarily – in two or three "cadential" sonorities, potentially verifying Lachenmann's statement that the "tone scale" of the *shō* had been important for this work (see above). Here, too, the principle of superimposed fifths is fundamental (Ex. 4.18, fourth line), along with triadic (Ex. 4.18, second line) as well as continuous and equidistant formations. The conceptual starting point could have been the eight-note final sonority that swells into a *fortissimo* (mm. 699–701, Ex. 4.19), creating a complete sequence of fifths with G-D-A-E/B-F#-C#-G# and interleaving six different major and minor triads in close position. This "final cadence" is balanced out by the second central sound from the initial phase of the final section (mm. 641–644), in which only the A of a seven-part chain of fifths is missing, but which – in contrast to the final sound – is built around a quartal chord (G#-C#-F#) (the fourth here also appears as a central interval in the piano part, which brings a virtuoso figuration of parallel fourths).

In other configurations in this section too, fourth and fifth harmonic layers reveal a hidden principle (Ex. 4.18). Of central importance is the fourth Eb4-Ab4 in measures 666 to 673, which is illuminated by various components in a constantly changing "crypto-tonally" shaded manner, for instance by a f loating B (resulting from an E major second inversion chord), the initial dominant seventh chord on C (tubular bells, m. 666), or the chromatically descending tuba line (G1-Eb1, mm. 669–670). In addition to these three pillar-like "cadential sounds," the other harmonic formations of the final section remain of secondary importance. They can be related either to *Concertini*'s overall "beating microscopy" (for example, the beginning: mm. 615–635, or mm. 674–689), echo-like fragments of the long solo passages from the preceding sections (especially in the harp and piano from measures 646, 659, or 674), or are too f leeting to perform a truly structuring function (as in measures 651 and 661).

Of course, the quartal/quintal harmony continues to expand into these fragmentary formations, such that the "cadencing" sounds redeem something that the more complex processes between them suggest: the two framing harmonies, in particular, are also built after the transient decay model of the cadential sound or *shō* archetypes; the high wind ensemble unequivocally seeks a sonorous approach to the *shō* sound; and – most notably – all pitches in these sounds are indeed based on the "tone scale" of the Japanese instrument (although, of course, at least the final sonority – even with a highly unconventional fingering – would hardly be playable, such that a "utopian" *shō* becomes audible in it). It can therefore be concluded that the final section of *Concertini* has a similarly concentrating, "cadential" function as scene 23 in *The Little Match Girl*. Decisive for this function is the demonstrated simultaneity of alterity and selfreferentiality, which, in addition to an obvious "break" with what precedes it, also develops a synthesizing and "unbroken magical" magnetic effect in which heterogeneous "sound families" brief ly come together in a f leeting "sonorous unity."

*Example 4.19: Helmut Lachenmann, Concertini, mm. 697–701*

Copyright © 2005 by Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden

#### Split Sound and Structural Sound

The "cadential" function of the extended final section of *Concertini* certainly appears most strongly in the last chord. In this twelve-voice sound played by wind instruments, consisting of eight different pitch-classes, an uninterrupted stratification of fifths is realized for the first time, which produces an interval structure of 2-1-2-2-1-1-1-4-1-2-2 semitones in close position (Ex. 4.20). Similar to the previous axial harmonies, this final chord is embedded in an extraordinarily complex sound spectrum composed of clusters of strings interleaved with the wind chord, resonances of the tubular bells, and a striking piano glissando.

*Example 4.20: Helmut Lachenmann, Concertini, mm. 697–701, reduction of instrumental groups*

Here a *sone*-based spectral analysis<sup>75</sup> will be used to gain a deeper insight into the relationship between the sound of the *shō* and the final sound of Lachenmann's *Concertini*. In the spectrum of the traditional *shō* chord *bō* with the basic pitches D5-E5-A5-B5-E6-F#6 (Ex. 4.21), based on the fifth structure D-A-E-B-F#, the impression is confirmed that the individual pitches tend to merge into a cluster-like sound: The fundamental tones recede into the background in contrast to dominating overtones such as the fifth partial of E5 (G#7) or the seventh partial of D5 (a C8 lowered by 31 cents). The auditory impression is thus characterized not only by a high degree of blending, which can be partly explained by the tendency of the Pythagorean tuning of the instrument as well as the high position, but also by a diffuse "textural character" (in the sense of Lachenmann's definition of "textural sound"), in which it is difficult to isolate or identify individual sound components owing to the strong presence of partials in relation to the fundamental pitches.

*Example 4.21: Spectral analysis of the traditional shō chord bō, ordered according to loudness of the spectral components (duration of the sound: 5.532 seconds; source: CD of Miki, Nihon gakki hō); values above the notes denote the loudness in sone (average over the entire duration of the sound)*

<sup>75</sup> This analysis wasrealized with the sof tware MUSE [later re-named CTPSO] by Dieter Kleinrath in 2009. For the functionality and programming aspects of the sof tware, as well as for further analytical applications, see Utz and Kleinrath, "Klang und Wahrnehmung bei Varèse, Scelsi und Lachenmann," 84–89.

*Example 4.22: Spectral analysis of the final chord of Lachenmann's Concertini (m. 699), comparison of the recordings by Ensemble Modern (2006, above) and Klangforum Wien (2009, below); notation arranged according to loudness of spectral components (values in sone); the analyzed sections of the sound comprise the quasi-stationary part between the beats 2.3 and 3.4 of measure 699 (duration: Ensemble Modern: 1.609 seconds, Klangforum Wien: 3.890 seconds)*

The spectral analysis of Lachenmann's final chord is based on a comparison of two different recordings of the work by Ensemble Modern and Klangforum Wien76 (Ex. 4.22). Both recordings reveal – in contrast to the *bō* chord – a spectrum dominated by the lower fundamental pitches of the chords B4, D5, E5, G5, while the volume (and intonation) of the remaining notes in the two recordings varies widely. The presence of the other fundamental pitches is significantly greater in the Klangforum recording, which, together with significantly lower microtonal deviations in the individual spectral components, seems to indicate a more precise intonation. In addition, the stronger dynamic contrasts within the chord in the Klangforum recording are striking and also contribute to a more pronounced morphological profile: the perceived loudness of the seventh-loudest component (A5) is already only about half that of the loudest (B4); in the Ensemble Modern recording, the corresponding pitch is only in 14th place, so the overall dynamics of the pitches are more balanced here.

<sup>76</sup> Helmut Lachenmann, *Concertini*: Ensemble Modern, Conductor: Brad Lubman, EMSACD 001 (2006); Klangforum Wien, Conductor: Johannes Kalitzke, Kairos 0012652KAI (2009).

Lachenmann brings about this concentration on the fundamental pitches by having the lower eight notes of the chord played throughout on low wind instruments in (partly very) high position (two horns, two bass clarinets, two bass f lutes, bass trumpet, trombone). Also, the oboes in the high position bring out the fundamental tones. As with the *shō*, masking effects occur; in both cases, the highest note (F#6) is largely obscured by the adjacent sine tone components (see Ex. 4.21 for the low loudness of the F#6 fundamental in the *shō* spectrum).

If we now try to evaluate the results of the spectral analysis with some caution from the perspective of the composer's aesthetics, we find, perhaps surprisingly, that despite the great spectral complexity, the individual (fundamental) pitches of the chord in the spectrum remain as distinct as possible, not least when Lachenmann's chord is set in contrast to the spectral characteristics of the traditional *shō* chord, in which the intensity of the partials contributes to a maximum sound fusion and a diffusion of the fundamental tones. It could thus be concluded that even where Lachenmann presents a seemingly "conventional" type of blended sound, its internal structure shows essential characteristics of a "split sound" or "structural sound."<sup>77</sup> Even though the perception of Lachenmann's final sound undoubtedly "switches" perception into a "global" mode, an oscillation between such a global impression and the singling out of individual components seems to be a perfectly plausible description of the auditory process invoked. Lachenmann's important idea is that in certain situations, structural and textural sounds can easily merge into one another, "tilt" into the other state.78 This is supported by the highly differentiated instrumentation of the chord and its surroundings. In the terminology of Albert Bregman's *Auditory Scene Analysis*, one could argue that a "natural assignment," in which an unambiguous identification of the sound sources is possible, and a "chimeric assignment," in which such identification is impossible, f luctuate here in a micro-temporal process (→ VI.4).79 In one moment, individual instruments seem to emerge as identifiable, in the next they have disappeared in the global sound event, the "texture."

It should be pointed out that the technical method of rationalized analytical methodology, which has been "aggravated" here by spectral analysis, is insufficient for conveying the wealth of connotations or describing the implicit meanings of sounds that emerge. Lachenmann's conviction that musical sound to a considerable degree unfolds "magic" and leads to a high level of identification and a merging of listener and sound, but that magic can exist today only in the context of its negation as "broken magic," illuminates the inner connection between the "magic" of the diffuse textural character of the traditional *bō* chord and the "broken," "structuralist," fundamental-based character of Lachenmann's *Concertini* chord.

<sup>77</sup> See Schering, "Nationale und historische Klangstile." Schering interpreted the history of music here as a constant change between the ideal of the "Verschmelzungsklang" (blended sound), dominant in vocal polyphony of the fif teenth and sixteenth centuries as well as in symphonic music from Haydn to Mahler, and the "Spaltklang" (split sound), dominant in the music of the Middle Ages, linear Baroque counterpoint, and modern music.Ofcourse, Schering's"Spaltklang"(splitsound) and Lachenmann's"Strukturklang"(structuralsound)should notsimply be equated here; a more nuanced discussionwould have toweigh commonalities and dif ferencesin terms. One possibly significant aspect might be that both termsseem to be based on a consistently polyphonic model (→ VI.4).

<sup>78</sup> Lachenmann, "Klangtypen desNeuen Musik," 20.

<sup>79</sup> Bregman, *Auditory Scene Analysis*, 459–460.

#### Temporal Sections

In his pioneering work, Pietro Cavallotti argues that only meticulous sketch studies can actually trace and interpret those "muddled paths" that make up the substance of Lachenmann's and other composers' poststructural music:

The importance of sketch research for the analysis of "New Music" should no longer be in question today.[…]"NewMusic"increasingly defined itself,forthe most part,through the composer's own rules, rules that dif fered in each work, meaning that source research is of ten an indispensable aid to understanding the most important structures and technical principles.<sup>80</sup>

In the case of Lachenmann, source studies reveal a rigorously anti-systematic, anarchic negation of regular, automated structures that are the exact opposite of a common concept of "structure." Lachenmann's structural grids are thus a medium that, on the one hand, enables an "almost complete pre-ordering of the material" and, on the other hand, includes the option of "freely editing all parts of a composition."81 In Lachenmann's music, structure becomes a means of articulation only through conf lict, friction, or synergy with an Other, with a principle of tonal, sensual, existential, or cultural alterity or through "imploding" conf licts with its selfcreated preconditions.

As most of the composer's works, *The Little Match Girl* and *Concertini* are based on structural grids and preformed material. Although the following considerations cannot document these preformations on the basis of the sketches, two tables clearly demonstrate the relevance of prearranged temporal sections for the perception of "cadence-like" effects, which are obviously very deliberately designed in the two sections of the works discussed here. In the case of the *shō* scene from *The Little Match Girl*, the table of temporal divisions (Table 4.1) initially shows proportions organized on the basis of the Fibonacci series or the Golden Section.<sup>82</sup> For example, the distance from the beginning of the large quartal field to the end of its resonances (mm. 518.3–539) and the previous distance from the beginning of the scene to the beginning of the quartal field show the ratio of 21.5:13.5 (1.592). Significantly, the duration ratios of the *shō* sound fields to their echoes (indicated in Table 4.1 by "x") are also often subdivided by Fibonacci proportions: sound field #1 3:2, sound field #5 13:8; sound field #6 2:3, sound field #7 8:5, etc.). At least two distinct Fibonacci series (starting from different points), namely 1-2-3-5-8-13-21-34 and 2-5-7-12-19-31, appear to have been used.

The numerical relationship is also significantly related to the structuring of the large-scale form: the proportion 25 (equivalent to 100 quarters/pulses) frames the section from the *shō*'s

<sup>80</sup> Cavallotti, *Dif ferenzen*, 12–13 ("Die Bedeutung der Skizzenforschung für die Analyse der "Neuen Musik" dürf te heute nicht mehr zurDebatte stehen.[…]'NeueMusik' konstituierte sich zum großen Teil immer mehr über vom Komponisten selbst vorgegebene und in jedem Werk anderslautende Regeln,so daß dieQuellenforschung of t eine unerläßlicheHilfe zum Verständnis derwichtigsten Strukturen und technischen Prinzipien darstellt.")

<sup>81</sup> Ibid.,126 ("fast vollständige Vorordnung des Materials;" "alle Teile einer Komposition frei zu bearbeiten").

<sup>82</sup> In other works by Lachenmann,selected rhythmicstructures, possibly also pitch processes, have certainly been developed using the Fibonacciseries. For example, the entry distances of the foursound familiessuperimposed at the end of *Mouvement (– vor der Erstarrung)* for ensemble (1982–84) (from m. 483) follow the sequence 8-5-3- 2-1-2-3-5 eighths. See also Piencikowski, "Fünf Beispiele," 109. The proportion of the Golden Section (Φ), known since ancient times, isrounded to 1.618033989. The "Fibonacciseries," named af ter the mathematician Leonardo of Pisa,called Fibonacci (c.1170–c.1250), is an integer approximation to this proportion. Forthe application ofthe proportion in musicalcontextssee among othersMöller, "Goldener Schnitt" and Baltensperger, *Iannis Xenakis*.


*Table 4.1: Helmut Lachenmann, Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern, scene 23: Shō, analysis of temporal divisions*


sound field #8 to the end of the scene symmetrically (17[5–5–7] + 8 | **19.5** | 17[4–13] + 8[6–2]), with the perforation field (19.5) forming the axis of symmetry. Also in the first part of the scene, the proportion 25 figures prominently and, in particular, links the *shō* sound fields #2 and #3, as well as #4 and #5. There are also multiplicative arrangements. For example, the duration of *shō* sound field #3 (24) can be explained as a multiplication of the durations 6 (sound field #2) and 4 (sound field #4) surrounding it; equally, the duration of the *shō*'s sound field #11 and the following perforation field (27.5) might be approximated as a multiplication of the surrounding *shō* sound fields #10 (7) and #12 (4).

However consciously such time relationships may be constructed, they always create a clear distinction between the clearly marked *shō* sound fields #4, #6, #9, #11, #13, and #14, which open up wide-ranging "lingering" sound states of the orchestra (here, the length of these orchestral "echoes" clearly outweighs the *shō*'s preceding sound field), and the remaining *shō* sound fields, in which the orchestra indeed acts primarily as a frame and/or resonance of the *shō* in the foreground. In addition, the time-span organization reveals an analogy between the quasi-


*Table 4.2: Helmut Lachenmann, Concertini, final section, analysis of temporal divisions*

symmetrically arranged, perceptually highly significant large "fields of alterity" (quartal field and perforation field), whose special aural effect is underlined by the "disproportionality" of their durations.83 Undoubtedly, in both cases these are moments in which a "ripetere ad libitum" could be prescribed to designate the points of contemplation that the composer has described as essential formal pivots in his works.84 The analogy of these sound states corresponds to an analogy of the transformation fields at the beginning and at the end of the scene, which refer to the framing scenes (no. 22 and no. 24) in an "intra-opus" manner. The different length of the echoes from no. 22: *Himmelfahrt* in the first two *shō* sound fields of no. 23 (mm. 508–515, 5+6 = 11 proportion values) and the premature entry of the "toneless" epilogue structure at the end of no. 23 (mm. 626–645: 13+6+2 = 21 proportion values) may be explained by a large-scale tendency within the scene toward the momentum of the echoes and their emancipation from the *shō* sound fields.

Undoubtedly, the deliberate design of the temporal proportions also represents a perceptually and psychologically relevant category, since the ever-reconfiguring relations between *shō* sound fields and echoes form a decisive criterion for the listening orientation. A relevant approach applicable to further interpret this scene in its larger context is the connection between a "saturated" listening situation, in which the expectation of change in the musical structure becomes increasingly "urgent" due to a permanently evaded closure, and the experience of musical coherence as developed in the music-theoretical discourse on expectancy and implication.<sup>85</sup>

<sup>83</sup> Although the proportions of 19 and 19.5 could be regarded as parts of the "alternative" Fibonacciseries 2-5-7-12- 19, this does not explain the combination with the proportional number 8 in the case of the perforation field. Also, in the case of the quartal field, the proportion of 5:19 would have to be constructed with the less plausible omission of the numbers 7 and 12. Therefore, it seems more consistent to regard both fields as consciously stretched "sound states" that break out of the proportionalstructure.

<sup>84</sup> Lachenmann, Gadenstätter, and Utz, "Klang, Magie, Struktur,"16.

<sup>85</sup> Leonard B. Meyerintroducesthe concept of "saturation" in the context of his basicconcepts of "completion" and "closure": "A figure which isrepeated over and over again arouses a strong expectation ofchange both because continuation isinhibited and because the figure is not allowed to reach completion." (Meyer, *Emotion and Meaning in Music*,135.)

For the final section of *Concertini* one could probably develop a similar argument. Here, too, the overall proportions (Table 4.2) show a numerically very clear structure in which all three "cadential sounds" (sound fields #2, #5, and #8) are preceded by longer sections of almost exactly the same duration (here the proportional number 25 or the duration of 100 quarters also form the mean value): 25.75–**4**–21–**7**–21–**3** (with the three cadential sounds in bold). Interpreted from a different angle, one can say that there are exactly the same distances between the three cadential sounds, and besides the sum of the two framing sounds' durations (#2 and #8) gives the duration of the central fourth Eb4-Ab4 (#5): **4**–21–**7**[**4+3**]–21–**3**. The ephemeral nature of the three cadential sounds, which seem to f lash up instantaneously from a sea of differences, gives this final section a more fragmentary character when compared to the three final scenes of the "opera." One might argue that, in the long "coda" of *Concertini*, the same kind of disintegration that increases constantly in scenes 22 to 24 of *The Little Match Girl* up to the "toneless" barrenness of the epilogue prevents a stabilization of the musical structure from the outset.

#### Narrativity

Lachenmann's text "Eine musikalische Handlung" ("A Musical Plot"), which accompanies *The Little Match Girl* instead of a libretto or synopsis, inimitably links the technical-poetic description of musical processes, references to the underlying texts of Hans Christian Andersen, Gudrun Ensslin, and Leonardo da Vinci, and musical references to his own works and those of others. The discussion that has been going on for some time in musicology as to how music, especially instrumental music, might perform narrative functions or in which cases it is appropriate, or even necessary, to apply the concept of narrativity to music (→ III.5), seems to be answered by this text in a strikingly straightforward manner:

She dares not return home. The cold gradually becomes more aggressive, reaching for her. Music, as its image, becomes shrill, violent once again in a dif ferent manner, invoking torpor and trembling mortal fear of growing cold oneself. […]

The girlcomesto again in the held second and finally again the "Scratch!". Greatestsound perforation of all: rif t across the vertebrae of the piano strings, just as the pattering pizzicato arpeggios, playedwith plectrums behind the bridge ofthe string instruments,transition through via a hammeringwooden stick to the appearance oftheGrandMother, her giantcontourssketched in one voice by the orchestra as quasi pedalled unisono line. ("*Her grandmother had never appeared so large, so beautiful"*) 86

Much has already been said about the specific pictorial character of Lachenmann's music, and differences from conventional concepts of musical narrativity have been identified in the fun-

<sup>86</sup> Lachenmann, "AMusical Plot,"14–15 (translation adapted) ("Siewagt nicht nachHause zu gehen.Die Kältewird zunehmend aggressiv, greif t nach ihr. Musik, als ihr Abbild, gerät nochmals auf andere Weise ins Schrille, Gewaltsame, beschwört zugleich Erstarrung und zitternde Todesangst vor dem eigenen Erkalten. […] Das Mädchen kommtwieder zu sich im gehaltenen Sekundklang und schließlich das erneute 'Ritsch!'. Größte Geräuschperforation: Riss über dieWirbel der Klaviersaiten, ebensowie prasselnde pizzicato-Arpeggien, ausgeführt mit Plektren hinterm Steg der Streicher, Übergang durch hämmerndenHolzstab zur Erscheinung der Groß Mutter, ihre Riesenkontur vom Orchester einstimmig gezeichnet als quasi pedalisierte Unisono-Linie. *('Die Großmutter war noch nie so schön, so groß gewesen.')*" (Lachenmann, "Eine musikalischeHandlung," 4, 6).

damental ambiguity of the "images" uncovered by his music. Even though Lachenmann's "listening guide" seems to suggest rather unambiguous assignments, this fundamental ambiguity results from the fact that any conventional semantics inherent in the sounds is first of all compositionally deconstructed by what the composer has called *musique concrète instrumentale*, which uncovers the physical conditions of sound production and makes it the topic of composition.<sup>87</sup> Similarly, the semantic character of the music may be deconstructed by means of the "crypto-tonal" techniques of pitch organization discussed above. For Lachenmann, therefore, there is no contradiction between the demand for structurally oriented listening and the exposition of pictorial associations. This clarifies his statement that "precisely 'structurally' directed listening, that is, an observing perception of the immediate sounds and the connections acting in them, is connected to internal images and sensations that by no means distract from that observation process, but remain inseparably connected to it and even lend it a special characteristic intensity."88 In the context of such a "pictorial" narration as evoked by music, the tonal quality and symbolism of body gestures and movements, such as trembling or the igniting of a match, are of particular importance, since they converge with a repertoire of noise sounds that Lachenmann has continuously refined and expanded since the 1960s.

Perhaps the contradiction between the unambiguousness of Lachenmann's musicalized prose in the "Musical Plot" and the demand for an openness to pictorial associations could be resolved by taking this "listening guide" as only one possible, by no means binding musicalnarrative structure. This can easily be understood from the final scenes discussed here. In Lachenmann's text (and score), the first use of the *shō* coincides with the arrival of the little girl in heaven, marked by Andersen's phrase "sie waren bei Gott" ("they were with God"). For Lachenmann, the "silvery removed sound of the 'Shō' […] in the happy-liberated sense" forms a "'comfortless' medium of the transcendent," then "returning seamless[ly]" to the "cold morning hour" of the final scene 24.89

In the context of Lachenmann's narrative structure, scene 23 thus essentially serves to concretize the celestial as a *musica coelestis* or *musica mundana*, which earlier music theory considered largely inaudible, but not actually sonically realizable. As outlined above, the *shō*, already in its earlier form as the Chinese *sheng*, was associated with the mythical phoenix owing to its shape since very early times (→ IV.1) and its sound is also closely linked to the best-known *tōgaku* repertoire piece *Etenraku*, literally "music of heaven." Moreover, due to its high position and overtone-rich, strongly fused sonority, it seems predestined for such a musical-narrative function. In Lachenmann's *Das Mädchen*, however, it is linked to the threads of the complete work via sound organization, timing, and also by the complex manner of its silencing. In its "structurality," it refutes the obvious assumption that it is only an easily accessible means of

<sup>87</sup> See Nonnenmann, "Musik mit Bildern"; Kaltenecker, "Subtraktion und Inkarnation," and Kaltenecker, "Musique concrète instrumentale."

<sup>88</sup> Lachenmann, "'… zwei Gefühle …'" ("[…] gerade das 'strukturell' gerichtete Hören, das heißt das beobachtende Wahrnehmen des unmittelbar Klingenden und der darin wirkenden Zusammenhänge, [ist] verbunden […] mit inneren Bildern und Empfindungen, die von jenem Beobachtungsprozess keineswegs ablenken, sondern untrennbar mit ihm verbunden bleiben und ihm sogar eine besondere charakteristische Intensität verleihen.")

<sup>89</sup> Lachenmann, "A Musical Plot," 16 (translation adapted) (see the section *Sound Organization* above) ("Der noch verbleibende Instrumentalapparat bildet einenHof um den silbern-entrückten Klang des'Shô'[…]: im glücklichbefreiten Sinne 'trostloses' Medium des Transzendenten, bruchlos hinüber- bzw. zurückführend in die 'kalte Morgenstunde' […]." (Lachenmann, "Eine musikalischeHandlung," 6.)

generating aura; rather it seems, as the time span analysis showed, to be connected to a construction-based "celestial mechanics."

One might conclude from this constellation of ideas that there is a "harmonizing" fusion of *shō* and orchestra in scene 23 based on the hybrid combination of deconstructed "European" and "Japanese" harmonies. Analogously to the course of Andersen's narrative structure, this harmonization of opposites seems to appear only temporarily intact, designed as pure hallucination, an escapist fantasy inevitably followed by the "hard facts" of worldly reality. The image of the little girl's corpse, understood as an indictment not only of the society that shares responsibility for her death, but also of those who delight in the sentimentality of this image, appears to result in questions that cannot be answered by the hybrid sound formations of the *shō* scene; one might even argue that this scene completely fails in its futile attempt to conjure up an "idyll."<sup>90</sup>

Largely independently of these questions, the extraterritorial character of the *shō* sound remains an important narrative basic figure in *The Little Match Girl* that updates the topos of spatial distance – a central aesthetic figure of nineteenth- and twentieth-century music featured perhaps most prominently in Gustav Mahler's music. In *Concertini* and its spatial disposition, in which the ensemble of soloists is placed around the audience in six heterogeneous groups, this topos becomes a basic element of the temporal-spatial narrative. Proximity and distance are here not only a question of individual listening position, but inscribed in extremely sharp dynamic and gestural contrasts on every page of the score. Only in the greater focus of the final section does the music seem to withdraw into the corners of the room through dynamic-gestural reassurance. Particularly in the f leeting yet sober "cadential sounds," that pick up the narrative thread of the *shō* from the *Little Match Girl*'s ending, the topos of distance is formed into presence, an experienced moment. In its "utopian" harmony there is an inherent law which cannot be completely integrated into the harmonic matrix of the work and thus negates a conventional cadential function, as it does in the "opera." Lachenmann's musical narrativity reveals its ambiguity, especially in its open endings.

#### Interculturality

The analyses presented here have attempted, albeit in fragmentary fashion, to present different points of view on the question posed at the beginning, namely, how Lachenmann's music realizes the simultaneity of an "irrupting" auratic alterity and dialectical mediation in the overall context in terms of compositional technique and aesthetics. With regard to the cultural contextualization of the (real and imaginary) *shō* sounds, I have repeatedly referred to their "double coding," which evades simplistic culturalist assignments (in the sense, for example, that the *shō* would produce only "Japanese" sounds and the orchestra only "European" ones). The more complex picture emerging from this interpretive model ultimately also raises questions about the historicity of the soloistic instrument and its repertoire.

Pietro Cavallotti has shown how Lachenmann's "deconstruction" of cultural, social, selfcreated conventions, automatisms, and structural plans presupposes a comprehensive critique of the notion of structure, a substantial parallel to the philosophical poststructuralism of Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and others.91 It is therefore not surprising that the term "interculturality" was similarly extensively "deconstructed" and problematized by Lachenmann in a lecture at the 2006 Darmstadt Summer Course published in 2008:

<sup>90</sup> SeeHiekel, "Interkulturalität als existentielle Erfahrung," 75.

<sup>91</sup> Cavallotti, *Dif ferenzen*.

The term "intercultural" is, not without justification, suspected of disguising or cosmetically masking what could otherwise be described dif ferently, namely as parasitic exploitation, reverential or unrepentant, loving or cleverly idyllic use of aesthetically "interesting" because untouched, "fresh," even "authentic" sources of fascination of "other," non-European or non-Central European, but internally – still – intact habitats, that is, cultures: fresh meat for a tired culture exhausted and drained by a gymnastics of reflection and perpetual horizon-crossing, and the compositional practice trapped in it in this part of theworld. […]

I amglad and itisimportantthatthere are seriously initiated "intercultural" encounters, not only in music and not only in the other arts: but even the very idea of "encounter"strikes me as a onesidedly Western proposition. […] Thinking in European terms, the intellect, however it operates, must leap beyond its own horizon, both in intercultural discourse and in dealing with itself. It actually seems ready for this in lucid moments, for the aspect of transgression is a crucial part of itstradition. […]

The mystery and the magic and the beauty oftraditionalJapanese court music[…] may fascinate us aesthetically, interest us, or even touch something deepwithin us – nevertheless, itstrikes me as problematic and misleading to speak of such an experience, however precious, in the same breath as a typically European artistic experience […]. Perhaps it is infinitely superior in its authenticity and ritual integrity. But as an object of import in our Western reception practice, it soon becomes an exotic idyll, insofar as its aesthetic appearance, its perceived outer skin, so to speak, entersthe mediating mechanisms of our bourgeois art-obsessed reception rituals: in the concert hall, or whatever replaces or supplements it today, stored on sound media and easily accessible artifacts, in the musical request program on the radio.<sup>92</sup>

The doubts about culturally encoded musical idiomatism as a whole, the legacy of the linguistic critique of the postwar avant-garde, is combined here with the offer to participate – through

<sup>92</sup> Lachenmann, "East meets West?," 84, 87, 90. ("Der Begrif f des Interkulturellen setzt sich, nicht zu Unrecht, dem Verdacht aus, etwas zu verschleiern bzw. kosmetisch zu maskieren, was auch anders bezeichnet werden könnte: nämlich als parasitäre Ausbeutung, ehrfurchtsvolle oder ehrfurchtslose, liebevolle oderschlau idyllisierende Nutzung von ästhetisch 'interessanten',weil unberührt 'frischen', gar 'authentischen' Faszinosa 'anderer', außereuropäischer bzw. außermitteleuropäischer, wie auch immer in sich – noch – intakter Lebensräume,sprich Kulturen: Frischfleisch für eine per Reflexions- und fortgesetzter Horizontüberschreitungsgymnastiken erschöpfte, müde, ausgelaugte Kultur und in ihr gefangenen [*sic*] Komponierpraxis hierzulande. […] Ich bin froh darüber und es ist wichtig, dass es ernsthaf t in die Wege geleitete 'interkulturelle' Begegnungen gibt, nicht nur in der Musik und nicht nurin den anderen Künsten: Aberschon die Idee der'Begegnung'selbstscheint mir ein einseitig westlich geprägtes Ansinnen zu sein. […] Das europäisch geprägte Denken, der wie auch immer denkend operierende Intellekt muss dabei im interkulturellen Diskurs und zugleich im Umgang mitsich selbst einen Sprung über den eigenen Horizont machen. Er scheint in lichten Momenten tatsächlich dazu bereit, denn gerade das Moment der Überschreitung gehört zu seiner Tradition. […] Das Geheimnis und der Zauber und die Schönheit einer traditionellen japanischen Hofmusik […] mag uns[…] ästhetisch faszinieren, interessieren oder auch tief in unserem Innern berühren – dennoch, esscheint mir problematisch und irreführend, ein solches,wie auch immer kostbares, Erlebnis in einem Atem zu nennen mit einem Kunst-Erlebnis europäischer Prägung […]. Vielleicht ist jenesin seinerAuthentizität undrituellenUngebrochenheit diesemunendlichüberlegen.Aber alsImportgegenstand in unsererwestlichenRezeptionspraxis oxydiert es alsbald zur exotischen Idylle, insofern seine ästhetische Erscheinung, sozusagen seine wahrgenommene Außenhaut, in die Vermittlungsmechanismen unserer bürgerlichen kunstbeflissenenRezeptionsrituale gerät: imKonzertsaal oderwasimmerihn heute ersetzt oder ergänzt, auf Tonträgern gespeichert und bequem zugänglich macht, im Wunschkonzert einer Rundfunksendung.")

a leap beyond one's own horizon – in a compositional-existential way in intercultural processes, though it is hardly specified where and how exactly the boundary between a (superficial) "exploitation" and a (substantial) "self-admitting" to an "Other" would be drawn (→ I.2, I.3). By contrast, in his conceptualization of the *shō*, Lachenmann seems to take a less dualistic approach. Since the initially described first perception of the categorial alterity of the Japanese instrument in the course of scene 23 becomes an integral part of an expanded aesthetic horizon while maintaining an extremely complex networked mediation in the cosmos of Lachenmann's sound transformation, an irresolvable cultural difference is revealed, without degrading the *shō* to a mere "treasure." It seems essential that Lachenmann hardly touches the timbral peculiarities of the instrument. This becomes particularly clear when one compares Lachenmann's approach with other compositions in which far stronger interventions are made in the *shō*'s peculiar sound space, for example in Chaya Czernowin's trio *Die Kreuzung* (1995, → IV.1), where the cultural identity of all instruments is reduced to a minimum through noise structures and great virtuosity in order to implicitly point at the "gap" between their traditional contexts, or in Gene Coleman's *Yago* for *shō*, *hichiriki*, *ryūteki*, saxophone quartet, live electronics and video (2003), in which the *shō* and the other *gagaku* instruments are integrated into semi-improvisatory noise structures. While both compositions – substantially inf luenced by Lachenmann's method of sonic alienation – try to shatter the myth of the instrument in almost didactic clarity, Lachenmann's own approach is characterized by much subtler intermediate stages.

Something similar may apply to Lachenmann's reception of the philosophy of the Kyoto school, which has already been treated in detail by Jörn Peter Hiekel:93 If the problematic historical-political context of this school's thought is not made explicit by Lachenmann (→ II.6), especially connections between philosophical rhetoric, nationalism, and militarism during the Second World War period,94 Lachenmann's sensitive "searching movements," which use the texts of Nishida, Nishitani, Ueda, and Teitaro Suzuki because they "try to illuminate the nonsensible, even the unthinkable with the help of discursively operating language,"95 successfully avoid simple attributions without slipping into the arbitrary or mystifying. One significant element seems to be a hitherto seldom discussed connection between the Kyoto school's and Lachenmann's (in his later works) increasingly accentuated impulse toward a "liberated perception."96 In the words of Keiji Nishitani:

What the Japanese call *mono no aware*("the pathos ofthings")indicatesthe pointwhere lust and joy are onewith a sadness overthe feeling ofimpermanence. In otherwords,the phrase signifies that where the being of man, assomething bound to thingsin time, risesto awareness"perfumed" with the feeling of world and time and under the Form of infinity, there also the essential impermanence of allthings, orsheer being-in-the-world, is *aesthetically* feltto the quick – in the Kierkegaardian sense of "aesthetic existence." It means that all the things of the world and the selfitself are realizedtogether aesthetically,intheoriginalcountenance oftheirmanifestation.97

<sup>93</sup> SeeHiekel, "Interkulturalität als existentielle Erfahrung."

<sup>94</sup> See particularlyHeisig and Maraldo, *Rude Awakenings.*

<sup>95</sup> Lachenmann, "East meets West?," 86. ("Texte eines Nishida, eines Nishitani, Ueda, Teitaro Suzuki, [die] das Nichtsagbare, gar dasNichtdenkbare mitHilfe der diskursiv operierenden Sprache anzuleuchten versuchen.")

<sup>96</sup> Forthe broader historical and aestheticcontext of Lachenmann'sconcept of"liberated perception"seeUtz,"Auf der Suche nach einer befreiten Wahrnehmung," 39–40.

<sup>97</sup> Nishitani, *Religion and Nothingness*, 247.

# **V. New Music and Beyond: Music-Historical and Cultural Entanglements**

This chapter focuses on three intercultural contexts in rather loose sequence (though arranged roughly chronologically) that may share some overarching themes and lines of development. Beside the inevitable confrontation with cultural essentialism, questions of political and social function and communicability of new music are foregrounded along with aspects that have not yet been discussed sufficiently or in detail, including the relevance of voice, body, and movement as well as questions of perception and metaphorical hearing. Deviating from the emphasis placed elsewhere on the East Asian space, problems of the conception and compositional reception of African rhythmic structures against the background of systematic and historical aspects of polymeter are outlined in part 2 of the chapter, proceeding from György Ligeti's much-discussed Piano Concerto. All three parts might also be understood as case studies for an entangled transnational music history as discussed in Chapter II.1.

### **1. The Rediscovery of Presence: Intercultural Passages Through Vocal Spaces Between Speech and Song**

#### The Voice in Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century Music

Owing to its mythical and magical implications and its close relation to speech and language, the human voice has always been a crucial hinge between musical and social, spiritual, religious experience. It has also been a medium of sound that from the beginning was considered highly capable of communicating meanings, ideas, and ideologies. Researchers of evolutionary musicology and linguistic anthropologists have suggested that human language originated from symbolic patterns of vocalization and singing. A naive genealogy that attributes speech and singing to a common origin has become questionable at least since Jacques Derrida's deconstruction of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's *Essai sur l'origine des langues*, arguing that speaking and singing have always already deviated from each other.<sup>1</sup>

<sup>1</sup> Derrida, *Of Grammatology*, 199. Rousseau's *Essai* (written in 1755, published posthumously in 1781) argues that speech and songwould have been nothing more than language itselfin a prehistoric era (see Rousseau,"Essay on the Origin of Languages"). Rousseau intended to prove that melody, not harmony,should claim priority in terms

If one considers anthropological theses about the origin of language through the formation of semiotic patterns in archaic vocal music, however,<sup>2</sup> it also becomes apparent that, on the one hand, a complete "desemanticization" of the human voice, as was sometimes rigorously sought in twentieth-century music, soon reaches its limits: speaking and singing, even non-verbal forms, generate meaning. On the other hand, it is also clear that the apparently "most neutral" forms of organization of language, such as the standardized voices of newsreaders, contain a subversive, sonically autonomous element that cannot be grasped using structural-syntactic language models. Nevertheless, in musical and linguistic environments – which often tend to stress this autonomy of vocal sonority – the voice is embedded in structural and cultural frameworks or codes that may both restrict and expand this sonorous presence and thus inf luence or multiply its connotations. These meanings are usually more ambiguous in performed language and vocal musical structures than in everyday language, and often intentionally so.

If the level of musical globalization comes into view regarding such ambiguity, understood as a constantly procedurally shifting constellation of homogenizing and differentiating movements (→ I.2–3), it becomes clear that the voice may reinforce both movements – cultural convergences or hybridizations as well as the articulation of local, regional, or national identities.<sup>3</sup> Furthermore, it has become clear in the extensive studies on the aesthetics and cultural history of the voice in recent years<sup>4</sup> that collective models of voice use and articulation are ref lected in a highly complex manner in individual voices through personal appropriation or musical training, so that it seems impossible to separate or isolate them. Indeed, it is precisely the pluralistic variety of vocal characters and techniques that enables storytellers, singers of traditional narrative genres, opera singers, avant-garde vocalists, or theater actors to switch between different moods and characters in the shortest possible time. In contrast to such vocal "role play," deep psychological approaches aim at a "liberation" of the voice from the formalized "masks" and conventions of the daily use of voice, an approach pursued by the vocal pioneers Alfred Wolfsohn and Roy Hart<sup>5</sup> as well as in the musical avant-garde since the 1960s by Dieter Schnebel, Peter Maxwell Davies, or Jani Christou.

Maybe it was precisely this tendency toward more or less subconscious articulation of a not only culturally but also historically "charged" sonority of human singing voices that, in twentieth-century music, temporarily led to a widespread eschewal of the vocal element – a point Dieter Schnebel made rather clear:

of music and musictheory,since it imitatesthe accents of language and, in its own linguisticsimilarity,would be superior to mere speech (see also Berger, "'Harmonie' und 'mélodie'").


<sup>2</sup> "Vocal music might have been the evolutionary laboratory in which early humans developed complex syntactic patterns and a system of multifaceted discrete contrasts that allowed them to attach to these patterns their preexisting symbolic abilities and thusto establish a stable speechlike system." (Richmann, "Did Human Speech Originate in Coordinated Vocal Music?," 244.) This argument has also been taken up in more recent research: "Performative functions associated with oralsound-making provided initial pressuresfor vocalcommunication by promoting rank and relationships. These benefits, I suggest, facilitated conflict avoidance and resolution, collaboration, and sharing of needed resources." (Locke, "Rank and Relationshipsin the Evolution of Spoken Language," 37, Abstract.)

Serial music was conceived as an abstract music, like abstract painting, nonrepresentational painting. We [the composers] also worked toward this. There were constructions and certain forms that we simply rejected. We didn't want to write symphonies. We didn't want to write operas. Vocal music also was almost taboo, because vocal music always has a text, and the text provides an emotional plan. The text has its own progression of sound, but we wanted to compose the sounds themselves. For this reason we turned to the phonetic script, because we had the possibility to notate minute dif ferentiationswithin the [vocal]sounds.6

Where the voice did appear, it was sometimes approached radically in an instrumental idiom, perhaps oriented toward some of Anton Webern's vocal works. This did not preclude, in works such as Pierre Boulez's *Le marteau sans maître* (1953–57) or Luigi Nono's *Il canto sospeso* (1955–56), a specific expressivity resulting from an unresolved friction between the musical structure and the vocal-physical sonorities. On the subject of his magnum opus *Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern* (The Little Match Girl, 1990–96, → IV.2), Helmut Lachenmann (referring to his own œuvre, but also making a general point) (self-)critically discussed this tendency toward an "exclusion" of the voice:

I have always paid special attention to familiar musical genres – in a paradigmatically modified context, so to speak. Of course, this also applies to answering the question: "How do you feel about singing?" To this day, this question has remained traumatic for me. There is something wrong with a notion of music that avoids the voice, or even shuts out singing. […] [My opera *The Little Match Girl*]can not least be attributed to an – unfinished – examination of the singing voice […].7

Lachenmann has explained further that his compositional practice, developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, by definition excluded the option of simply "recuperating" established modes of vocal and instrumental expression by employing "recognizable emotional gestures." For Lachenmann, compared to instrumental music, vocal music particularly relies on such gestures since "singing without preconceived emphasis is impossible;" a "singer cannot […] deliver their tone from a distance, but must give themselves, identify themselves. That is why the sung tone today, like 500 years ago, is a magical event."8 In his few vocal works, Lachenmann consistently

<sup>6</sup> Schnebel, personalcommunication, 25/05/2006, quoted in Gee, "The Notation and Use of the Voice in Non-semantic Contexts,"180 ("Die serielleMusik sollte eine abstrakteMusik sein,wie abstrakteMalerei, gegenstandslose Malerei. Und das haben wir auch angestrebt. Es gab Konstruktionen und bestimmte Formen, die wir einfach abgelehnt haben. Wirwollten keine Symphonien schreiben. Wirwollten keineOpern schreiben. Vokalmusikwar auch fast verpönt.Weil Vokalmusik istja immer mit Text, und der Textliefert einen emotionalen Ablauf.Der Text hat auch selber einen Klangablauf, aberwirwollten die Klänge selber komponieren. Deswegen sindwir auch auf die phonetische Schrif t gekommen, weil wir da die Möglichkeit hatten, die Klänge sehr dif ferenziert zu notieren." Gee, "The Relationship ofNon-Semantic Vocal Musicto the International Phonetic Alphabet," 281.)

<sup>7</sup> Lachenmann, "'Klänge sind Naturereignisse,'" 33 ("So ging es mir immer wieder um die Auseinandersetzung mit den vertrauten Werkgattungen – sozusagen in paradigmatisch verwandeltem Zusammenhang. Zum Beispiel natürlich auch um die Beantwortung der Frage: 'Wie hältst Du's mit dem Gesang?' Bis heute ist für mich diese Frage traumatisch geblieben. Ein Musikbegrif f, der der Stimme ausweicht, gar den Gesang aussperrt, bei dem stimmt irgendetwas nicht. […] [*Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern* verdankt] sich nicht zuletzt der noch nicht beendeten Auseinandersetzung mit dersingenden Stimme […].").

<sup>8</sup> "Helmut Lachenmann im Gespräch," SFB 2005, 69, quoted inMeyer-Kalkus,"Stimme und Atemsyntax,"105. ("vorab eingeführte Ausdrucksregister der Vokal- und der Instrumentalmusik mit wiedererkennbaren emotionalen

understood the voice as physical materiality that is made to sound on the basis of an anti-rhetorical "breathing syntax"<sup>9</sup> whereby the instrumental approach of the *musique concrète instrumentale* is transferred to the vocal medium.<sup>10</sup>

Whether such developments are traced back to the music-aesthetic primacy of instrumental music in the nineteenth century or are thought of in combination with the radical criticism of conventional ideas of similarity between linguistic and musical elements in the period after the Second World War (→ I.2), it is clear that the voice in works such as Arnold Schoenberg's *Erwartung* (1909) or Dieter Schnebel's *glossolalie* (1959–60, a concept work for which the composer made a fully-notated performance score, *Glossolalie 61*, 1961–65) breaks into situations that threaten the credibility of the language-character of music, and with it the presence of the human voice with a kind of atavistic, eruptive force. Last but not least, the incommensurability of these works can be identified in the way the vocal protagonists assume a new responsibility that significantly encroaches on the monological authority of the composer.11 In *Erwartung* or *glossolalie*, neither the performer's nor the composer's voice communicates a stable identity any longer; rather, they articulate (deliberately) futile attempts at constructing coherence, which is clearly shown by their non-linear, anti-narrative formal design.

If the voice in European music after 1945 and until Lachenmann was deployed at all, it did not necessarily act as a medium for the articulation of linear and meaningful expressive content that had generally become questionable: an intact musical-vocal representation of texts seemed to be meaningless. Also in music composed outside of Western contexts, the vocal element was often used with great caution from the postwar period on – a turn surely indebted to Cold War aesthetics, in which the enthusiastic endorsement of vocal music during the prewar and wartime periods, for example in Japan (→ II.4), appeared problematic.12 Moreover, instrumental works seemed easier to convey to a global audience (an audience comprising a majority accustomed to Western music) than vocal music, not least because it allowed the composer to avoid primary language and phonetic problems. Against this background, it is again no coincidence that – contrary to this tendency – in what was perhaps the most important period of Asian music in the twentieth century – the emergence of young Chinese composers since the early 1980s – the vocal element played a key role (→ II.3., III.5).13 In the space between the vocal

Gesten einfach abzurufen;" "Singen [ist] ohne […] vorgelagerte Emphase unmöglich;" "Ein Sänger kann nicht […] seinen Ton aus derDistanz abliefern,sondern er muß sich selbst dabei geben, muß sich identifizieren.Darum ist der gesungene Ton, heutewie vor 500 Jahren, ein magisches Ereignis.")

9 See ibid.


13 See, for more detail, Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 315–316.

modernism represented by Schoenberg's *Pierrot lunaire* (1912) and the almost inexhaustible reservoir of Chinese local and national vocal genres, a "third space" with great potential opened up (see below).

A special characteristic of vocal music has always been the difficulty of notating it. The voice certainly ref lects the tension between aural, performative and written, denotative layers of musical practice in a particularly fundamental manner. This tension is equally familiar from ethnomusicology14 and contemporary music. The minimal variations in pitch, vocal coloring, dynamics, and register changes that constitute an individual vocal sound can hardly ever be recorded in notation without omissions. In new music, this resulted on the one hand in overdetermined forms of notation, which, as in the aesthetics of Brian Ferneyhough, were sometimes linked to the idea of the vocal organ as a "resonator" to help filter out and individualize the notational complexity.15 This contrasts tendencies of works that have been created in close collaboration between composers and vocal soloists relying on their very specific vocal skills and colors – including vocal "composer-performers." In such collaborations, notation often has a merely supplementary role as a mnemonic device, establishing a kind of "oral tradition" comparable to many vocal genres in traditional music. Even though some of these developments can also be observed in the field of instrumental composition, the highly individual and peculiar vocal colors and possibilities of the singers led in many cases to particularly strongly performer-centered concepts. These include Peter Maxwell Davies's *Eight Songs for a Mad King* (1969), written for Roy Hart's "polyphonic" vocal artistry, a work ref lecting the anti-psychiatric debate in the UK during the late 1960s,16 the large number of works created for, with, and by Cathy Berberian, including John Cage's *Aria* (1958), Luciano Berio's *Sequenza III* (1966), and Berberian's *Stripsody* (1966),17 as well as Giacinto Scelsi's works for solo voice, especially the *Canti del Capricorno* (1962–72); Michiko Hirayama played a crucial part in the creative process of the *Canti*, also adding connections to traditional Japanese vocal practices.<sup>18</sup> In several cases, such collaborations touch on questions of authorship, since the performers often took on the role of a "co-composer."<sup>19</sup> In the globalized context, such close collaborations between composer and vocal soloist ref lect a growing importance of local contexts, which often involve new forms of global connectivity.<sup>20</sup>

<sup>14</sup> See Nettl, *The Study of Ethnomusicology*, 74–91.

<sup>15</sup> "[P]erformers are no longer expected to function solely as optimally ef ficient reproducers of imagined sounds; they are also themselves'resonators' in and throughwhich the initial impetus provided by the score is amplified and modulated in the most variedwaysimaginable." (Ferneyhough,"Unity Capsule,"100.)

<sup>16</sup> Williams, "Madnessin the Music Theatre Works of Peter Maxwell Davies," 83–84.

<sup>17</sup> SeeHerzfeld-Schild, "Studien zu Cathy Berberians'NewVocality.'"

<sup>18</sup> See, among others, Kirchert, "Between Worlds," Hirayama, "'Mach's wie Du esfühlst,'" Tortora, *Voce come sof fio, Voce come gesto*, and Hiekel, "Escaped from Paradise?," 161–164. Hirayama, however, emphasized that she had no sound knowledge of traditional Japanese vocal music (Hirayama, "[Michiko Hirayama in Conversation with Jürgen Kanold],"16–17).

<sup>19</sup> See especially Meehan, "Not Just a Pretty Voice."

<sup>20</sup> This means, for example, that these collaborations of ten develop over a longer period of time at a certain location – of ten privately – but atthe same time integrate the experiences of allthose involved on the global"stage." See also Tomlinson, *Globalization and Culture*,1–31.

#### Articulation and Codification of the Voice: Thresholds and Interactions Between Speech and Song

Analogously to the limitations of vocal notation, it was shown that even a tool designed as universalistically as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), despite its high degree of differentiation, ultimately cannot capture many phonetic structures, for example, where a voice gradually changes between different phonetic types or categories.21 An interculturally accentuated historiography (→ II.1) that critically addresses the criterion of writing must see a central task precisely in the clarification of such tensions between notation and performance, writing and sound. Indeed, it is the transitional areas between established vocal categories and vocal styles, as ref lected in the problem of adequate notation, that have repeatedly become a focal point of particular importance for vocal music of the most varied historical and cultural provenance, especially in the twentieth and twenty-first century. Such passages22 between speaking and singing voices are traced below using selected case examples from Japanese, Chinese, and European contexts. The exploration of the areas between speaking and singing seeks to question the relationship between voice and musical meaning, whereby structural and sociocultural dimensions of vocal music are interrelated. To this end, the interaction between "articulation" and "codification" is placed at the center of attention. "Articulation" is here understood not only in the technical or phonetic sense, but above all also metaphorically: the human voice "articulates" itself as an independent "agent" in a musical context where the vocal sound forms an autonomous psychophysical presence, while it might at the same time appear as one "voice" among several in the structure of the composition. Similarly, "codification" is understood not only in the obvious sense as a notation of sounding voice(s), but also as a term for those sound-immanent and language-discursive means for the constitution of cultural and historical "codes" in which a vocal sound is received and understood.

The passages between speaking and singing can be technically described in a variety of ways. Two culturally different "mappings" of this field will be discussed here, some parts of which will serve as a reference in the following analyses. As early as 1963, still somewhat indebted to the tradition of "Comparative Musicology," George List created a map conceived in an unambiguously universalist manner, based on a very wide number of traditional and new singing and speaking styles (Table 5.1).23 The examples include Western Australian Nyangumata *wangka* speech, Hopi Native American's *laváyi* (speech), *táwi* (song), and *tí:ngava* ("announcing," a chant on two reference pitches), and the New Zealand Maori's *koorero* (speech), *karakia* (ritual chant), *waiata* (song), and *haka* (narrative form with mixed styles). In addition, List discusses forms of heightened speech in advertising speakers, Western spoken drama, and jumping rope rhymes,

<sup>21</sup> See Gee, "The Relationship ofNon-Semantic Vocal Musicto the International Phonetic Alphabet," 265.

<sup>22</sup> In a wide-ranging essay, Martin Zenck presented the potential of the term "passage" as it is used here, historically prominently introduced by Walter Benjamin in *The Arcades Project* (*Das Passagen-Werk*). Zenck thematizes topographical-cultural fields(passages between geographiccultures or regions), intercultural fields(passages asinteractions between cultures), philosophical fields(passages between physical and metaphysical levels and concepts), and aesthetic fields (passages as crossings and transgressions of boundaries). These fields are also associatedwith music-specific meanings ofthe passage concept(transitions as part of musicalsyntax and form, continuoustransition as a principle in new music, etc.).According to Zenck, passagesthat"lead overthresholds" sometimes approximate transgressions in which borders are violently torn down "because this is the only way to cross them" (Zenck, "Zu einer kulturwissenschaf tlichen Theorie der 'Passage,'" 30, "über Schwellen führen," "weil nurso ihre Überschreitung möglich erscheint").

<sup>23</sup> List, "The Boundaries of Speech and Song," 9.

*Table 5.1: Gradation of the areas between spoken voice and singing by George List with placement of the examples discussed by List. 1: heightened speech (Western drama); 2: jump rope rhymes (USA); 3: Palau women song (Micronesia); 4: type of Thai Buddhist chant; 5: Schoenberg, Pierrot lunaire; Maori: haka; Chinese opera recitative (not specified); 6: tobacco "auctioneering" (USA); 7: Hopi Native Americans (Arizona): announcement; 8: aboriginal Australians (songs); 9: songs of black Americans; 10: bi-, tri-, tetratonic chants (Vedda: children's songs, folk songs)*

forms of recitation from Palau (Micronesia), Thailand, songs of black Americans, Schoenberg's *Sprechstimme*, and Chinese opera "recitative." The presupposed assumption of comparability within this sociologically and geographically exceptionally broad spectrum naturally leads to the question of how far the "technical" aspects of the voices gathered here can be isolated from the sociocultural conditions of their production and their emic concepts – a familiar argument from the broad criticism of comparative ethnomusicology since the 1960s. The meaningfulness of this map must certainly be limited to the "technical" dimension, which should not prevent us from using it as an aid to the following analyses. The pitches, which are less profiled in the everyday speaking voice than in the singing voice, gain clearer contours in more stylized declamation or in "half-sung" forms (List places Schoenberg's *Sprechstimme* in this area, center left). In contrast, pitch organization in the form of monotone recitation is increasingly narrowed

*Table 5.2: Gradations between speech and song in the four most important vocal genres of traditional Japanese music using Hirano's classification of ginshō, rōshō, and eishō*

down to a single note (center right), often in ritual contexts. Recitative styles are often characterized by repetitions of sound, such as the *parlando* of opera buffa. An increasing stabilization of the pitch or an expansion of scalar structures then leads to forms that are generally referred to as "singing."

Even on a purely technical level, List's map obviously only provides a relatively rough grid. More detailed categories are required to describe specific forms of vocal delivery. In traditional Japanese vocal music, passages between speaking and singing have received special attention and have been differentiated into complex categories within the practice of the individual genres. Table 5.2 seeks to show these categories for the vocal styles from *heikyoku* (epic narrative singing accompanied by the lute *biwa*), *gidayū-bushi* (vocal style accompanying the puppet theater *bunraku*), *nō* (archaic music theater employing male voices exclusively in both solo and choir formats), and *shōmyō* (ritual Buddhist chant) in a representation using an overarching three-level typology based on research by Kenji Hirano on *katarimono*, an umbrella term for language-oriented traditional Japanese vocal genres.<sup>24</sup> Hirano distinguishes between *ginshō* (declamation that moves close to the spoken language), *rōshō* (syllabic recitation at regular time intervals with pitch repetitions on one or a few pitch centers), and *eishō* (recitation tending toward singing, employing changing time intervals, with sustained notes alternating with faster notes of different pitches).

The vocal delivery techniques listed in Table 5.2 are by no means complete, however, and their assignment to the three categories is somewhat arbitrary, especially in *heikyoku* and *gidayū-bushi*, which have an extraordinarily large number of different gradations, although their exact relevance in practice often remains ambivalent and strongly dependent on additional factors such as the aural conventions of the respective schools.25 After all, in the three transcriptions shown in Example 5.1 (*shirakoe*, *kudoki*, *sanjū*) from the *heikyoku* piece *Suzuki*, one can recognize the three categories *ginshō*, *rōshō*, and *eishō* in a relatively pure form.

The vocal delivery techniques in *heikyoku* are generally referred to as *kyokusetsu*<sup>26</sup> (alteration, change, melodic formula), and in *gidayū-bushi* as *senritsukei*27 (melody type). Depending on the context, these terms may designate vocal techniques in the narrower sense but also melodic contours, lines, or even certain individual pitches.<sup>28</sup> *Gidayū-bushi* includes particularly numerous transitory styles that are used to switch between the main styles *kotoba* (speech), *iro* (recitation), and *ji* (chant), such as *kotoba-nori*, *ji iro*, or *kakari*. Cadential figures, melodic patterns, and quotations of specific melodies are juxtaposed to these main styles, resulting in a layered complexity that is inwardly connected to the process of oral transmission.<sup>29</sup>

<sup>24</sup> SeeHirano, "Beziehungen zwischen Sprache und Musik im *katarimono*."

<sup>25</sup> Updated introductions into the two genres can be found in Komoda, "The Musical Narrative of *The Tale of the Heike*" and Yamada, "*Gidayū-bushi*: Music of the *bunraku* Puppet Theatre."

<sup>26</sup> Komoda, "The Musical Narrative of *The Tale of the Heike*," 84. Sometimes the term *onsetsu* (syllable) is used instead of *kyokusetsu* (see Mayeda, "Über die *sanjū*-Abschnitte im *heikyoku*,"174).

<sup>27</sup> Yamada, "*Gidayū-bushi*: Music of the *bunraku* Puppet Theatre," 205.

<sup>28</sup> The use of these terms is not uniform in research and is not limited to the two genres: "[*kyokusetsu*] tends to indicate longer passages ofsection length, while [*senritsukei*] […] refersto shorter phrases" (Tokita andHughes, "Context and Change in Japanese Music," 24).

<sup>29</sup> "All *katarimono* of pre-modern provenance stem from oral practices in which text and music were produced by techniques of oral composition. Evidence for oral composition in such traditions is demonstrable through analyses developed from the principles of oral-formulaictheory." (Ferranti, "Transmission and Textuality in the Narrative Traditions of Blind *Biwa* Players,"141, note 22.)

*Example 5.1: The three vocal delivery techniques shirakoe, kudoki, and sanjū in transcriptions of the heikyoku piece Suzuki (performer: Tsutomu Imai; transcription: Komoda, Heike no ongaku, 404–417)* 

Copyright © 2003 by Haruko Komoda/Daiichi Shobō Tokyo

Hirano particularly highlights the intersections and transitions between the three main categories, which show a tendency toward hybrid formation. For example, a *kotoba* recitation in *gidayū-bushi* can tend to stabilize pitches in the manner of *rōshō* practice, motivated by dramatic, phonetic, or symbolic contexts. The *hiroi* technique in *heikyoku*, in turn, can be extended both to the regions of *eishō* and *ginshō*. Furthermore, as both traditions are transmitted orally, performance styles specific to a certain school and/or individual performers may lead to substantially different interpretations of the same technical terms. We can thus infer that even the most refined typologies do not provide sufficient tools to grasp the specific manner and criteria of transformation between speech and song inherent to many elaborate vocal styles. This obvious shortcoming implies that the interaction and transformation between speech and song must be analyzed comparatively in a variety of specific contexts.

#### **Fragmentation and Montage** (*gidayū-bushi*, **Tan Dun, Schoenberg)**

A detailed analysis of a section from *gidayū-bushi* will initially show how its "hybrid formation" of vocalizations is achieved practically. *Gidayū-bushi* is a specific vocal style of the narrative genre *jōruri* used in Japanese *bunraku* puppet theater and developed by Gidayū Takemoto (1651– 1714) in Osaka around 1684. The ambivalences and complexity of this style seem to me to allow particularly vivid passages to other types of vocal articulation. *Gidayū-bushi* is performed by a reciter (*tayū*, narrator) and a player of the three-string long-necked *futozao shamisen* (a bass *shamisen*, usually tuned in *honchōshi* with the [relative] pitches B3–E4–B4). The *tayū* acts as the narrator of the story and simultaneously lends his voice to all puppet characters acting on the stage. His vocal timbre is based on a strong chest voice and diaphragmatic breathing and is of a rough and throaty quality, which is guided by the aesthetic ideal *ibushi* (oxidation)30 and closely linked to the buzzing *sawari* timbre of the *futozao shamisen*. The *shamisen* contributes to the

<sup>30</sup> Reese, "*Bunraku*,"148.

expression of the text by playing finely spun heterophonic lines around the reciter's part and bridging gaps between sections with solo melodies (*meriyasu*). The continuing changes in the reciter's vocal character can only inadequately be inferred from the sparse original notation, which merely consists of a few instructions noted down in the *tayū*'s book to the right of the column with the lyrics.<sup>31</sup>

Example 5.2 shows the transcription of a section from the scene *Yama no dan* (Mountain Scene) from *Imoseyama onna teikin* (Mount Imo and Mount Se: A Parable of Female Virtue, 1771) a *bunraku* drama written by Hanji Chikamatsu (1725–1783). This section gives a good understanding of the mosaic-like microstructure that is so characteristic of *gidayū-bushi*, in that the vocal delivery changes with every line of text, or often even within the same line.32 The lyrical pas-

*Example 5.2: Hanji Chikamatsu, Imoseyama onna teikin (Mount Imo and Mount Se. A Parable of Female Virtue). Section from the scene Yama no dan (Mountain Scene), based on a performance by Sumitayū Takemoto, recitation, and Kizaemon Nozawa, futozao shamisen (transcription: Malm, "A Musical Analysis of 'The Mountains Scene,'" 78–79; the transcription follows the convention of notating the open strings of the futozao shamisen with the pitches B3–E4–B4; in the recording of the scene attached to Malm's analysis, the pitches are about a minor third lower, so the open strings of the futozao shamisen are at G#3–C#4–G#4*

Copyright © 1990 by Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan

<sup>31</sup> See Yamada, "*Gidayū-bushi*: Music of the *bunraku* Puppet Theatre," 204–205.

<sup>32</sup> See Malm, "A Musical Analysis of 'The Mountains Scene'" and Inobe, "Reading 'The Mountains Scene' as Music."

sage belonging to the overarching category *ji* at the beginning of text line 44 (third system on the left) is designated with the term *nagaji*, which symbolizes elegance, and is subdivided by the beginning of the direct speech of the young Hinadori, marked by the word "koishi" ("dearest [missed Koganosuke]"), which is clearly distinguished from the previous song by speaking. The melody then reaches a melodic and emotional climax with the B4 (*kami*) on the word "anata" ("you"). The top note, B4, returns at the beginning of the following line on the word "kiita" ("I asked [my mother to let me go]"), but with slightly less intensity and in a semi-spoken voice, marked by the vocal delivery technique *iro*. The "open end" of the sung phrase on F4, the upper secondary note of the pitch center E4, facilitates the transition to an initially half-spoken, then purely spoken passage (category: *kotoba*); another transitional passage employing the recitation technique *kakari*, in which the F4 is taken up again, finally leads back to the singing type *ji*. Hinadori's direct speech continues during all these changes in the vocal articulation; the forms of vocal delivery are thus not synchronized with the narrative-dramatic sectional structure of the text.

The transitions between sung and spoken passages are organized down to the last detail and at the same time with great variability, whereby pitch, timbre, and the interaction between voice and instrument continuously inf luence one another, "blurring" the vocal techniques. Owing to a high number of repeated pitches, most lyrical passages (*ji*) contain references to stylized speech (in Hirano's terms, it is a mixture of *rōsho* and *eishō*), while conversely spoken passages (*kotoba*) retain clearly present melodic forms (i.e., they mediate between *ginshō* and *rōsho*); references to gender, class, or age of the characters, or to the dramatic situation are encoded in these gradations. We therefore cannot reduce the complex relationships between melodic form, melodic patterns, the meaning of the words, and the phonetic structure to simple schemata or rules. The resulting high level of fragmentation is analogous to the f lexibility with which the performers translate the traditional performance instructions into sound; the information in the notation is formed by the reciter and the singular timbre of his voice into a strong vocal presence whose fragmentary microstructure is shaped into an ever-changing continuum.

Comparable forms of vocalization that continually change between different articulation types can be found in numerous Asian dramatic and narrative genres, though only a few show a degree of fragmentation in the microstructure similar to *gidayū-bushi*. The vocal articulation in Beijing Opera (*jingju*), which is usually summarized with the overarching categories of *sangzi* (voice) or *changbai* (singing and speaking), encompasses a large number of formalized gradations, even if these often vary imperceptibly in practice: "Because the same basic techniques of vocal production are used for all types of vocal performance, there is no feeling that a character suddenly stops talking and starts singing, or stops singing and begins talking; 'a very smooth transition from speech to song and vice versa [is achieved], contributing to the unity of a whole play.'"<sup>33</sup>

In addition to the Chinese folk song type *shan'ge* ("mountain songs"), Daoist ritual music, and Schoenberg's "speech voice," the singing styles of Beijing Opera constitute a key element of the vocal style developed by the Chinese American composer Tan Dun. Comparable to many other Chinese composers of his generation such as Qu Xiaosong (b. 1952), Wen Deqing (b. 1958), or Mo Wuping (1958–1993), Tan Dun created this distinctive style primarily on the basis of his own voice and during the 1980s consequently often acted as a vocal soloist of his own works. Starting with the early *Fu, Fu, Fu* (1982) to *On Taoism* (1985) and *Nine Songs* (1989), the metaphorical saying of "finding one's own voice" can be understood literally in Tan's case. Establishing

<sup>33</sup> Wichmann, *Listening to Theatre*,177, quotingHwang, "Peking Opera," 220.

*Example 5.3: Tan Dun, Silk Road for soprano and percussion, 3, systems 1+2*

an "oral tradition" of its own, Tan subsequently passed on this style to other singers who (with the exception of Beijing Opera singer and director Chen Shi-Zheng) were usually trained in European vocal technique. The American soprano Susan Botti (b. 1962), for example, worked with Tan Dun on a number of projects in the 1980s and 90s. An important step in this cooperation was *Silk Road* for soprano and percussion (1989).34 Example 5.3 shows a section of this work in which the voice alternates regularly on almost every beat between Tan's "register notation," marked by a "register key," which distinguishes five registers, and a speech voice, marked by cross-shaped noteheads and notated in chromatic pitch degrees.

The sections in register notation connect the individual syllables by means of sliding lines whose shapes are precisely prescribed, the falsetto and breast voice constantly merging into one another, as is characteristic of the *yunbai* style of declamation in Beijing Opera, in which stylized Chinese speech tones are connected to a melodic contour through glissandi. The relative pitches in *yunbai* follow the conventions of *Zhongzhou yun* (Zhongzhou rhyme, based on a dialect of the district of Zhongzhou, Henan province in the tenth to fourteenth centuries), a style distinct from "Beijing dialect" (Mandarin) which is also used in Beijing Opera.35 In Tan Dun's adoption, both types of vocal articulation, the "chromatic" chanting in the Schoenbergian speech voice style and the glissando-laden *yunbai* style, which is only roughly designed melodically according to registers, are combined in a way that minimizes their conceptual difference, not least by assigning them to the same performer and thus by linking them through a constant timbre.

Copyright © 1989 by G. Schirmer, Inc. [ASCAP]

<sup>34</sup> A first version of *Silk Road* was presented by Joan La Barbara on 01/04/1989, butsubsequently the work was performed by SusanBotti and recorded on CDby her. SeeUtz,*Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 397–398 and 423–429 (a detailed description of Tan Dun'scompositionswith voice up to the years1996 to 1998).

<sup>35</sup> Wichmann, *Listening to Theatre*, 204–211.

In his opera *Marco Polo* (1991–95), Tan Dun then referred to the *yunbai* style much more extensively and, in this context, expanded the concept of stylistically hybrid voices suggested in *Silk Road*. The type of voice treatment for the role Water, for example (Ex. 5.4), which emerged from the long-standing cooperation with Susan Botti (the soloist of the premiere), shows such a hybrid character in a particularly sustainable manner. The vocal structure aptly mirrors the symbolism of the Water-role in the opera as a mediator between geographical areas (water as a transport medium) and between the opera's spiritual and physical layers (water as a transformative medium). Although Tan Dun's elaboration for all voices in *Marco Polo* refers to the traditional singing technique of the Beijing Opera, differentiating between three phases of sound production – head (*tou*), belly (*fu*), and tail (*wei*) – according to the initial, middle, and final sounds of the Chinese syllable,36 this characteristic and the resulting inf lection techniques summarized in Tan's term "vocal calligraphy" are particularly formative for the Water-part.37 In addition, this part is characterized by a montage-like, paratactic structure that constantly changes between allusions to Beijing Opera vocal qualities, including the hightened speech (*yunbai*) and colloquial speech (*nianbai*), as well as to the singing style of Chinese mountain songs (*shan'ge*) and a (Western music based) lyrical high soprano register with controlled vibrato. Here too, the timbre of the vocal performer lends this fragmented mosaic-like structure a certain timbral unity. In fact, Susan Botti's performance as recorded on CD does not seem to be essentially informed by Asian singing traditions,<sup>38</sup> so that the structural analytical impression of hybridity to some degree appears questionable in the result.

Copyright © 1997 by G. Schirmer, Inc. [ASCAP]

<sup>36</sup> For more detailssee ibid.,194–199.

<sup>37</sup> See Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 423–427.

<sup>38</sup> Vgl. Tan Dun, *Marco Polo: An Opera within an Opera*, Sony Classical S2K 62912 (1997), CD 1, Track 11.

It becomes clear from the examples discussed so far that "vocal styles" that are linked in such hybrid contexts are almost infinitely differentiable and "fragmentable" in themselves. And this perspective can be further condensed if one includes a historical dimension that, for example in the case of the Beijing Opera, would have to take into account all those local and national singing styles from which a specific singing style emerged.39 The same applies, of course, to what is probably the best known form of vocal hybridization in the twentieth century – Arnold Schoenberg's *Sprechstimme*, as introduced by the composer in *Pierrot lunaire* op. 21 (1912). An interpretation of Schoenberg's *Sprechstimme* as hybrid, as a montage from fragments of different voice concepts, could initially point to the wealth of its actual and potential sources,<sup>40</sup> including post-Wagnerian styles of vocal declamation, for example in Hugo Wolf's songs41 or in Engelbert Humperdinck's short experiment with *Sprechgesang*, as well as contemporary forms of heightened speech in theater and literature, prominently embodied in Karl Kraus's readings or in the speech art of the legendary *Burgtheater* actor Josef Kainz, in which the melodic ambitus was stretched far beyond what is common today.42 Last but not least, the Sprechstimme concept in *Pierrot lunaire* is linked to the aesthetics of a "tonal freedom" of vocal articulation, as demanded in a 1920 treatise by Albertine Zehme,43 the soloist in the premiere of *Pierrot lunaire* in 1912 and the commissioner of the work – even if one has to assume that there was ultimately no consensus between Schoenberg and Zehme regarding the degree of this "freedom." It is clear, however, that Schoenberg wanted to go beyond a simple imitation of the fin-de-siècle trend of "pathetic speaking" when, in his foreword written in 1914, he stated that the vocal performer "must always be on guard against falling into a 'singing' manner of speech,"44 and that he disagreed with Zehme's increasing "tonal freedom" in the performances following the premiere.<sup>45</sup>

The microstructural fragmentation of the vocal part in *Pierrot* can be traced not only in terms of cultural history, but also in terms of the compositional structure. The peculiarity was pointed out in the literature several times that in no. 3 of *Pierrot* (*Der Dandy*) in addition to the general *Sprechstimme* as employed in all movements of the cycle, no less than six other different types of vocal articulation are explicitly distinguished (Ex. 5.5): *tonlos gef lüstert* (whispered tonelessly), *tonlos* (toneless), *gesprochen* (spoken), *mit Ton gesprochen* (spoken with tone), *halb gesungen* (half sung), and *gesungen* (sung). One can find comparable instructions for the

<sup>39</sup> The main styles converging in the Beijing Opera are *xipi* and *erhuang*, the styles of local operas in the Chinese provinces of Anhui and Hubei. See Li, *The Soul of Beijing Opera*,18–24, Schönfelder,*Die Musik der Peking-Oper*, and Mackerras, *The Rise of the Peking Opera 1770–1870*.

<sup>40</sup> See, in addition to countless other contributions, Brinkmann, "Kritischer Bericht," Stephan, "Sprechgesang," Meyer-Kalkus, *Stimme und Sprechkünste im 20. Jahrhundert*, 299–318, Cerha, "ZurInterpretation der Sprechstimme in Schönbergs *Pierrot lunaire*," and Byron, "The Test Pressings of Schoenberg Conducting *Pierrot lunaire*."

<sup>41</sup> See Kravitt, "The Influence of Theatrical Declamation upon Composers of the Late Romantic Lied."

<sup>42</sup> See Cerha, "Zur Interpretation der Sprechstimme in Schönbergs *Pierrot lunaire*" and Nöther, *Als Bürger leben, als Halbgott sprechen*.

<sup>43</sup> See Zehme, *Die Grundlagen künstlerischen Sprechens und Singens*.

<sup>44</sup> Schönberg, "Vorwort" ("sich sehr davor hüten [muss], in eine 'singende' Sprechweise zu verfallen"), translation af ter Byron, "The Test Pressings of Schoenberg Conducting *Pierrot lunaire*," 2.6;see Nöther, *Als Bürger leben, als Halbgott sprechen*,131.

<sup>45</sup> Meyer-Kalkus, *Stimme und Sprechkünste im 20. Jahrhundert*, 308–309.

*Example 5.5: Dif ferent instructions for voice articulation in Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire op. 21, no. 3: Der Dandy, mm. 6–11, 15–20, 30–31*

Copyright © 1914, 1941 by Universal Edition A. G., Wien/UE 5336

voice only in five other movements of the cycle, only in one place each.46 While this on the one hand surely proves that the fanciness of this movement (and the portrayed character) was of particular importance to Schoenberg, I would suggest that the continuous change between different nuances of *Sprechstimme* here only prescribes a performance practice in particular detail that can (cautiously) be transferred to the other movements as well.

This viewpoint perhaps provides a new perspective on the much-discussed problem of the interpretation of the *Sprechstimme* in *Pierrot lunaire*: Schoenberg's ambiguous information on the performance of the vocal part in the score, to which he added further, no less contradictory, restrictions and clarifications, unintentionally opened a space, a *passage* for the collaboration between the composer and the vocal soloist. He consistently notated clear chromatic levels for the *Sprechstimme* but at the same time – also in performances he directed himself – apparently allowed interpretations (or even preferred ones) in which the sung-spoken pitches differed sig-

<sup>46</sup> Four times it is a short "sung" phrase (*gesungen*), the end of which is marked by the instruction *gesprochen* (spoken), see no. 4 (*Eine blasse Wäscherin*), mm. 14/15, no. 8 (*Die Nacht*), mm. 10/11, no. 9 (*Gebet an Pierrot*), mm. 13/14, no. 11 (*Rote Messe*), mm. 24/25. In no. 10 (*Raub*), mm. 9/10, the voice alternates between *tonlos* (toneless), here indicated by special noteheadsthat occasionally appear withoutcomment in later movements, and *ton* ([with] tone).

nificantly from those specified in the score.47 The artistic process initiated by Schoenberg can therefore neither be described as a license for "self-assumed musical reciters" nor as an unambiguous product of a "radical aesthetic of the work."48 With this passage between speaking and singing Schoenberg also opened one between writing and orality. His concept of *Sprechstimme* "resists the view of music as solely the composer's sound which needs to be reproduced by passive performers"<sup>49</sup> and thus opens a space of negotiation between notation and orality, between compositional intentionality and performative presence.

There are key moments in *Pierrot lunaire* in which the voice moves to extreme registers, such as in some phrases of *Nacht* (no. 8), where an extremely low register symbolizes blackness, darkness, or in *Die Kreuze* (no. 14), where ascending leaps of over two octaves are contained within a structural cross symbolism. In these moments, the ecstatic potential of the voice can be experienced abruptly, it transcends the meaning of the word just as it goes beyond a simple illustration of rhythmized text declamation.<sup>50</sup> Indeed, it is probably these moments when the fragmentary microstructure is most sustainably absorbed in the presence of the voice and can be filtered by the performer into a new unity – similarly to what has been described above for the voice in *gidayū-bushi*. In all the examples discussed so far, there is this tension between fragmentation, particularity, a tendency to disintegrate into individual articulations and their connection in the act of an overarching vocal representation by the performer.

#### Incantation, Prosody, Ritual (Shimoyama, Takahashi, Peri, Sciarrino)

Such moments of vocal presence, immediacy, even ecstasy, were exploited most extensively in the twentieth century as a key subject of vocal composition. Some Western composers such as Dieter Schnebel, Giacinto Scelsi, or Jani Christou, encountered this field mainly through "psychoanalytic" and ritualistic approaches, and it is hardly coincidental that the attraction of the voice's presence resulted from the extreme fragmentation or parameterization in serial and postserial music.

<sup>47</sup> See Byron, "The Test Pressings of Schoenberg Conducting *Pierrot lunaire*," 4.1–4.12. On the problems of whether the vocal part in *Pierrot* should respect the notated pitches or not, a broad discussion has continued for decades. Recently, Lukas Dorfegger made detailed transcriptions of the vocal part in three recordings (Erika Stiedry-Wagner/Arnold Schoenberg 1940, Anne-Lise Berntsen/Christian Eggen 1994, Christine Schäfer/Pierre Boulez 1998) and summarized thatwhile the more recentrecordingssurely respected the pitches more than the earlier ones, "the demand to sing each pitch exactly is basically hardly feasible and thus is cannot become the most important criterion for a good performance of *Pierrot lunaire*." (Dorfegger, "Praktische und theoretische Überlegungen zur Ausführung der Sprechstimme in *Pierrot lunaire* op. 21 von Arnold Schönberg," 32; "die Forderung […], jeden einzelnen Ton genau anzusingen, [ist] praktisch kaum ausführbar ist und [kann] daher auch nicht zum wichtigsten Kriterium für eine gute Auf führung von *Pierrot lunaire* werden […].")

<sup>48</sup> Meyer-Kalkus, *Stimme und Sprechkünste im 20. Jahrhundert*, 309 ("musikalisch sich dünkende Rezitatoren," "radikale[] Werkästhetik").

<sup>49</sup> Byron, "The Test Pressings of Schoenberg Conducting *Pierrot lunaire*," 4.6.

<sup>50</sup> Some research (e.g., Rapoport,"On theOrigins of Schoenberg's *Sprechgesang*") arguesthatthe melodiccontours of Schoenberg's *Sprechstimme* basically follow the model of intonation in spoken language in an almost literal manner, and the musical result is "alienated" through structural procedures such as reversal or octave transposition. Even though I doubt that the "melody" in *Pierrot* actually came about in such an analogical way, it is by no means unreasonable to assume that spoken intonation could have been essential for the melodic and rhythmic design of the vocal part.

Against a comparable background, vocal works by Hifumi Shimoyama (b. 1930)51 and Yūji Takahashi can be cited from the Japanese context, in which a countercurrent to the cases discussed so far becomes apparent: the starting point is less a variety of fragmented vocal techniques than a single reference articulation that is eroded in several ways. Since the 1970s, Japanese composers have responded to the simplistic combinations of "Western" structure and "Japanese" color, as sought in some parts of Japanese postwar music, by turning to ritualistic simplicity (→ III.1).

Shimoyama's vocal works generally use text material from Buddhist ritual music as it can be found in *shōmyō* or *nō*, specifically relying on the Japanese transliteration of archaic Sanskrit, in which the textual meaning dissolves into auratically conceptualized sequences of sounds.<sup>52</sup> Shimoyama explains that the meaning of these texts, if they can be reconstructed at all, has no relevance for his compositions.53 Rather, he focuses on the magical implications of individual words or phrases. This attitude is also ref lected in his approach to archaic Japanese words, which are no longer part of everyday language today but can still be found in the local Tsugaru dialect of his home prefecture Aomori and also in the vocal aesthetics of the narrative genre *tsugaru-jamisen*, 54 which is little known in or outside of Japan. Shimoyama hears these magical dimensions of words and phonemes in this genre and in the ancient Tsugaru language, in *gidayū-bushi*, as well as in *nō* singing.

His *Monolog* (1991) for *shamisen*-playing vocalist, written for Kazuko Takada, and *Breath* for three voices, two drummers, and piano (1971/77), written for Michiko Hirayama (who, as mentioned above, is noted for her performance and co-creation of Scelsi's *Canti del Capricorno*), vividly illustrate the type of vocal presence in Shimoyama's vocal works. The reference technique in both works is an almost pure variant of the *rōshō* type, which suggests Buddhist recitation; it consists of rapid repetitions of a single, not precisely defined pitch. In *Monolog* (Ex. 5.6) fragments are arranged around this reference model, which deepen into the auratic qualities of individual phonemes and describe interrelations between voice and instrument as familiar from numerous traditional genres. The Buddhist text is taken from the *nō* play *Funa Benkei* (Benkei on the Ship), where it is presented as a prayer to guardian deities.

*Breath* introduces a "multiplication" of Hirayama's voice into three parts, two of which were pre-recorded by the soloist.55 The text material is compiled from the three different *nō* pieces *Okina, Aoi no ue* [The Court Lady Aoi], and *Atumori* (from which a prayer of the Nenbutsu sect is used). All vocal textures are based on the same *rōshō* model, which occurs in at least five different forms of articulation (Ex. 5.7), including a microtonally layered recitation tone with

<sup>51</sup> Shimoyama belongsto the large group of Japanese composerswho are hardly known in the West.Hewas born in the same year as Tōru Takemitsu and, af ter graduating from HirosakiUniversity (Aomori Prefecture),studied with Yoritsune Matsudaira in Tokyo from 1955. In an internationalcontext, his works were presented primarily at the festivals of the International Society for Contemporary Music(ISCM).

<sup>52</sup> This transliteration tries to imitate the pronunciation of Sanskrit using the syllables or morphemes available in Japanese, but without linguistic meaning; it is a purely onomatopoetic procedure. See Nelson, "Court and Religious Music(2)," 67–68.

<sup>53</sup> Personalcommunicationwith the author, Tokyo, 26/2/2008.

<sup>54</sup> See Groemer, *The Spirit of Tsugaru*.

<sup>55</sup> *Breath*was premiered byHirayama in Rome in 1974 and revised by the composer in summer1977. In 1978 the revised versionwas premiered atthe ISCMfestival inHelsinki. The live recording ofthis performance is published on CD. In addition to a performance by a live vocalsoloist and two pre-recorded vocal parts,which are played on tape, a performance by three live soloistsis also possible.

Copyright © 2003 by Mother Earth Company Ltd. Tokyo, Japan

crescendo [a], also occurring in a whispered variant [b] and in a variant with "pressed" voice [c], which Shimoyama associates with *gidayū-bushi*<sup>56</sup> but in the score refers to with the (original German) word "sprech-stimme." In addition, there is a texture of sustained notes performed with "larynx articulation" [d], which can be seen as a much slower variant of the *rōshō* model, as well as mixed polyphonic textures [e] that also contain vocal inserts by the instrumentalists, comparable to the *kakegoe*-calls of the drummers in *nō* theater.<sup>57</sup>

Yūji Takahashi's works since the late 1980s were introduced in Chapter III as remarkable examples of an anti-essentialist approach to traditional Asian musical practices, informed by long-term composer-performer collaborations (→ III.4)*.* The vocal style in Takahashi's *Unebiyama* (1992) for a reconstructed archaic five-string zither and chant is mainly derived from vocal practices in shamanistic genres. Although there are still a few female shamans (*fujo*) practicing in Japan's northern Aomori Prefecture, Takahashi's work primarily refers to shamanistic music from Southeast Asian regions, particularly to "hidden traditions" that are hardly documented and which Takahashi encountered through field recordings. More specifically, the

<sup>56</sup> Personalcommunicationwith the author, Tokyo, 26/2/2008.

<sup>57</sup> Adetailed description ofthe function and content ofthese calls,which can be associatedwith the cries(*katsu*) of masters of Zen Buddhism during meditation, is provided in Tamba, *The Musical Structure of Nō*, 228–229.

*Example 5.7: Hifumi Shimoyama, Breath for three voices, two percussionists, and piano, five vocal articulations (a–e) from pages 3, 13, 11, 2, 7 of the score*

Copyright © 1982 by Hifumi Shimoyama, Tokyo

composer identified music by shamans from the Temiar ethnic group in Western Malaysia as one of his main sources.<sup>58</sup>

The organology and construction of the five-stringed zither (length: 115 cm) and ethnological evidence form another important background of this work. The instrument dating from the fifth century BC was discovered 1978 in a tomb of the Marquis Yi of Zeng in Hubei Province, China.59 Not much is known about the original name or usage of this instrument. Takahashi argues that, based on iconographic evidence, it may have been used in shamanistic rituals.<sup>60</sup> He tunes the instrument in a modified, "oblique" pentatonic system (D2, lowered E2, A2, D3, raised C3) that bears some resemblance to the popular Japanese mode *miyakobushi* (→ II.4)*.* The strings are plucked with a long pick made from the horn of a water buffalo. Since it is almost impossible to depress the strings, Takahashi's composition consists almost exclusively of open strings, with the repeated patterns enhancing the impression of ritual music.

<sup>58</sup> Personalcommunicationwith the author, Tokyo, 22/2/2008. The Temiar belong to the Senoi group ofthe indigenous *orang asli* people. See Roseman et al., "The Indigenous Peoples(*Orang Asli*) of the Malay Peninsula."

<sup>59</sup> Kido, *Reconstructed Music Instruments of Ancient East Asia*,126–133.

<sup>60</sup> Takahashi, *Astray Among Decayed Strings*, 9.

*Example 5.8: Yūji Takahashi, Unebiyama for five-string zither and incantation, p. 1*

Copyright © 1992 by Yūji Takahashi, Tokyo

The voice takes up the pitches of the five open strings (Ex. 5.8). The instructions in the score call for a voice that combines "muttering" (*tsubuyaki*) and "whispering" (*sasayaki*). The text is based on the Japanese creation story *Kojiki* (compiled around 712 CE by Ō no Yasumaro) and can be linked to the dragon iconography of the original instrument via the symbolism of water and clouds. The selected poem belongs to the category of *wakauta*, songs that handed down oracles sung by young virgins who warned of political crises.61 It is attributed to Isukeyorihime, the wife of the mythical emperor Jinmu.<sup>62</sup>

<sup>61</sup> Ibid., 11.

<sup>62</sup> There is, however, notably no explicitreference in Takahashi'swork to the archaicrecitation style thatis usually associated with the *Kojiki*. This style was practiced by singerscalled *kataribe* and is considered the origin of the Japanese *katarimono* (dramatic narrative chants, see above). Hirano connects this style to genres practiced by the Ainu and Okinawa peoples(*yūkara*, *omoro*;see Hirano, "Beziehungen zwischen Sprache und Musik im *katarimono*," 57.)


The notation developed here is based on the composer's ref lections on the difference between the notation methods for vocal and instrumental music in the traditional music of Japan: while music for instruments is usually recorded in a form of tablature that indicates the position of the fingers, the string, etc., and is permeated with instrumental patterns learned by mnemonics, the notation of vocal music is based on gestural analogies between writing and sound as in the notation forms *hakase* (e.g., in the Buddhist chant *shōmyō*) or *gomaten* (in *nō* theater).64 For Takahashi, these different paradigms convey the more temporal quality of vocal music, in which the sounds are continuously "stretched" over time, compared to the more spatial, punctuating characteristics of the (often plucked or struck) instrumental impulses.

One method by which Shimoyama and Takahashi circumvent the tendency toward fragmentation is to consciously refrain from specifying pitches or their constant inf lection and f luctuation in an often vague (registral) area. As shown, this method can be closely related to linguistic articulation or corresponding forms of notation in traditional Japanese music.

In a completely different historical-cultural context, related methods for deriving different degrees of vocal pitch determination from linguistic particularities can be observed. In his preface to *Le musiche, sopra l'Euridice* (1601), Jacopo Peri (1561–1633), singer, composer and a key figure in the *nuove musiche* around 1600, refers to the ancient distinction between "diastematic" and "continuous" vocal articulation. This distinction can be traced back to around 500 CE, when Boethius adopted it from Aristoxenus's *Elementa Harmonica*, while describing a mixed type of vocal articulation for the presentation of "heroic poems."<sup>65</sup> Peri developed a theory of Italian speech and intonation patterns from these categories, conveyed by Girolamo Mei and Vincenzo Galilei, whereby clearly intoned speech sounds were assigned to a consonance or a change of harmony, whereas the syllables in between could be free and independent of the bass part.

An intercultural passage can therefore by opened in relating to the spatial characteristic of the instrumental sounds accentuated by Takahashi (Peri's "diastematic" vocal style coupled to change of harmony) and temporal vocal articulation (Peri's harmony-independent "continuous" vocal style). Peri, who, like his rival Giulio Caccini, was trained in strict counterpoint, must have been aware of the provocative effect of such a musical structure. The notable dissonant passages from Daphne's speech in Peri's *Euridice* are not merely constructed according to the text's prosody, of course, but driven primarily by the (negative) affect of the words ("Angue crudo e spietato," "con si maligno dente").66 The freedom in the articulation of the unstressed syllables prompts a novel musical form: the recitative.

A f lexible articulation of unstressed syllables was also fundamental to Giulio Caccini's theory of vocal style, as documented in the dedication of his *L'Euridice* (1600) and his collection

<sup>63</sup> Af ter Takahashi, *Astray Among Decayed Strings*, 11 (English translation based on *A Waka Anthology*, vol. 1: *The Gem-Glistening Cup*. Translated by Edwin A. Cranston. Stanford: Stanford University Press,1993).

<sup>64</sup> Personalcommunicationwith the author 22/2/2008. For a good introduction to the notation forms oftraditional Japanese music see Malm, *Traditional Japanese Music*.

<sup>65</sup> See Palisca, *Studies in the History of Italian Music and Music Theory*, 456–457.

<sup>66</sup> See ibid., 460.

*Nuove musiche* (1602). Caccini used a key concept of the high Renaissance to describe the lightness of these phrases, *sprezzatura* ([noble] negligence): "In this manner of song, I used a certain negligence that I valued as having a noble quality, for it seemed to me that with it I approached natural speech that much more."<sup>67</sup>

In the years after 1600, there was a paradoxical development. The reference to spoken language helped to free song from the rhythmic rigor of speech-based declamation. Thus virtuoso "fioraturi" and "passagi" increasingly replaced the ascetic early syllabic style, so that in 1614 Caccini consistently applied the term "sprezzatura" to the execution of these "passagi" and no longer primarily to a vocal style close to speech:

*Sprezzatura* isthat gracefulnessconferred upon singing by passing through a number of eighth notes and sixteenths over various notes[of the bass], throughwhich,when done in time, removing from the singing a certain bare poverty and dryness, itisrendered pleasing, unhindered, and airy…68

The Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino (b. 1947) has described his vocal style using the term "sillabazione scivolata" ("sliding syllabic articulation"), and one can recognize in it something akin to a shadow of Peri's recitative, interspersed with some elements of Caccini's "passagi." Sciarrino refers to spoken language in a way closely related to Peri's theory, emphasizing the "scioltezza" ("lightness") of everyday language as a model for the vocal performers. And by combining sustained, "diastematic," stressed syllables/notes with several extremely short, "continuous," unstressed ones, Sciarrino's works also use a musical approach analogous to Peri's (Ex. 5.9). Sciarrino notes that the intonation of the closing figures, consisting of short notes, should not be rendered precisely and need not be equally tempered, meaning that "the nuancing of non-tempered intervals, as is customary when speaking," is possible.69

Example 5.9 shows variants of the "sillabazione scivolata" from Sciarrino's opera *Luci mie traditrici* (1996–98) in which the stylization and variation of the interval structure [a, b], the breaking-up of the lines with rests (symbols for hesitation [b], fainting [c], death [e]), and their dissolution into descending micro-glissandi [b, c, e] or monotonously spoken phrases [d] are clearly recognizable. In fact, the formal process of the entire opera can be seen as an increasing reduction of intonation, culminating in the dark final scene, in which all articulation types extending to extreme interval jumps [d] recur in a (nightmarish) reminiscence.70

#### Articulation – Codification – Presence – Passage

The discussion presented here attempted to show how different forms of articulation and codification between speaking and singing voices – in situations with strongly divergent historical and cultural conditions – are organized in a related manner and performatively transformed into a presence of the voice. Finally, three main threads of this discussion will now be highlighted and linked:

<sup>67</sup> Giulio Caccini, *L'Euridice composta in musica in stile rappresentativo* [1600], dedication to Giovanni Bardi, quoted from ibid., 463.

<sup>68</sup> Giulio Caccini, *Nuove musiche e nuova maniera di scribere*[1614], preface, quoted from ibid., 464–465.

<sup>69</sup> Sciarrino and Petazzi,"Salvatore Sciarrino im Gespräch," 37 ("dieNuancierung nichttemperierterIntervalle,wie dies beim Sprechen üblich ist").

<sup>70</sup> See, for more detail, Utz, "Statische Allegorie und 'Sog der Zeit.'"

*Example 5.9: Salvatore Sciarrino, Luci mie traditrici, variants of the "sillabazione scivolata": [a]–[c] scene 1, Il Malaspina (baritone), mm. 15, 17, 29–30; [d], [e] scene 8, La Malaspina (soprano)/Il Malaspina (baritone), mm. 67–69, 83*

Copyright © 1998 by Universal Music Publishing Ricordi – Milan, Italy [NR 138034]


materiality'; […] where the melody really works at the language, […] explores how the language works"71 – to the point, of course, that they obscure or even destroy the language. And by ultimately provoking – for all the inspiration they derive from the spoken language – conf licts with conventional forms of prosody, linguistic intonation and declamation instead of following these structures, they probably represent far more suitable examples of the "grain of the voice" than those Barthes himself tried to grasp (which tend toward a culturalist stereotyping of French and German song traditions that has become increasingly dubious72).

3. Carolyn Abbate's narratological expansion of the concept of the voice as part of an "aural vision of music animated by multiple, decentered voices localized in several invisible bodies,"73 the conception of "voices" of different origins that support musical structures, but can also counteract them and thus destabilize the composer's monological authority, can be assumed for all the examples presented here. Yet the "codification" of the vocal articulation can neither be reduced to the type of written notation nor to the gestural-performative presence of its actual rendering but arises from the interaction of these two "voices" with those of cultural memory and reception history. The passages between speech and song explored here seem to exhibit a particular, obvious tendency toward the divergence of written and performed voices, resulting in an unfolding of composition, terminology, and categorization on the one hand and vocal practice on the other. The nature of this divergence, as is equally evident in *gidayū-bushi*, in Schoenberg's *Pierrot*, Peri's *Euridice*, or Sciarrino's "sillabazione scivolata," allows a specification of the vocal medium, and thus a differentiation from Abbate's metaphor of "multiple voices" applicable to both instrumental and vocal music alike.

Seen in this way, an intercultural history of the voice could appear as a process of condensation in which such contradictions, divergences between individual voices in the conception, written codification, sounding event, and perception are made visible, and physical and metaphorical levels of the phenomenon are envisaged. The outline undertaken here can at best be understood as a first attempt in this direction.

<sup>71</sup> Barthes, "The Grain of the Voice," 269.

<sup>72</sup> See Meyer-Kalkus, *Stimme und Sprechkünste im 20. Jahrhundert*, 427–444.

<sup>73</sup> Abbate, *Unsung Voices*,13.

#### **2. Space-Time Movements in György Ligeti's Piano Concerto: Polymeter and Conflicting Meter in Historical and Intercultural Perspective**

#### György Ligeti's "Space-Time" and the "Generalized Hemiola"

The polyglot, boundary-defying conceptions of György Ligeti, driven by artistic curiosity, have been widely praised, and his collected writings published in German posthumously in 2007 impressively demonstrate the rhizome-like ramifications of his thinking in and about music, as also aptly demonstrated by the polymorphic vividness of the structures in his music since *Apparitions* (1958–59). From the very beginning, Ligeti, in his own energetic manner, absorbed impulses from often heterogeneous areas of the arts and sciences, and idiosyncratically interwove them into an asymmetrical, open maze of sounds and thoughts. Still, it should be emphasized how intensively, but also "art-typically" Ligeti engaged with scientific thinking, especially since the beginning of the 1980s, for example in the areas of chaos theory, fractal geometry, and artificial intelligence. At the beginning of his essay "Paradigmenwechsel der achtziger Jahre" (1988), Ligeti emphasizes that he does not write "'scientific' music, do[es] not use calculations, nor algorithms […], realize[s] only [his] own ideas, but deal[s] with analogous ideas from other areas. Complexity or complex patterns have always attracted [him]."74 Not least, Ligeti's view of European or indeed "global" music history was given new impetus by these search movements (for example, through the discovery of the *ars subtilior*) and a no less consequential turn toward music genres from Africa, Java, Bali, Melanesia, China, and Korea, with their specific structures and underlying ways of thinking.75

The reception of sub-Saharan African genres, which include the ensembles of *ongo* horns of the Central African Banda Linda, songs of the Aka pygmies, the *kiganda* music of the *amadinda* xylophones in Uganda as well as the *mbira* lamellophone music of the Shona in Zimbabwe, form just one layer in an eclectic chain of associations in Ligeti's thinking and compositions in the 1980s. As outlined earlier in this book, intercultural reception processes in European music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have often been (and still are) integrated into comparably universalist aesthetic-conceptual designs, reaching out in a self-ref lexive and complex manner in the most diverse directions and determining a reception model that I have attempted to characterize with the term "interpenetration" (→ II.6). Such reception strategies proceed structurally, associatively, and transformatively and are based on analogous formations and cross-connections between different contexts and discourses – something that is particularly characteristic of Ligeti's approach.

In the case of sub-Saharan music, Ligeti's particular interest was in gestalt paradoxes and illusionary effects, which are also ref lected in fractal geometry or M. C. Escher's visual paradoxes, such as the waterfall or staircase, which seem to be constantly falling or rising but in

<sup>74</sup> Ligeti, "Paradigmenwechsel der achtzigerJahre,"116 ("keine 'wissenschaf tliche'Musik, verwende keine Kalküle, keine Algorithmen […], verwirkliche nur [seine] eigenen Vorstellungen, doch beschäf tige [ersich] mit analogen Vorstellungen in anderen Bereichen. Komplexität beziehungsweise komplexe Muster [hätten ihn] immer angezogen").

<sup>75</sup> On Ligeti's reception of African music see especially Ligeti and Bouliane, "Stilisierte Emotion," Taylor, "Ligeti, Africa and Polyrhythm," Scherzinger, "György Ligeti and the Aka Pygmies Project," Scherzinger, "Remarks on a Sketch of György Ligeti," and Taylor, "Hemiola Maximal Evenness and Metric Ambiguity in Late Ligeti." Ligeti's relation to mensural organization inworks by *ars subtilior*composersis mentioned inGünther,"DieArssubtilior" and explored in Schütz, "Wiedergeburt der Arssubtilior?"

fact always return to their starting points. Comparable musical phenomena include above all "inherent patterns," as described in detail in *amadinda* music by Gerhard Kubik:76 phenomena emerging in aural perception in a kind of relief from interlinked rhythmic-melodic lines. Starting from other African contexts, Steve Reich's music had already been crucial to exploring such patterns (labeled "resulting patterns" by Reich) over ten years earlier (→ II.6).77 Gerhard Kubik's and Simha Arom's structuralist and cognitive ethnomusicological approaches had a significant impact on Ligeti. Both researchers assume a fundamental alterity between African and European music, rhythm, and the underlying ways of thinking – an *a priori* assumption of ethnomusicology as a whole that had remained unquestioned for decades but has been harshly criticized for some twenty years from postcolonial perspectives. The central argument in Kofi Agawu's criticism, for instance, is that research committed to Western knowledge discourse has construed "African rhythm" as extraordinarily complex in order to categorize it as something categorically different from European rhythmic phenomena. Inevitably, however, this almost completely obscures the rhythmic complexity of Western music in the twentieth century.78 Agawu concludes:

A determined researcher could easily show that the sum of isolated experiments in rhythmic organization found in so-called Western music produces a picture of far greater complexity than anything that Africans have produced so far eithersingly orcollectively.One could, in short, quite easily invent "European rhythm."79

Ligeti points out Kubik's interpretation of sub-Saharan musical practices as particularly significant for his reorientation in the 1980s, saying that it led him to develop an analogous conception of musical spatiality in his own work:

Gerhard Kubik has shown that, in another culture, categories of our European ways of thinking are not valid,thatthere is a completely dif ferentway of experiencing time,space, and form. This is away ofthinking in certain patternsthat arise from movements, a culture inwhich movement, language, dance, and also spatial configurations are conceived dif ferently than in European culture.

What thisway of thinking shareswith mywork isthe idea of a unity of time and space. […] I think in musical structures and forms in which the temporal is actually conceived spatially – as if everythingwere present at the same time. In the second movement of my *Requiem*, in the Piano Concerto, and also in the Cello Concerto, there are formations that cannot be compared with

<sup>76</sup> See, among others, Kubik's essays "The Phenomenon of Inherent Rhythms in East and Central African Instrumental Music," "Die Amadinda-Musik von Buganda," "Kognitive Grundlagen afrikanischer Musik," and "Theorie, Auf führungspraxis und Kompositionstechniken der Hofmusik von Buganda." Kubik refers in detail to Ligeti's compositional techniques in conversation with the author in Kubik and Utz, "Auf Entdeckungsreise durchs Universum." See also Arom, Duchesneau, and Marx, "A Kinship Foreseen."

<sup>77</sup> For more detail,see Reich's essays"Gahu – ADance ofthe Ewe Tribe in Ghana" and "Non-Western Music and the Western Composer."

<sup>78</sup> See especially Agawu, "The Invention of 'African Rhythm,'" and Agawu, *Representing African Music*. An updated and concise historical account on art musicin Africa that is multiply indebted to forms of rhythmiccomplexity, can be found in Scherzinger, "Art Musicin a Cross-Cultural Context" and Scherzinger, "Afrika."

<sup>79</sup> Agawu, "The Invention of 'African Rhythm,'" 386.

the traditional concepts of melody, harmony, and rhythm. They are very dif ferently conceived, staticforms. They seemto stand in front of us asiftheywere objects and did not unfold in time.80

This "frozen turbulence"81 can actually be experienced again and again in Ligeti's music, though the aforementioned characterization of an "annihilation" of the temporal dimension could easily be refuted by a formal analysis of specific works, since the often "spiral-like" processes in Ligeti's works, including the famous *Kyrie* of the *Requiem* (1963–65) referred to by Ligeti, and even more clearly the paradigmatic works of the 1980s such as the first or sixth Piano Etudes (1985), formally point toward central moments of conf lict, which does indeed imply a decisive temporal, sometimes almost deterministic, strategy.<sup>82</sup> So perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Ligeti's music plays out in a musical "space-time" in which spatial and temporal characteristics – state and process – are formative for our reception of the music, constantly re-orienting ourselves in the ever-changing mixtures of not exclusively present-oriented or goal-oriented states.

Works in which these characteristics appear in a particularly mature and varied manner are the three volumes of Ligeti's Piano Etudes (1984–97)83 and his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1985–88).84 Following on from some passages of the Piano Concerto, Ligeti's connection of historical-European and African formations of polyrhythm, polymeter, conf licting meter, and their different dimensions will be addressed and expanded upon with the aim of showing areas of friction in Ligeti's original forms of intercultural and historical reception.

The relationship between Ligeti's spatial metaphoricism and the compositional significance of conf licting meters is clearly demonstrated by some passages from the third movement of the Piano Concerto, which Ligeti described as "the most succinct example of illusionary rhythm and illusionary melody so far."85 This is easy to see at the beginning of the movement (Ex. 5.10) and, thanks to a clear difference in color, it is not difficult to grasp perceptually how successive

81 Ligeti and Bouliane, "Stilisierte Emotion," 61("gefrorene Turbulenz").

<sup>80</sup> Ligeti, "Paradigmenwechsel der achtzigerJahre,"117–118 ("Gerhard Kubik hat gezeigt, daß in einer anderen Kultur Kategorien unserer europäischen Denkweise keine Gültigkeit haben, daß es eine ganz andere Weise gibt, Zeit, Raum und Form zu erleben. Diesist ein Denken in bestimmten Mustern, die aus Bewegungen entstehen, eine Kultur, in der Bewegung, Sprache, Tanz und auchRaumkonfigurationen anders aufgefaßtwerden alsin der europäischen Kultur. Gemeinsam mit meiner Arbeit ist darin die Vorstellung einer Einheit von Zeit und Raum. […] Ich denke in musikalischen Strukturen und Formen, in denen das Zeitliche eigentlich räumlich konzipiert ist – so als ob alles gleichzeitig anwesend wäre. Im zweiten Satz meines *Requiems*, im Klavierkonzert, auch im Cellokonzert gibt es Formationen, denen man mit den herkömmlichen Begrif fen Melodie, Harmonie, Rhythmus nicht beikommt. Essind ganz anders gedachte,statische Formen. Sie scheinen vor uns zu stehen, als ob sie Objektewären und sich nicht in der Zeit entfaltenwürden.")

<sup>82</sup> See, for example,Haapamaki, "Order in *Désordre*," 40–44.

<sup>83</sup> Analytical examinations of the piano etudes can be found in Bouliane, "Imaginäre Bewegung," Wilson, "Interkulturelle Fantasien," Rothkamm, "Ordnung in der Unordnung," Scherzinger, "György Ligeti and the Aka Pygmies Project,"Haapamaki,"Orderin*Désordre*," and Polth,"'nichttonal und nicht atonal.'" See also the composer's notes in Ligeti, "Études pour piano," "Études pour piano – Premier livre," and "Études pour piano – Deuxième livre."

<sup>84</sup> Analytical studies of the Piano Concerto are provided by Willmann, "Gebannte Zeit," Steinitz, "A qui un hommage?," and Huber, *Das zeitgenössische Klavierkonzert*, 85–134. See also the composer's notes in Ligeti, "Zu meinem Klavierkonzert" and "Zum Klavierkonzert."

<sup>85</sup> Ligeti, "Zu meinem Klavierkonzert," 298 ("das bislang prägnanteste Beispiel fürIllusionsrhythmik und Illusionsmelodik").

pulse layers enter. First the sixteenth-notes in the piano are established, indicating the smallest basic rhythmic value on which the other pulses are built. In measure 2 the left hand adds dotted eighths, which are in turn adopted by the f lute in measure 5. In measure 6, a descending melodic movement appears in the right hand in values of seven sixteenths, and in measure 9 the viola joins in with straight quarter-notes, resulting in a ratio of 1:3:4:7.

The special nature of the space-time structures in Ligeti's works since the early 1980s may well be seen in his attempt to create a sense of levitation or "lift-off" by superimposing various pulsations and accents:

If this musicis played correctly, at the right speed and with the right accentuation within the individual layers, af ter a certain time itwill "lif t of f" like a plane af tertake-of f:the rhythmic event, too complex to be followed in detail, hovers above us.86

Such a situation undoubtedly occurs at the moment of greatest density in the same movement. Example 5.11 shows a schematic representation of this passage, in which the ratio 1:4:5:6:7:9:11 is formed. All seven layers appear in the piano part (the orchestra merely doubles the 9/16 layer), indicating related techniques in the works for solo piano, the Piano Etudes, whose first book was written immediately prior to (and partly probably in parallel with) the concerto.

Ligeti summarized these compositional procedures with the term "generalized hemiola" and described their historical and cultural reference points most extensively in 1987, in a conversation with Denys Bouliane published in 1989.87 Ligeti traces a wide arc from the basic definition of the "hemiola," that is, the rhythmic ratio of three against two, to its extension from Chopin to Debussy, the discontinuous superimposition of different "pulses" in his own sixth Piano Etude, examples from Mozart, Scriabin, Ives, Messiaen, and Stockhausen, to the African Banda Linda and the music of the Aka Pygmies. Ligeti (as emerges from Arom's investigations) sees the peculiarity of the rhythmic organization in the African genres, in comparison to the explicit simultaneity of different meters in Mozart's "Imbroglio" (the famous superimposition of three dances with different meter in *Don Giovanni*), Charles Ives's *The Fourth of July*, or Karlheinz Stockhausen's *Gruppen*, in the fact that they do not describe polymeter, but rather a polyrhythm in which "different rhythmic patterns can be accommodated […] in the same basic pulse,"88 whereas "there is no simultaneity of different meters."89 Ligeti uses Alfons Dauer's term *Nennwert*90 (nominal value; today's more common terms for this phenomenon are "Ele-

<sup>86</sup> Ligeti, quoted in Dibelius, *György Ligeti*, 234 ("Wenn dieseMusik richtig gespieltwird, also in richtiger Geschwindigkeit und mit richtiger Akzentuierung innerhalb der einzelnen Schichten, wird sie nach einer gewissen Zeit 'abheben' wie ein Flugzeug nach dem Start: Dasrhythmische Geschehen, da zu komplex, um im Einzelnen verfolgt zuwerden, geht in ein Schweben über.").

<sup>87</sup> Ligeti and Boulaine, "Stilisierte Emotion" (conversation from 08/07/1987). Unfortunately, this highly informative and rich conversationwas not included in the edition of Ligeti's *Gesammelte Schrif ten*.

<sup>88</sup> Ibid., 52 ("verschiedene rhythmische Patterns[…] im selben Grundpuls unterbringen").

<sup>89</sup> Ibid., 53 ("weil es […] keine Gleichzeitigkeit von verschiedenen Metren gibt"). This rejection of the concept of polymeter can possibly credited to Ligeti's exchange with Simha Arom whom Ligeti met for the first time around 1985 when the original French edition of Arom's book on Central African music appeared (see Arom, Duchesneau, andMarx,"AKinship Foreseen").Arom deniesthe concept of polymeterforAfrican music, in opposition to earlier ethnomusicological approaches such as that of Arthur Morris Jones (*Studies in African Music*) and dedicates an entire chapter to this question (Arom, *African Polyphony and Polyrhythm*,179–212).

<sup>90</sup> See Dauer, "Musiklandschaf ten in Afrika."

*Example 5.10: György Ligeti, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, third movement, mm. 1–9 (* Copyright © 1986 by Schott Music GmbH & Co. KG,

Mainz)

*Example 5.11: György Ligeti, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, third movement, mm. 83–85, layers*

mentarpulsation"<sup>91</sup> [elementary pulsation] or "density referent"92) and describes this crucial aspect of African music in detail in his foreword to Simha Arom's seminal study *African Polyphony and Polyrhythm*:

Forcomposition,[SimhaArom'sfundamentalwork] opensthedoorleading to anewway ofthinking about polyphony, one which is completely dif ferent from the European metric structures, but equally rich, or maybe,considering the possibility of using a quick pulse as a "common denominator" upon which various patternscan be polyrhythmically superimposed, even richer than the European tradition.<sup>93</sup>

Various metric figures that can be related to a very rapid basic pulse are clearly audible in the third movement of the Piano Concerto, as shown above. All rhythmic processes here are based on a very fast basic pulse as a "common denominator": the sixteenths of the piano (at the stated rate, a sixteenth-note should be played at a tempo of 552 bpm, which corresponds to 9.2 attacks

<sup>91</sup> Vgl. Kubik, "Einige Grundbegrif fe und -konzepte der afrikanischen Musikforschung," 72–74.

<sup>92</sup> SeeNketia, *The Music of Africa*,127–139. The problem ofincoherentterminology has been noted and debated also in recent research on African rhythm, see Polak, Jacoby, and London, "Kulturelle Diversität in der empirischen Rhythmusforschung," 206, note 32.

<sup>93</sup> Ligeti, "Foreword," xviii.

Copyright © 1986 by Schott Music GmbH & Co. KG, Mainz

per second and a pulse duration of about 10.86 ms94). Of course, the different periodicities that sound at the same time might also be perceived as a superimposition of *tempo* layers and less as an overlaying of different rhythms or meters – an aspect that Ligeti himself has ref lected

<sup>94</sup> Here too, one can see a reference to the African genres. Ligeti describes in detail that the basic pulse can here be even faster than ten attacks per second: "The fastest piano-tremolo that we can perform consists of 13, 14 attacks per second, that is a bit faster, but the Central Africans are building incredibly complex polyphony on such frantically fast pulses." (Ligeti and Boulaine, "Stilisierte Emotion," 53; "Das schnellste Klaviertremolo, das wir ausführen können, besteht aus 13, 14 Anschlägen pro Sekunde, das ist zwar etwas schneller, doch die Zentralafrikaner bauen eine unglaublich komplexe Polyphonie aufsolch rasend schnellen Pulsen.").


*Table 5.3: György Ligeti, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, third movement, mm. 71–76: pulse layers, data in sixteenth note values (\* = of fset), ostinato pulses marked in bold*

with the term "polytempo."95 The orientation of the listener is def lected away from the basic musical framework, the sixteenth pulse, to different pulse rates or periodicities, which are at first clearly distinguishable from one another, but later increasingly blur into texture and thus produce a "destabilization" of cognitive interpretation. It remains to be noted, then, that the distinction between "polyrhythm," "polymeter" and "polytempo" is by no means trivial and requires a more detailed discussion.

The relation of such layering to the aspect of the illusionary can be discussed in reference to another passage from the same movement in which, over six measures, a xylophone part joins the solo piano and interlocks with it, no doubt following the model of *amadinda* music (Ex. 5.12; this setting and reference are taken up again at the end of the fifth movement 96). By auditory streaming, notes in the same registers in the listener's interpretation are connected to form common patterns,<sup>97</sup> so that rhythmic-melodic shapes – "inherent patterns" – arise that none of

96 Ligeti, Piano Concerto, fif th movement, mm. 79–84;see Jena, "Raum und Zeit in derNeuen Musik," 52–76.

<sup>95</sup> Ibid., 52 ("Polytempik." – The term is here suggested by Bouliane). Ligeti developed thisconcept of "polytempo" already in 1974, using the example ofIves's music:"Ives needed the exacttonal definition of his quoted materials in order to set them apartclearly from the context,which of ten described a dif ferent tonality. The polytonality isjoined by polyrhythm, polymeter and – onewould actually have to introduce thisterm – polytempo. Polymeter already existed in Mozart's *Don Giovanni*. In Ives, however, dif ferent metric processes sometimes also have dif ferenttempi." (Ligeti, "Zur Collagetechnik beiMahler und Ives," 289; "Ives brauchte die exakte tonale Bestimmung seiner zitierten Materialien, um sie deutlich gegen den Kontext, der of t eine andere Tonalität beschrieb, absetzen zu können. Zur Polytonalität gesellen sich Polyrhythmik, Polymetrik und – man müßte eigentlich diesen Begrif f einführen – Polytempik. Polymetrik gab es ja schon in Mozarts *Don Giovanni*. Bei Ives jedoch haben die metrisch verschiedenen Abläufe mitunter auch verschiedene Tempi.")

<sup>97</sup> Phenomena of auditory streaming or stream segregation have received broad attention in music psychology, and are most prominently described in Bregman, *Auditory Scene Analysis*, 47–212.

the two soloists alone plays (Ligeti has repeatedly used formulations by Gerhard Kubik almost verbatim to describe this effect98).

How do the levels of rhythm, meter, tempo, and melody relate to each other in this situation? In order to answer this question, it is advisable first to consider the individual strata in isolation; one quickly sees that there are essentially four pulse layers, all of which have different characteristics, or "tempos." Ligeti notates the passage in 6/4 time, with each measure divided in the middle by dashed lines in 2x3 quarters (these half-measures are indicated by adding a and b to the measure numbers below). The 24 sixteenths of a measure can be divided into the hemiolic ratio 3:2 at four levels – 24:16 x/x., 12:8 e/e., 6:4 q/q., and 3:2 h/h..

Already in the transition from measures 71 to 72, both hands of the piano add a sixteenth note to the regular 12+12 sixteenth pattern, thus creating a friction with the regular meter of the xylophone, which retains the 4-3-2-3 division from measure 71 (Table 5.3). On sixteenth beat 72a.7, ostinato pulses begin in the piano at 6, then 7 sixteenths (right hand) as well as 5 sixteenths (left hand), which from the end of measure 74 are supplemented by another layer in the right hand (3 sixteenths). By measure 73b at the latest, one would have to speak of a continued "generalized" hemiola with the accents only realigning at the beginning of measure 77. This moment of synchronization is prepared, in particular, by the regular isochronous 3 and 4 divisions from measures 75 and 76, consolidating the given meter; this regularity, however, continues to be disturbed by an accent shift of one sixteenth in the xylophone layer.

So far, I have consciously restricted the description to the terms "pulses" and "accents." The extent to which these also constitute *meter* can only be clarified by discussing whether these pulses in themselves or in their interaction have superior salient properties that give rise to metric periodicities. For this purpose, I extracted all accented notes from the musical text and wrote them on three staves (A, B, C) separated by register (Ex. 5.13). This reduction makes clear that registers A and C describe an upward movement to the highest piano key C8 in measures 73 and 74, and then a downward movement which can also be observed in registral layer B entering shortly before measure 75.

The xylophone part, marked in Example 5.13 by wedges (accents together with piano) or circles (xylophone accents without piano), jumps between all three registers, transforming the largely periodic layers of the piano into changing "inherent patterns." It can be assumed that the shared accents (wedges) are particularly emphatic markers, so that the first pulses of the measures 71a, 71b, 72b, 73a, 73b are clear indications of marking the given meter (6/4, subdivided in 2x3 fourths or 2x12 sixteenths), which is also supported by highlighted register peaks (this results in an overarching aural stream of Bb6-B6/C7-[D7-E7-]F#7-G7-[G#7-]Bb7 in layer A; thereafter almost no common accents occur. The alternative presentation in Table 5.4 vividly demonstrates the compression process leading to metric leveling and destabilization: whereas measures 71 to 73 contain between five and seven accents on twelve fundamental pulses in each half-measure, this number rises between measures 74 and 76 to eight and ten accents per half-measure.

The relative metric stability of measures 71 to 73 is also demonstrated by another illustration in which the resulting rhythmic figures of layers A and B+C are placed one below the other in a simplified manner (Ex. 5.14). Here it is obvious how, from measure 74 onward, the initially clear periodicity of the resulting patterns seriously disintegrates. This becomes apparent relatively late in layer A, in which the accents within the first three eighths of each half-measure are shifted only in measure 75b. Here, as well as in measure 76a, new (off-meter) periodicities are formed by the shared accents of piano and xylophone. In registers C and B, the processual shift

<sup>98</sup> Compare, for example Ligeti, "Zum Klavierkonzert," 301,with Kubik, "Musikgestaltung in Afrika," 39.

*Example 5.13: György Ligeti, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, third movement, mm. 71–76, accent layers in three registers A, B and C; wedges: common accents piano and xylophone; circles: accents xylophone (without piano)*

begins earlier, with particular emphasis on the development of the figure, which at first seems to be clearly syncopated at positions 71a.8 and 71a.10. These positions remain stable until measure 73a, thus contributing significantly to an "intact" metric periodicity, while afterward they move more and more "to the left," switching between layers C and B – a process of convergence is completed that simultaneously blends the pitch registers of these two layers (see Ex. 5.13).

While measures 71 to 73 can still be perceived as metric despite their complexity, and within this basic meter, the deviation of the piano accents' shape in measure 72a can clearly be identified as a conf licting metric layer, the following three measures, with the seven-sixteenths ostinato pulses of the upper piano register, the addition of a third register, and a shift in the resulting salient patterns, eliminate almost any sense of meter, although new stabilizing factors counteract this process (such as the 3-sixteenth and 4-sixteenth pulses). Owing to the overall compression, these pulses also tend toward a dissociation of meter – ten accents on twelve basic pulses, such as in measure 74b, hardly allow us to speak of a reference metric layer anymore. Time becomes space, structure becomes texture – a paradigmatic process in Ligeti's later works that can be equally observed in Piano Etudes 1, 6, 12, or 13, as well as in the first, fourth, and fifth movements of the Piano Concerto.

*Table 5.4: György Ligeti, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, third movement, mm. 71–76, accent layers in three registers A, B and C, represented on the basis of an adapted Time-Unit Box System (TUBS), developed by Philip Harland* 


*Example 5.14: György Ligeti, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, third movement, mm. 71–76, resulting rhythms of layers A (lef t) and C/B (right); accents: common accents piano/xylophone; circles: impulses xylophone*

#### Summation Meter and Metric Dissonance

Let us now try to expand this analytical approach to Ligeti's "generalized hemiola" somewhat more systematically. It seems necessary to problematize the arguably inadequate distinction between polyrhythm and polymeter in Ligeti's theoretical perspective, which corresponds to a similar lack of distinction in some approaches in music theory, music psychology, and ethnomusicology.

The phenomenon of meter can, as already shown in the above analysis, usually be explained as periodically recurring salient signals within regular pulse sequences, that is, dynamic or register-based emphases, accents, patterns, or events, which can be eliminated when the meter is established, so that meter cannot be generally defined on the basis of "accents," as has long been the norm. On the contrary, a distinction must be made between "commetric" and "contrametric" accents, a necessity which becomes very clear, for example, from measures 71 to 73 of the example discussed above.<sup>99</sup>

In research, there has been a tendency only to recognize those musical contexts as "metric," where meter can also be identified by an "experienced listener." Meter has thus been described as an essentially cognitive phenomenon, often in explicit contrast to rhythm.100 In this context, the existence of polymeter was repeatedly questioned, since it was only possible to perceive different metric shapes simultaneously to a limited extent.101 On the contrary, it has been stated that the term "rhythm" today says "much and yet almost nothing anymore."102 One could justifiably assert that the term "polyrhythmic" is, on closer examination, tautological and therefore unusable, since countless types and forms of music are composed of different simultaneous "rhythms," while the simultaneity of different *metric* periodicities constitutes a far more specific form of superposition.103

At any rate, it seems problematic to make a (narrowly empirically defined) cognitive level the sole prerequisite for a definition of meter. For there are – not only in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries – musical contexts and compositional processes in which the conf licts between a metric base layer and the actual formations in musical groupings, or conf licts between such units, are crucial factors of the structure which are not aimed at a clear identification of one or more meters, but are still essential for complex and often ambiguous manners

<sup>99</sup> Kolinsky, "A Cross-Cultural Approach to Metro-Rhythmic Patterns," 497.

<sup>100</sup> See London, "Rhythm," I.1. The Distinction Between Rhythm and Metre. This distinction essentially goes back to the rhythm and metertheories of Lerdahl and Jackendof f,*A Generative Theory of Tonal Music*. See also London, *Hearing in Time*, 65–76.

<sup>101</sup> See Drake and Parncutt, "Psychology of Music," II. Perception and Cognition, 2. Rhythm; London, *Hearing in Time*, 67.

<sup>102</sup> Seidel, "Rhythmus, Metrum, Takt," I. Zur Definition des Prinzips ("Heute bezeichnet *Rhythmus* alles, was irgendwie mit der Struktur oder dem Ablauf der musikalischen Zeit, of t auch,was mit Bild- und Raumbewegungen zu tun hat. Das Wortsagt vieles und doch fast nichts mehr.")

<sup>103</sup> Arom triesto circumvent this problem by defining polyrhythm as"dif ferent patterns of accent […]superposed in the same work" (Arom, *African Polyphony and Polyrhythm*, 205). To associate rhythm (rather than meter) with "patterns of accent" might, ofcourse, appear quite problematic. Arom'srejection of the concept of polymeter for African musicisconsequently based on a very narrowdefinition of"meter":"Ifwe take 'metre' in its primary sense of *metrum* (the metre being the temporal reference unit), 'polymetric' would describe the simultaneous unfolding of several parts in a single work at dif ferent tempos *so as not to be reducible to a single metrum.* This happensin some modern music,such assome of CharlesIves's works, Elliott Carter's *Symphony,* B. A. Zimmermann's opera *Die Soldaten,* and Pierre Boulez's *Rituel.*" (ibid.)

*Example 5.15: E Juba – beginning of a popular song from South Sudan(transcription: Gerhard Kubik; Kubik, "Musikgestaltung in Afrika," 36)* 

Copyright © 1983 by Gerhard Kubik/Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin

of gestalt perception. Ligeti's music is a prominent example of this. Of course, the problem (or indeed the impossibility) of providing a succinct definition of "rhythm" and "meter" accommodating not only different periods of Western music history but also musical time structures on a global scale is far beyond what can be achieved here and would require a monograph on its own (as presented for the Western context, most notably, by Christopher Hasty104). Especially when we turn to the richly imaginative and thorough treatment that the relationships between rhythm, meter, and tempo have received in twentieth- and twenty-first-century music, it seems inevitable to conceive of a complex model in which the interrelation of these concepts or areas is maintained and highlighted.<sup>105</sup>

Examples 5.15 and 5.16 and Tables 5.5 to 5.8 show polymetric situations in African contexts based on the studies of Kubik, which Ligeti knew, and without taking into account the extensive more recent research on African rhythm, which has undergone much further development.<sup>106</sup> Although to what extent a concept such as "meter" can be appropriate for African designs of

<sup>104</sup> Hasty,*Meter as Rhythm*.TheconceptsofpolyrhythmorpolymeterarenotdiscussedinHasty'sbookwhichotherwise of fers an unsurpassedly nuanced discussion of the relation between rhythm and meter.

<sup>105</sup> SeeUtz andNonnenmann, "Rhythmus,Metrum, Tempo"for a comprehensive overviewof definitions and compositional approachesintwentieth- andtwenty-first-centurymusic. See alsoDelaere,"Tempo,Metre,Rhythm."

<sup>106</sup> Polak, Jacoby, and London, "Kulturelle Diversität in der empirischen Rhythmusforschung" provides an excellent example.

*Example 5.16: Tan'b'oloko se? – song from a fairy tale of the Yoruba, West Africa (transcription: Gerhard Kubik; Kubik, "Musikgestaltung in Afrika," 37)* 

Copyright © 1983 by Gerhard Kubik/Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin

music at all remains controversial in ethnomusicology, there is broad agreement that most African musicians think in larger, frequently recurring, rhythmic-melodic formulas, and thus in periodicities whose relationship to European concepts of meter has possibly not yet been fully explored.107 In Example 5.15, Kubik uses a popular song from southern Sudan to show how four different periodicities are superimposed.108 They comprise 6, 9, 12, and 18 pulses per "summation meter" of 36 basic pulses read from top to bottom (schematic representations in Tables 5.5 and 5.6). The numbers 6, 12, and 18 are divisible by both 2 and 3, thus allowing constantly changing metric references. In addition, a periodically recurring vocal melody comprising 36 basic pulses, which is shifted by two basic pulses with respect to the rhythmic group generates an additional quasi-canonic metric displacement.

<sup>107</sup> Polak, Jacoby, and London, for example, argue: "We concur with authors who support an application of the concept of meterin African musicresearch; however,we emphasize the necessity to keep the theoretical definition of the concept of 'meter' open." (Ibid., 198; "Wir folgen Autor\*innen, die eine Anwendung des Metrumsbegrif fsin der afrikanistischenMusikforschung befürworten, betonen jedoch gleichzeitig dieNotwendigkeit, die theoretische Bestimmung des Konzepts'Metrum' of fen zu halten.")

<sup>108</sup> Kubik, "Musikgestaltung in Afrika," 36.

*Table 5.5: Representation of Example 5.15 in the Time-Unit Box System (TUBS); metric periodicities of the patterns are marked by changing gray levels*



*Table 5.6: Pulse speeds and metric patterns in Example 5.15*


The different pulse speeds, on the one hand, and the meter within the three sound layers (voice, clapping, percussion), on the other hand, should be differentiated here. The representation in Table 5.5 shows clearly that only with the completion of a full 36-valued unit can all periodicities be synchronized again. It also becomes clear that the meter of the percussion layers follows that of the voice (with a hemiolic dissonance between the 11th and 22nd pulse), while the meter of clapping is canonically displaced by two fundamental pulses. Hemiolic overlays occur even within the metric periods in clapping and percussion layers (3:2 and 6:4 pulses).

The values transcribed as triplets by Kubik between the 29th and the 32nd pulse of Example 5.15 seem to be a rhythmically free "phrasing" provoked by a speech-oriented vocal intonation,


*Table 5.7: Representation of Example 5.16 in the Time-Unit Box System (TUBS); metric periodicities of the patterns are marked by changing gray levels*


*Table 5.8: Pulse speeds and metric patterns in Example 5.16*


while the continued triplet values in Example 5.16109 produce additional rhythmic-metric complexity. Based on Kubik's note values, one must assume that triplet sixteenths act as a common fundamental pulse, so that a "summation meter" of 24 values is obtained (Table 5.7). Continuing in the gong, the *omele* formula is one of Africa's best-known structural elements, commonly also referred to as "time-line pattern," and has been widely deployed by Ligeti and others.110 Due to its irregular division according to the proportion n-1/n+1 (5+7 triplet-eighths – here cor-

<sup>109</sup> Ibid., 37.

<sup>110</sup> See Scherzinger, "György Ligeti and the Aka Pygmies Project," 240–244. The *omele* formula has also been related to Steve Reich's paradigmaticworks*Drumming* (1970–71) and *Clapping Music*(1972),see Klein, *Alexander Zemlinsky – Steve Reich: Alternative Moderne(n)*,139–147 and Colannino, Gómez, and Toussaint, "Analysis of Emergent Beat-Class Setsin Steve Reich's'Clapping Music.'"

responding to 10+14 fundamental pulses) and the additional constant change between threeand two-division in the singing voice (lead singer), metric tension is created on a simultaneous and successive dimension (Table 5.8).111 a. without changing the group length (Beethoven, Symphony no. 3, i, mm. 46–52, melody instruments)

**2. Displacement dissonance** (shi�t of focus by syncopation/accentuation, successive con�licting meters)

The function of such overlays in the African context varies. In some genres – as is often the case, for example, with the Aka pygmies in Central Africa – the strata are gradually built up, and the increasing "polymeter" thus serves to increase the density of sounding events and is often coupled with an intensification of dance movement. In other genres, the metric layers are established from the beginning, so that the complex mesh over time appears static and basically only the inherent patterns within a summation meter are perceived, as in the examples discussed above. In general, the superposition of different periodicities in numerous genres of African music can be understood as the basic constant.

In contrast, the simultaneity of different meters in European music, at least within the framework of the common-practice tonality of about 1600 to 1900, most often fulfills a very specific formal function, namely that of a *metric dissonance*. This dissonance deliberately distinguishes itself from the *metric consonance* of (established or imagined) rhythmic constellations supporting the prescribed meter, so that one can meaningfully speak of "conf licting meters" in b. with change of group length (Beethoven, Symphony no. 3, i, mm. 250–257, strings)

**2. Displacement dissonance**

<sup>111</sup> See also Arom, *African Polyphony and Polyrhythm*, 241–250.

, "Préambule," mm. 99–106)

this context. Yet, numerous examples can be found in music history, particularly before 1600 and after 1900, in which certain affinities with the African models become visible.

Following on from Harald Krebs, one can distinguish two basic types of metric dissonance (Table 5.9).112 In a metric *grouping dissonance* (or simultaneous conf licting meters) a continuous shift in emphasis is brought about by ongoing and possibly irregular syncopation or accentuation, while in a *displacement dissonance* (or successive conf licting meters) different metric groupings or accents are superimposed, leading to a continuous shift of metric emphasis.113 In each case, subcategories of increasing complexity are to be differentiated, with hybrids occurring frequently. Each *displacement dissonance* is at the same time a metric *grouping dissonance* relative to the (possibly inaudible) periodicity of the prescribed meter.

<sup>112</sup> See Yeston, *The Stratification of Musical Rhythm*, Krebs, "Rhythmische Konsonanz und Dissonanz," Krebs, "Some Extensions of the Concepts of Metrical Consonance and Dissonance" and Krebs, *Fantasy Pieces*. London, "Rhythm in Twentieth-Century Theory," 708 provides a usefulsummary.

<sup>113</sup> This distinction is particularly linked to the terminology first developed by Krebsin "Rhythmische Konsonanz und Dissonanz" and further developed in *Fantasy Pieces*, 31–45. Krebs acknowledgesthe origin ofthese termsin Kaminsky, "Aspects of Harmony, Rhythm and Form in Schumann's *Papillons*, *Carnaval* and *Davidsbündlertanze*," 27.

Of the categories and examples provided in Table 5.9, the basic meter remains intact in category 1a, but is subdivided by the dissonant combination of quarter and eighth triplets, which creates a f loating character that the mathematically equivalent notation of eighths and quarters in a 6/4 meter could surely not generate. This points to the important fact that metric dissonance can have profound implications for performance and is crucial for a particular aspect of virtuosity and the impression of "levitation" in Romantic piano music. In category 1b, the 2/4 grouping in the left hand faces a 3/4 grouping in the right and both groupings return periodically and therefore realign after two measures, that is, they sound together again after 2x3/3x2 pulses.114 We find a more complex case in category 1c, where the periodic 2/4 grouping of the left hand is overlaid with an aperiodic sequence in the right hand. The grouping dissonance becomes so intense here that Schumann inserts a 4/4 measure (not indicated) in the third measure of the specified section in order to re-synchronize the layers with the prescribed meter – a moment that actually aptly exemplifies an interaction of grouping and displacement dissonance.

The second basic form of metric dissonance, *displacement dissonance*, is illustrated here by two widely cited examples from the first movement of Beethoven's *Eroica*. In category 2a, the group length of the basic meter 3/4 is retained, but shifted by one beat to create a syncopation that turns into a continuing displacement of the metric grid, while in category 2b – analogously to the right hand in 1c – the grouping lengths change constantly, which increases the metric destabilization or the degree of metric dissonance. As frequently observed, harmonic and metric dissonances here reinforce one another, marking a crucial moment in the movement's formal process.

#### Toward an Intercultural Theory of Musical Time and Its Historiographic Implications

I will refrain here from further exploring the history of polymeter in Western music, as I have done in earlier versions of this chapter.<sup>115</sup> Much of this is familiar from a variety of studies and does not need to be repeated here at length.116 The implications of hemiolic or *sesquialtera* proportions to provoke metric ambiguities might be traced back to ancient Greek theory, where the term *hemiólion* is found in Pythagorean tuning theory and already transferred to five-beat rhythmic patterns by Aristoxenus.117 The ambiguity is made explicit in mensural notation where especially the coloring of notes can be associated with hemiolic re-

<sup>114</sup> See Krebs, *Fantasy Pieces*, 33.

<sup>115</sup> Compare this part in the German edition of the present book (Utz, *Komponieren im Kontext der Globalisierung*, 300–316)which is, asthe entire chapter, based on an earlier 2009 publication (→ Appendix).

<sup>116</sup> GroveMusicOnline of fers articles on hemiola and proportio sesquialtera (see Rushton,"Hemiola,"Hiley, Stanford and Laird, "Sesquialtera"). A systematic study of hemiolysis and polymeter in European music has so far taken place mainly on the basis of isolated case studies. See among others Ham, "A Sense of Proportion: The Performance of Sesquialtera ca. 1515–ca. 1565," Willner, "Metrical Displacement and Metrically Dissonant Hemiolas," Willner, "The Two-Length Bar Revisited: Handel and the Hemiola," Lewin, "On Harmony and Meter in Brahms's Op. 76, No. 8," Cohn, "Complex Hemiolas, Ski-Hill Graphs and Metric Spaces," Cohn, "Metric and HypermetricDissonance in theMenuetto ofMozart's Symphony in G minor, K. 550," Cohn, "TheDramatization of Hypermetric Conflicts in the Scherzo of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony," Berktold, "Zur Satztechnik der Hemiolenbildung in Klaviersonaten Mozarts," and Plyn, *Die Hemiole in der Instrumentalmusik von Johannes Brahms*. More general studies relevant in this area include the classic Apel, *The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900–1600*  as well as Schachter, "Rhythm and Linear Analysis," Kramer, *The Time of Music*, Hasty, *Meter as Rhythm*, Maurer Zenck, *Vom Takt*, and particularly Mirka, *Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart.*

<sup>117</sup> Aristoxenos, "Elementa Rhythmica, Book II,"189.

lationships, eventually resulting in prolonged phases of polymensural structures in music by Johannes Ciconia and his contemporaries. For Baroque music Channan Willner distinguishes between "cadential hemiolas," "contraction hemiolas," "expansion hemiolas," and "overlapping hemiolas" in Handel and Bach, thus making it clear how diverse and sometimes formative hemiolic structures could be in the eighteenth century.<sup>118</sup> Further elaborations of hemiolas in the classical style and the nineteenth century arise from "dance" movements, particularly the courante and minuet, and eventually result in famous examples of metric dissonance in the Minuet from Mozart's Symphony G minor K. 550, the first and third movements of Beethoven's *Eroica*, Schumann's piano cycles, Chopin's Fourth Ballade, as well as Brahms's late *Klavierstücke* and the first movement of his Third Symphony.119

In the most complex of these examples, such as the Chopin, more than two metric layers are established, anticipating the subsequent practice of superimposing structures in differing meters in the twentieth century. More generally, one can distinguish two main tendencies in the unprecedented wealth of rhythmic-metric dimensions since 1900 that are conjoined in the late music of Ligeti. On the one hand, the metric organization might tend to increase in complexity by means of multiple superimpositions, up to the point at which they transform into a texture that we can no longer conceive of metrically in any specific sense. On the other hand, metric structures can be somewhat overemphasized, be it through clear tonal or registral structuring, that allows their friction, interaction, and internal dynamics to be perceived.120 In works such as Charles Ives's Fourth Symphony (1910–16)121 and *Universe Symphony* (1911–28), Karlheinz Stockhausen's *Gruppen* (1955–56), or Bernd Alois Zimmermann's *Die Soldaten* (1958–64), we can witness both tendencies in permanent interaction with the polyphony of meter and/or tempo exposed and concealed at irregular intervals. In the *Universe Symphony*, Ives conceived of a "basic unit," a macro-metric period symbolizing the "pulse of the universe," that is cyclically overlaid with ever new metric layers until a structure of twenty different layers is reached. The arrangement for percussion orchestra entitled *Life Pulse Prelude* by Larry Austin (1984) uses different *tempo* layers to realize this polymeter for practical reasons.122 The pulses are sent to the players via click track. In his *Memos*, Ives worked intensively on questions of the feasibility and perceptibility of such stratifications:

The listener, if he tries enough, will get the composite ef fect that's wanted, while each player concentrates on his particular meter, hearing the others as secondary sounds, at least while practising [*sic*] them. […] if the dif ferent meters are each played by groups of dif ferentsounding units, the ef fect is valuable, and I believe will be gradually found an important element in deepening and enriching all of the depths of music, including the emotional and spiritual.<sup>123</sup>

\*\*\*

<sup>118</sup> Willner, "The Two-Length Bar Revisited:Handel and theHemiola."

<sup>119</sup> See Ligeti and Boulaine, "Stilisierte Emotion," 54. The passage from Chopin's Fourth Ballad (mm. 175–178) referred to by Ligeti is also dealtwith in an essay byDouglas R.Hofstadterthat obviously pointed Ligetito the respective passage: Hofstadter, *Metamagical Themas*,179 (the article first appeared in 1982 in *Scientific American*).

<sup>120</sup> See Utz andNonnenmann, "Rhythmus, Metrum, Tempo" for an overview.

<sup>121</sup> See, among others, Gail, *Charles E. Ives' Fourth Symphony*, 308–434 and Gail, "Die 4. Symphonie von CharlesIves," 73–87, and Utz, "Bernd Alois Zimmermann und CharlesIves,"126–129.

<sup>122</sup> See Austin, "The Realization and First Complete Performances of Ives' *Universe Symphony*."

<sup>123</sup> Ives, *Memos*,125.

Both the systematic considerations of summation meter and metric dissonance as well as the historical examples of conf licting metric formations in Western music make it clear that a complex ref lection of the simple hemiolic principle of juxtaposed or superimposed metric periodicities is found in various eras and cultural contexts. These properties thus can by no means be considered a specific aspect of recent music, although twentieth-century composers, often inspired by Stravinsky and Bartók, offer an extraordinary variety of examples. Many genres of African music seem to imply comparable types of superimposition of meter-like periodicities as a fundamental prerequisite for music making, even though both the conceptualization of the performer and the perception of the listener may be more focused on the patterns resulting in the summation meter than on the superimposition itself. At this point, it seems important to stress that, in contrast to a strong focus on "emic" approaches, that is, on the musical structures as imagined and conceived by the performing musicians (and local audiences) in ethnomusicology, an intercultural approach aiming at global historical and theoretical perspectives must go beyond these restrictive premises, as Michael Tenzer has most notably done in his essays exploring musical temporality by systematically referring to repertoire of different cultures and historical periods.124 While it is clear that some of Tenzer's arguments risk overgeneralization, his typology of musical temporalities (though it conspicuously lacks a type that could apply to polymeter or polytempo) would surely make a good starting point for rethinking musical time in broader terms than has been done until now.

A dimension of polymeter that may be further explored in the intercultural universe is the idea of musical spatiality as it emerges particularly strongly in polymetric music of the twentieth century with Ives, Mahler, Zimmermann, or Ligeti, but which also resonates with African genres, as they are often characterized by an anti-teleological, quasi-spatial basic principle125 with which Ligeti's "frozen turbulence" has close affinities. Even in most of the other examples discussed here, metric confusion produces a temporal delay, a congestion of energy, and sometimes a momentary stasis, which, however, is not always to be understood as a tension that requires resolution. Thus the concept of "metric dissonance" should reasonably be limited to the three or so centuries of common-practice tonal music.

In any case, one can take the history of polymeter as proof of the thesis resulting from the considerations in Chapter II.1 that music history, especially from an intercultural perspective, is not a linear progression from simple to more complex forms. On the contrary, it becomes clear from the examples discussed here that – as in many other areas of music – the different concepts and musical contexts of metric conf lict and overlays describe a network of references that embody the most diverse, sometimes unexpected and surprising connections as they were drawn again and again by composers such as Ligeti in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is more than a mere *bon mot* to say that polymeter constitutes a kind of "metric dissonance" in the structure of music history.

<sup>124</sup> See Tenzer, "A Cross-Cultural Topology of Musical Time" as well as the earlier "Temporal Transformations in Cross-Cultural Perspective."

<sup>125</sup> See Arom, *African Polyphony and Polyrhythm*,17.

### **3. Intercultural Tension in Music by Chaya Czernowin and Isabel Mundry: Variations on Identity and Musical Meaning**

A phenomenon crucial for the perception of new music, and which is featured prominently in Helmut Lachenmann's sound typology, is the transition between structure and texture: the more information is conveyed at once in a musical context, the more it is perceived in terms of "global" characteristics – that is, structure (conceived as an interaction of individual sound elements or "families") morphs into texture (in which one global characteristic dominates) – and the reverse process is, of course, equally relevant. Although this principle was particularly wellknown and much explored in "sound composition" during the 1960s, it plays a certain role in listening to almost any polyphonic or multi-layered music. Complex and dazzling musical stratification was derived by many composers in the twentieth century from the legacy of Romantic orchestral magic (→ VI.1). Such a "dialogue" between layers can give rise to a morphological vividness that communicates itself directly, even without the framework of tonal harmony.

In the music that emerged from the fault lines of cultural globalization from the end of the nineteenth century, it was, as we have seen, a much-used procedure to conceptualize the differences between cultural idioms in the form of such a layered structure: groups of instruments and/or musical timbres were often arranged "culturally" (and usually differing compositional techniques applied to such groups mirrored this cultural segregation). In Tan Dun's *Ghost Opera* (1994), the string quartet was culturally "identified" by the C# minor prelude from volume 1 of Bach's *Well-Tempered Clavier*, the Chinese *pipa* by the Chinese folk song *Xiao bai cai*. The more such musically "cultural" layers are combined, the more they become "anonymized" in a global sound and dissolve into a "metacultural" texture, or else, if necessary, a "secondary" texture might develop out of hierarchies in which certain strata follow others or are clearly subordinate to them (→ III.5). A fundamental criticism of such processes could be made based on the argument that every stratification ultimately ref lects a "politics of polarity" that Homi K. Bhabha sees overcome only by a "third space of articulations" in which cultural hybridity can arise (→ I.3).126 Is it possible to create such a "third space" in music?

### **Chaya Czernowin's** *Excavated Dialogues – Fragments***: Is Cultural Hybridity Musically Representable?**

In Chaya Czernowin's *Excavated Dialogues – Fragments* (2003–04) for seven Chinese and nine Western instruments, cultural hybridity as a potential is presupposed, but at the same time deliberately limited. Using the compositional principle of fragmentation, the composer intends from the outset to leave no space for cultural idiomatics, even where it should appear unintentionally. The original cultural codes of the instruments can at best f lash up as vague intuitions, characterized by instrument-specific performance gestures, for example. Czernowin's antiessentialist approach first appears in the division of the ensemble into three groups – wind instruments, plucked instruments, strings – each containing both Chinese and European instruments. Indeed, the instruments are not subject to any polarized categorial separation. The four movements of different lengths, with a total duration of about ten minutes, are based on various "dialogues" within these groups: in the first movement – hardly perceptible – between the mouth organ *sheng* and the bass trombone, in the second, the most complex and longest movement, initially between the high bamboo transverse f lute *bangdi* and the oboe as well as

<sup>126</sup> Bhabha, *The Location of Culture*, 38.

between the knee fiddle *erhu* and the violin, later between the dulcimer-zither *yangqin* and the piano, in the third movement between the bamboo f lute *dizi* and the (Western) f lute, later the trombone, and in the fourth movement again between *erhu* and violin.

It is obvious that Czernowin does not trust the concept of a balanced dialogue between equal partners and, consequently, cut and rearranged the dialogue sections during the compositional process. Against this background, one can hear an increasing "talking at cross purposes" in the second movement: a self-contained, elegantly complementary opening cadenza of Chinese and European string instruments (*erhu*, *zheng*, string trio, Ex. 5.17a) in the first three measures is soon followed by a wind instrument section (mm. 11–29, Ex. 5.17b) in which the *bangdi* and oboe try to drown each other out like "angry speech" and with "aggression" (instructions in the score, m. 13), but in the end synchronize in a "cadence-like" phrase. The dialogue layer between the *yangqin* and the piano, starting *ppp* at measure 20, finally disappears in a field of pure unpitched string noise before resuming from measure 38 (Ex. 5.17c), where the instruments now "aggressively" interrupt one another (note in the score, m. 38), surrounded by a "deafening" tutti chord that eventually silences everything.

In this way, Czernowin explicitly tries to disrupt the identity discourse: "The different dialogues between alternating instruments merge into one another and decompose one another – as though they had been buried in the ground for a long time where they had lost their original separate identities."127 The composer explained that in this process, she deliberately ignored the East-West conf lict temporarily in order to emphasize the "abyss" between East and West in the collision of the fragmented material.128 She seems to want to make it audible in the music that hybridization – in the sense of Peter Burke's critique of this term (→ I.3)129 – contains an element of violence, and intends to let the seemingly neutral-objective observer position collapse, from which the opposites appear to f low into each other naturally.

The perceived sonic experiences, not least based on "gestural types" in Robert Hatten's sense130 (→ III.5), appear to be connected in a causal chain, with syntactic consequences: timbral blending, balanced dialogues, or independent monologues, divergence, conf licts, or even aggression between the instrumental or sound groups are detectable spontaneously and intuitively. Czernowin's archaeological idea of unearthing remnants of a former dialogic practice can be associated with the pre-linguistic character that Hatten presupposes for musical gestures as a whole and on which their immediacy rests.<sup>131</sup>

One may object that semanticizations of musical organization through fragmentation and montage are not directly comprehensible to the same extent as the gestural levels. They represent a conceptual sphere of abstraction, at least limited in its effectiveness by the cognitive relevance of hierarchically salient events. Although the attempt made by Czernowin to question cultural hierarchies may be successful at first sight, it cannot prevent the resulting work, its key events, and its arrangement of sound elements building a new hierarchical environment that overlays the culturally hybrid space of identities. This raises the question of whether harmonic, tonal, and rhythmic models, which refer to certain listening and intellectual traditions (such as contemporary, classical, Chinese, or popular music) do not again produce a new hierarchical

<sup>127</sup> Czernowin, "Excavated Dialogues – Fragments."

<sup>128</sup> Czernowin, "Der Dialog als ein kompositorisches Modell,"168–170.

<sup>129</sup> Burke, *Cultural Hybridity*, 54–55.

<sup>130</sup> See Hatten, *Interpreting Musical Gestures*.

<sup>131</sup> Ibid.,108–110.

*Example 5.17: Chaya Czernowin, Excavated Dialogues – Fragments, second movement, a. mm. 1–3 (string instruments); b. mm. 7–19 (bangdi/oboe); c. mm. 37–42 (tutti)* 

discussion of power and exclusion. Without them, however, musical articulation is hardly possible – a productive paradox that also applies to the following example.

#### Isabel Mundry's*Ich und Du*: Identity Riddle

Isabel Mundry sees her music as permeated by intangible layers of meaning characterized by blurriness, ambivalence, doubt, and suspension of time.<sup>132</sup> In Mundry's music, meaning arises from f leeting, passing, and unfinished states of sound, time, and space. If this aesthetic stance seems to resist any signification of music in a sociopolitical sense, a tendency in twentieth-century music criticized by Susan McClary and many other scholars,133 it nevertheless goes far beyond a simplistic ideal of autonomy. Mundry evokes Nelson Goodman's concept of *metaphorical exemplification*134 as a link to the desire in her music to open a horizon beyond "pure listening," to create musical situations that can be related to experiences, recollections, or emotions from everyday life. She quotes the piano accompaniment of the song *Die Krähe* from Schubert's *Winterreise* to illustrate this principle: the piano figure creates "an experiential correspondence between our sensory perception of the music and what we experience during a walk when birds circle above our heads."135 More formally than Mundry, Christian Thorau describes the transfer of Goodman's concept to musical contexts as a "mode of reference that is linked to the exhibited sensual properties of the sign, i.e., implanted in the music [Mundry's reference to Schubert's piano accompaniment], while at the same time transcending it in the manner of a metaphor [the correspondence between musical structure and the experience of circulating birds]."<sup>136</sup> However, Mundry's intention is to relate to experiences of daily life *without* resorting to conventional musical gestures, figures, or topics such as Schubert's. Her attitude thus blends in with the image of numerous compositional approaches since the 1970s that combine a demand for their social relevance with the insistence on a certain degree of auto-referentiality (→ I.2).

The title of Mundry's 2008 composition *Ich und Du* for piano and orchestra clearly indicates her intention of referentiality. It stands for the construction and deconstruction of identity, the theme of the essay *Watashi to nanji* (I and You) by the Japanese philosopher Kitarō Nishida (1870–1945), first published in 1932, which Mundry references.137 In his texts, Nishida, a princi-


<sup>132</sup> SeeHiekel, "Über Isabel Mundry."

<sup>133</sup> SeeMcClary, "Terminal Prestige" and Born andHesmondhalgh, "Introduction:OnDif ference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music."

<sup>134</sup> See Goodman, *Languages of Art*.

<sup>135</sup> Mundry, *Resonanzverhältnis zwischen kompositorischem Ich und Gesellschaf t*, 21 ("erzeugt […] eine Erfahrungskorrespondenz zwischen dem, was wir in der Musik sinnlich wahrnehmen, und dem, was wir von einem Spaziergang kennen, nämlich daß über unseren Köpfen Vögel kreisen.").

pal exponent of the Kyoto school, explores classical topics of Western philosophy such as logic, subject-object dichotomy, knowledge, and identity, with his later texts (after *I and You*) increasingly ref lecting on cross-cultural thought figures in these fields. The key ideas of *I and You* are succinctly summarized by Rolf Elberfeld:

The question of the relationship between I and You is dealt with at dif ferent levels. [...] Since we encounter the absolute negation at the bottom of our self-determination, we encounter in ourselves the absolute other, where a You or an absolute Other is already given within myself, so that the absolute Other in myself opens up accessto the You of the other person. That is, the absolute dif ference between I and You becomes animated, as we both realize within ourselves the absolute Other, and thus I become I and You become You.<sup>138</sup>

Thus, as in Czernowin's work, complex philosophical-aesthetic premises are juxtaposed with a purely instrumental work, which, in contrast to *Excavated Dialogues - Fragments*, is based on an ensemble and genre – the piano concerto – with a long and inf luential historical background. Mundry's introductory text plays in a characteristic way with this interlocking of philosophical-semantic and music-immanent levels:

The composition is not about a biographical I and You, but rather addresses the I as a place of centered perception and You as a place of projection. […] The frame suggests thinking of the solo instrument as the I and the orchestra as the You, but the music is about shifts and reinterpretations, about demarcations, encroachments, attributions, or self-determination. In this respect, the piano can become You while the orchestra stands out in front of it as an I, or it can become alien to itself by mutating from intimate sound to an externally determined machinery.<sup>139</sup>

To approach such musical processes, a morphosyntactic approach140 seems particularly appropriate: the contrast between the concentration of the overall sound on a single point in time and space, as well as the "drifting out" of the sound through the three almost identical orchestral groups, take on the force and precision of physical gestures. The connection between these two basic events, which already clearly emerge on the first page of the score (Ex. 5.18), is completed by a third, which can be added to the other two events as an echo. Point, proliferation, and echo form an equally simple and productive material that almost forms the sole basis for the nearly 15-minute work.

<sup>138</sup> Elberfeld, "Einleitung," 11 ("Die Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Ich und Du wird auf verschiedenen Ebenen bearbeitet. […]Dawirim Grunde unserer Selbstbestimmung auf die absoluteNegation stoßen,tref fenwirin uns selbst auf das absolut Andere, wodurch in mir selber bereits ein Du bzw. ein absolut Anderes gegeben ist, so daß sich durch den absolut Anderen in mirselbst ein Zugang zum Du der anderen Person eröf fnet. Das heißt, die absolute Dif ferenz zwischen Ich und Duwird lebendig, indem wir beide in unsselber den absolut anderen realisieren und so Ich Ichwerde und Du Duwirst.").

<sup>139</sup> Mundry, "*Ich und Du*" ("In der Komposition geht es nicht um ein biografischesIch und Du,sie thematisiert vielmehr dasIch als einen Ort zentrierter Wahrnehmung und das Du als einen Ort der Projektion. […] Die Disposition legt nahe, das Soloinstrument als dasIch und dasOrchester als dasDu zu denken, doch dieMusik handelt von Umschichtungen und Umdeutungen, von Grenzziehungen, Übergrif fen, Zuschreibungen oder Selbstbestimmungen. Insofern kann das Klavier zum Du werden, vor dem das Orchester sich als ein Ich abhebt, oder es kann sich selberfremdwerden, indem es vom intimen Klang zurfremdbestimmten Maschinerie mutiert.").

<sup>140</sup> For the foundations of the morphosyntactic analytical method, see especially Utz, "'Liberating' Sound and Perception" and "Time‐Space Experience in Worksfor Solo Cello by Lachenmann, Xenakis and Ferneyhough."

The composer distinguishes five sections that pass through "Ich" and "Du" in five modes: intersection, self-interrogation, landscape, attribution/loss of self, and permeability.141 Is this narrative thread plausible? From a morphosyntactic point of view, three phases in particular can be distinguished. Several times in the course of *Ich und Du*, a pizzicato impulse appears, a symbol of coherence, synchronicity, and identification, which can be assigned an energetic "trigger" function. The opening piano pizzicato (G4, m. 1, Ex. 5.18) first triggers a sequence of four further pizzicato points of increasing intensity (m. 2/III, m. 3/I: vla., vc., Bartók pizzicato, m. 4/I, left: Bartók pizzicato behind the bridge, m. 5/I–III: pizzicato in high position142), the latter of which finally causes a first cascade-like proliferation (m. 5). In the first phase, the sound cascades derived from the proliferation in measure 5 become increasingly dense (after an initially hesitant release from measure 10) and from measure 51 blend into a continuous virtuoso figuration in the solo instrument, shaded by the orchestral groups in an extremely fragmented instrumentation. This impression is often reversed, and the piano appears as the shading of a dominant orchestral sound – a complex, field-like sound transformation in which no sharp delimitation of individual "sound events" can be identified.

After this figuration is slowed down by quarter-note pulses marked by chords, the second phase begins in measure 140, again marked by a piano pizzicato in measure 142 (now F4). It is characterized by long, resonant single tones (and thus by clearly marked sound events) over a noise-saturated background, has a ref lexive character, and transfers the echo principle from the micro- to the macroformal level. The third phase begins in measure 167 again with the piano pizzicato (now A4) and is characterized by the attempt of the piano to pick up the cascading figurations from the first phase again. It seems essential that, in the now more chamber-musical environment, the colors of the cimbalom and the vibraphone, which are "competing" with the piano (m. 174), are more pronounced than in the tutti constellations of the first phase, and the energetic gestures of the piano are increasingly deformed. With the expansions in measures 243 to 244 and 249 to 250 the music ends in a long composed-out echo (mm. 253–269), thus again transferring this central morphological principle to the macroformal level.

In conjunction with the title of the work, it is undoubtedly appealing to play with the identities given by Mundry and Nishida's text in relation to this musical unfolding. One aspect in particular seems to stand out: that of ambiguity. For whether the interlocking proliferations of piano and orchestra in the first phase are now seen as mutually reinforcing their respective identities (in one case "Ich"/piano, in another case "Du"/orchestra – or vice versa) or their doubts in the sense of a "permeability," as Mundry puts it only for the end of the work, can certainly not be decided unequivocally. In any case, Mundry's identity discourse has found a suitable area for the concept of metaphorical exemplification, in which referentiality can be held sufficiently in limbo and an overly clear symbolic assignment of the material is avoided.

It does not seem coincidental that Thorau also explains the "referential complexification" of metaphors in art through the interlinking of reference levels between a work's title and the musical structure.<sup>143</sup> An interpretation of Mundry's "piano concerto" – and *concertante* in the sense of "competing" is what the solo instrument and orchestra are all about in this work – would certainly lead in different directions without the title. The rather ephemeral character of Mundry's referentiality is thus fundamentally different from Czernowin's attempt to convey

<sup>141</sup> Mundry, "Ich und Du."

<sup>142</sup> Roman numerals designate the three orchestral groups.

<sup>143</sup> Thorau, *Vom Klang zur Metapher*, 201–205. Thorau here discusses Robert Schumann's piano piece *Vogel als Prophet* from *Waldszenen* op. 82.

#### *Example 5.18: Isabel Mundry, Ich und Du, mm. 1–5*

Copyright © 2008 by Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden

cultural conf lict through a gesturally effective vocabulary. What is common to both compositional designs, however, is the effort to prioritize the emergence of musical meanings from an interplay between referential and transcendental levels, and with the help of morphosyntactically tangible musical elements.

#### The Limits of Musical Signification

The contradictions arising between the musical contexts that emerge from Czernowin's and Mundry's sound events and the possibilities of signification, of "worldliness,"144 demanded and approached by the composers, can generally become productive for a theory of intercultural composition in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These conf licting lines should not be surprising, as they point to a fundamental music-specific ambiguity and a persistent riddle character of the musical work of art, which no cleverly equipped theory should try to dissolve. The context of ref lexive globalization (→ I.2) and the references to metaphor theory and semiotics also show that such a theory faces quite different challenges than, for example, a theory of common practice tonal harmony. The intensified concern of many composers for perception and meaning since the 1980s, as well as an insistence on the (much-debated and doubted) social relevance of contemporary music, pushes the necessity of interdisciplinary networking into the foreground. It also becomes obvious that there can be no more "historically informed" analytical practice or theory, in the sense that recently emerged for music of the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries based on source criticism and period theory. For apart from a problematic reduction to authorial perspectives (→ II.1), the "sources" of the composers, the traces of the compositional process, however minutely they might be reconstructed, can always elucidate only a small portion of the processes that take place in the intermediate domain of structure, perception, and meaning – domains increasingly emphasized as essential also by the composers themselves. Nevertheless, structural analysis will continue to form an essential component in the theory of post-tonal music. Linking it to music psychology, ethnomusicology, and related fields appears to be a deciding factor, enabling an expanded, contextual understanding of new music in a global context.

<sup>144</sup> See Wellmer, *Versuch über Musik und Sprache*,166–218 ("Welthaltigkeit").

# **VI. Reflections on My Own Composing as a Search for Traces in the In-Between**

In turning my attention toward my own attempts at composition, I in no way intend to hold them up as any form of "model," nor do I intend to ascribe any "historical" value to my work. It has been a long-standing fact for me that the musicological and compositional examination of questions of intercultural f luctuation, the problems of the different culturally coded idioms, languages, listening styles, and sound producers, continue to run parallel to one another. It is difficult from my perspective to judge whether, and how, artistic and scholarly activities may have inf luenced one another. In any case, it was always clear (and many composers can confirm this from their own experience) that theoretical and historical knowledge – even in the form of the quasi-ethnomusicological "competence" sometimes demanded in the previous chapters – are ultimately of little help at the moment of composing, and often take a back seat. Rather, my compositional thinking has grown from encounters with performers, fellow composers, and listeners, in discussions about crossing borders, drawing boundaries, possibilities, and dead ends of dialogue. If there is a basic feature of my compositional work that resulted from these continuous interactions, then perhaps it is the principle of a "polyphony of meanings" outlined in the third and especially fourth sections of this chapter, which can be found in the mostly multilayered, "multitextual" works to be discussed. At this point, it is particularly important for me to offer the possibility of perceptual exploration: recordings of all seven of my own works discussed below are available online.1

### **1. Layered Fabric, Intertextuality, and Cultural Context: From Striated to Open Space**

It may be surprising that, despite the omnipresence of a shift toward stratified thinking in new music from its beginnings around 1900 until today, there have been only tentative attempts to approach a theory of musical stratification. While this may be because stratification methods in music theory and analysis are often subsumed under more conventional terms such as structure or polyphony, it may also be due to the fact that they are usually difficult to generalize owing to some inherent breaches of rules and limits. A distinction between stratification methods and polyphonic methods would be established, for example, in the fact that a

<sup>1</sup> https://soundcloud.com/chr\_utz; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JVDCA3tmds. Weblinks to individual pieces are provided belowin the respective sections of thischapter.

higher-level rule or reference system (such as the different types of tonality or counterpoint), which is always unspoken in the latter, can very easily be undermined by the former. In other words, one could speak of layered phenomena in music when individual levels emerge from the structure of the music simultaneously as autonomous, individualized "personae," their heterogeneity can be heard, and their cross-relationship is not trivial, self-evident, or inherent in the system. The constant oscillation between such processes of contouring individual elements and the change in the textural impression of an overall sound is characteristic of many compositional layering processes and can be linked to Helmut Lachenmann's distinction between structural and textural sound; Lachenmann's emphasis on the interlocking of different sound types is especially relevant in this context.<sup>2</sup> In the structural sound, the relationship between detail and the whole is non-linear and oversummative, the overall character is not a blanket quality, but something "virtually new" that "requires formal projection in a temporal space that allows a listener to feel their way through it."<sup>3</sup> It is precisely this processual nature, allowing sonic and formal conceptions to coincide in the structural sound, that must also be assumed for the stratification processes envisaged here. What is aimed at are not some automated schemes but networks that enable novel, surprising, and non-linear connections – a dimension that Lachenmann's well-known formulation of structure as a "polyphony of orderings"<sup>4</sup> captures only insufficiently, since it tends to mark a territorialized, "striated" musical space,<sup>5</sup> namely the (potential) control systems of the "orderings" organized by means of "polyphony." The aforementioned autonomy of the figures or "personae" linked by means of complex layering techniques, on the other hand, can sometimes turn them into independent musical texts, or – viewed in reverse – the intention to put different musical texts or contexts in nonlinear relationships with one another can lead to complex stratification procedures, eventually resulting in a far-reaching deterritorialization, an open musical space. The intertextuality that arises in this space stands out significantly from more conventional assemblage or collage processes but can temporarily adopt its vividness and alienation processes.

In this context, it is no coincidence that composers whose music developed "proliferating" tendencies, and was thus determined by increasingly complex stratification processes, attempted to sharpen the contours of tempo, metric, or timbral strata, which are usually difficult for listeners to grasp, with extraterritorial quotations or related intertextual reference techni-

<sup>2</sup> Lachenmann, "Klangtypen derNeuen Musik," 20.

<sup>3</sup> Ibid.,17–18 ("virtuellNeues"; [bedarf einer] "formalen Projektion in einen abzutastenden Zeit-Raum").

<sup>4</sup> Ibid., 18 ("Polyphonie von Anordnungen"); see also Lachenmann, "Vier Grundbestimmungen des Musikhörens," 62.

<sup>5</sup> The distinction between "striated" and "smooth" spaces goes back to Pierre Boulez's Darmstadt lecture *Musikalische Technik* (1960), which was published in 1963 (see Boulez, *Musikdenken heute I*, 58–61, 72–83). The two terms were taken up in Gilles Deleuze's and Félix Guattari's "nomadology" and extended to the analysis of the history of technology and power in the twentieth century (Deleuze and Guattari, *A Thousand Plateaus*, 474–500, with explicit reference to Boulez 477–478). Boulez's position is paraphrased succinctly by Deleuze and Guattari: "In the simplest terms, Boulez says that in a smooth space-time one occupies without counting, whereas in a striated space-time one counts in order to occupy. He makes palpable or perceptible the dif ference between nonmetric and metric multiplicities, directional and dimensional spaces. He renders them sonorous or musical. Undoubtedly, his personal work is composed of these relations, created or recreated musically." (ibid., 477). In the following, instead of the "smooth" I speak of the "open" space, since the metaphor of the "smooth" – apart from general aesthetic-pejorative connotations – would contradict the "points of friction" in the layer structure that are aimed for here.

ques.<sup>6</sup> The background to this decision was the strong tendency toward texture that can be observed as a consequence of complex layering, for example in Bernd Alois Zimmermann's music. One problem with Zimmermann's quotation process could perhaps be seen in the deliberately decontextualized references to melodies and idioms that are forced into a rigorous structure and thus territorialized – their function is an affirmation, not a critique of the stratification structure. While their extraterritorial character becomes palpable within the basic idiom of Zimmermann's musical language, their system-disrupting potential is rarely fully established.

The relationship between stratification technique and intertextuality in the work of Charles Ives is even more ambiguous. Ives's witty musical puns create a paratactic, conf lict-laden formal tension in which self-quotation, outside quotation, and pseudo-quotation become indistinguishable. The ambiguity of the references or fragments of quotes is primarily determined by the interlocking of symbolism and structure and thus leads to a unique proliferation, a constant tactile shifting of the musical space. The montage in the second movement of the Fourth Symphony (1910–16) at rehearsal number 8, consisting of a total of six hymn citations or allusions and a self-quotation, overlays the adagio material that started at rehearsal number 7 in 3/2 time, which symbolizes the march of pilgrims, with an allegro layer in 4/4 time, from which we hear the heavily altered *Beulah Land* anthem in the trumpets (mm. 43–45, G major), then in the trombones (mm. 47–50, F major). After eight measures, the allegro layer suddenly disappears by means of a sudden fade-out and the adagio layer of the pilgrims, who have had soot blown in their faces by the passing allegro railway (an orchestral rendering of real-world sounds that Ives labeled "take-off"7 ), can continue: a multidimensional layering with connecting lines between and within the tempo layers, from which contoured figures emerge again and again with a programmatic context that can also be related to basic philosophical concepts (the f lat, continuous adagio layer corresponds to the string layer in *The Unanswered Question* [1906] and stands for a transcendent, timeless principle; the rushing allegro layer stands for the f leeting frenzy of the world). Ives's unique form of intertextual stratification can only be grasped by acknowledging how all these factors, which lead to an "overdetermination"8 of the musical structure, work together.

As indicated, the transcendentalist symbolism presents itself as the decisive motivation for Ives's multipolar stratification processes, but at the same time tends to dissolve this multipolarity in the affirmative, emphatic transformation of heterogeneity into a hierarchical structure – turning an open space into a striated space – as in the finale of the Fourth Symphony, or at the end of many other works, when the archetypical, primordial, "transcendental" ground of music remains as the only layer of music symbolizing "purity."<sup>9</sup> This indicates that the complexity of a layered fabric and intertextual cross-references alone do not guarantee an analogous polyphony of meaning. Rather, what is decisive are the formal processes, however symbolically connoted, that are triggered by them.

With Zimmermann and even more with Ives, one can also observe how the musical texts linked in the layering process often turn into musical-cultural contexts. This process of association is often deliberately provoked by the composers, in some cases even relying on the rather clumsy effect of blatantly obvious references. While a quotation can thus impose itself on the listener in such a way that it f lattens the layered fabric as a whole, and consequently

<sup>6</sup> See on this and the following Utz, "Bernd Alois Zimmermann und CharlesIves."

<sup>7</sup> See Giebisch, Take-of f *als Kompositionsprinzip bei Charles Ives*.

<sup>8</sup> Rathert, *Charles Ives*, 98 ("Überdetermination").

<sup>9</sup> See Kramer, "Cultural Politics and Musical Form,"192–195.

undermines it, the links to a broader context, intelligently articulated, might offer the advantage of basic ambiguity. This becomes particularly relevant where different musical-cultural contexts are to be related, for example in works for Western and non-Western instruments. Such a process raises the question of whether cultural difference – that is, heterogeneity – or the linking of what is different is emphasized by the stratification process, or in what way the cultural texts and contexts are made the subject at all (→ III.4).

As explored in detail in this book, East Asian composers have been observing this urgent cultural-historical tendency at least since Takemitsu's *November Steps*, seeking to counteract the gravitational effect and acceptance of Western music discourse with a special emphasis on the cultural non-commensurable. Meanwhile, one has clearly gone beyond the paradox of Takemitsu's work outlined earlier (→ III.4), with the composer striving for coexistence, a layering of Japanese solo instruments and Western orchestra, but ultimately composing a delicate web of soft transitions between these supposedly separate worlds. Takemitsu's transitions are linear, modulative, transformative, and thus remain in the "striated" space. They lack a "second reality," a polylinear layered fabric that points beyond such simple connecting lines between polarized entities.

This is not to say that the arrangement of such a fabric alone guarantees the desired openness of musical space. On the contrary, the high density of the suggested model seems to contradict the *xieyi* and *liu bai* principles in Chinese calligraphy, the idea – broadly developed beyond classical East Asian aesthetics – that the center of artistic meaning is where there is no script, no materiality.10 Here, one should not only look for density or multipolarity as manifest in the complexity of a score; concentration can also be found in the spaces between types of notation, oral instrumental traditions, and precise communication models, in a conceptual rather than a compositional layered fabric, as shown by the social-communicative experiments of Yūji Takahashi or José Maceda (→ III.4). In addition, there are also successful materialized intercontextual and intercultural stratifications, for example in the best works by Tan Dun like *Orchestral Theatre I: Xun* (1990) or some scenes from *Marco Polo* (1991–95),11 or in Qin Wenchen's *He-Yi* (1999) for *zheng* and chamber ensemble (→ III.5). The common denominator of these works could perhaps be found in the fact that different, mutually heterogeneous idioms are constantly present through their "tone," without ever being directly quoted, whereby constant transformations of a newly heard Chinese musical tradition into formally constitutive approaches developed in the area of Western new music – and vice versa – take place. Tan Dun's works, of course, also show how fine the boundary is between such compactions and the moments already outlined above, in which the directness of the heterogeneous texts makes striated and open spaces collapse like a house of cards (→ III.3).

This problem always comes to the fore when the quoted idioms appear in an unmediated and affirmative form – which is why the danger of slipping toward cultural essentialism (which might also have a nationalist accent) is never far away in the intercultural context. Within European music, such an unquestioning turn toward an apparently "secured" repertoire of

<sup>10</sup> See Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 235–237, 268–270 for a summary of traditional East Asian aesthetics relating to calligraphy. Elements of calligraphic practice and aesthetics have been taken up by a large group of both East Asian and Western composers including Isang Yun, Chou Wen-Chung, Tōru Takemitsu, Tan Dun, ToshioHosokawa, andHans Zender. For Chou Wen-Chung'scalligraphy-informed compositional aestheticssee especially Everett, "Gesture and Calligraphy in theMusic of ChouWen-Chung" and Lai,"Calligraphy and Texture in Chou Wen-Chung's Music."

<sup>11</sup> See Utz, *Neue Musik und Interkulturalität*, 460–474.

musical signs or gestural types was already rejected in Brian Ferneyhough's criticism of the neotonal and neo-Romantic tendencies in European music during the early 1980s.12 Ferneyhough polemically referred to the faith in such a limited repertoire, aimed specifically at certain perceptual abilities of the listener, as "'Pavlovian' semanticism."13 The authenticity of a musical dialect, according to Ferneyhough, cannot be reconstructed through references to such surface features, but rather requires a re-establishment of the connection between surface characteristics, subcutaneous driving forces, and a compositional attitude that becomes aware of the energetic potential of gestures.

Though we can certainly question whether Ferneyhough's own music always lives up to this standard in a convincing way, his picture of the musical surface and its inherent energetic potential points in a direction that now can lead to brief descriptions of my own works. My instrumental works for East Asian-European instrumentation, as discussed in parts 1, 2, and 4 of this chapter, focus on the sonic concept of a large-scale, relief-like sound mass that – similarly to a kaleidoscope or computer animation – constantly dynamically changes its surface structure, its foreground and background, height, depth and "breadth." In all cases, the intention to create such three-dimensional situations necessitated a more intensive examination of the possibilities of interlocking layers, which ultimately also led to the inclusion of simple algorithmic formalizations.

#### *Interference***: Contradictory Self-Identity**

The challenge of finding music for piano and Chinese instruments initially drew my attention to cultural difference as outlined above: the contrast between the European and East Asian musical traditions embodied in the instruments and the "states of friction" this created were of primary interest. It would have been an obvious move to implement these in the form of a dichotomic layer structure, in which this difference between the piano as one layer and the Chinese ensemble as another is preserved or carefully reduced. Instead of building the music around such a polarization, however, I tried to create a musical situation where closeness and distance dissolve in a constantly oscillating energy state, inf luenced by the two concepts of "contradictory self-identity" (*mujunteki jikodoitsu*) and "discontinuous continuity" (*hirenzoku no renzoku*) formulated by Kitarō Nishida (→ V.3), which Rolf Elberfeld explains as follows:

Neither identity nor the general take priority over dif ference or the individual, nor does the reverse relationship take precedence. Both are equally original and mutually determined. […]

Time is neither mere continuity nor a random series of moments. Rather, time is the dialectical simultaneity ofcontinuity and discontinuity. At the same time, I and You are neither simply identical nor absolutely separate. Discontinuous continuity thus denotes an intermediate area that rejects extremes as false one-sidedness.<sup>14</sup>

<sup>12</sup> Ferneyhough, "Form – Figure – Style."

<sup>13</sup> Ibid., 23.

<sup>14</sup> Elberfeld, "Begrif fserklärung," 308, 290("Weder hat die Identität bzw. das Allgemeine einen Vorrang über die Dif ferenz bzw. das Einzelne noch besitzt das umgekehrte Verhältnis einen Vorrang. Beidesist gleichursprünglich und bestimmt sich gegenseitig. […] Zeit ist weder eine bloße Kontinuität noch eine zufällige Reihe von Augenblicken. Zeit ist vielmehr das dialektische Zugleich von Kontinuität und Diskontinuität. Zugleich sind Ich

The three-movement formal design of *Interference* (2001)15 builds on Anton Webern's Variations for piano op. 27 (1935–36), which also form the main source of the musical material in the piano part. In the first movement, this material is incorporated into a process of accumulation and reduction in the instrumentation, based on a *sizhuyue* ensemble with *dizi*/*xiao* (bamboo f lutes), *sheng* (mouth organ, → II.6), *huqin* (knee fiddle, alternating between *gaohu*, *gezaixian*, and *zhonghu*), *pipa* (lute), *daruan*/*zhongruan* (mandolin), *zheng* (arched zither), and *yangqin* (hammered dulcimer). Based on the well-known melody *Xing jie* (Street Procession) from the *Jiangnan sizhu* repertoire, the Chinese instruments are carefully approximated to the piano, which initially remains strangely indifferent. Although it is supposedly in dialogue with the *zheng*, it nevertheless sustains an independent level and, like the *sheng* and the percussion, forms a selfcontained structure. The *sheng*, which forms a constantly present sound band, analogous to the *tōgaku* repertoire of *gagaku* (→ IV.1), follows a progression from twelve-note to pentatonic chords and back (Ex. 6.1). The drum part is based on basic rhythmic patterns (*changdan*) from the Korean genre *p'ansori* during all three movements of the work, and the same genre also provided a model for the shifting and entangling of simultaneous processes, which becomes particularly evident in the second and third movements.

*Example 6.1: Christian Utz, Interference, first movement: chord structure of the sheng*

Copyright © 2001 by UtzMusicPrints, Vienna

In the second movement, as in the second movement of Webern's Variations, a game of illusions with "self-similar aggregates" is provoked, forcing the piano and the Chinese instruments, repeatedly driven into noise-saturated sonorities here, into a shared gestural sequence. The third movement, on the other hand, which uses successively increasing tempos in a highly abstracted analogy to the Chinese suite form (*liuban*, *baban*), ultimately forces the simultaneity of piano and Chinese instruments, already suggested in the first movement, into an extreme form of unrelated superposition. The eleven *aitake* chords that form the basic structure of the *tōgaku* repertoire (→ IV.1) can now be heard in the *sheng*. The Chinese title of the work *Jiao die sheng luan* (roughly translated as "Crossed Layers – Sound of the Phoenix") refers to the energetic processes at the node of the work shortly before the end (Ex. 6.2), which in the score is marked metaphorically by three Chinese characters with similar pronunciation – *luàn* (chaos), *luán* (spasm), *luán* (phoenix) – a moment in which the conf licts that have built up in the course of the music dissolve in an ecstatic, cathartic booming and screaming. Finally, the *sheng* mouth organ (symbolizing the phoenix, → IV.1) becomes audible, underlaying a succinct conclusion (an analogue to the end of the third movement of Webern's Variations).

und Du weder einfach identisch noch bloß absolut voneinander getrennt. Die diskontinuierliche Kontinuität bezeichnetsomit einen Zwischenbereich, der die Extreme alsfalsche Vereinseitigungen zurückweist.")

<sup>15</sup> At the world premiere of *Interference* on 12 April 2001, Iconducted the Taiwanese ensemble China (Chai) Found Music Workshop (→ III.6) atDeutschlandfunk Cologne; Wen-TsienHong played the piano part. The edited recording ofthisworld premiere appeared on the CD*Christian Utz: Site*(Composers Art Label,cal13012, 2002) and can be accessed at https://soundcloud.com/chr\_utz/christian-utz-interference.

*Example 6.2: Christian Utz, Interference, third movement, p. 26* 

The layering principle aims for a dynamically changing, open sound space that alternates between different stages and levels of cultural coding, between repulsion and attraction. The English title *Interference* describes how the constant f luctuation of "contradictory self-identity" is transformed into music, but also contains the meaning "to interfere," suggesting an unwillingness to hold on to established categories.

### *the wasteland of minds***: Sound Layer Relief and Disintegration**

This relief-like sonic concept first used in *Interference* became the central starting point for *the wasteland of minds* (2003–04) for two Chinese and four European instruments (*sheng*/*xun* [a Chinese ocarina], *zheng*, clarinet in A, accordion, violin, cello) and live electronics.16 An intricately

Copyright © 2001 by UtzMusicPrints, Vienna

<sup>16</sup> The premiere of *the wasteland of minds* was given on 24 January 2004 at the Wiener Konzerthaus by Wu Wei (*sheng*), Yeh Jiuan-Reng (*zheng*) and the ensemble on\_line (today PHACE) under Simeon Pironkof f. A studio recording appeared on CD with the same performers: *Christian Utz: transformed. music for asian and western instruments 2001–2006*, Spektral Records SRL4-08028, 2008; the recording can also be accessed at https://soundcloud.com/chr\_utz/the-wasteland-of-minds-2003.

*Figure 6.1: Structural grid of rhythmic periods for Christian Utz, the wasteland of minds, mm. 1–20* 

layered structural grid of rhythmic periods (Fig. 6.1), woven by means of a freely managed formalization, serves as a canvas in this work on which colors are constantly highlighted, scratched off, or painted over. The binding of layers results in an extremely compact, highly energetic overall sound whose surface structure is constantly changing. The foreground and background alternate continuously and create mergings, dissociations, or splits of instrumental colors.

Of the five different rhythmic layers, each has two sublayers in the ratio 9:8, with the five main layers shifted by the ratio 6:5:4:3:2. This sets in motion a process that only returns to its starting point after 48 6/4-measures (the first c. five-minute phase in a total duration of around 16 minutes); in this first phase there is a constant inner tension, a frictional energy, an inner dynamic that is explored compositionally. This can be seen, for example, in the constant variation of musical details, which can be traced back to eight basic models. There is never any mechanical repetition of such a model; even in the substructure, there are continuous "changes of illumination." The live electronics are also involved in this interplay; it colors those instruments that follow the slowest layer, creating a musical background that is always slightly roughened.

The cultural intercontextuality here is limited primarily to the harmonic organization derived from the organology of the two Chinese instruments. The nine-note center at the beginning requires a special microtonal tuning of the *zheng*, which is pentatonic in the traditional context; as often in contemporary music, the bridges are moved to achieve a new form of pitch systematization, ref lecting the sometimes very different regional tuning conventions in China. The axial pitches of this tuning are D2, C#3, Eb4, C5, and B5, on which five microtonally

spread variants of the traditional pentachord are built (all pentachords have the same sequence of microtonally modified intervals: lowered whole tone, raised fourth, semitone, raise whole tone, lowered semitone), and below that, F#1 appears as a further axial pitch (Ex. 6.3). In addition to these six pivot pitches, the three highest pitches of the A clarinet (F6), violin (A#6), and accordion (G7) accumulate to form a nine-note chord (covering the full chromatic aggregate without the pitch-classes E, G#, and A) (Ex. 6.4).

*Example 6.3: Christian Utz, the wasteland of minds, tuning of the zheng. The accidentals marked with an arrow indicate a retuning of the pitch by 30 cents (higher/lower). In the score (see Ex. 6.5), the other parts with the same notation show a quartertone of fset (+/- 50 cents).*

*Example 6.4: Christian Utz, the wasteland of minds, compositional sketches of the harmony*

The other two pitch centers (see Ex. 6.4) were obtained from "maximum-pitched" chords of the *sheng* mouth organ, a 16-note chord (with eleven different pitch-classes, where only the pitch D is missing to complete the aggregate) and a twelve-note sound (containing all twelve pitchclasses). Pitches common to two out of the three chords (9-tone, 16-tone, 12-tone) are used for "modulation," with the principle of the (complementary) "negative" also playing an important role; for example, the pitch D can appear as a negative of the 16-note chord. Within the four large sections of the work, especially from the third section onward, increasing "decay processes" occur, which prompt an emancipation from the "striated" layer structure, especially in the "extraterritorial" solo of the Chinese ocarina *xun* at the beginning of the last section (mm. 126–138).17 But there is already a kind of "implosion" of layers in the dense first section, followed by an abrupt breakdown (Ex. 6.5). The formal dramaturgy is loosely related to the four short poems *MISHIMA Skizzen* by petschinka (Eberhard Petschinka, b. 1953) based on the novel *Thirst for Love* (*Ai no kawaki*, 1950) by Yukio Mishima (1925–1970). Mishima's novel was one of the starting points for the (unrealized) music theater project *wüst.land*, which was conceived by petschinka and myself in 2003 and sporadically developed until 2006. The project, based on such global political conf licts as the Iraq War, ref lected on questions of intercultural encounter from the perspective of deep psychological dimensions of dissent, violence, and war (my work *Glasakkord* emerged from the same context, → VI.2). There is a certain trail leading from scenes in Mishima's novel (including sudden shock effects such as the gruesome murder committed by the main character Etsuko toward the end of the plot) and petschinka's adaptation of the text to dramatic turns in the music, although there is no linear program or storyline running through the musical narrative.

In *the wasteland of minds*, the multi-contextual layered fabric creates a tension between construction and realization in sound that seeks to constantly renew the energetic potential of the musical process. Spontaneous compositional decisions are not hindered by the layered construction, but rather made possible, and here the oscillation between structure and texture, between soft connectivity and formalized simultaneity takes on a key position. Nishida's terms "contradictory self-identity" and "discontinuous continuity," of course, describe a vision that music can only tentatively approach. The same applies to the aesthetics of the open musical space laid out at the beginning. In contrast to the "striated," territorialized, hierarchized space of the city, Deleuze and Guattari design the "smooth" vectoral space of the sea, which is difficult to occupy.18 Perhaps my instrumental work in this phase may be described as diving into this marine space with no certain destination.

#### **2. Stratification and Analysis**

The aesthetic and quasi-political impulse to preserve identity, perhaps even the incommensurability of individual idioms, vocabulary, structures, and to avoid subjecting them to an imposed hierarchical order through a layered musical situation, appears to be a necessity in intercultural thinking. Of course, as hinted at above and explored in further detail below (→ III.5, V.3, VI.4), it is hardly conceivable to compose in a way that completely dissolves hierarchies (and, as has been shown on various occasions, they are usually very clearly preserved, even in John Cage's attempts at musical "anarchy"). At least, the utopia of a hierarchy-free space may still be a good starting point for approaching intercultural situations musically. Complementary to stratification is the analytical insight into specific forms of music. Analysis aims for something distinctive: it can try – as utopian as it may seem – to "subtract" culturalist attributions from the analyzed object by conceiving of it as something that cannot be subsumed, but at the same time is also provisional and changeable. In this way it approaches the "hypoleptic" discourse (→ I.3), denying musical objects a "mythical" or "canonical" status. A link between stratification and analysis is obvious; in fact, the two strategies seem to be mutually dependent.

<sup>17</sup> A similar formal function isserved by the concluding *xun* and *zheng* soli in mywork*walls* for ensemble and electronics(2018) (→ VI.4).

<sup>18</sup> Deleuze and Guattari, *A Tausend Plateaus*, 478–481.

#### **Symbolism and Implosion in** *Glasakkord*

In *Glasakkord* for *shō*, *shakuhachi*, bass clarinet, tubular bells and string trio (2006),19 I started developing the music from two almost hermetically opposed structures in the *shō* and strings. This formation of layers was not based on cultural paradigms, however, and is moreover exposed to a process of decay, which from the outset establishes an undeniable internal tension. This differentiation between layers unfolds by means of the analysis of an instrumental-haptic "internal logic" in the case of the *shō* and the analysis of glass sound spectra in the case of the strings.

The *shō* part is defined by a series of seven-note chords, which are connected to each other by means of two dyads and shared pitches (Ex. 6.6). The basic structure includes all 135 possible seven-note chords on the modern 17-note *shō* (→ IV.1) and all 117 possible dyads, and no chord is repeated.20 These limitations of harmony result from the specific fingering layout of the instrument (→ IV.1, Ex. 4.4). At the same time, the string trio follows a completely independent sound process derived from spectral analyses of eight different glass sounds (Ex. 6.7), which merge into one another continually to create new sequences. In this context, the glass symbolism is of particular importance: the sounds of the "glass strings" are fragile, fragmented, untempered, intangible – just like tentative (and sometimes unsuccessful) forms of intercultural encounter, which may lead to conf licts and even violence.21

Both processes are contained within a polyphonic network of rhythmic layers, based on the layered structure of *the wasteland of minds* (→ VI.1). The scheme was freely reworked in *Glasakkord*: some of the five layers were not considered at all, but new microperiods were introduced (especially in the *shō* and strings), related to the peculiarities of the respective material, with *shakuhachi*, bass clarinet, and tubular bells f luctuating in their coordination with the *shō* layer or the string layer. At the beginning, the period of a layer period lasts 33.75 quarter notes, so the

<sup>19</sup> Theworld premiere of *Glasakkord* took place on 23 March 2006 at the MaerzMusik Festival (Berliner Festspiele); it was performed by Kō Ishikawa (*shō*), Tony Clark (*shakuhachi*), and ensemble on\_line (today PHACE), directed by Simeon Pironkof f. A studio recording of the work with the same performers has been released on the CD *Christian Utz: transformed. music for asian and western instruments 2001–2006*, Spektral Records SRL4-08028, 2008 (https://soundcloud.com/chr\_utz/glasakkord-2006-for-sh). Aside from *Glasakkord*, I have only composed one morework forJapanese instrumentsso far, namely *Site*(2001)for *gagaku* ensemble and live electronics, produced in collaboration with the Wakatake Gagaku Society Yamaguchi/Japan and premiered (10 March 2001) at the concert hall of Akiyoshidai International Art Village. Since these were not professional musicians, the compositionalconcept was mainly limited to the electronictransformation of traditionalsound material into natural sounds and the connection with text fragments from Kitarō Nishida's essay *bashō* (Place, 1926), which was the source of the title. The edited recording of the premiere appeared on the CD *Christian Utz: Site* (Composers Art Label,cal13012, 2002).

<sup>20</sup> Owing to the arrangement of the fingers(→ IV.1, Ex. 4.4), the pitches A5, B5, and F5 are included in allseven-note chords, since three of the seven fingers used (R4, L2, L3) are each assigned exclusively to one of these three notes. Based on my information, Wolfgang Suppan has developed an algorithm thatcalculated the exact number of possible chords(assuming thatthe assignment ofthefingersto the individual pipesis defined asin Example 4.4 from Chapter 4; in some cases, there might be changes in these assignments [→ IV.2] that would result in further possible combinations). Accordingly, the following pitch combinations are possible: 117 dyads; 421 three-note chords; 851four-note chords; 963 five-note chords; 567 six-note chords; and 135 seven-note chords.

<sup>21</sup> In similarsemanticcontexts, glasssoundswere used in the followingworks of mine: *Zersplitterung* for baritone, piano, and glass percussion (2002) (→ VI.3)*, specula* for percussion and live electronics(2005), and *vier epigramme* for percussion and live electronics(2005–06). The eight glasssounds(Ex. 6.7)spectrally analyzed for *Glasakkord* were taken from a concert recording of *specula*.

*Example 6.6: Christian Utz, Glasakkord, mm. 1–17, shō part; chord progression: 7-2-2 pitches*

*Example 6.7: Christian Utz, Glasakkord; "glass chords" of the strings obtained by spectral analysis of glass sounds*

Copyright © 2006 by UtzMusicPrints, Vienna

change from the first glass chord (Ex. 6.8: no. 6) to the second (no. 522) takes place after five 6/4 measures and 3.75 quarters. The three chordal phases (related to the acoustic phases of attack, sustain, a decay in the respective spectral analyses) are here reproduced with the same duration at 11.25 quarters each (see Ex. 6.7 and 6.8).

Copyright © 2006 by UtzMusicPrints, Vienna

The crucial point here is that this layered structure by no means remains intact, but is completely "thrown off track" by interpolated solos from the *shō* and *shakuhachi*, and later by vocal passages performed by these two soloists.23 The lack of connection between *shō* and strings becomes increasingly problematic; the intricate structure is, as it were, "decomposed" from the inside – even more clearly than in *the wasteland of minds*. The dramatic texts by petschinka24

<sup>22</sup> The numbering ofthe chordswasconceived at a precompositionalstage and is notrelated to the orderinwhich the chords appear in the finishedwork.

<sup>23</sup> In contrast to the invariable pulse of the layered structure, the two instrumental soli are characterized by a "recomposition" ofthe free-floating temporality ofthe *chōshi* and *netori* introductory partsin *gagaku* (in the case of the *shō* solo, mm. 28–29) and the similarly freely timed traditional *honkyoku* solo repertoire of the *shakuhachi* (*shakuhachi*solo, m. 64). The style ofthe first vocal passage (mm. 117–120),sung by the *shakuhachi* soloist, is a free transformation of low-pitched Buddhist *shōmyō* vocalization. In the second passage (mm. 137–140),sung by the *shō* soloist, a transcription of the song *Kashin* from the repertoire of the archaic vocal genre *rōei* (recitation of Chinese poetry with instrumental accompaniment, Heian period, 794–1185) is slightly microtonally distorted and placed under petschinka's text (see footnote 24). The position of these four solo inserts within the overall form is determined by the proportions of the golden ratio.

<sup>24</sup> The textsspeciallywritten by petschinka for *Glasakkord* are:1. (Originally in English,sung by the *shakuhachi* soloist): "they entered the mosque in boots. /they heard a silent voice. / 'look overthere!whatthe hell isthat?!' /they

relating to the Iraq War, which can be heard in the two vocal passages, reveal the insistence on cultural difference, on which the musical strata are indirectly based, as an impasse. The system of layers collapses, imploding the tension generated by the solidified structure (Ex. 6.9).

*Example 6.9: Christian Utz, Glasakkord, mm. 151–155* 

To what extent can we actually hear and comprehend the process described here? Is the initial assemblage of two independent layers perceptible at all, or does the ear not listen out immediately for relationships, connections, for the synthesis of the different? A problematization of hidden hierarchies has already been addressed when challenging the compositional relevance of cultural difference (→ III.4, V.3). The question of which factors contribute to an actually perceptible difference between musical layers, or whether a layered fabric does not merely result in a f lat sound texture, can hardly be understood through generalization. The dialectical relationship between structural and textural sound, as Lachenmann's sound types essay states, is self-evident (→ VI.1). In connection with the cultural coding of the material, however, it becomes even clearer that in f luctuations between structure and texture, second-order hierarchies as well as the leveling of difference can indeed occur more quickly than expected (→ III.5, VI.4).

shot, they laughed and they were filmed. / 'anybody still alive?'" 2. (Originally German, sung in Japanese by the *shō* soloist): "kisokuwa nao ari /sude nitokkan nashi / itamiwa hutatabi / nanji no kaowo yugamerukoto nashi" [you are still breathing / you are no longerscreaming / no pain distorts anymore / your face]."

Copyright © 2006 by UtzMusicPrints, Vienna

#### *together//apart***: Reconstruction, Recomposition, and Irritation**

In my preparatory work for *together//apart* (*hamkke//ttŏrŏjyŏ*) for the Korean instruments *kayagŭm* (arched zither), *taegŭm* (bamboo f lute), *saenghwang* (mouth organ), as well as violoncello, piano, and live electronics (2001),25 I analyzed in some detail the structure and sound effects of a well-known piece from the repertoire of Korean court music: *Sangnyŏngsan* from the *Yŏngsan hoesang* suite. In addition, an extraction of the pitch organization from the second movement of Isang Yun's duo *together* (1989) for violin and double bass, to which the title also refers, plays a part in the musical structure. The arched zithers *kayagŭm* and *kŏmun'go* perform the main melody of *Sangnyŏngsan*, which is elaborated heterophonically by the other instruments, whereby the lines become very independent from the start and combine to form a fabric-like texture (Ex. 6.10). The melody comprises four stanzas of three, four, four, and six phrases (*kāk*).

A decisive compositional thought was now directed toward rethinking this varied, rhythmically very f lexible, and therefore also unpredictable type of heterophony using a type of temporal stratification that avoids exact rhythmic synchronization. The basis for this is a metertempo scheme based on the metric structure of the Korean template 6–4–4–6; the ensemble is divided into three groups (*taegŭm* + *saenghwang*, *kayagŭm* + violoncello, and piano + electronics). While the wind group always maintains the 6/4 meter and changes the tempo every two measures in a ratio 2:3 or 3:2, *kayagŭm* and violoncello alternate at the same distance at a constant tempo between a 9/4 and a 6/4 measure. The piano in turn maintains a 2:3 ratio to the pattern in the wind instruments (Ex. 6.11). Through the very free use of the given pitch material and a radicalization of the heterophonic principle, there is an extremely high notational and tonal density from the beginning. It is important to realize the notation as precisely as possible, yet it is never a matter of mechanical or mathematical precision, but rather a constant oscillation between the concentration on one's own part and a common "breathing," which is also provoked by the limited f lexibility within the prescribed tempo ranges. This breathing is particularly important at the beginning of each measure and should be carried out very deliberately by the entire ensemble (but without creating a clearly noticeable break or caesura). The percussive accents adopted from the Korean model contribute to this underlying pseudoregularity. The electronics transform the pitches of the piano by means of a pitch-shifting effect approximating the piano's sound to the constantly sliding, deliberately unstable pitch design of the other instruments.

The decisive factor – and this is an analogy to *Glasakkord* – is not the "strutting" of these layers as such, but rather the molding process resulting from the internal tension thus generated. While the layered fabric initially eliminates the feeling of linear temporality, targeted and "pinpoint" processes are gradually introduced. On the one hand, four ensemble sections are interrupted by three solos (piano, violoncello, *kayagŭm*) that are increasingly theatrical and gestural, but the ensemble sections also develop within themselves. On the other hand, from the second ensemble section, there are more and more synchronized actions, such as a spiral-

<sup>25</sup> The premiere of this work took place almost six years af ter its creation on 10 February 2007, thanks to an invitation from Jack Body to participate in the Asia Pacific Festival of the Asian Composers League in Wellington/ NewZealand. The Contemporary Music Ensemble Korea (CMEK, → III.5) and Stroma (NewZealand), directed by Hamish McKeich, performed. A remixed live recording of this premiere was released on the CD *Christian Utz: transformed. music for asian and western instruments 2001–2006*, Spektral Records SRL4-08028, 2008 (https:// soundcloud.com/chr\_utz/together-apart-for-kayag-m).

*Example 6.10: Sangnyŏngsan from the Yŏngsan hoesang suite (Korean court music): first verse, kāk 2+3 (Anthology of Korean Traditional Music, vol. 5, edited by National Classical Music Institute, Seoul, n. d.)*

#### *Example 6.11: Christian Utz, together//apart, mm. 4–6*

Copyright © 2001 by UtzMusicPrints, Vienna

ing ascending figure in the *taegŭm* or tone repetitions, which give the sound more pronounced contours. This process of contouring is intensified in the third ensemble section, where increasingly block-like agglomerations and synchronicities appear. In the last section, apart from a short insert, the polymetric grouping is completely removed, the music "tears itself free," and the previously largely "invisible" theatrical parts of the music forcefully push through the calls and bodily actions of the musicians to the surface, comparable to the cathartic moment in *Interference* (→ VI.1) (Ex. 6.12).26

The complexity of the layering technique and the interwoven intertextual references are thus not ends in themselves, but trigger concise formal processes. At the same time, the cultural context of Korean music can be placed in an open musical space without a direct quotation but is very close to an "original text." Here, "analysis" contributes to a transformative and abstract rewriting of a reference model while maintaining an idiomatic reference based on meticulous rewriting. It is precisely this insistence on (audibly) demonstrable idiomatic difference that can disorient the listener in the resulting music, pointing beyond the limits of purely conceptual integration.

<sup>26</sup> *Together//apart* has a "recomposed" version forseven (European) instruments and live electronics entitled *Unsichtbares Theater* (2001),whichwas premiered on 21November 2001 by Klangforum Wien (director: Ed Spanjaard) as part of the European Music Month in Basel.

*Example 6.12: Christian Utz, together//apart, mm. 84–87*

Copyright © 2001 by UtzMusicPrints, Vienna

#### **3. Intercultural and Multilingual Trajectories of the Human Voice**

It makes sense to present my two vocal works *Zersplitterung* (2002) and *telinga – mulut* (2009) after the analyses of the four instrumental works with crosscultural instrumentation, since they demonstrate fully an aspect that was a factor in many of the previous arguments but hardly became explicit: the (inherent) coherence and ambiguity of the sounds creates a productive tension in relation to the singular, presumably "authentic" voice from which these sounds emanate. Already at the beginning of this book, it was suggested that the demand for a simple model of identity, in which one is expected "to speak with one's own voice" (→ I.2), poses almost insoluble problems in today's f loating and evolving societies as well as in many musical discourses. It was also highlighted, however, that in a musical context, the voice always gains a communicative potential from the ambiguity of identities located in the sound structures, a potential that may directly "touch" the other, the listener, as explored with reference to the boundary between speaking and singing in the preceding chapter (→ V.1). Both works discussed below reveal this potential in the ways they address idiomatic-phonetic alterity (*Zersplitterung*) or hybridity (*telinga – mulut*) against the background of multilingual conceptions (Korean/German/English and Indonesian/German/English). In particular, these two works seek to convey meaning on a multitude of levels and through different "channels," all of which are eventually transported through a single vocal persona (in both cases a baritone part, performed by Martin Lindsay). Political and historical problems in contemporary Korean and Indonesian societies also resonate in the often-conf licting lines of fracture of the text-music structures.

#### *Zersplitterung* **– Splintering of Voices**

In *Zersplitterung* (*pusŏjin chogak*, Splintering) for baritone, piano, and glass percussion, I tried to approach the tension between contemporary and traditional Korean culture as I had experienced it both during my short visit to South Korea in 2001 and during my study of contemporary and traditional Korean music since 1998 (→ III.4, III.5).27 After researching music in the Korean context for a few years, I had written *together//apart* in 2001 for the Contemporary Music Ensemble Korea (CMEK). As explained above, this work emerged from the Korean court music piece *Sangny*ŏ*ngsan* from the suite *Yŏngsan hoesang* and from Isang Yun's *Together* (1989) for violin and double bass. My compositional method in this piece was based on detailed analyses of both works, and developed a "stratified" structure, in which these two materials coincided and were substantially transformed and contextualized (→ VI.2). This approach resulted, among other factors, from my research on Isang Yun's music and my criticism of simplified tendencies in his Asia-West dualism (→ III.4), but more importantly from a detailed study of Yūji Takahashi's non-essentialist reinvention of Asian instrumental practices (→ III.4) as well as conversations with Korean composers of a younger generation, mainly Bonu Koo (→ III.5). In our conversation, Koo referred to Takahashi's concepts, a connection that Koo documented in his own works by quoting the Korean children's song *Saeya, saeya, pahrang saeya* (Bird, bird, blue bird), also mentioning the role of this melody in Takahashi's piano work *Kwangju, May 1980* (1980):

Supporters of the late nineteenth-century Tonghak movement used this song as a key melody. Since the Tonghak movement was brutally suppressed, it soon became very dangerous to sing this song. Only children were allowed to sing it without repercussions. Meanwhile, it became a symbol of hope. The way Takahashi quoted this song was very moving and I felt that he had a deep understanding of Korean politics, for he connected the Tonghak movement and the Kwangju protests.28

As a tribute to Takahashi and Koo and a reference to politically charged Korean music and art discourses, a quotation from this song also appears in *Zersplitterung*, in the first interlude, whistled by the pianist (Ex. 6.13).

In *Zersplitterung,* Takahashi's tendency toward "radical traditionalism"29 is ref lected above all in the musical elaboration of the vocal part, which follows the principle of the traditional Korean vocal genre *sijo* and is closely modeled on the speech melody and rhythm of the spoken text. As in *together//apart*, the approach was rather "philological" in the beginning, guided by the idea that only a close understanding of and compositional intervention into the microstructure of a model would make it possible to bring its incommensurability to light during the compositional process. Furthermore, it was exactly such a method that I missed in a famous

<sup>27</sup> *Zersplitterung* wascommissioned by the *Rice & Bread* musicfestival in 2002, whose focus was Korean-European musical cross-relations, organized by earPORT Duisburg/Germany (Gerhard Stäbler, Kunsu Shim). It was first performed by Martin Lindsay (baritone), Jong-Ah Yoon (piano), and Dirk Rothbrust (glass percussion) in Essen and Duisburg (two performances) on 22 June 2002. A more recent performance took place at the Salihara Festival in Jakarta, Indonesia on 14 July 2009 with Martin Lindsay (baritone), Hsin-Huei Huang (piano), and Berndt Thurner (glass-percussion). A recording of the 2009 performance can be accessed online: https://soundcloud. com/chr\_utz/zersplitterung-2002.

<sup>28</sup> Koo, "Beyond 'Cheap Imitations,'"133–134.

<sup>29</sup> See Miller, "Radical Traditionalism."

#### Copyright © 2002 by UtzMusicPrints, Vienna

appropriation of *sijo*, Isang Yun's Fourth Symphony *"Im Dunkeln singen"* (1986),30 to which I was seeking a kind of countermodel. My main sources for the study of *sijo* were a transcription<sup>31</sup> (Ex. 6.14) and a recording of a *pyŏng sijo* song.<sup>32</sup> In preparation for the premiere, I played this recording to the vocal performer, Martin Lindsay, and together we developed vocal timbres and techniques in *Zersplitterung* based on a rather intuitive graphic vocal notation (Ex. 6.15).

Although the basic orientation of the vocal line around central pitches is derived from a similar structure in *sijo*, where only three main pitches, constantly inf lected and varied, form a drone-like pitch space, the highly expressive and contemplative *sijo* vocal style is not imitated, but rather expanded into extreme registers and experimental timbres that transcend stylistic limitations. This vocal line merges with irregular repetitive structures in the (extended) piano and glass percussion into "hybrid" sonic constellations (see Ex. 6.15). The tension created by the vocal-instrumental interaction and the dense structure set up by the superimposition of three interrelated ostinato cycles (in a much simpler way than in *the wasteland of minds*, → VI.1) is released in two interludes and a postlude that are written in unmetered time and include "spectacular" gestures, most prominently the breaking of a glass plate in the second interlude that marks the climax of the piece (Ex. 6.16). I had already developed this type of simple ritornello-like large-scale form plan in my earliest pieces with intercultural content, such as *sheng – yue – lü* (1997) for vocal quartet and, more importantly, in *Abstract Voyage* (2000) for soprano and string quartet. These simple formal models enhance the ritualistic character of the music and guide the listener through altered and ambiguous musico-lingual territories while ensuring a basic orientation in the formal architecture.

The fragility of glass material as a sound source has been further explored in many of my subsequent works such as *specula* (2005) and *vier epigramme* (2005–06) for percussion solo and live electronics. The symbolic connection between this fragility and the conf lict-laden atmosphere of particular cultural-political contexts established in *Zersplitterung* is further explored in *Glasakkord*, where spectral analyses of glass sounds serve as one of the main materials in a stratified structure with a strong tendency toward collapse (→ VI.2).

<sup>30</sup> See Stephan, *Isang Yun: Die fünf Symphonien*, 95–128 and Choi, *Einheit und Mannigfaltigkeit*,175–207.

<sup>31</sup> Reese, "Gattungen des Kunstliedes,"105–107.

<sup>32</sup> *Korean Traditional Music Vol. 1*(Court MusicHighlights), TheNational Classical MusicInstitute, SKC Limited,1987, Track 8.

*Example 6.14: Transcription of pyŏng sijo by Chang Sa-hun, "Art Song."In Survey of Korean Arts – Traditional Music, Seoul 1973, 194 (quoted in Reese, "Gattungen des Kunstliedes," 106)*

In the center of the text arrangement of *Zersplitterung* is the poem *Ch'immuge taehayŏ* (Silence) by Ko Ŭn (b. 1933), set in the original Korean (Table 6.1). The structure of this poem is juxtaposed with two further Korean poems, *Kŭ nalŭn* [This Day] by Sangbyŏng Ch'ŏn (1930–1993) in the two interludes and a traditional *sijo* short poem by Kim Inhu (1510–1560) in the postlude. The "splintering," the fragmentation of traditional and modern culture in Korea, is analogous to the gap between silence and speech, political commitment and interiorization, as documented in the two contemporary poems. They make the suffering and suppression of Korean intellectuals (both in South and North Korea) another facet of this piece.

In addition to dealing with the *sijo* vocal style, dealing with the sound and rhythm of the Korean language and the poetic style of the poems played a key part in the compositional process. The Koreanist Marion Eggert sent me the original Korean versions of the poems that I had found in

*Example 6.15: Christian Utz, Zersplitterung, beginning of the second part (p. 6)* 

Copyright © 2002 by UtzMusicPrints, Vienna

*Example 6.16: Christian Utz, Zersplitterung, second interlude; breakage of the glass plate (p. 11)* 

Copyright © 2002 by UtzMusicPrints, Vienna

her compilation *Wind und Gras*, 33 and the pianist at the premiere, Jong-Ah Yoon, recited the poems for me in the original Korean. The rhythm and design of the vocal part are derived directly from the speech rhythm and intonation of this reading; again, I was not aiming for an imitation, but in some places, blatant exaggerations of, or "counter-designs" to, Yoon's reading were included.

<sup>33</sup> Eggert, *Wind und Gras*, 95 and 96–97. The original poem by Kim Inhu and the English translationwere taken from the collection Kim, *Classical Korean Poetry*, 55 (no. 2055).

*Table 6.1: Christian Utz, Zersplitterung, (2002), Libretto, based on poems by Ko Ŭn (b. 1933), Ch'immuge taehayŏ (Silence); Sangbyŏng Ch'ŏn (1930–1993), Kŭ nalŭn (This Day); Inhu Kim (1510–1560), Ch'ŏngsanto (The Blue Hills) (words or verses in italics are not sung/spoken)*

#### **baritone**

modŭn ch'immuktŭra hanpantoe hŭt'ŏchin ch'immuktŭra toraora oksusŭstae sakyŏinŭn paramsorisairo kangmuri hŭrŭun kosŭl kŏsŭllŏsŏ ŏcheoa talli irŭk'inŭn mulkyŏlsairo ssŏgŭn tuiŏm soke pakheinŭn kich'isorisairo toraora {Ko Ŭn, *Ch'immuge taehayŏ*}

*How long ago might it have been since that day when it hit me like the shirt under the iron …*

*How long ago might it have been since that day when in the house of horror a summer insect of fered me a handshake …*

amu kŏtto ssŭchi mothanŭn hŭin chongiwie pamŭi pyŏrang kŭ pyŏrangŭi pawi t'Ŭme namŭn ppurie kant'ŏnghanŭn amk'ŏttŭrŭisalsoge anisoriran sorirŭl ta ijŏbŏrin saramtŭrŭi cham soke inŭn ch'immuktŭra toraora toraoasŏ k'ŏdaran ch'immugŭro

ch'immugŭi ausŏngŭl tŭllyŏdao ŏttŏn ausŏngpodado musŏpke modŭn ch'immuktŭra toraora {Ko Ŭn, *Ch'immuge taehayŏ}*

Mein Fleisch und meine Knochenwissen es: Wahrhaf tigkeit und Schmerz welchesstärker ist … An einem Rand des Himmels in mir reitet ein Vogel in jähem Schrecken die Flügel\* *All you silences, Silences scattered on this island, come back. To the crackling of the wind in the blade of corn. Among those waves rebelling against the river, erected today dif ferently from yesterday, to the cough that got stuck in the dung heap, come back.*

i jen myŏ nyŏn i ŏ nŭn ga, a i ron miwa isya ŭ gat'i tang han kŭ nar ŭn …

i jen myŏ nyŏn i ŏ nŭn ga, mu sŏ un chip tich'ang sa e yŏ rŭm kon ch'ung han ma ri ttam hul li nŭn na e ge ak su rŭlch'ong han kŭ nar ŭn … {Sangbyŏng Ch'ŏn, *Kŭ nalŭn*}

*Over white paper refusing the writing the clif f of the night – with roots lef t in the rocks, fornicating females and in their flesh the silences in the sleep of people who forgot the voiceless voice, come back. Returned to a tremendous silence let the cry of silence be heard more terrible than any other outcry. All you silences, come back,*

#### **pianist (whispered)**

nae sal gwa ppyŏ nŭn al go i ta. chin sil gwa ko t'ong kŭ ŏ nŭ tchog i kang cha in ga rŭl … nae ma ŭm ha nŭl han p'yŏn sa e sŏ sae nŭn so sŭ ra chi ge nal gae p'yŏn ta. {Sangbyŏng Ch'ŏn, *Kŭ nalŭn*}

\* My flesh and my bones know: / Truthfulness and pain / which is stronger ... / On one edge / of heaven in me / a bird spreadsitswingsin sudden terror

kŭrihayŏ hanpandoŭich'immogŭl modŭn padaekkachi p'akŭphara. modŭn ch'immoktŭra ttŏnachi mal'la. toraora han kaeŭich'immukŭm ch'immuki anida. han kaeŭisorinŭn soriina modŭn ch'immuk soge kŭ sorinŭn saraita. naesŏragŭi namuisaedŭra tathin mun tathin iptŭra saramtŭrŭi hanahanaŭi noyechŏk aesutŭra toraoasŏ ch'immugŭro mannago ch'immugŭro ittangŭi modŭn ppyŏdŭleke chesarŭlchinaedao. toraora toraora aenŭn kaŭrida. {Ko Ŭn, *Ch'immuge taehayŏ*}

*and carry the silence of Korea to the ends of the seas. All of you, don't go turn back. A single silence is not a silence. A single sound is a sound, in every silence lives this sound. You leaves of the mountain forest, locked doors, locked mouths you, slavish melancholy from person to person, come back and meet as silence. In silence, bow to every skeleton in this country. Come back, it is autumn.*

#### **pianist (spoken)**

ch'ŏngsanto chŏllo chŏllo noksudo chŏllo chŏllo san chŏllo su chŏllo sansukane nado chŏllo kŭ chunge chŏllo charan momini nulgkido chŏllo harira. {Inhu Kim, *Ch'ŏngsanto*}

*The blue hills go the way they go, so do the green waters. Hills and waters go the way they go; and I follow between them. As I have grown up with both of them so will I grow old, following wherever they go.*

The instrumental writing acknowledges the tensions inherent in the vocal part's "orality" by aiming at a balance between the unstable, sensitive fragility of sounds that are hard to control (overtones produced by bowing glasses or piano strings) and explosive violence charged with maximum energy (booming and piercing effects produced by bottles in the piano, breaking of the glass plate, crushing glass splinters with a mortar, etc.). These sound events, however, are not used as naïve illustrations of the poetic meanings. Instead, they can be understood as a consequence of the music's structural tendency toward fragments or "splinters." A tension between concentration, self-control, and the eruption of withheld energies is a key aspect in the interaction of words and music in *Zersplitterung*.

#### **Exploration of Tone Spaces and Political Narrativity in** *telinga – mulut*

*Zersplitterung* is possibly the last work in which I pursued an explicitly "philological" approach aimed at an intensification of cultural and structural incompatibilities. In a series of ensemble works written between 2001 and 2006, I combined Asian and Western instruments, often with the addition of live electronics,34 in varying forms and situations. In these works, I replaced the

<sup>34</sup> In addition to the works dealt with in Chapters VI.1 and VI.2 (*Interference*, *together//apart*, *the wasteland of minds*, and *Glasakkord*) this series of works includes *Kreise – Yuan* (1998–2001) for soprano, *shakuhachi*, flute, string trio, and live electronics and *repercussion.camouflage.report*(2003)forflute,trombone,*sheng*/*xun*, percussion, and live electronics. In 1999, I composed my first work for East Asian instruments, *Koinzidenzen* (*ouran yizhi*) for six Chinese instruments (*xiao*, *sheng*, *erhu*, *pipa*, *zhongruan*, *zheng*).

evocation and transformation of traditional pieces or genres with a more structuralist contextualization in which pitch and timbre constellations were, for instance, derived from the organology, the fingerings, or the string layouts of instruments, common registers, peak pitches, or hybrid timbres. A key aspect of *Zersplitterung*, the idea of a musical structure that is highly loaded with sometimes narrative, sometimes vaguely metaphorical, but usually ambiguous meaning, however, has been pursued further in my subsequent work, as already demonstrated in *Glasakkord*, and has become an important link between the structural design and the exploration of cultural conf lict and encounter in subsequent works of mine (→ VI.4).

This principle of structural semantics (or semanticized structure) was taken to a new level in *telinga – mulut* [ears – mouths] for baritone, recorded female speaker, and four instruments (f lute/bass f lute, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, violoncello) (2009), a work exploring the boundaries between concert and stage music. Commissioned by the Salihara Festival in Jakarta, *telinga – mulut* approaches the poem *Suatu Cerita dari Negeri Angin* [A Story from the Country of Hot Air, 1998] by the Indonesian poet Agus R. Sarjono.35 Sarjono's poem develops highly disturbing images of a village society dominated by suspicion, spying, and open violence, all triggered by the breaking of a dam (presumably linked to corruption among local officials). This is a dimension to which the title of the piece – *ears – mouths* – refers (Table 6.2): the villagers were once "required to become *ears*" (7636) – which I read as a metaphor for spying and mistrust –, but after they had unlearned listening "they are delighted to have become *mouths*" (78–79) – and they repeat the same, "long-winded and repetitive" story (92–93), possibly propaganda slogans of an authoritarian political regime. *Telinga – mulut* is thus loosely connected to *Zersplitterung*, as both pieces focus on highly political questions arising from cultural and social conf licts evident in the selected poetry, and these also leave their marks on the musical settings. Furthermore, both works pursue a multilingual conception in which Indonesian/ Korean, English, and German textual elements are crossrelated.

The setting of *telinga – mulut*, however, confronts this political impact of the words with a strict, conceptual musical organization that contrasts with the more explicitly expressive writing of the main vocal part in *Zersplitterung*. In *telinga – mulut*, music and words remain far more isolated, each leaving the other largely "without comment." No attempt was made to "musicalize" the text according to general musical principles or to shape musical gestures according to the language structure. This stems from my intention to give Sarjono's words, which are fraught with collective traumas from more recent Indonesian history, their own space. They are interspersed with enigmatic prose fragments by Franz Kaf ka which tell of a bridge equipped with human sensitivity that eventually collapses. Despite the obvious analogy between a breaking dam and a collapsing bridge, this insertion might be understood as a polyvalent comment on the musical structure, rather than Sarjono's words: it is not following the pitch organization in most other sections, which is based on two non-chromatic equidistant

<sup>35</sup> *Telinga – mulut* was premiered in Jakarta at Teater Salihara on 15 July 2009 by Martin Lindsay and ensemble on\_line (now PHACE), conducted by Simeon Pironkof f. An edited recording of this performance can be accessed online: https://soundcloud.com/chr\_utz/telinga-mulut-2009. I first encountered Sarjono's poems through a collection in German translation (Agus R. Sarjono. *Frische Knochen aus Banyuwangi*. Berlin: Edition Galrev, 2002), that is opened by *Suatu Cerita dari Negeri Angin* ("Eine Geschichte aus dem Land der heißen Luf t," pp. 5–7).With the kind assistance ofthe translator BertholdDamshäuser, Icontacted Sarjono personally and he provided me with the Indonesian original and an English translation by Toenggoel Siagian, which was slightly adapted for my setting.

<sup>36</sup> Numbersrefer to the linesin the libretto provided in Table 6.2.

*Table 6.2: Christian Utz, telinga – mulut (ears – mouth) (2009), Libretto, based on texts by Agus R. Sarjono (b. 1962), Suatu Cerita dari Negeri Angin (A Story From the Land of Hot Air, 1998; English version af ter Toenggoel Siagian – slightly modified by the composer) and Franz Kaf ka (1883–1924), Die Brücke (1917, fragments from a short prose sketch) (words or verses in italics are not sung/spoken)*

#### **baritone**

#### Airmata yang berpuluh

*One morning the dam in my village built by a thousand hours of indoctrinations, a hundred ceremonies and ten bayonets started to rumble and collapsed.*


#### **tape (female speaker)**

#### *Tears held back for decades*

Bendungan di kampungku yang dibangun oleh seribu jam penataran, seratus upacara dan sepuluh sangkur, pada sebuah subuh berderak-derak dan runtuh.

*Bendungan di kampungku yang dibangun oleh seribu jam penataran, seratus upacara dan sepuluh sangkur, pada sebuah subuh berderak-derak dan runtuh. Airmata yang berpuluh tahun tertahan pecah menderas menyapu jalanan lalu berobah menjadi genangan darah. Orang-orang bergegas mengeramasi rambut dan ingatannya di sana. Mereka pun berkeliaran dengan kepala serupa labu dingin menyusuri pelosok-pelosok pedesaan sebagian bahkan menyamar sebagai pembunuh bayaran.* 

*Paman dan sepupuku yang memergokinya jadi penasaran. Mereka pecahkan kepala-kepala itu dengan batu atau parang, siapa tahu ada sebersit saja ingatan atau kenangan, ucapnya, semacam data misterius sebagai bahan gunjingan dikala ronda malam.*

Tapi tak ada apa-apa dalam kepala-kepala itu kecuali gelembung sabun,sepertisisa pencucian yang tak dibilas dengan teliti. Sebagian mereka segera mengarak potongan kepala itu seperti mengarak ingatan yang compang-camping tentang sebuah saat sebuah musim disebuah negeri yang padat berisi angin.


Ich war steif und kalt, ich war eine Brücke, über einem Abgrund lag ich. Diesseits waren die Fußspitzen, jenseits die Hände eingebohrt, in bröckelndem Lehm habe ich mich festgebissen. […] Gegen Abend im Sommer, dunkler rauschte der Bach, da hörte ich einen Mannesschritt! […]

Er kam, […] In mein buschigesHaarfuhr er mit der Spitze und ließ sie […] lange drin liegen. Dann aber […] sprang er mit beiden Füßen mir mitten auf den Leib. Ich erschauerte in wildem Schmerz, […] da stürzte ich schon, ich stürzte, und schonwar ich zerrissen und aufgespießt von den zugespitzten Kieseln, die mich immer so friedlich aus dem rasenden Wasser angestarrt hatten.

*Since then* 


*Tetanggaku yang gemar cerita, pernah menangkap seorang pesulap yang entah mengapa sibuk mengendap-endap di ruang tidur kampungnya. Setelah dicekik dan ditebas lehernya, ternyata tak sebuah ceritapun mengalir dari kerongkongannya. Dari potongan urat lehernya, hanya gas yang memancar keluar diiringi denging sirine, semacam isyarat darurat dari sebuah kapal yang tengah karam.* 

#### Sejak itu

penduduk kampungku ramai-ramai melepas kepala mereka dan menggantinya dengan buah kelapa: keras dan berair. Buat persiapan, ucap mereka, jika seluruh kampung hangusterbakar, kepala kami masih bisa basah menyimpan ingatan tentang anak-anak tersayang yang mengembara ke kota-kota, bersekolah atau bergelandangan mengais hari depan. Tiba-tiba disuatu malam anak-anak mereka bermunculan dari balik gumpalan asap dan gas airmata dengan tengkuk penuh peluru hingga semua bapak tersedak dan ibu tersedu. Akhirnya,selepas musim panen yang gagal karena hama dan cuaca busuk dengan sabar mereka tanam kembali anak-anak mereka di tengah sawah dan ladang.

*Di sebuah pagi, entah bulan apa entah tahun berapa, seluruh kampung kami diwajibkan bergotong-royong membangun* 


#### *For quite some time*


#### When they began


#### Patienly, they took


*bendungan itu kembali. Segera mereka curahkan habis-habisan seluruh airmata mereka di sana sambil berharap-harap barangkali saja suatu hari kelak bisa mereka lepaskan kelapa, semangka atau labu dari atas leher mereka.*

*Di bawah gerimis di sebuah sore entah bulan apa entah tahun berapa, penduduk kampung itu ramai-ramai memenuhi tepian bendungan untuk mengail dan mencari kembali kepala mereka.* 

Sungguh

lama mereka rindukan kepala yang biasa saja lengkap dengan ingatan atau kenangan tentu izin untuk memakainya kembali sudah mereka urus bersama di kantor kepala desa yang entah mengapa kini tampak tersipu dan agak malu dengan kepala buaya yang selama ini terpasang elok di ataslehernya.

Dulu, di kampung kamiseluruh penduduk diwajibkan menjadi telinga. Mereka terbiasa menerima gelembung-gelembung sabun dari mulut licin para pengurus desa.

Kini mereka bersukaria bisa menjadi mulut.

#### Tatkala mereka mulai pandai

membikin cerita, merekapun kecewa tak ada lagi yang bersedia menjadi telinga juga segala aparat desa hingga segala cerita baru yang mereka susun itu tak lagi ada yang mendengarnya.

Dengan sabar,segala cerita yang mereka susun mereka tanam diam-diam disawah dan ladang sambil membayang-bayangkan tibanya musim panen ketika semua pohon tumbuh dan berbuah ribuan kisah. Tapisalah satunya tumbuh kelewatcepat dan berbuah cerita-cerita yang sama: panjang dan berulang.

scale systems (Ex. 6.17). In system A the octave is divided into ten equal steps (i.e., 120-cent steps), and in system B the minor ninth is divided into seven equal steps (i.e., c. 186-cent steps). The confines of these rigid pitch structures are challenged by inf lections in sections where pitches are consistently destabilized, creating fields of varying noise content, especially during the insertion of the Kaf ka fragment in Section C (see Table 6.3). The rigidity of the pitch structure exhibits a tendency to "collapse" at a very sudden, unpredictable moment toward the end of the piece in part B4 (see Table 6.3).

Neither pitch system makes any reference to the lower parts of the harmonic series or its proportions, and they are therefore not intended (in contrast to some proponents of spectral approaches in contemporary music) to imply "pure" intervals as an implicit criticism of the equidistant chromatic system. Instead, they are representative (just like the chromatic scale commonly used) of a highly artificial rationalization of note relationships and might be understood as tongue-in-cheek musings on the phenomenon of tempered pitch systems (– why could history not also have produced systems with ten, instead of twelve, notes per octave?). The performers are, however, encouraged to stretch and narrow the intervals intuitively, though without resorting to the habitual twelve-tone scale. Thus, I give each system an individual sound space (in a similar way, intonation is always adjusted in more conventional pitch systems according to style, composer, or work). This idea of a deliberate stretching and narrowing of intervals also refers to the practice in some Indonesian *gamelan* ensembles of consciously detuning identical paired instruments in relation to each other in order to create beating and interference patterns.

Again, the overall formal design of *telinga – mulut* follows a very simple alternating scheme with slight "interruptions" (Table 6.3). In all A sections, Sarjono's poem is rendered by the baritone in English translation, while in the B sections it is heard from tape recited by the female Indonesian speaker Palupi Warananingtyas.37 In the beginning and toward the end, English and Indonesian layers overlap.

In the A sections, the baritone is conceived as part of a basic five-part structure in which the voice and instruments act on the same hierarchical level, molded into "homophonic fields" that gradually explore the scale and intervals of system A. These fields are interrupted by three recitative-like vocal narratives in Section A1 in which the baritone takes the role of a storyteller – a function that is further explored in dramatic scenes in Sections C and A3 and taken to surreal and ecstatic levels. In A2 and A4, the homophonic fields tend to disperse into fragmented and, especially in A4, into heterophonic structures. All A sections have been developed from the same basic model introduced at the beginning of A1, resulting in a large-scale variation structure. Example 6.18 gives a sense of the transformation process taking place during these four "variations" by comparing a few measures from the beginning of each A section.

The B sections take the speech rhythm of the prerecorded Indonesian text as a structural model for six complementary duos (including, as two variants, a solo in B3 and a *tutti* in B4). "Complementary" here means that the live instruments punctuate the speech rhythm heard from tape. Similarly to the A sections, the pitch constellations are derived from a cautious exploration of pitch system B in its scale and intervals (Ex. 6.19).

<sup>37</sup> Palupi Warananingtyasis a singer and academicteaching at the Universitas Sebelas Maret, Surakarta/Java; her recitation of Sarjono's poem wasrecorded in at the University of Musicin Graz, Austria on 6 May 2009, where Ms. Warananingtyas presented a guest lecture on vocal music genresin Indonesia.

*Example 6.17: Christian Utz, telinga – mulut, tone systems: scale A divides the octave into ten equal steps (one step = 120 cent) from B*b*1(the lowest instrumental pitch used in this piece); scale B divides the minor ninth into seven equal steps (one step = 185.71 cent) from C2*

The multiplicity of perspectives involved in the compositional process (pitch systems, scalar, intervallic, and timbral principles, phonetic, semantic, and rhythmic dimensions of the text, and text-music interaction) mirrors the confusing effect of the multilingual setting. The deformation and destabilization of all layers is considerably enhanced after the sudden collapse in the ephemeral Section B4: the final crisis is reached in the breathless alternation between heterophonic fragments between baritone and instrumental ensemble and isolated snatches of the prerecorded Indonesian recitation in Section A4.2 (Ex. 6.20). The rigid musical structure is turned completely on its head by these ruptures and develops into a strange figural field, with the high bass clarinet taking up the falsetto timbre of the baritone, who in turn whistles a melodic fragment that has emerged over the course of the piece as a fixed idea within pitch system A (mm. 289–294). The atmosphere has turned into a field of memory, a remembrance that gets stuck toward the end in a sequence of abruptly rhythmicized, pressed bow impulses (mm. 294–296). In the end, the singer appears to have lost his ability to articulate (soundless movements of the mouth in the baritone part mark the end of the piece).

#### Toward a Polyphony of Meanings

As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter (→ VI.1), the compositional approaches I have described should not be seen as exemplifications of a theory of interculturality. My music, however, definitely aims to encompass concepts of composed alterity – musical processes which are rigorously separated from one another, and hypolepsis – musical processes that connect to one another both by negation and transformation. However, the music never really "succeeds" in keeping the layers or sections "pure" and separate; rather, processes of convergence or dissolution remind the listener that these layers constantly refer to one another and have a common destiny. There is no harmonious reconciliation of the realms and dimensions of the music, but neither is there any insistence on negativity as the only way.

In *Zersplitterung* and *telinga – mulut,* the highly versatile nature of the human voice as a messenger between musical structure and meaning, in conjunction with the multilingual text settings and the specific qualities of the languages involved, is of particular significance for the

*Table 6.3: Christian Utz, telinga – mulut, synopsis. Line numbers for the poem refer to the English translation (see Table 6.2), although the verse structure dif fers from that of the Indonesian original in some instances.*



*Example 6.18: Christian Utz, telinga – mulut, beginnings of sections A1 (mm. 1–6), A2 (mm. 72–79), A3 (mm. 186–192), A4 (mm. 238–243)* 

*Example 6.19: Christian Utz, telinga – mulut, section B2, mm. 177–185*

*Example 6.20: Christian Utz, telinga – mulut, section A4.2, mm. 275–282*

Copyright © 2009 by UtzMusicPrints, Vienna

Copyright © 2009 by UtzMusicPrints, Vienna

overall effect of the music on the listener. Its chameleon-like interaction with the sound world of the instrumental layers – acting as subject, object, and an almost imperceptible element among equal voices in a global texture or structure – brings together dramatic, narrative, and purely structural dimensions.

Despite the politically loaded references and symbolism of the texts, both works refrain from making any authoritative statement about musical or political meaning. The polyphony of the compositional methods employed can be understood as an affinity for the metaphors of "polyphony" or "plurality of voices" in literary criticism as developed by Mikhail Bakhtin and Jacques Derrida, among others. Bakhtin describes the polyphonic novel as a situation in which an author or narrator no longer has control over the characters, but acts with them on the same hierarchical level:38 "There is no third person to bring unity to the confrontation between the two; they do not culminate in a stable 'I' which would be the 'I' of the monologic author."39 In my compositions, however, "polyphony" is not limited to the hierarchical balance of different musical and textual layers, but might also be connected to Derrida's idea of an inner polyphony within voices and single words:

Voice can betray the body to which it is lent, it can make it ventriloquize as if the body were no longer anything more than the actor or the double of another voice, of the voice of the other, even of an innumerable, incalculable polyphony. A voice may give birth […] to another body.40

Already when a word hasseveral meanings – and this plurality isirreducible – you can hear in it, or it lets you hear even if you don't take the initiative, several meanings and thus several voices. There are several voices already in theword.One can give this plurality of voicesin theword itself its freedom, more or less freedom.<sup>41</sup>

#### **4. Composition as Polyphony: Creating, Performing, and Perceiving Music Non-Hierarchically**

When we speak of "polyphony" in the context of this book, this naturally implies the idea of an "(inter)cultural polyphony," the idea of an "encounter" or "confrontation" between two (or more) different systems or understandings of sound and listening that may or may not have common features, common ground. Bhaktin's and Derrida's decentering of the subject as condensed into the metaphor of polyphony, outlined above, has profound musical implications. In contemporary music, however, the term "polyphony" has rarely been used after 1945, probably because of its close association with past musical epochs such as Renaissance or Baroque (not to mention "counterpoint," which, owing to its image as a narrowly rule-based and outdated method, has temporarily disappeared almost entirely from compositional discourse).42 A "radicalized" polyphony, a simultaneous occurrence of different musical layers or personae, however, is at the core of many new music poetics, as demonstrated in preceding chapters (→ V.3, VI.1).

<sup>38</sup> See Bakhtin, *Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics*, 5–46.

<sup>39</sup> Kristeva, "The Ruin of a Poetics,"111.

<sup>40</sup> Derrida, *Points… Interviews 1974–1994*, 161.

<sup>41</sup> Ibid., 392–393.

<sup>42</sup> See the detailed discussion ofthese terms and their applicability to new musicinKleinrath andUtz,"Harmonik / Polyphonie."

John Cage is an obvious example: from the early 1950s, he created many pieces or collections of pieces that can be performed simultaneously in any combination, often without any specified restrictions. In 1991, experiencing a complete simultaneous performance of Cage's *Ten Thousand Things*, a collection of solo pieces for piano, violin, percussion, and speaker completed between 1953 and 1956,43 was a revelation for me as a young composer. It motivated me to engage more self-consciously with the idea of simultaneous musical structures that would not be coordinated precisely by a score, but rather allow for different versions and interconnections in each performance.

It seems that some recent developments in contemporary art music tend to give up the kind of pleasantly disorienting complexity that I associate with such an experience of musical simultaneity, and I feel that this leads to a certain dependence on "designed" but one-dimensional musical surfaces. (This may seem an overly generalized criticism, but it will suffice here to point to common experiences I might share with many colleagues in daily encounters with "academic" new music, however broadly defined.) That is why I feel a certain necessity to insist on "polyphony" as a fruitful component of a critical music of our time. In approaching this dynamic, I will proceed by discussing a number of my own works from perceptual perspectives, leading into a theoretical-psychological excursus and closing with analytical remarks on my recent work *walls* for ensemble (2018), premiered in Beijing in July 2018.

Several years after my 1991 "Cage experience," the problem of simultaneous layers reoccurred in my music when I tried to find compositional solutions to the challenge of musical interculturality. Simultaneity in a narrower sense, explored repeatedly in this book, seemed to be a valid option for combining East Asian and Western instruments in the same ensemble, as suggested most prominently by Tōru Takemitsu's well-known (and Cage-inf luenced) work *November Steps* from 1967 (→ III.4, VI.1). As elaborated earlier, the cultural essentialism inherent in such a conception appeared increasingly problematic to me. How, then, was it possible to put "Asian" and "Western" parts of an ensemble on the same footing without reducing them to a static image of associated local, national, or "cultural" traditions – but also without subsuming them under an authoritative compositional concept that does not allow any kind of idiomatics to emerge?

The preceding analyses aimed to demonstrate the answers to this intricate compositional problem that I have attempted to provide in a series of chamber music pieces composed between 2001 and 2006, in which Western instruments mix with Korean, Chinese, and Japanese instruments. The principal idea on which these works are based may be understood as evoking the image of a broad three-dimensional sonic and temporal space subjected to constant kaleidoscopic transformation during the listening process. These works aim at a sonic situation in which foreground and background are permanently reconfigured; culturally defined idioms may be incorporated as inseparable parts of this sonorous environment, partly preserved, partly dissolved.

As we have seen, *Interference* and *together//apart* from 2001 employ culturally defined structural layers as key materials: Webern's piano variations op. 27, *Xing jie* from the South Chinese Silk-and-Bamboo repertoire (*sizhuyue*), the Korean court music piece *Sangnyŏngsan*, and Isang Yun's duo *Together*. In many parts of *Interference*, the different materials are still recognizable, remaining broadly indebted to Takemitsu's idea of enhanced cultural difference preserved in a montage-like simultaneity, especially in the first part, where the mosaic-like surface consists of easily distinguishable layers (→ VI.1). Although there are multiple processes of interaction between these layers, most notably in a transformation of the *zheng* zither in the direction of the piano's Webernian idiom, the idea of enhanced cultural difference is expressed in a rather

<sup>43</sup> See Pritchett, *The Music of John Cage*, 95–103.

crude montage-like simultaneity. Similar processes operate in the background of *together// apart*, though here the original materials largely "disappear" in a dense polymetric and polytemporal structure. The layering of meter and tempo in this work serves to communicate a refined form of heterophony or slight "asynchronicity" in response to traditional Korean ensemble playing, resulting in a mode of performance that "collapses" toward the end and gives way to a more propulsive ensemble structure (→ VI.2).

Three to five years later, I further radicalized the idea of simultaneous layering in *the wasteland of minds* and *Glasakkord*. Here, I increasingly associated the idea of simultaneity with conf lict and "incompatibility," resulting from a more "pessimistic" perspective on interculturality in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq War. The dense layering of proportional structures of asynchronous and cyclical rhythmic layers is continuously transformed by live electronics in *the wasteland of minds* and destroyed by increasingly contrasting interruptions in *Glasakkord*.

In turning to my more recent research on the phenomenological and performative aspects of musical listening,44 I would like to convey a somewhat more precise idea of the experience of hearing sound structures as resulting from layered structures, as in *the wasteland of minds* (→ VI.1, Ex. 6.3–6.6). What is the auditory consequence of this kind of enhanced layering? One might emphasize the diversity of perceptual approaches that this layered structure affords, something that might be described as "performative listening": the option to f luctuate or switch constantly (or selectively) between different "listening attitudes." If we take the beginning of *the wasteland of minds* (mm. 1–8), it is intended to allow for – at least – four different attitudes of listening. Needless to say, these attitudes are not mutually exclusive, but rather overlap or can be considered complementary to some degree (Fig. 6.2):


<sup>44</sup> See, among other publications, Utz, "'Liberating' Sound and Perception" and Utz, "Time-Space Experience in Works for Solo Cello." My research on performative listening and performative analysis has been conducted since 2009, documented in around twenty articles, and isset to appear in a monograph in 2021.

<sup>45</sup> Stockhausen, "Momentform."

*Figure 6.2: Christian Utz, the wasteland of minds, mm. 1–8, sonagram and rudimentary transcription; the graphic elements suggest four dif ferent modes of listening: "analytical" (small gray boxes and dotted lines), "holistic" (large black box around the entire sonagram excerpt), "cue-oriented" (arrows and vertical lines), and "presentist" (mid-size gray boxes)*

by Jonathan Kramer as "moment time"<sup>46</sup> – a type of listening less reliant on memory and expectation than on a contemplation of the present moment.

The plausibility of these listening attitudes surely changes as the piece progresses; toward the end of the first phase of the piece, after about five minutes, a "collapse" of the layered structure occurs, resulting in a high density of cue-based fragmentation that disrupts the temporal f low and can already be inferred from the scattered impression of the score (→ VI.1, Ex. 6.6).

Another type of listening experience can be triggered if we jump to a later stage: roughly six minutes into the piece, in the middle of its second phase, a more rigid and repetitive, less gestural version of the layered structure evolves, so here the transformative, "holistic" and/or presentist listening attitudes surely gain importance. In later stages of the piece, the dense and tightly layered model continuously disintegrates, giving way to more prominent soloistic articulations such as a solo by the Chinese ocarina *xun* performed by the *sheng* soloist, which is

<sup>46</sup>  Kramer, *The Time of Music*, 201–220.

singled out in the listening act because of its unfamiliar and unique timbre as a prominent *cue*  in the large-scale formal process.

#### A Map of Musical Simultaneities

Some of the terminology I have used here is taken from psychological and psychoacoustic theories of perception, such as those summarized in Albert Bregman's major book *Auditory Scene Analysis* from 1990.47 I will now expand these categories as basic parameters of a "map of musical simultaneities" (Fig. 6.3) and explain different categories and examples with reference to this map.

Musical perception might be described as building spatiotemporal relationships between sounds. This process involves many preconditions, not least an implicit and explicit knowledge of everyday and musical sounds, most of them acquired during our experience as lifelong listeners. Establishing spatiotemporal relationships during musical perception means that we organize sound in a twofold manner: sounds occupy an imaginary spatial "map" on which we locate sound events and processes simultaneously and sequentially or linearly. The simultaneous dimension might be described as a continuous space between segregation and fusion of sound layers or *streams*, while the linear dimension lets sound events appear either in isolation, prompting the model of a large-scale architectural form of different events in time, or as part of an ongoing process or continuity without clear-cut segmentation.<sup>48</sup>

Placing concepts of musical simultaneity in music on this map first requires looking at the most common concept established for this phenomenon in music theory: *polyphony*. Western polyphonic music might be grasped as an ensemble of independent voices, intertwined in a sonorous space, subject to a hierarchical system of note relations but appearing free and unique in their melodic contour and registral space. Ernst Kurth's 1918 definition of polyphony captures some of these features while notably emphasizing the priority of overall coherence over an independence of parts:

The highest law of polyphonic structure is that the complex of voices must always appear as a unity; the multiplicity of voices never suppresses the sense of a totality into which the lines are woven, and at the same time, omitting a single voice would not only lead to a reduction of the complex of lines butwould mean its organic distortion.49

Established notions of polyphony had been challenged as early as 1911 (six years before Kurth's monograph *Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts*) in Arnold Schoenberg's *Theory of Harmony*, where harmony in modern music is described as a result of musical lines that are pursued with

<sup>47</sup> Bregman, *Auditory Scene Analysis*. See also Deutsch, "Grouping Mechanisms in Music" and Deliège and Mélen, "Cue Abstraction in the Representation of Musical Form."

<sup>48</sup> There is a huge number of studies on these two conflicting conceptions of musical listening and musical form, which I have summarized and transformed into analytical perspectives on music from Dufay to Varèse in the extended article Utz, "Räumliche Vorstellungen als'Grundfunktionen desHörens.'"

<sup>49</sup> Kurth,*Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts*, 351("Das obersteGesetz polyphoner Struktur besteht darin, daßder Stimmenkomplex stets als eine Einheit erscheint; nie verdrängt die Häufung der Stimmen den Eindruck einer Gesamtheit, zu der die Linien ineinandergeflochten sind und andrerseits würde das Weglassen einer einzigen Stimme nicht eine bloße Verdünnung des Linienkomplexes darstellen,sondern seine organische Zerstörung.")

a particular degree of independence.50 Schoenberg elaborated on this point in the 1931 manuscript "Der lineare Kontrapunkt."51 Here, he insisted on the "carelessness" (Unbekümmertheit) of simultaneous lines and suggested avoiding all progressions that might remind one of tonal cadences or fundamental chord relationships.<sup>52</sup>

This perspective had far-reaching consequences: in dodecaphony and (proto-)serial music, note rows and aggregates are superimposed in a rigorous manner, as did, even earlier, the tunes of military bands, Protestant hymns, folk songs, and quotations of art music in the works of Charles Ives, testifying to a simultaneity of independent events or "personae" as a key experience of modernity (→ V.3, VI.1). Many serialist approaches to musical structure were derived from radical interpretations of polyphony akin to Schoenberg's. In a 1955 radio program,

<sup>50</sup> "Foritis apparent[…]thatwe are turning to a newepoch of polyphonicstyle, and asin the earlier epochs, harmonieswill be a product ofthe voice leading: justified solely by the melodiclines!" (Schoenberg, *Theory of Harmony*, 389; "[…] anscheinend […] wenden wir uns einer neuen Epoche des polyphonen Stils zu, und wie in den früheren Epochen werden die Zusammenklänge Ergebnis der Stimmführung sein: Rechtfertigung durchs Melodische allein!" (Schönberg, *Harmonielehre*, 466.) In the preface to the third edition of his monograph from 1927, Kurth insisted that a "harmony-free patching together of pitch lines" ("harmoniefreie[s] […] Zusammenflicken von Tonlinien," *Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts*, third edition, XVI) had in no way been implied in his use of the concept of linearity. He thus rejected the idea that his title "linear counterpoint" suggested a radicalization of linear independence to the point of making the resulting harmonies a byproduct of the complex of lines.

<sup>51</sup> Schoenberg, "Linear Counterpoint."

<sup>52</sup> Ibid., 291–292.

Stockhausen was particularly explicit about the consequences of (post-)serial composition for a non-hierarchical musical perception:

We listen to the whole, retaining an overall impression in which the details are distinguished fromone anothersuf ficiently strongly to prevent any interconnectionsthatmight becomemore important than others. […] Asfar as possible, everything composed should be part of the formal process, nothing should dominate […]. […] the music is in a state of constant flux […], without lingering on the instantaneous, on the beautiful moments[…].53

Following Kurth's, Schoenberg's, and Stockhausen's definitions, we might place the three concepts of (tonal) polyphony, linear (post-tonal) polyphony, and superimposition on a diagonal line on our map. Of course, these areas on the diagonal are to some degree arbitrary and should be regarded as movable, at least in the horizontal; in general, the relationship between polyphony and superimposition appears not as a categorial distinction but as a permeable relationship indicated by the dotted arrows on the map.

In John Cage's *45' for a Speaker* from 1954, a component of the *Ten Thousand Things*, a radicalized form of superimposition is interpreted as a logical consequence of the decision to "give up counterpoint": "Giving up counterpoint one gets superimposition and, of course, a little counterpoint comes in of its own accord. How I wouldn't know."54For Cage, non-hierarchical simultaneity is closely connected to the abandonment of "form" and leads to the model of presentist listening.

The term "polyphony" is also used in another key concept of musical simultaneity that must complement our map: in 1963, nine years after Cage's *45' for a Speaker*, Helmut Lachenmann first developed his much-cited sound typology in a series of lectures (→ VI.1). As outlined above (→ VI.1), this typology insists on the key model of "structural sound" (*Strukturklang*) as a "*polyphony* of orderings."55 Lachenmann's idea of structural sonority suggests that the "development of each element is traceable by the listener" resulting in "a sort of montage of different structures [that] actively dispels any sense of hierarchy or priority."<sup>56</sup>

The most efficient compositional tool Lachenmann invented in order to realize such "structures" is the idea of "sound families." The key feature of this idea is that, similar to Ludwig Wittgenstein's idea of family resemblance, family affiliations are not exclusive.57 This means that, for example, the f lutter tongue of a f lute in the middle register might be part of three families at once: the family of f lute sounds, the family of middle-register pitched sounds, and the family of "perforated" tremolo sounds. A work like Lachenmann's orchestral piece *Kontrakadenz* (1970)

<sup>53</sup> Stockhausen, "Gruppenkomposition: Klavierstück I," 65, 67 ("Wir hören vielmehr auf das Ganze hin, behalten einen zusammenfassenden Eindruck, in dem die Einzelheiten so gleich stark auseinandergehalten werden, daß keine Verbindungen auf tauchen, die wichtiger als andere werden […]. Möglichst alles Komponierte soll gleich stark am Formprozeß beteiligt sein, und nichts soll dominieren […]. […] die Musik [befindet] sich ständig im Fluß […], ohne das Verweilenwollen beim Augenblicklichen, bei den schönen Stellen […].")

<sup>54</sup> Cage, "45' for a Speaker,"164.

<sup>55</sup> Lachenmann, "Klangtypen derNeuen Musik,"18 ("Polyphonie von Anordnungen;" emphasisis mine).

<sup>56</sup> Heathcote, "Liberating Sounds," 28.

<sup>57</sup> See Neuwirth, "Strukturell vermittelte Magie," 79–82. Wittgenstein's concept has been thoroughly explored and adopted for musical analysis by Dora A.Hanninen ("Associative Sets, Categories, and Music Analysis,"160– 163).

exemplifies how Lachenmann creates a universe of interacting and superimposed sounds from this framework.58

Albert Bregman's distinction between "natural" and "chimeric" assignment is equally relevant to a further analysis of such situations, and is an important addition to our map:59 in the case of "natural assignment" (which I prefer to label "object-oriented assignment"), the identification of the sound source is a vital part of musical experience, connecting it with everyday audition where we are used to identifying sound sources. In many other musical cases, which Bregman labels "chimeric assignment," several sound sources create a composite timbre, or the originating sound object is obscured for other reasons. In Lachenmann's *Kontrakadenz*, both types of assignment are clearly contributing to the listening experience; at the beginning, rotating metal discs and table tennis balls are identified as "non-musical" sounds unexpected in an orchestral piece, but they soon merge with other members of the sound family "accelerating impulses" into a chimeric situation. Ultimately, it becomes clear that many composers (including myself) were or are seeking musical situations that enable perception to f luctuate continuously between the whole and individual streams or segments, between "chimeric" and "object-oriented" listening situations.

#### *walls***: Ongoing Processes of De- and Restabilization**

In order to contextualize these attempts to systematize polyphony and simultaneity in music in a broader research context, one might refer to the question of hierarchies in music. These may be configured in two different ways, along the two axes of our map in Figure 6.3:


While it is clear that both kinds of hierarchy can be reduced to a minimum, musical experience is never entirely hierarchy-free. A valuable artistic aim may thus be defined as developing compositional ideas that result in spatiotemporal constellations that are sufficiently multivalent to allow for both increasing and decreasing simultaneous and sequential hierarchies during the act of listening.

These ideas were triggers for my most recent work to be discussed here, *walls* for chamber ensemble and electronics (2018), which is predominantly a piece for Western ensemble, interrupted three times by electronic ritornellos accompanied by the instruments on stage – but eventually extending into the audience space, where two Chinese instruments (*zheng* and *xun*) act as surprising and unfamiliar "sounds from afar." The metaphor of "walls" not unintentionally invokes cultural and political references (the Great Wall of China, the Berlin wall, the wall built recently between the United States and Mexico, the firewall censoring the Chinese internet, etc.) but it

<sup>58</sup> See the analyses of this work in Nonnenmann, *Angebot durch Verweigerung*, 80–137 and Utz, "Auf der Suche nach einer befreiten Wahrnehmung," 48–49.

<sup>59</sup> See Bregman, *Auditory Scene Analysis*, 459–460.

*Example 6.21: Anton Webern, Symphonie op. 21, second movement, variation V; the structural model explored in Utz, walls for ensemble and electronics*

Copyright © 1929 by Universal Edition

is also used and deconstructed in the compositional process. Imaginary "walls" are necessary in order to construct the two hierarchical concepts during listening, as explained above: simultaneous and sequential "walls" may help to distinguish formal sections or polyphonic layers.

In composing this piece, I once again used a preconceived structure, serving here as a representation of a "stable" system of walls: Variation 5 from the second movement of Anton Webern's *Symphonie* op. 21 (1928) (Ex. 6.21). In a complex conceptual transformation, this rhythmic canon was expanded to a duration of twenty minutes. Although I originally intended to preserve and continue this expanded canon until the end of the piece, it soon occurred to me that this would have resulted in an overly deterministic, overly even formal process. Thus, the stability of the "Webern wall" is continuously challenged and eroded by all sorts of "distur-

bances," most prominently by three loop-saturated sequences of electronic sound, using excerpts from one of my early electronic pieces (*time freeze*, 1996), which resonate with Webern's ostinato structures. The musicians initially attempt to "integrate" the electronic sounds, but the situation gets increasingly "out of control." The Chinese instruments *zheng* and *xun* enter from afar, completely denying the "controlled time" of the Western ensemble and introducing, among other things, allusions to the *qin* classic *Guang ling san* (*Shen Qi Mi Pu*, 1425). Thus, the music in *walls* moves from a clear and probably somewhat overemphasized focusing of perceptual attention (a single dodecaphonic sonority, repeatedly introduced, opens the piece, Ex. 6.22) to situations of changing, movable, transforming centers of perceptual attention. The "walls" in the music lose their stability, and an open space of conf licting layers gains prominence (Ex. 6.23).

The idea of simultaneity and non-hierarchy also has consequences for performance – indeed, the question of musical hierarchies is not least a question of performance in general. In the more recent performance practice of contemporary music, a brilliant, virtuosic, "philharmonic" sound has prevailed which tends to hierarchically separate foreground and background, and to accentuate formal segmentation even in cases where the musical score might be ambiguous in these respects.60 Thus, the idea of rediscovering ambiguity and *polyphony* might also provide inspiration for performers who seek to go beyond the harsh "synchronizing" effects of formal contrast. This is a point that cannot be elaborated upon here, as it has been explored quite extensively in recent studies on musical performance that aim to draw conclusions from both quantitative measurements of recorded performances and the aesthetic ideas guiding individual interpretations.<sup>61</sup>

Ultimately, the metaphor of *fabric*, in French "agencement," a key term in Gilles Deleuze's and Félix Guattari's *Thousand Plateaus*, seems an adequate model for the interaction between the different types of simultaneities, non-simultaneities, hierarchies, and non-hierarchies in music and elsewhere. In the *rhizomatic* "agencement" of Deleuze and Guattari, hierarchies are not resolved by compromise or consensus, but by a non-localization of things; this invokes a "perpendicular direction, a transversal movement that sweeps one *and* the other away, a stream without beginning or end that undermines its banks and picks up speed in the middle."62

<sup>60</sup> I have critically described this tendency especially in the example of performance practice of Giacinto Scelsi's music;see Utz, "Scelsi hören,"166–169.

<sup>61</sup> See especially Cook, *Beyond the Score*.

<sup>62</sup> Deleuze and Guattari, *A Thousand Plateaus*, 25.

Copyright

© 2018 by

UtzMusicPrints,

 Vienna

*Example 6.22: Christian Utz, walls for ensemble and electronics, opening, mm. 1–9*

*Example 6.23: Christian Utz, walls for ensemble and electronics, beginning of the closing section, mm. 144–151*

.

# **Bibliography**


Bispo, Ieda. "Olivier Messian's *Sept Haïkaï*: Beyond Japonisme." In *Musicology and Globalization: Proceedings of the International Congress in Shizuoka 2002*, edited by the Musicological Society of Japan, 242–246. Tokyo: Musicological Society of Japan, 2004.

Blacking, John. *How Musical is Man?* [1973] Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000.

Bloch, Ernst. *Erbschaf t dieser Zeit*. [1935] Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985.


Cowell, Henry. "Shaping Music for Total War." *Modern Music* 22, no. 4 (1945): 223–226.


Eikemeier, Dieter. "Zum Text von Yun Isangs *Memory* für drei Stimmen mit Schlagwerk (1974)." In *Ssi-ol: Almanach 2000/01*, edited by Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer, 79–100. Munich: edition text + kritik, 2002.

Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. *Multiple Modernities*. New Brunswick: Transaction, 2002.


Felderer, Barbara, editor. *Phonorama: Eine Kulturgeschichte der Stimme als Medium*. Berlin: 2004.


Ferneyhough, Brian. "Form – Figure – Style: An Intermediate Assessment." [1982] In *Collected Writings*, edited by James Boros and Richard Toop, 21–28. Second edition. Amsterdam: Harwood, 1998.


by Rainer Kleinertz, Christoph Flamm, and Wolf Frobenius, 197–203. Hildesheim: Olms, 2010.


Ligeti, György. "Zum Klavierkonzert." [2001] In *Gesammelte Schrif ten*, Vol. 2, edited by Monika Lichtenfeld, 300–301. Mainz: Schott, 2007


Pörtner, Peter, and Jens Heise. *Die Philosophie Japans*. Stuttgart: Kröner, 1995.


Proescholdt, Catherine W. "Johann Christian Hüttner (1766–1847). A Link Between Weimar and London." In *Goethe and the English-Speaking World*, edited by Nicholas Boyle and John Guthrie, 99–110. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2002.

Pym, Anthony. *Exploring Translation Theories*. New York: Routledge, 2010.


*Auf bruch – Umbruch, Zeiten – Räume, Modelle, Nähe – Ferne*, edited by the Institut für Neue Musik und Musikerziehung Darmstadt, 189–207. Mainz: Schott, 2004.


Takahashi, Yūji. *Koto nado asobi* (score). Tokyo, 2000. http://www.suigyu.com/yuji/score-pdf/ kna\_e.pdf


Tanaka, Shōhei. *Nihon wasei no kiso* (Foundations of Japanese Harmony). Tokyo: Sōgensha, 1940.


Pfau, 2010. Also published in *Analytical Approaches to World Music* 1, no. 1 (2011): 152–175. http://aawmjournal.com/articles/2011a/Tenzer\_AAWM\_Vol\_1\_1.pdf


Vol. 4, edited by Laurence E. R. Picken and Noël J. Nickson, 117–133. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.


# **Appendix**

#### **Text Sources**


Research Association. The material was first presented in a lecture on 29 November 2002 on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Shanghai Conservatory.


#### **Publications**


# **Index**

**A**alst, Jules A. van; *Chinese Music* 195, 198, 200 Abbate, Carolyn 235, 362; "Music – Drastic or Gnostic?" 55–56 Abe no Suehisa; *Gaku ka roku* 306 Abramović, Marina 257 Academy of Arts (*Akademie der Künste Berlin*) 170 action notation 257 Adami, Giuseppe 198 Adler, Ferdinand 169, 173, 177, 187 Adorno, Theodor W. 25, 29, 57, 66, 118; *Philosophy of New Music* 82 aesthetics 26–27, 38, 40, 44, 47, 59, 61–66, 69, 71–72, 75, 77, 83, 94, 112, 114, 134, 136–137, 143, 156–157, 167, 170, 206, 210, 212–213, 215, 217, 234, 238, 241, 269, 303, 327, 333, 338, 340–341, 351, 354, 402; aesthetics of genius 29; Chinese 280; Daoist 272; East Asian 396; Japanese 137, 260–261, 295; pan-Asian 127, 275; Western 35, 261, 274 Africa 26, 28, 34, 49–50, 53, 55, 70–72, 96, 121, 130, 134, 137–138, 206, 337, 363–366, 368–369, 375–377, 379–381, 384 Agawu, Kofi 364 *agencement* (fabric) 437 *agung* (Philippine nipple gong) 217, 219 Aid Association of German Jews (*Hilfsverein der Juden in Deutschland*) 169, 173 Ainu (northern Japanese indigenous people) 358 *aitake* (chords of → *shō* in → *gagaku*) 125, 164, 260, 290–291, 295–298, 300, 303, 306, 312, 314, 398

*ajaeng* (Korean arched zither) 139, 206 Aka Pygmies (Central African ethnic group) 138, 363, 365–366, 379–380 Akutagawa Yasushi 127 *alap* (unmeasured introduction in Indian *rāga* music) 88 Albeniz, Isaac 83 Albertson, Dan 217 aleatoricism 114, 128, 163 alienation 62, 149, 282, 335, 394 Alliance to Promote the New Order in the Musical World (*Gakudan shintaisei sokushin dōmei*) 103 alterity 34, 36, 42–44, 46, 67, 139, 152–153, 160, 166, 185, 206–207, 212–213, 235, 268, 308–310, 322–323, 328, 330, 333, 335, 364, 411, 423 alternative modernities → modernity *amadinda* 138, 363–364, 370 ambiguity 12, 134–135, 159, 221, 234–235, 238, 314, 332–333, 338, 382, 390, 392, 395–396, 411, 437 ambivalence 55, 75, 92, 206, 346, 388 Ambros, August Wilhelm 58, 195, 197–198 American Musicological Society (AMS) 95 Ami (Taiwanese indigenous people) 269–270, 273–274 Amiot, Joseph-Marie 293 Ampo Pact (Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan, 1960) 120, 129 Andersen, Hans Christian 319, 331–333 Ansermet, Ernest 92 anthropology 59, 61, 75, 126, 221, 337–338

anti-Semitism 77 Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaigns (*Qingchu jingshen wuran*) 201, 225 *Aoi no ue* (Japanese nō play) 354 Aomori (Japanese prefecture) 354–355 *Apaches* (Paris composers' group) 83, 85–86 Aperghis, Georges 75 Arab music 77, 96, 125, 143, 298 archaism 27, 40, 45, 77, 80, 126, 136, 139, 147, 149, 204, 210, 223, 232–233, 241, 261, 267, 276, 278, 290, 298–300, 306–307, 338, 345, 354–355, 358, 406 Arezzo, Guido of; *Micrologus de musica* 54 Aristoxenos; *Elementa Harmonica* 359 Arom, Simha 134, 364; *African Polyphony and Polyrhythm* 366, 368, 375, 380 *ars subtilior* 54, 138, 363 art music 12, 25–29, 31–35, 37–41, 43, 45, 49, 51, 58–59, 61, 63, 65, 73, 77–78, 82, 116, 135, 138, 146, 206, 235–236, 264–265, 267–269, 281, 287, 364, 429, 433 Artaud, Antonin 33 artificial intelligence 363 Asia 12, 26–28, 34–36, 49–50, 67–68, 72, 75, 78, 82–83, 86, 96, 116, 119, 121, 123, 137, 139–140, 153, 158, 161, 163, 166–167, 179, 182–183, 189, 194, 198, 206–207, 209–213, 219–221, 229–230, 233, 235–238, 249, 259, 263–265, 267, 275, 278, 280, 284, 286–287, 293, 299–300, 304, 340, 348, 350, 399, 412, 417, 429; East Asia 25, 39–40, 49, 53, 60, 116–118, 137, 139, 142, 146–147, 153, 155–157, 159, 166–167, 172, 186, 206–207, 209–212, 228, 235–236, 238, 241, 249, 251, 259, 337, 396–397, 418, 429; Southeast Asia 215, 220–221, 259, 307, 355 Asia Pacific Festival 408 Asian Art Ensemble 146 Asian Composers League (ACL) 12, 275, 408 AsianCultureLink 146 assimilation 52–53, 77 Assmann, Aleida 29 Assmann, Jan 29, 38, 41–42, 289 Association for Japanese Music Culture (*Nihon ongaku bunka kyōkai*) 103 Atayal (Taiwanese indigenous people) 282 Atlas Ensemble 146

atonality 65, 161, 170, 182, 188, 238, 281–282, 365 *Atumori* (Japanese *nō* play) 354 auditory streaming / stream segregation 370–371, 430–433, 435 aura 139, 293–295, 308–310, 333, 354 aurality (see also orality) 54, 56, 76, 137, 139, 215, 233–234, 253, 263, 310, 330, 341, 345, 362, 364, 371 Austin, Larry 383 authenticity 34, 43, 57, 77–78, 81–82, 149, 159, 196, 198, 200, 210, 215, 269, 307, 334, 397, 411 *auzān* (rhythmic cycles in → Arab music) 143 avant-garde 12, 45, 60–62, 102, 115–116, 123, 127, 129, 135, 161, 209, 225, 237, 258, 266, 269–270, 272, 275, 280, 334, 338 Avshalomov, Aaron 165, 167, 177, 185–187, 192; Piano Concerto 161; *The Great Wall (Meng Jiang Nü)* 161 Avshalomov, Jacob 186 *ba yin* (ancient Chinese classification of sounds) 290 *baban* (Chinese suite type) 398 Babbitt, Milton 116 Bach, Johann Sebastian 25, 180, 187, 189, 208, 221, 229, 383; Brandenburg Concerto no. 5 BWV 1050 177; *Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue BWV* 903 177; English Suite in G minor BWV 808 172; Prelude in C# minor BWV 849 (*The Well-Tempered Clavier,* vol. 1) 237, 385; "Goldberg Variations" BWV 988 27, 286 Bakhtin, Mikhail 428 Balanchine, George 127 Bali 69, 71, 97, 120, 138, 219, 363 *balingbing* → *pakkung / balingbing* Banda Linda (Central African ethnic group) 134, 138, 363, 366 *bangdi* (Chinese horizontal f lute) 385–387 *bangibang* (Philippine wooden stick) 219 Barmas, Issay 168 Barney, Matthew; *Drawing Restraint 9* 298 Barrow, John 195–198; *Travels in China* 195– 197, 202 Barthes, Roland 361–362

Bartók, Béla 27, 30, 32–33, 59–61, 65, 67, 75–78, 80, 82, 96, 112, 159, 182, 270, 384, 390 Bashō Matsuo 91–92, 105 basic pulse 366, 368–369, 372, 377 Bathorie, Jane 92 Beck, Ulrich 35 Beckett, Samuel; *sans* (*Lessness*) 225; *The Unnamable* 132 Beethoven, Ludwig van 28, 40, 66, 78, 175–178, 180, 187, 204, 208, 380–383; Romance no. 2 F major op. 50 177; Symphony no. 1 178; Symphony no. 3 "Eroica" **381**–383; Symphony no. 5 175; Symphony no. 6 "Pastorale" 175; Symphony no. 9 205 *Bei feng bo zhou* (poem from the → *Shijing*) 241 *beiguan* (Chinese traditional musical genre) 268, 275, 279, 282 Beijing 34, 49, 158–159, 161, 169, 175, 184, 190, 195–196, 205, 223, 238, 240–241, 243, 267–268, 270, 275, 282, 348–351, 429 Beijing Opera → *jingju* Bekker, Paul 56; *Musikgeschichte als Geschichte der musikalischen Formwandlungen* 51 Bellman, Jonathan 37 Bénarès (Varanasi) 86 Berberian, Cathy 129; *Stripsody* 341 Berg, Alban 97, 167 Berio, Luciano 74, 114, 117–118, 120, 122; *Coro* 132, 134; *Folk Songs* 130; "Meditation on a Twelve-tone Horse" 132; *Passaggio* 130; *Sequenza III* 341; *Sequenza XIV* 134; *Sinfonia* 129, **131**–134; *Traces* 130, 133 Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra 168 Berliner Festspiele 121, 404 Berlioz, Hector 178, 208 Bernstein, Leonard 120, 127 Berntsen, Anne-Lise 353 Bertelsmann Foundation 28 *Beulah Land* 395 Bhabha, Homi K. 43, 385 Bhagwati, Sandeep 146, 153; *Illusies van harder en zacht* 149–**150**; *Traces and Shadows* 149; *Wörterbuch der Winde* 149 Bhatia, Vanraj 120 Bialas, Günther 278

*bianzhong* (archaic Chinese bronze bell set) 204 Birman, Meir (Meyer Eliash) 172 *biwa* (Japanese lute) 166, 213, 260–261, 292, 306, 345; *satsuma-biwa* 206, 212 Björk; *Drawing Restraint 9* (see also Barney, Matthew) 298 Blacher, Boris 118, 120 Blacking, John 52–53; *How Musical Is Man?* 52 Bloch, Ernst 58, 60, 62, 82 Blum, Stephen 53, 56 Bo Yang 264 Boas, Franz 59, 100 Body, Jack 408 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus 359 Bons, Joël 146 *bonshō* (Japanese temple bells) 127, 294 Borio, Gianmario 62 Botti, Susan 349–350 Boulez, Pierre 62, 74–76, 114–115, 135, 170, 353; *Le marteau sans maître* 339; *Musikalische Technik* 394; *Rituel* 375; Second Piano Sonata 33 Bouliane, Denys 366, 370 Bovet, Frederic 'Fritz' 200 Brahms, Johannes 177, 180, 270; *Klavierstücke* 383, Symphony no. 3 383 Brandt, Willy 121 Brecht, Bertold 130 Bregman, Albert 435; *Auditory Scene Analysis* 327, 370, 432 Britten, Benjamin 53, 75, 125; *Curlew River* 294 Brown, Julie 77 Bruch, Max 162 *budaixi* (Taiwanese puppet theater) 270 *budingxing* (indeterminacy) 272 *bugaku* (Japanese traditional dance) 127–128, 134, 227, 294 *bunmei* (civilization) 102 *bunraku* (Japanese puppet theater) 127, 345–347 Bunun (Taiwanese indigenous people) 282 Bürger, Peter 62 Burian, Emil František 98 Burke, Peter 43, 386 Burney, Charles 196

Buschmann, Christian Friedrich Ludwig 293

**C**accini, Giulio; *L'Euridice* 359; *Le nuove musiche* 359–360 cadential sound (Kadenzklang) 139, 311–312, 322–323, 331, 333 Cage, John 32, 60, 74, 122, 124, 135–137, 140, 148, 213, 223, 225, 255, 257, 281, 402; *Aria* 129, 341; *4'33''* 212; *45' for a Speaker* 434; *Fontana Mix* 129; *One9* 303; "*Number Pieces*" 303, 308; *The Ten Thousand Things* 429, 434; *Two3* 303; *Two<sup>4</sup>* 303; 108 303 Cai Yuanpei 179 *Caifeng Yuefang* (Chai Found Music Workshop) 146, 278–279, 285–286, 398 calligraphy 191, 270, 274, 295, 350, 396 canon 11, 25–26, 41, 203, 298, 305, 308, 436 canonicity 26, 45 canonization 26–27, 63 Canton 96, 177, 196–197, 202, 279 Cantonese Opera 96 Cardew, Cornelius 228 Carnatic music 89 Carnegie Hall 28, 94, 127 Carter, Elliott 118, 120; *Symphony* 375 Cavallotti, Pietro 62, 328, 333 censorship 205, 287 Central Africa 134, 138, 363–364, 366, 369, 380 *ch'angjak kugak* (Traditional Korean Contemporary Music) 249 Ch'ŏn Sangbyŏng; *Kŭ nalŭn* (This Day) 414, 416 Chang Sa-hun 414 Chang, Lynn 205 *changbai* (Beijing Opera voice) 348 *changdan* (rhythmic cycles in Korean traditional music) 251, 398 *changgo* (Korean hourglass drum) 251, 253–254 chant 139, 215, 233, 243, 275, 279, 342–343, 345, 355, 358–359 Chao Ching-Wen 265 Chao Mei-Pa (Zhao Meibo) 187 chaos theory 138, 363 Cheetham, Edgard 95 Chen Ching-Gang 270 Chen Duxin 156 Chen Gexin 180–181 Chen Mao-Shuen 265

Chen Mau-Liang 265 Chen Mingzhi 166 Chen Qigang 236; *Poème Lyrique II* 241 Chen Sa-Zhi 265 Chen Shi-Zheng 349 Chen Xiaoxi 265 Chen Xiaoyong 263; *Circuit* 241; *Invisible Landscapes* 241–**242**; *Speechlessness, Clearness and Ease* (Yin, xi, yi) 241, **244**; *Yang Shen* 241 Chen Xujing 156 Chen Yi 236 Chen Yingshi 292 Chen Yu-Chou 265 Chengdu 169 Chiang Kai-Shek 194 Chien Nan-Chang 265 Chien Shan-Hua 265 Chikamatsu Hanji; *Imoseyama onna teikin* (Mount Imo and Mount Se: A Parable of Female Virtue) **347** chimeric assignment 327, 433, 435 Chin Unsuk 36 *China Can Say NO!* (*Zhongguo keyi shuo bu!*) 237 China Symphonic Orchestra (*Zhongguo Jiaoxiang Yuetuan*) 175–176, 178 China 25, 27, 33, 35, 37, 40, 68, 71, 78, 80–82, 96, 103, 124, 146, 155–156, 159–161, 164– 169, 175–188, 194–205, 225, 236–237, 243, 248, 263, 265, 267–268, 274, 277–279, 286, 307, 357, 363, 398, 400, 435 Chinese Civil War 157, 170 Chinese opera 96, 223, 238, 343 Chinese Symphony Orchestra 157–158, 166 Chinese Youth Orchestra (*Zhongguo Qingnian Yuetuan*) 177–178 Chineseness 36, 240 Chŏng Hoegap; Theme and Variations (*Chujewa Pyŏnjugok*) 249 Chongming (Chinese island) 223 Chopin, Frédéric 58, 180, 366, 380–381; Ballade no. 4 in f minor op. 52 383 *chōshi* (introductory parts in → *gagaku*) 128, 227, 290, 292, 295, 307, 406 Chou Wen-Chung 35, 78, 206, 211, 396; *The Willows are New* 36; *Yü Ko* 36

Christou, Jani 338, 353 Chu (ancient Chinese kingdom, c. 800–223 BCE) 80 *chuanju* (Sichuan Opera) 80, 240 *Chuantong yu zhanwang* (Tradition and Prospect) 267 Chun Doo-Hwan 250 Chung Il-Ryun 146 Chung Yiu-Kwong 265 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) 115–117, 120–122 Clark, Tony 404 classical music 25–29, 192, 252 cliché 27, 113 close reading 138, 211 closure 330 Cloud Gate Dance Theater (*Yunmen Wuji*) 266–267, 270, 273, 275; *Wu Feng* 272 Club of Poets, Essayists, Novelists (PEN) 64 cluster 38, 94–95, 98, 164, 303, 324–325 Coca-Colonization 34 codification 342, 360–362 coexistence 38, 155, 163, 166, 213, 237, 396 Cold War 12, 60, 63, 66–67, 101, 114–118, 121, 123–124, 129, 133–134, 263–264, 269, 340 Coleman, Gene 117; *Yago* 335 collage 70, 72, 129, 132–133, 370, 394 colonialism 31, 50, 52–53, 55, 58, 66, 127, 139, 156, 167, 173–175, 197, 205, 207, 215, 219, 228, 263, 266 Commission for International Exchange Concerts 95 Committee for Assistance of European Refugees in Shanghai (→ Speelman committee) 169 comparative musicology 59, 67, 74, 97, 342–343 complexity (musical) 48, 54–55, 88, 100, 133, 147, 149, 165, 208, 221, 237, 327, 341, 345–346, 363–364, 372, 379, 381, 383, 395–396, 410, 429 composition 38, 45, 48, 51, 53–58, 61, 71, 88, 116–117, 125, 187, 362, 368; critical composition 300; intercultural composition 38– 46, 56, 82, 134–137, 142–143, 149, 211, 259, 261, 289, 308, 392; sound composition 93, 98, 250, 299, 385

Confucian ritual music (see also *Jikong dianli*) 147 Confucianism 147, 155, 279–280 Confucius 241 Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) 115–118, 120–121, 123, 133 Conklin, Harold C. 217 connective structure 29 connectivity 287, 341, 402 conservatory style 147, 153, 165 constants (pitch collections of even-sized intervals) 314 container model 35 Conte Rosso 169 Contemporary Music Ensemble Korea (CMEK) 408, 412 contemporary Xchange 146 contextual analysis 53, 235 continuants (pitch collections of steadily increasing interval sizes) 314 Convention of Geneva 63 Convention of The Hague 63 convergence 46, 73, 101, 113, 118, 254, 338, 361, 372, 423 Cook, Nicholas 47, 127; *Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music* (see also Pople, Anthony) 49 Corelli, Arcangelo 270 corporeality 237 cosmopolitanism 49, 64, 169, 275 Couchoud, Paul-Louis; *Au fil de l'eau* 91 Council for Cultural Affairs 267 Council of Cultural Planning and Development (CCPD) 267 counterculture 30, 210 counterpoint 30, 55, 100, 137, 169, 180, 185, 187–189, 311, 327, 359, 394, 428, 433–434 Cowell, Henry 74, 82–83, 93–101, 112–114, 117–118, 120–127, 249, 281; *American Melting Pot* 98; *Amiable Conversation* 96; *Atlantis* 97–**99**; *Celtic Set* 98; Concerto for Harmonica 123; Concerto [no. 1] for k*oto* and Orchestra; Concerto no. 2 for koto and Orchestra 123; *Four Assorted Movements* 98; *Mosaic Quartet* 98; *New Musical Resources* 95; *Ongaku* 123–**126**, 127, 134; *Ostinato Pianissimo* 98; *Persian Set* 98;

*Pulse* 98; *Rest* 98; *Some Music* 98; Symphonies no. 11 to 15 98; Symphony no. 13 98; *The Nature of Melody* 97; *The Universal Flute* 123; *United Quartet* (String Quartet no. 4) 98, 113 Crawford-Seeger, Ruth; *Chinaman Laundryman* 96 Crossley-Holland, Peter 120 Crumb, George 62, 74, 225, 282 cultural difference → difference cultural globalization → globalization cultural history 59, 63, 257, 338, 351 cultural memory 29, 41–42, 250, 289, 299, 362 cultural pessimism 30, 50–51, 64, 73 cultural practice 29, 35 cultural racism 38 Cultural Revolution 78, 155, 158, 161, 165–166, 175, 185, 200, 223, 225, 267 cultural self 38, 40, 207, 322 cultural studies 29 culturalism 43, 254, 261, 289 Curran, Alvin 74 Cvetko, Dragotin 120 Czernowin, Chaya 385–387, 389–390, 392; *Die Kreuzung* 300, **302**–303, 335; *Excavated Dialogues – Fragments* 385, **387**, 389 **D**'Indy, Vincent 83, 158 Dahlhaus, Carl 51, 115–116 Dai Hong-Hsuan 265 *Dainihon sakkyokuka kyōkai* (Great Japanese Association of Composers) 102 *daluo* (large Chinese opera gong) 270 Damshäuser, Berthold 418 Dan Ikuma 127 Daniélou, Alain 120–121 Daoism 204, 280 Daoist ritual music 348 *daqu* (Chinese Tang-Dynasty court mu-

sic) 276 Darmstadt Summer Course 33, 45, 60, 65, 115–116, 163, 333 *daruan* → *ruan* Dauer, Alfons 284, 366

Davies, Peter Maxwell 338; *Eight Songs for a Mad King* 341

Debussy, Claude 29–30, 33, 55, 69, 86–87, 102, 113, 138, 160, 177, 182, 187, 208, 366; *La mer* 132; *Pagodes* 86; *Pelléas et Mélisande* 83 declamation 159, 343, 345, 349, 351, 353, 360, 362 deconstruction 26, 43, 57, 136, 149, 310, 332–333, 337, 388, 436 Delage, Maurice 69, 83–94, 112–113; *Conté par la mer* 85; *Quatre poèmes hindous* 85–86, 88; *Ragamalika* 86, 88–**90**, 92–93; *Sept Haï-kaïs* 86, 89, **91–93** Deleuze, Gilles 257, 333, 402; *A Thousand Plateaus* (see also Guattari, Félix) 394, 437 Délibes, Léo; *Lakmé* 88 Demian, Cyril 293 Deng Erjing 181 density referent 368 *dentō* / *denshō* 27 Derrida, Jacques 333, 337, 428 descriptive notation 48, 233 *devadasi* (Indian temple prostitutes) 88–89 Devi, Indira 177, 192 *dhārani* (mantra) 226 dialogue 38–39, 41–42, 146, 163, 238, 272, 279, 385–386, 393, 398 *diaoshi* ("mode") 157 Dickinson, Emily 286 difference 37, 41–44, 46–47, 53, 67, 88, 94, 114, 139–140, 166, 254, 263, 303, 331, 349, 359, 365, 385, 410; cultural difference 12, 33–34, 38, 67, 71, 78, 80, 113, 142, 206–235, 237, 241, 261, 286, 307, 335, 396–397, 407, 429 digitalization 29, 34, 45 Ding Shande 180; *Long March Symphony* (*Changzheng jiaoxiangqu*) 159, 248 Dirlik, Arif 31, 35 discursivity 208 displacement dissonance 377, 381–382 dissonance 65, 114–115, 125, 310, 375, 378, 380–384 diversification 26, 33, 57 *dizi* (Chinese horizontal bamboo f lute) 149, 157, 165, 278, 280, 386, 398 dodecaphony 102, 161, 163, 165–166, 170, 189, 191, 433, 437

*Dongfang huahui* (Eastern Painters) 266 double coding 312, 333 Draeger, Hans H. 120 Dreifuß, Alfred 175, 178 drone 88–89, 92, 100, 113, 215, 219–221, 238, 304, 413 Du Wen-Huei 265 Duan Pingtai 181, 184 *dudka* (Russian shawm) 76 Dufay, Guillaume 432 *duikou chang* (Chinese antiphonal singing) 159 Dukas, Paul 158

*E Juba* (popular song from South Sudan) 376 East Asia → Asia East India Company 86, 197 East-West Music Encounter Conference and Festival (Tokyo 1961) 117–122, 124, 127, 129 Eco, Umberto 136 Edo Culture 231 Eggen, Christian 353 Eggert, Marion 414; *Wind und Gras* 415 Eichheim, Henry 74 Eimert, Herbert 114 Einem, Gottfried von 120 *eishō* (category of vocal delivery in traditional Japanese music) 345–346, 348 Elberfeld, Rolf 32, 137, 389, 397 electroacoustic music 286 electronic music / live-electronics 70–71, 119, 127, 135, 152, 254, 272, 277, 286, 294, 306, 335, 388, 399–400, 404, 408, 410, 413, 417, 430, 435, 437 *Elementarpulsation* (elementary pulsation) 368 Elision Ensemble 147 Ellis, Alexander; "On the Musical Scales of Various Nations" 59 Eloy, Jean-Claude 74, 125, 143, 274; *A l'approche du feu méditant* 294; *Anāhata I–III* 294 *embai* (sliding tones in → *gagaku*) 291 embodiment 28, 293, 351, 384, 397 emic 343, 384 Enigma (pop group) 268, 309 Enlightenment 29, 58, 66, 68, 221 *ennui* 30

Ensemble Modern 146, 326 ensemble on\_line / PHACE 399, 404, 418 Ensslin, Gudrun 331 entangled history / histories 11, 13, 43, 46, 51, 57, 60–62, 82, 113, 117, 135, 233, 337 Erdmann, Martin 225 *erhu* (Chinese knee-fiddle) 27, 147, 149, 156–157, 225, 243, 280, 286, 386, 418 Escher, Mauritz Cornelis 363 essentialism 35–37, 42–43, 48, 67, 75, 205, 207, 220, 236–238, 240, 259; cultural essentialism 29–30, 35, 37, 39, 46, 61, 78, 128–129, 135, 213, 233–234, 238, 253, 337, 396, 429; pluralistic essentialism 238; polarizing essentialism 237 *Etenraku* 101, 164, 192, 292, 294, 311–312, 332 ethnicity 31, 34, 37 ethnicization 30–31 ethnocentrism 46 ethnomusicology 34, 50–51, 60, 215, 266, 268, 307, 341, 343, 364, 375, 377, 384, 392 Eto Kimio 125–126 Eurocentrism 52, 59 Eurological discourse 38 Everett, Yayoi Uno 11, 294, 396 evolutionary musicology 337 Ewell, Philip A. 11 exile 59, 160, 167–168, 170, 182, 189, 194, 250 exoticism 27, 30, 36–37, 39, 43, 51, 61–62, 69, 74, 82–83, 86–88, 96, 98, 128, 136–137, 158, 191, 198, 200–201, 205, 261, 298, 334 experimental music 130 expressionism 33 extended vocal technique(s) 98, 272

**F**alla, Manuel de 83, 112; *El amor brujo* 104 falsetto 349, 423 *fanshen* ("subversion") 157 *faqu* (Chinese Tang-dynasty court music) 285 Far Eastern Jewish Central Information Bureau (DALJEWCIB) 168–169, 172–173 Farfield Foundation 117 fascism 51, 58, 73, 75, 77 Fassini-Camossi, Edoardo 195, 198, 200 Fauser, Annegret 29–30 Felber, Erwin 177–178 Feldman, Morton 60, 223, 225

feminism 31 Feng Zicun 157 Ferneyhough, Brian 54–55, 341, 397 Ferroud, Pierre-Octave 104 Fétis, François-Joseph 58 Feyerabend, Paul 44 Fibonacci series / proportions 328, 330 Finchum-Sung, Hilary Vanessa 12 Findlay, E. J. 124 *fioraturi* 360 Fish Leong (Liang Jingru); *Wings of Love* 195, 202 Foa, Arrigo 173, 177 folk song / folk tune 27, 52, 76, 78, 80, 102, 130, 139, 159, 182, 194–196, 198, 202–203, 229, 237, 255, 266–267, 295, 343, 348, 385, 433 folklorism 59, 61, 65, 103–104, 159, 182, 234, 269 Ford Foundation 117–118, 121, 127, 129–130 Forkel, Johann Nikolaus 58 Formosa incident 267 Forte, Allen 197; *The Structure of Atonal Music* 281 Fou Tsung (Fu Cong) 178 Foucault, Michel 29, 31, 44 fractal geometry 138, 363 Fraenkel, Agnes 168 Fraenkel, Philipp 168 Fraenkel, Rosa 168, 170 Fraenkel, Wolfgang 160, 167–194; *3 Impromptus* 171; *Afunktionelle Musik* 167, 170, 181, 188; *Chinese Song* 192, 195, 197; *Der brennende Dornbusch* 170; *Der Wegweiser* 170; *Die 82. Sure des Koran* 170–171; *Drei Orchesterlieder* 189–191, **192–193**; *Drei zweistimmige Praeludien* 182, 189–**190**; "Grundprobleme der Neuen Musik" 188; *Hölle – Weg – Erde* 189; *Music for String Quartet* 170; "Music-Development?" 184–185, 188; *Musik für großes Orchester* 170, 189; *Musik mit konzertanter Flöte* 170; *Musik mit obligater Oboe* 170; *Ombacha* 177, 192; Sonata for Violin 170; Sonata for Violoncello 170; *Symphonische Aphorismen* 170; Symphony no. 3 189; Symphony no. 4 189; *Three Masks* (*Im-*

*provisation on a Japanese Theme*) 177, 192; *Variationen und Fantasien über ein Thema von Arnold Schönberg* 171 fragment / fragmentation 13, 26, 31, 35, 41, 50, 68, 71, 80, 137, 189, 207, 211, 213, 215, 223, 226, 241, 243, 295, 299–300, 314, 323, 331, 333, 346, 348, 350–351, 353–354, 359, 361, 385–390, 395, 404, 414, 417–419, 422–423, 431 France 65, 68, 75, 83, 87, 95, 112, 114, 198, 236, 249 Franco-Flemish school 54 Frescobaldi, Girolamo 180–181 Freud, Sigmund 31, 43; *Totem and Taboo* 76 *fu* ("belly," phase of vocal sound production in Beijing Opera) 350 Fujian (Chinese Province) 195–196, 279 Fujieda Mamoru 259 Fujii Kiyomi 102 Fujikura Dai 36 *fujo* (Japanese female shamans) 355

*Funa Benkei* (Japanese nō play) 354

*gagaku* (Japanese court music) 68, 101, 103, 105, 110, 120, 123–125, 128–129, 163–164, 192, 213, 227, 231, 260, 290, 292, 294–295, 306–308, 310, 312, 335, 388, 398, 404, 406 Galilei, Vincenzo 359 *gamelan saléndro* 29 *gamelan* 29–30, 34, 55, 68, 86, 120, 128, 138, 146, 215, 231, 272, 422 *gandingan* (Philippine nipple gong) 219 Ganges 86–87 *gangsa* (Philippine f lat gong) 222 Gansu (Chinese Province) 195–196 *gaohu* (Chinese knee-fiddle) 398 Ge Ganru 233; *Yi Feng* 223, 225 *gegenstrebige Harmonik* 139 *gendai hōgaku* (Traditional Japanese Music of the Present) 146, 164, 231, 249 gender 11, 26, 348 Genet, Jean; *Les nègres* 130 geno song 361 Genzmer, Harald 277 Germany 32, 64, 67, 74, 116, 146, 149, 167, 187, 211, 249–250, 274, 277, 282, 412 gestalt perception 376

gestural types 262–263, 386, 397 gesture 49, 142, 147, 149, 165, 241, 255, 260, 262–263, 286, 305, 307, 322, 332–333, 339, 359, 362, 385–386, 388–391, 396–398, 408, 413, 418, 430–431 *gezaixi* (Taiwanese Opera) 268, 270 *gezaixian* (Taiwanese knee fiddle) 398 *gidayū-bushi* (musical style of Japanese puppet theater → *bunraku*) 345–348, 353–355, 361–362 Gil-Marchex, Henri 92, 104 *ginshō* (category of vocal delivery in traditional Japanese music) 345–346, 348 *gitgit* (Philippine three-string fiddle) 217 Glash, Joe 173 Glass, Philip 138 globalization 26, 29, 32–38, 42, 44, 49, 53, 56, 63, 67, 69, 73, 112–113, 135, 206, 289, 338, 341; cultural globalization 12, 33, 57, 211, 385; grassroots globalization 31; ref lexive globalization 28, 35, 38, 45–46, 392 glocalization 34, 75 Glock, William 120, 141 Goebbels, Heiner 143 Goebbels, Joseph 114 Goehr, Alexander 223 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 138, 196 *gomaten* (Japanese traditional vocal music notation) 359 *gongche* (Chinese traditional character notation) 195–196, 198, 202 Goodman, Nelson 388 Gostuški, Dragutin 120 Gottwald, Clytus 138 Gould, Glenn 27 grain of the voice 362 Grainger, Percy 55, 74 gravitation 46, 396 Great Depression 83, 95, 112 Grey, Madeleine 92 Grieg, Edvard; Piano Concerto 179 Grisey, Gérard; *Les Espaces Acoustiques* 33 grouping dissonance 380–382 Grupe, Gerd 34 *gu wei jin yong, yang wei Zhong yong* (Making the past useful to the present and the foreign useful for China) 203

Guan Yinshen 181 Guan Zhong; *Guanzi* 290 *Guang ling san* 437 Guangxi (Chinese Autonomous Region) 195– 196, 200, 307 Guattari, Félix 402; *A Thousand Plateaus* (see also Deleuze, Gilles) 394, 437 Gubaidulina, Sofia 233 Guggenheim Foundation 97 Guizhou (Chinese province) 307 Gulf War 143 Guo Nai'an 181 Guo Wenjing 82, 238; *She Huo* **79–81**; *Ye Yan* (Night banquet) **240** *guocui* → national essence *Guoyue gaijinshe* (Society for the Improvement of National Music) 156 *gusli* (Russian psaltery) 76 Guttmann, Oscar 168 gypsy music 77

*haegŭm* (Korean fiddle) 253 Hagiwara Sakutarō 112 *haikai* (Japanese poetic genre) 91, 113 *haiku* (Japanese poetic genre) 91–92, 105–106, 113 *haka* (Maori narrative form with mixed styles) 342–343 *hakase* (Japanese traditional vocal music notation) 359 Hakka (*Kejia*) 268 Hall, Stuart 31 Hamel, Peter Michael 74 Hammelmann, Hans 198 Han (Chinese dynasty) 266 Han Byung-Chul 38–39, 61 Han Chinese 157, 248, 263–264, 268 Han Shaogong 80 Handel, George Frideric 187, 383; *Passacaglia* in G minor HWV 432/6 172 Handschin, Jacques 51 *haozi* (Chinese work songs) 159 Harbin Symphony Orchestra 172 Harewood, The Earl of 120 Harland, Philip 373 harmony / theory of harmony (see also *gegenstrebige Harmonik*, Japanese har-

mony) 40, 88, 92–93, 102–106, 110–113, 125, 127, 139, 143, 147, 157–159, 162–164, 169, 180–182, 187–189, 197, 200, 204, 237, 295–296, 300, 312, 314, 316, 320, 323–324, 333, 337, 359, 365, 381–382, 385, 392, 400, 404, 432–433 *Harmondie* 70 Harrison, Lou 74, 118, 120, 197 Harsányi, Tibor 104 Hart, Roy 338, 341 Hashimoto Kunihiko 166, 173; *Akebono*  162–163 Hasty, Christopher 376 *hát bội* (Vietnamese music theater) 29 Hatten, Robert 339, 386, 420 Havana Society for Contemporary Music 95 Hayasaka Fumio 83, 101; *Ancient Dance* (*Kodai no bukyoku*) 104, 164; *Four Unaccompanied Songs to Poems by Haruo* (*Haruo no shi ni yoru yottsu no mubansō kakyoku*) 110–**111**; *Nihonteki ongakuron* (Treatise of Japanese Music) 110; *Piano shōhin shū* (Piano Pieces) **109**–110 He Fang 195, 203 He Luting 186; *Buf falo Boy's Flute* (*Mutong duandi*) 104, 159–**160** Hebei (Chinese Province) 195–196, 237, 277 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 43, 50, 208 hegemony 38, 61, 75, 134 Heian Period (Japan, 794–1185 CE) 91, 155, 292, 307, 406 heightened speech 342–343, 351 *heikyoku* (Japanese traditional narrative genre) 345–346 Heile, Björn 49 Heilongjiang (Chinese Province) 195–196 Heinecke, Max 168 hemiola 363, 366, 371, 375, 382–383 *hemiólion* 382 Henan (Chinese Province) 349 Herder, Johann Gottfried 38, 77 hermeneutics 29, 53 Herzfeld, Gregor 95 heterogeneity 50, 103, 185, 206, 248, 263, 323, 333, 363, 395–396 heteroglossia 138

heterophony 88, 100, 103, 149, 157, 196, 208–209, 227, 237, 252, 260, 282, 291–292, 306, 347, 408, 422–423, 430 Hezarfen Ensemble 146 *hichiriki* (Japanese double-reed wind instrument) 125, 163, 227, 291, 294–295, 300–301, 335 hierarchy 43, 54, 67, 112, 208, 213, 221, 255, 263, 309, 385–386, 395, 402, 407, 422, 428, 432–437 *Higho, high-hau* (Chinese rowing song) 197 *Hilfsverein der Juden in Deutschland* → Aid Association of German Jews Hindemith, Paul 60, 65, 161, 170, 180, 182, 187–189, 277 Hindu music 87 Hinkel, Hans 168 Hirano Kenji 345 Hirashima Masao 120 Hirayama Michiko 341, 354 *hiroi* (vocal delivery technique in Japanese → *heikyoku*) 346 historicism 50, 307 historicity 234, 308, 333 historiography 46–48, 50–51, 57–59, 62, 67, 82, 115, 156, 194, 211, 235, 342 Hobsbawm, Eric 31, 157 Hofstadter, Douglas R. 383 *Hōgaku yonin no kai* (Group of four for traditional Japanese music) 164 Holliger, Heinz 213 homogenization 33–34, 38, 57, 78, 81, 208, 212, 215, 338 Honegger, Arthur 104, 112 Hong Kong 123, 169, 200, 275 Hong Sin-Cha 251 Hong Wen-Tsien 398 Hong Zhu 240 Hongkou (Jewish ghetto in Shanghai) 169– 170 Hood, Mantle 120–121, 215 Hopi (Native American group) 342–343 Hornbostel, Erich Moritz von 59, 74, 95, 97 Horthy-regime (Hungary) 77 Hosokawa Toshio 32, 125, 137, 206, 263, 303, 308, 396; *Birds Fragments II* 213, 295; *Birds Fragments III* 213, 295; *Birds Fragments* 

*IV* 295; *Cloudscapes Moonlight* 295; *Garden at First Light* 294–295; *Koto-Uta* **260**–261; *Landscape V* 259–260, 295–**297**, 298; *New Seeds of Contemplation (Mandala)* 294–295; *Seeds of Contemplation (Mandala)* 294–295; *Tokyo* 1985 294; *Utsurohi-Nagi* 294–295; *Utsurohi* 294–295; *"Wie ein Atem im Lichte"* 295–**296** Hou Chun-Ching 265 Hou Hsiao-Hsien 264 Hou Xiaoxian 264 Hovhaness, Alan 74, 118; Symphony no. 16 for *kayagŭm*, Korean instruments, and string orchestra 249 Howard, Keith 210 Hsu Po-Yun 265–267, 269; *Han shi* 267, 276–**277**; *Pipa suibi* 276; *Sheng – si* 277; *Zhongguo xiqu mingxiang* 275–**276** Hsu Sung-Rung 265 Hsu Tsang-Houei 266, 270, 275, 277; *Deux Poèmes* 265 Hsu, William 178 Hu Shi 156 Huang Chun-Ming 267 Huang Hsin-Huei 412 Huang Lung-Yi 147–148 Huang Zi 186, 266; *In Memoriam* 175, 250 Huayan Buddhism 135, 137, 212, 303 Hubei (Chinese Province) 195–196, 204, 357 Huber, Klaus 282; *Black Plaint* 298–**299**; *Die Erde bewegt sich auf den Hörnern eines Stiers [Ochsen]* (The Earth Moves on the Horns of a Bull [Ox]) 143, 146; *Miserere Hominibus* 143 Huber, Nicolaus A. 282 *hulusheng* (mouth organ in → Yunnan / China) 307 Humperdinck, Engelbert 351 Humphrey, Doris 97 Hunan (Chinese Province) 80, 243 Hundhausen, Vinzenz 189–190; *Chinesische Dichter in deutscher Sprache, mit 2 Bildern nach Originalen des Wang Ting-Dsche* 190 *huqin* (Chinese knee fiddle) 277, 398 Hüttner, Johann Christian 195–198, 202; *Nachricht von der Britischen Gesandtschaf tsreise nach China* 1792–94 197

Hwang Byungki 249, 251 hybridity 13, 31–32, 36, 38, 40–41, 43–44, 61, 77, 80, 93, 95, 97, 122, 127, 129, 134, 140, 142, 149, 153, 206, 211, 233, 235, 238, 241, 243, 251–252, 275, 289, 298, 333, 346, 350–351, 381, 385–386, 411, 413, 418 hybridization 26, 42, 49, 80, 122, 124–126, 299, 338, 351, 361, 386 hyperculturality 39, 44 hypolepsis 38, 41–42, 46, 289, 308, 402, 423 **I**bert, Jacques 104 Ibuse Masuji; *Black Rain* (*Kuroi ame*) 299 *ibushi* (vocal timbre in Japanese → *gidayūbushi*) 142, 346 Ichiyanagi Toshi 206 identity 12, 25, 27, 29–39, 41–43, 45, 53, 64, 67, 80, 82, 94, 134, 155, 159, 161–162, 167, 173, 175, 189, 194, 203–205, 207, 209, 211, 223, 254, 265–266, 274–275, 277, 280–281, 287, 289, 292–293, 338, 340, 385–386, 388–390, 397, 399, 402, 411; cluster identities 38; cultural identity 31, 36–37, 39, 117, 204–205, 237, 243, 248, 263, 268, 281, 303, 335; mixed identities 29, 39; multiple identities 38; patchwork identities 38 Ifukube Akira 103; *Japanese Rhapsody* (*Nihon kyōshi kyoku*) 104 Ikenouchi Tomojirō 207 *ikigahe* (changes of breath in Japanese → *shō* performance) 291, 312 Ikkyū Sōjun 140–141 Imai Tsutomu 346 *imbroglio* 366 immediacy 51, 148, 353, 386 imperialism 53, 58, 64, 66, 124, 173, 287 improvisation 54, 88–89, 143, 177, 192, 241, 251, 272 in-between 43, 46, 217, 257 incommensurability 34, 42, 44–46, 56, 61, 113, 153, 206, 232, 249, 268, 289, 340, 402, 412 India 27, 34, 40, 51, 68, 82–83, 86–89, 95–98, 113, 119–120, 123, 137–138, 146, 149, 177, 197, 272 Indonesia 83, 98, 119, 123, 137, 146, 275, 411–412, 418, 422–425 inherent pattern 364, 370–371, 380

integration 35, 38–39, 49–50, 55, 57, 61, 67, 70, 73, 77, 80, 97, 101, 124, 127, 138–139, 159, 163–166, 204, 206, 209, 213, 243, 270, 276, 284, 306, 320, 333–335, 363, 410, 437 interconnectedness 12, 66, 73, 117 intercultural dialogue → dialogue intercultural composition → composition intercultural reception 135–138, 146, 209–211, 363 interculturality 11–13, 26–27, 32, 34, 36, 38–40, 42, 44–48, 51, 53, 56–57, 62, 75, 82, 95, 129, 134–139, 143, 146, 149, 153, 167, 194, 196, 203, 207, 209–213, 233–235, 249, 251, 255, 259, 261–263, 289, 293, 304, 308, 310, 333–335, 337, 342, 359, 362–363, 365, 382, 384–385, 392–393, 396, 402, 404, 411, 413, 423, 429–430 intermodulation 136 International (First, Second) 63–64 International Association for Cultural Freedom (IACF) 117 International Congress of Composers and Music Critics, Second (Prague 1948) 64, 116 International Council of Women 63 International Institute of Comparative Music Studies and Documentation (iicmsd) 121 International Institute for Traditional Music 121 International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) 339, 342 International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) 64, 92, 103, 112, 127, 164, 267, 278, 354 *Internationale Isang Yun Gesellschaf t* (Isang Yun Society) 146, 211 internationalism 63–66, 83, 93–94, 104, 112, 117–118 internet 69, 205, 435 interpenetration 135, 137–138, 142, 188, 212, 280, 303, 363 intertextuality 45, 393–395, 410 invented tradition 31, 75, 157 Iran 98, 123 Iraq War 402, 407, 430 Irino Yoshirō; *Music for Two Kotos* 165

*iro* (vocal delivery technique in Japanese → *gidayū-bushi*) 345, 348 Irwin, Eyles 195, 197–198 Ishii Gorō 102 Ishii Maki 259 Ishikawa Kō 289, 293, 306, 404 isolationism 33, 59, 66, 263 Israel 49 Isukeyorihime 358 Italy 74–75, 79, 81, 117–118, 127, 198, 361 Ito Noboru 102 Ives, Charles 223, 281, 370, 375, 383–384, 433; *Life Pulse Prelude* 383; *Memos* 383; Symphony no. 4 383, 395; *The Fourth of July* 366; *The Unanswered Question* 395; *Universe Symphony* 383 **J**ankélévitch, Vladimir 56 Japan Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra 120 Japan Society for Contemporary Music (JSCM; *Nihon gendai ongaku kyōkai*) 103 Japan 25, 27, 35, 68, 71, 74, 83, 86, 89, 91–92, 96, 98, 101–106, 112–113, 117, 119–120, 123–127, 129, 136–137, 140, 146, 155–156, 159, 162–164, 172–174, 179, 182, 207, 212, 234, 249, 259, 261, 272, 275, 290, 292, 294, 296, 298, 300, 340, 354–355, 359, 404 Japanese harmony (*Nihonteki waseiron*; see also harmony) 102, 104, 106, 110, 164 Japanese Symphony Orchestra 101 Japaneseness 229, 259, 261 Jasmine Revolution (*molihua geming*) 205 Java 29–30, 34, 55, 86, 97, 219, 363, 422 Jewish Club (Shanghai) 177 Jewish Cultural League (*Kulturbund Deutscher Juden*) 168, 173 Jeypore (Jaipur) 86 *ji* (vocal delivery technique in Japanese → *gidayū-bushi*) 344–345, 348 *ji iro* (vocal delivery technique in Japanese → *gidayū-bushi*) 345 Jia Daqun; *The Prospect of Colored Desert* (*Mo motu*) 241 Jiang Kui 56 Jiang Wenye 159, 265 Jiang Zemin 200

*Jianglan yueji* (Jianglang Music Group) 266 *Jiangnan sizhu* (South Chinese musical genre) 279, 398 Jiangsu (Chinese Province) 195–196, 198, 202–203 Jiangwan (district of Shanghai) 179–180 Jiangxi (Chinese Province) 159 *jianzipu* (Chinese cipher notation) 156, 196 *jiaoxian* (performance technique in Chinese *pipa* music) 243 *Jikong dianli* (Confucian shrine music) 147 *jinghu* (knee fiddle in Beijing Opera) 282 *jingju* (Beijing Opera) 49, 158, 161, 238, 240, 243, 267–268, 270, 275, 282, 348–351 Jinmu 358 *jiuta* (Japanese traditional music genre) 103, 231 Joachim, Joseph 173 Joachim, Otto 173 Joachim, Walter 173 Jodjana, Raden Mas 97 Johnson, Lyndon B. 96, 130, 133 Jolivet, André 62, 68, 265 *jōruri* (Japanese traditional music genre) 231, 346 Joseon Period (Korea, 1392–1910) 250 jumping rope rhymes 342 Juszkiewicz, Anton; *Melodje ludowe litewskie* 76 *kabuki* (Japanese traditional music drama) 163 Kaf ka, Franz 424; *Die Brücke* 419–420; *Eine Kreuzung* 300 Kagel, Mauricio 74, 282; *Anagrama* 135; *Exotica* 136

*kagok* (Korean traditional music genre) 251– 253 Kainz, Josef 351 Kaiser, Georg 189 *kāk* (musical phrase in Korean court music) 408 *kakari* (vocal delivery technique in Japanese → → *gidayū-bushi*) 345, 348 *kakebuki* (introductory section in Japanese → *gagaku*) 227

*kakegoe* (calls of the drummers in Japanese → *nō* theater) 355 *kakko* (coordinating drum in Japanese → *tōgaku*) 299 Kalinnikov, Vasily 176 *Kalipay* (festival of the Philippine Hanunóo) 217 Kamakura Period (Japan, 1185–1333 CE) 307 Kambra, Karl 195, 197–198; *Higho high-hau* 197 *kami* (high pitch in Japanese → *gidayūbushi*) 348 Kandy (Ceylon / Sri Lanka) 86 Karajan, Herbert von 164 *karakia* (Maori ritual chant) 342 *karawitan* (Javanese *gamelan* composition) 34 Karkoschka, Erhard 254 *Kashin* (song from Japanese → *rōei* repertoire) 406 *kata* (sequence of body movements) 231 *kataribe* (archaic Japanese reciters) 358 *katarimono* (group of Japanese narrative musical genres) 345, 358 Kathakali Dance Group Kerala (India) 120 *kayagŭm* (Korean arched zither) 249, 251, 254, 408 *kebianxing* (variability) 272 *kecak* (Indonesian dance drama) 275 Kelemen, Milko 120 Kelly, Barbara L. 30 *kenengxing* (potentiality) 272 Kennan, George F. 133 Kennedy, John F. 130 Khan, Imdad; *Jaunpuri Todika Alap* 87–88 Khrennikov, Tikhon 64 Kido Toshirō 232 *kiganda* (→ *amadinda* xylophone music in Uganda) 363 Kim Chi-Ha 257 Kim Eun-Hye 253, 263; *Kayagum* 251–**252** Kim Inhu 414; *Ch'ŏngsanto* (The Blue Hills) 416–417 Kim Jeong-Seung 251 Kim Jin-Hi 251; *Nong Rock* 252–**253** *Kindai Nippon sakkyokuka renmei* (Modern Composers' Federation of Japan) 103 Kineya Rokeshiro 162 Kineya Sakichi IV 92

King, Martin Luther 133 Kipling, Rudyard; *Jungle Book* 55 Kitazawa Masakuni 120 Kiyose Yasuji 102–103 Kiyoshi Komatsu 102–103 *Klangfarbenmelodie* 213 Klangforum Wien 146, 326, 410 Kleinen, Günter 143 Klemperer, Otto 172–173 Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory 168 Klingsor, Tristan 86 Ko Ŭn; *Ch'immuge taehayŏ* (Silence) 414, 416–417 Kodály, Zoltán 182 Koechlin, Charles; *Deux pièces javanaises* 86; *Etudes antiques* 85; *Suite Javanaise* 86 Kokoschka, Oskar 170 *kokosui* → national essence *kokumin-shikyoku* (Japanese national tone poems) 104 *kokumin shugi* (Japanese nationalist political ideology) 129 *kokyū* (Japanese knee fiddle) 124 *komagaku* (Japanese court music genre) 128, 227 Komatsu Heigorō 102–103 Komatsu Kiyoshi 102–103 Komatsu Kōsuke 103 *kŏmun'go* (Korean arched zither) 251–253, 408 Kondō Hakujirō 102 Kondō Jō 259 *kongjian* (Chinese aesthetic concept) 272 Konoe Hidemaro 101, 172–173 Konoe Naomaro 101 Kontarsky, Alfons 120 Kontarsky, Aloys 120 Koo Bonu 252, 263, 412; *nah/fern* 254–**255** *koorero* (Maori speech) 342 Korea 25, 68, 116, 123–124, 146, 207–209, 211, 249–252, 254, 286, 363, 408, 412, 414, 417 Korean court music (*a-ak*) 36, 208, 408–409, 412, 429 Korean War 116, 123, 249 Koreanness 251 *koto* (Japanese arched zither) 96, 123–125, 163–165, 210, 225–226, 231, 260, 307

*kotoba* (vocal delivery technique in → *gidayūbushi*) 345–346, 348 *kotoba-nori* (vocal delivery technique in → *gidayū-bushi*) 345 *koto-kumiuta* (vocal suites with *koto* accompaniment) 260 Kötter, Daniel 310 Koussevitzky Foundation 130 Kramer, Jonathan 432 Kramer, Lawrence 235 Kraus, John 177 Kraus, Karl 351 Krebs, Harald 381 Kronos Quartet 252 Kubik, Gerhard 364–365, 371, 376–379 *kubing* (jaw harp of the → Hanunóo-Mangyan) 215 *kuchi-jamisen* (mnemonic syllables from *koto* practice) 226 *kudoki* (vocal delivery technique in Japanese → *heikyoku*) 345 *kudyapi* (guitar-like Philippine instrument) 217 Kuhn, Thomas; *The Structure of Scientific Revolutions* 44 *Kulturbund Deutscher Juden* → Jewish Cultural League *kundiman* (Philippine vocal music genre) 215 *kunqu* (Chinese traditional opera) 147, 162 *Künstlerhilfe der Jüdischen Gemeinde Berlin* (Association for the Support of Artists of the Jewish Community) 172–173 Kuo Chi-Yuan 265 Kuo, Tiffany M. 129, 133 *Kuomintang* (KMT, Chinese National Party) 263, 267–268 Kurth, Ernst 161, 170, 182, 188–189, 434; *Bruckner* 188; *Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts* 180, 188, 311, 432–433; *Musikpsychologie* 188; *Romantische Harmonik und ihre Krise in Wagners* Tristan 188 Kutschke, Beate 138 Kuttner, Fritz A. 188 *kyokusetsu* (vocal delivery techniques in → *heikyoku*) 345 Kyoto school 136–137, 335, 389

*La Jeune France* 68 *La Scala* (Milan) 130, 170 Lacan, Jacques 31 Lachenmann, Helmut 26, 32, 40–41, 45, 74, 136–137, 274, 278, 293, 298–299, 308–312, 322–335, 339–340, 385, 388, 394, 407, 434– 435; *Air* 152, 219, 249, 316, 318, 418–419; *Concertini* 308, 310, 322–328, 330–331, 333; *Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern* (The Little Match Girl) 139, 206, 298, **308–322**, 328–335; "Eine musikalische Handlung" 331–332; *Kontrakadenz* 434–435; *Mouvement (– vor der Erstarrung)* 328; *Pression* 225; *Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied* 255 Lahiri, Sarat 96 Lahore 86–89, 93 Lahu (Chinese minority) 307 Lai Deh-Ho 265 Lam Doming; *Insect World* 158 Lang Lang 27 Laozi 241, 257; *Daodejing* 243 Latin America 26, 28, 34, 49–50, 53, 65, 94, 121, 206 Lau, Frederick 37 *laváyi* (speech of → Hopi Native Americans) 342 Lavoie-Herz, Djane 95 *Le festival de musique contemporaine* (Sapporo) 104 League of Composers 94 League of Nations 64 Lechner, Ethan 100 Lee Ang (Li An) 264 Lee Chih-Chun 265 Lee Geon-Yong; *The Song of the Plain* 250 Lee Tai-Hsiang 265–267, 269, 271–276, 280; *Da Shenji* 267, 272–273; *Ganlanshu* (Olive Tree) 274; *Huanjing san zhang* 274; *Long Wu* 270; *Taixuyin* 272–274; *Yi tiao riguang dadao* (A Sunbeam Path into the Future) 274; *Yu – Chan – Ximen ding* 272; *Yunxing sanbian* 270–271 Lee Tzyy-Sheng 265; *Mr. DE –– ath* 282; *Wang guo shi* I 282–283 Lehmann, Harry 32 Lehtonen, Lasse 105–106 Leibowitz, René; *L'artiste et sa conscience* 65

Leonardo da Vinci 328, 331 Lerner, Murray; *From Mao to Mozart* 175 Lévinas, Emmanuel 309 Levinson, Jerrold 50 Li Ang 264 Li Delun 175, 181 Li Jue 175 Li Naicong 181 Li Tai-Bo; "Ein Flötenlied in Lau-Yang" (*Chunye Luoyang xin di*) 190 Li Weining 175, 177, 180 Li Yinghai 181; *Hanzu diaoshi hesheng* (Han Chinese Musical Modes and Harmonies) (see also Wang Zhenya) 157 Li Yuan-Chen 265, 285 Li Zhengfan 202 Liao Lin-Ni 265, 285–286; *one bird, one tree…* 286; *Time of Trees II* 286 Liaoning (Chinese Province) 195–196 Liezi 241 Ligeti, György 55, 138, 223, 241, 337, 363–367, 369–376, 379, 383–384; *Apparitions* 363; *Aventures* 135; Concerto for Piano and Orchestra **365–374**; Études pour piano 365– 366, 372; "Paradigmenwechsel der achtziger Jahre" 363, 365; *Requiem* 364–365 Lin Hwai-Min 264, 266 Lin Tao-Sheng 265 Lindberg, Paula 170 Lindsay, Martin 411–413, 418 linguistic anthropology 337 linguistics 31, 45, 71, 140–141, 160, 237, 241, 274, 334, 337–338, 340, 359, 362, 386 *líra* (Russian hurdy-gurdy) 76 List, George 342–343 listening 13, 25–26, 37, 50, 56, 82–83, 86, 133, 146, 225, 227–228, 257, 263, 278, 284, 287, 304, 308–309, 330, 332–333, 385–386, 388, 393, 418, 428–435; attitudes / modes of listening 430–431 Listenius, Nikolaus; *Musica* 54, 88, 225, 332 Liszt, Franz 27, 58 *liu bai* (white space within and between lines in calligraphy) 270, 396 Liu Te-I 277 Liu Tianhua 156–158, 166, 186, 192; studies

for → *erhu* 156

Liu Xiaobo 156, 205 Liu Xiaozu; *Ci Luan* (woodcut print, 1655) 195 *liuban* (Chinese suite form) 398 live-electronics → electronic music Living Tones 251–252 *Liyuan* (Pear Garden, Chinese Tang-Dynasty imperial music group) 285 Lloyd-Triestino 169 localism 78, 80–82, 220, 237 logic 32, 87, 135–136, 215, 220–221, 225, 234, 306, 389, 404 London Symphony Orchestra 28 Lorenz, Alfred; *Abendländische Musikgeschichte im Rhythmus der Generationen* 51 Los Angeles 93, 121, 162, 168, 170, 215 Lu Chuan-Sheng 265 Lu Chunling 157 Lu Qingshuang 196 Lu Wen-Tze 265 Lu Xun; *Forging the Sword (Zhu jian)* 229 Lu Yen 265 *lubung* (jaw harp of Taiwanese → Atayal and → Bunun indigenous peoples) 282 Luo Zhongrong 80; *She jiang cai furong* 161 *luogu dianzi* ("gong and drum patterns" in Beijing Opera percussion music) 238, 270 *lusheng* (mouth organ of the → Miao minority in southern China) 307 Lyceum Theatre (*Lanxin daxi yuan*, Shanghai) 173, 176–178 Lyotard, Jean-François 44–45, 47 *ma* (Japanese aesthetic concept) 260–261, 295 Ma Shui-Long 265 Ma Sicong 178, 186 Ma Si-Hon (Ma Sihong) 178 Ma, Yo Yo 241 Macartney, George 196–197 Maceda, José 35, 56, 75, 78, 120, 206, 211, 217–223, 225, 229, 233–235, 396; *Ading* 217; *Cassettes* 100 217; *Kubing* 215; *Pagsamba* 217, **218**; *Suling, Suling* **222**–223; *Udlot-Udlot* **220**–221; *Ugnayan* 217 Mack, Dieter 146 Maderna, Bruno 118, 120, 170 Madras (Chennai) 86, 88, 97–98, 121

Maehder, Jürgen 198 Magellan, Ferdinand 215 Mahabalipuram 88 Mahler, Gustav 25, 53, 58, 84, 173, 182, 235, 255, 327, 333, 370, 384; *Das Lied von der Erde* 200; Symphony no. 2 132 mainstream 47, 49, 78, 136, 185, 237, 299 Malaysia 357 Manchuria 101, 162, 172, 196 Mandarin (*putonghua*) 161, 349 Mandelstam, Ossip 233; "Sluh chutkij parus naprjagaet" (Ears stretch sensitive sails) 304 *Man'yōshū* ("Collection of 10,000 Leaves") 110, 299 Mao Zedong 81, 203, 274 Maoism 116, 157, 182, 236–237 Maori 342–343 *maqām* (Arab mode) 143, 298 Marcuse, Herbert 32; "The Individual in the Great Society" 130 Marett, Allan 292, 306 marginalization 13, 29, 61, 63, 268 Margolinski, Henry 173, 176–177 Martin, Agnes 259 Maruyama Masao 113, 234 Marx, Adolf Bernhard 311 Marx, Karl 63 Marxism 31, 58, 68 *mat* (Korean aesthetic concept) 209 Matsudaira Yoritsune 92, 102, 129, 354; *Bugaku* 127; *Drei Arien nach Gedichten aus der "Geschichte vom Prinzen Genji"* 163; *Genji Monogatari* 163; *Pastorale* 104; *Saibara ni yoru Metamorfōzu* 164; Sonatine for Flute and Piano 164; *Theme and Variations for Piano and Orchestra* 163; *U-Mai* 163 May Fourth Movement (*Xin wenhua yundong* [New Culture Movement]) 156, 186 Mayer, Hans 65 Mayuzumi Toshirō 75, 117–118, 122, 261; *Bacchanale* 118, 127; *Bugaku* 127–**128**, 134; *Bunraku* 127; *Geka (Pratidesana)* (Public Confession) 127; *Mandala Symphony* 127; *Nirvana Symphony* (Nehan kokyokyoku) 126–127; *Ochitaru tennyo* 101;

*Samsara* (Reincarnation) 127; *Sange* (Scattering) 127; *Showa tenpyōraku* 129 *mbira* (African lamellophone) 363 McClary, Susan 388 McDonaldization 34 McKeich, Hamish 408 McLuhan, Marshall 69–70; *The Gutenberg Galaxy* 69; *The Medium Is the Message* 69; *Understanding Media* 69; *War and Peace in the Global Village* 69 McPhee, Colin 74, 118, 120 medieval music 91, 134, 215, 225, 307 meditation 104, 132, 272, 275, 355 Mei Lanfang 275 Mei, Girolamo 359 Meiji era / Period / restauration (Japan, 1868–1911) 101, 113, 125–126, 163–164, 212, 261, 290 Melanesia 363 Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix; Violin Concerto 175, 178 Meng Haoran; "Am frühen Frühlingstage" (*Chun xiao*) 190–191, 193 Menuhin, Yehudi 121 Menzel, Stefan 101, 104 Mersch, Dieter 309 Messiaen, Olivier 69, 71, 76, 125, 265, 366; *Sept Haïkaï* 68, 294; *Turangalîla Symphony* 68 metaphor theory 392 metaphorical exemplification 388, 390 metric dissonance 375, 380–384 Meyer, Andreas 61, 86, 126 Meyer, Leonard B. 330 Meyer-Eppler, Werner 71 Miao (Chinese minority) 243, 307 micrology 47 microtonality 80, 95, 204, 221, 223, 226, 294, 296, 326, 354, 400, 406 migration 12, 31, 36, 40–41, 58, 67, 135, 172, 207, 211, 249, 286 Miki Minoru 75, 259 militarism 58, 126, 335 military music 155 Mills College 118 *Minge caiji yundong* (Folk Song Collection Movement) 266

minimalism 129, 138, 259, 272–274 *minzoku shugi* ("cultural tradition") 129 *minzuxing* (national character) 248 Mishima Yukio 129; *Ai no kawaki* (Thirst for Love) 402 Mitsubishi corporation 101 Mitsukuri Shūkichi 83–84, 101–102, 110, 112–113, 164; *Bashō kikōshū* 103, 105–108; *Sinfonietta* [*Shōkōkyōkyoku*] 104; Sonata for Violin and Piano 106 Mittler, Barbara 40, 165, 273 Miura Atsushi 84, 104 Miyagi Mamoru 120 Miyagi Michio 125, 164, 166; *Etenraku Variations* 101 *miyakobushi* (Japanese scale / mode) 92, 102, 105–106, 110, 124–125, 357 Miyata Mayumi 146, 289, 295, 298, 312 Mo Wuping 348 model works (*yangbanxi*) 158, 161, 175, 223, 267 modernism (see also postmodernism) 46, 49, 55, 58, 61, 63, 65, 83, 89, 110, 129, 138, 156, 159–161, 167, 182–183, 186–187, 189, 194, 200, 206, 223, 233, 237, 241, 251, 264–265, 281, 341; anti-modernism 55, 61; capitalist modernism 116; ultramodernism 93, 122 modernity 11, 30–31, 35–36, 51, 55–57, 61–62, 64–65, 67, 69, 74, 80, 92, 101, 112–113, 126–127, 129, 155–156, 159, 166, 168, 173, 175, 182–184, 194, 206, 219, 234, 261, 299, 433; alternative modernities 35, 57; multiple modernities 11, 51, 57, 62, 113, 156, 234; ref lexive modernity 35; Second Modernity 35 modernization 61, 101, 121, 147, 156, 158, 163, 207, 231, 263 modality 59, 61, 88, 92, 100, 102, 105–106, 110, 113, 125, 127, 143, 157, 161, 163–164, 240, 259, 300; polymodality 92–93, 265 Moffat, Julie 140 Moldenhauer, Hans 168 *Molihua* (Jasmine Flower) (see also *Xianhua*) 194–198, 200, 202–205 *mono no aware* (Japanese aesthetic concept) 292, 335 monotonous recitation 343

Moroi Makoto 120 Moroi Saburō 35, 84, 103, 121, 155 *mŏt* (Korean aesthetic concept) 209 mother chord 296, 298, 308 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 175, 177–178, 270, 382–383; *Don Giovanni* 366, 370; *Eine kleine Nachtmusik* (Serenade for Strings in G major K. 525) 210; Symphony in G minor K. 550 210 multiculturalism 37–38, 43, 98, 130, 251 multiple modernities → modernity Mundry, Isabel 385, 388–392; *Ich und Du* 388–**391** Murata Takeo 120 music historiography 47–48, 50–51, 57–59, 62, 67, 82, 115, 156, 194, 211 music history 11, 13, 34, 39, 51, 53–54, 57–58, 60, 62, 67–68, 78, 112–114, 117–118, 122, 135–136, 167, 188, 203, 225, 234, 236, 249, 337, 363, 376, 381, 384 music journalism 12, 33, 206 music psychology 370, 375, 392, 435 music theory 11, 48, 67, 95, 97, 116, 124, 139, 143, 168–169, 174, 180, 188, 208, 275, 309–310, 330, 332, 338, 375, 393, 432 *musica coelestis* 332 *musica mundana* 332 *musica theorica* 225 musical meaning 195, 342, 361, 385, 391 musicking 55 musicology 11–12, 29, 49–51, 56, 59–61, 67, 74, 97, 114, 331, 337, 342 *musique concrète* 127, 217, 272 *musique concrète instrumentale* 278, 332, 340 myth criticism 289, 293, 298, 303–305 myth negation 303 myth reception 40, 293 mythologization 40, 137, 139, 299 **N**abokov, Nicholas 118, 121 *nagaji* (vocal delivery technique in Japanese

→ *gidayū-bushi*) 348 *nagauta* (Japanese musical genre) 162–163, 231 Nakayama Shinpei 103 *nanguan* (South Chinese and Taiwanese musical genre) 268, 275, 279, 282

*Nanjing guoli yinyue yuan* (National Music School Nanjing) 180 Nantou (Taiwanese district) 277 Nara Period (Japan, 645–794 CE) 299 narrativity 13, 39, 47–48, 50, 57–60, 114, 142, 165, 231, 235–238, 243, 252, 255, 258, 262–263, 309–310, 314, 331–333, 338, 340, 342, 345–346, 348, 354, 358, 390, 402, 417–418, 422, 424, 428 National Academy of the Arts (*Guoli yishu zhuanke xuexiao*) (Taipei) 270 national character 32, 77, 248 National Concert Hall (Taipei) 112, 268, 334, 404 National Cultural Center (Taipei) 267 national essence (Chin. *guocui*, Jap. *kokosui*) 157 National Institute of the Arts (*Guoli yishu xueyuan*) (Taipei) 267, 278, 282 national schools 156, 201 National Socialism 51–52, 75, 112, 114–115, 160, 167, 169, 187 National Taiwan Normal University (*Guoli Shifan Daxue*) 266, 277 National Taiwan University of the Arts (*Guoli Taiwan yishu daxue*) 270 National Theater (Taipei) 129, 268 National Theater Tokyo 129 National Vocational School for Music (*Guoli yinyue zhuanke xuexiao*) 179 nationalism (see also neo-nationalism) 30– 32, 35, 38–40, 52, 58–59, 63–68, 75, 77, 81–83, 86, 94, 101–102, 105, 110, 112, 116, 124, 126–129, 134, 137, 155–156, 158, 162– 163, 186–187, 205, 219–220, 223, 231–234, 237, 248–251, 254, 257, 259, 261, 269, 292, 299, 307, 335, 396 Nattiez, Jean-Jacques 235 natural assignment 327, 435 Naxi (Chinese minority) 246, 248 Nelson, Steven 306 *Nennwert* (nominal value) 366 neoclassicism 32, 65, 75, 78, 100, 102, 118, 127, 163–164, 170 neo-nationalism (see also nationalism) 31, 38, 59, 67, 77, 127, 129, 134, 237 neotonality 59, 397

*netori* (introductory section in Japanese → *gagaku*) 227, 290, 406 *Neue Musikgesellschaf t* (Berlin) 94 New Age 136 New Aspect Cultural and Educational Foundation (*Xin xiang wenjiao jijinhui*) 275 New Complexity 54 New Culture Movement → May Fourth Movement New Delhi 86 New Environment of Asian Music (*Yazhou yinyue de xin huanjing*) 267 New Life Movement (*Xin shenghuo yundong*) 187 New Music Society of California 93–94 New Musicology 51 New Symphony Orchestra (*Shin kōkyō gakudan*) 101, 173 New York Musicological Society 95 New York Philharmonic 118, 120, 127 New York Times 117 NHK (*Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai*) Orchestra 173 *nianbai* (Beijing Opera vocal delivery technique) 350 Nietzsche, Friedrich 257 Nigg, Serge 65 *Nihon gendai sakkyokuka renmei* (Federation of Contemporary Japanese Composers) 103 *Nihon wo mamoru kokumin kaigi* (National Conference for the Defense of Japan) 129 *nihonjinron* (Japanese discourses) 128 Ningxia (Chinese Autonomous Region) 195– 196 *Nippon kaigi* (Japan Conference) 129 *Nishang yuyi qu* (Song of the Rainbow Skirt and Plumage) 285 Nishi Yoko 231 Nishida Kitarō 335, 389–390, 397, 402; *Bashō* (Place) 388, 404; *Watashi to nanji* (I and You) 388 Nishimura Akira 75, 259 Nishitani Keiji 137, 335 *nō* theater (Japanese traditional drama) 139, 142, 163, 260, 275, 296, 298, 354–355, 359 Nobel Peace Prize 205 noble savage 30, 77

noise 140, 149, 223, 225, 241, 243, 261, 263, 273, 276, 278, 285, 316, 319, 332, 335, 386, 390, 398, 422, 424 Nomura Koichi 120 Nomura Yoshio 120 *nonghyŏn* (vibrato technique in Korean traditional music) 252, 254 Nono, Luigi; *Il canto sospeso* 339; *Intolleranza* 1960 134 Nooteboom, Cees 149 North Korea 249–250, 414 notation 28, 48, 54–56, 76, 149, 156–157, 166, 196, 198, 200, 215, 221–223, 225, 227, 229, 231, 233, 241, 251, 253, 257, 273, 275, 280, 290, 292, 294, 299, 306–307, 326, 339–342, 347–349, 352–353, 359, 361–362, 371, 382, 396, 401, 408, 413, 430 Nozawa Kizaemon 347 Nuss, Stephen 127 Nyangumata (aboriginal Australians) 342

**Ō** no Yasumaro; *Kojiki* 358 *O ssei sseil* (*Remeicuo*; dance song of the → Naxi minority in China, see also *Worere*) 248 object-oriented assignment 433, 435 Oceania 28, 72 October Revolution 76, 172 *oibuki* (canonic introductory section in Japanese → *gagaku*) 227 Oida Kōkichi 102 Oki Masao 103; *Yoru no meisō* (Evening Meditation) 104 *Okina* 354 Okinawa (southern Japanese island) 358 Oliveros, Pauline 272 *omele* (rhythmic formula in African music) 379 *omeribuki* (canonic structures in → *gagaku*) 227 *omoro* (traditional musical-poetic genre of → Okinawa) 358 *Ongaku hyōron* (Music Review) 103 *Ongaku konkuuru* (Music Competition) 104 *ongiyong* (Philippine duct f lute) 219 *ongo* (horns of Central African → Banda Linda) 138, 363

opera (see also Chinese opera, *chuanju*, *gezaixi*, *jingju*, *kunqu*) 25, 28, 33, 55, 58, 72, 80, 83, 86, 88, 158, 163, 168, 170, 185, 189, 194, 197–198, 200, 203, 238, 300, 310, 320, 331, 333, 338–340, 345, 350, 360, 375 Olympic Games 64, 71 (Munich 1972), 205 (Beijing 2008) oral tradition 203, 282, 307, 341, 349 orality (see also aurality) 54, 56, 136, 156, 194, 203, 211, 229, 282–284, 307, 338, 341, 345–346, 349, 353, 361, 396, 417 organology 147, 149, 153, 226, 298, 305, 312, 357, 400, 418 orientalism 30, 37, 61, 77, 86, 88–89, 93, 113, 198, 200, 208 Ormandy, Eugene 175 Osterhammel, Jürgen 48 Other / otherness 32, 55, 61–62, 75, 136–137, 139, 206–207, 309, 328, 335, 389 *ōtsuzumi* (drum in Japanese *nō* theater) 260, 296 Oyama, Susan 130 Ozawa Seiji 118 *p'ansori* (Korean traditional narrative genre) 275, 398 Paci, Mario 173, 176, 178–179, 186 Pacific War 126, 162, 172–173 Pacun, David 110 *pakkung / balingbing* (Philippine buzzers) 219,

222 *palakpak* (Philippine rattle) 219 Palau (Micronesia) 343 Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi di 30, 55, 180 Pan American Association of Composers (PAAC) 94–95 Pan Hwang-Long 265, 267, 269, 277; Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra 280; *East and West* (*Dong nan xi bei*) 121, 123–124, 280, 386; *Erleuchtung* (*Qishilu* [Illumination]) 278; *Kausalnexus* (*Yinguo muguan sichongzou* [Causal Nexus]) 278;

*Migong daoyaoyou* 278, 280; *Shi – Dao – Ru* 279; String Quartet no. 2 278; String Quartet no. 3 278–**279**; *Taiwan fengjing hua* 279; *Transformation* (*Hudie meng* [Butterf ly Dream]) 278; *Ursache und* 

Effect]) 278; *Wandlungsphasen* (*Wu xing sheng ke*) 278; *Wuqing, qingjing, yijing* 137, 278, 280; *yin-yang* cycle 278 Pan Shyh-Ji; Quartet 282; *Raining Night* 282 Pang Xianpin 181 Paolini, Luigi Gualtiero 198 parallel cultures 38–39 Parish of the Holy Sacrifice 219 Park Chung-Hee 250 *parlando* 345 Partch, Harry 74, 281 Pasler, Jann 86–88 Pasolini, Pier Paolo 233 *passagi* 360 pentatonic Romanticism (see also Romanticism) 40, 186, 200–201 pentatonicism 40, 92, 96, 102, 127, 157–159, 161, 164, 175, 186–187, 200, 215, 238, 240, 266, 312, 320, 357, 398, 400 performance practice 125, 203, 231, 233–234, 252–253, 261, 264, 269, 276, 292, 298, 303–304, 307, 310, 312, 342, 351–353, 361, 382, 385, 430, 437 performative listening 56, 430 performativity 48, 56, 153, 229, 231, 241, 270, 282, 285, 305, 338, 341, 353, 360, 362, 430 Peri, Jacopo 359–360, 362; *Le musiche, sopra l'Euridice* 359 periodicity 369–372, 375, 377–381, 384 Peru 134 *pétit récits* (Lyotard) 47 petschinka (Petschinka, Eberhard) 406; *MISHIMA-Skizzen* 402 Philadelphia Orchestra 175 Philharmonic Society Tokyo 101 Philippines 119, 123, 215, 217, 219, 221, 234 phoenix 290, 332, 398 *Phonogramm-Archiv* (Berlin) 97, 100 phonograph 87 Picard, François 156 Picken, Laurence E. 292, 306 Pinder, Wilhelm 58 *pipa* (Chinese lute) 149, 186, 196, 206, 225, 237, 240–241, 243, 276, 280, 285, 385, 398, 418 Pironkoff, Simeon 153, 399, 404, 418; *Fall/ Wende* 149, **151**–152

*Wirkung* (*Yinguo sanzhongzou* [Cause and

Pisa, Leonardo of 328 pluralism 58, 71, 236 *poeticus musicus* 54 polyculturality 32 polymeter 337, 363, 365–366, 370, 375–376, 380, 382–384, 410, 430 polyphonic novel 428 polyphony 30, 48, 58, 70, 100, 142–143, 152, 157, 180, 198, 237, 274, 309, 327, 341, 355, 366, 368–369, 375, 380, 382–383, 385, 393–395, 404, 423, 428–429, 432–437 polyrhythm 95, 100, 303, 363, 365–366, 368, 370, 375, 380 Pople, Anthony; *Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music* (see also Cook, Nicholas) 49 popular music / pop music 28, 32, 34, 37, 43, 45, 49, 52, 58–60, 62–63, 65, 67, 77, 92, 102, 130, 133, 157, 160, 172, 180, 202–203, 228, 234, 237, 252–253, 263, 267–269, 274–275, 279, 281, 292–293, 357, 376–377, 386, 416, 419 popular music studies 12 popularization 237, 281 postcolonialism 31, 38–39, 51, 53, 55, 57–58, 61, 67, 72, 137, 139, 167, 204, 208, 220, 228, 234, 364 postmodernism (see also modernism) 44, 47, 140, 206, 234 post-tonality 188, 221, 392, 434 postwar period / history 32, 35, 57, 60, 64–66, 68, 71–72, 82, 112, 114, 116–117, 122, 126, 129, 135–136, 162–164, 217, 221, 263–264, 334, 340, 354 Pousseur, Henri 75 pragmatism 137–138, 174 Prague manifesto 64–65, 116, 118 prescriptive notation 222, 233, 361 presence 56, 257, 333, 338, 340, 342, 348, 353–354, 360, 362 Prey, Hermann 120 Princeton University 116 Pringsheim, Klaus 106, 164 *Prometeo* (Japanese composers' group) 102 Prunières, Henri 104, 112 Prüwer, Julius 168 psychoanalysis 31, 353

Puccini, Giacomo 75, 203–204; *Turandot* 194– 195, 197–198, **200** pulse 98, 217, 276, 328, 366, 368–372, 375, 377–380, 382–383, 390, 406 Punjab (Indian state) 86

*qawwali* (Indian and Pakistani vocal music genre) 34 Qian Decang; *Zhui bai qiu* (see also Wang Xieru) 195, 202 Qianlong (Chinese emperor) 195 *qin* (Chinese zither) 36, 225, 243, 280, 437 Qin Wenchen 263; He-Yi 238, 240–241, 396 Qin Xixuan 169–170, 180–181 Qing (Chinese dynasty) 195 Qinghai (Chinese Province) 182 *qiyun* (Chinese aesthetic concept) 280 Qu Qiubai 156 Qu Xiaosong 82, 276, 348; *Mong Dong* 80 Qu Xixian 181 Qu Yuan 45; *Jiu ge* (Nine Songs) 80 Quezon City 215, 219 Qureshi, Regula Burckhardt 49

**r**ace 11, 37, 64, 67, 69, 77–78, 88, 94–95, 130, 228 *rāga* (Indian mode) 88–89, 96, 231 *Rāgamālika, Ramalinga swamis arulpa* 89 Rajasthan (Indian state) 86 *Rákóczi March* 77 Rameau, Jean-Philippe; *Les Indes galantes* 86 Ranta, Michael 274 Rao, Nancy Yunhwa 97 Rapp, Sabine 177 Rasalîla 146 Rattle, Simon 25, 27, 219 Ratz, Erwin 208 Ravel, Maurice; *Histoires naturelles* 92; *Shéhérazade* (song cycle) 86; *Trois poèmes de Mallarmé* 85 Reber, Heinz 153; *Music for Sheng* 147–148 recitation 27, 47, 94, 96, 104, 127, 159, 170, 177, 226, 233, 299, 304, 343, 345–348, 353–354, 358–361, 406, 415, 422–423 recitative 159, 343, 345, 359–360, 422 recognition 42–43, 46, 235; struggle for recognition 43, 46

ref lexivity 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 35, 37, 39, 41, 43, 45 Reich, Steve 52, 129, 137–138, 364; *Drumming* 379 *Reichskristallnacht* pogrom 169 relational musicology 49–50 relativism 48, 59, 61, 67, 100, 121 Renaissance 360 *Renouveau catholique* 68 *res facta* 54–55 Reynolds, Roger 270, 272 Ricœur, Paul 42–43 Riemann, Hugo 58–59, 105, 188, 208, 221; *Folkloristische Tonalitätstudien* 59; *Handbuch der Musikgeschichte* 59 Rihm, Wolfgang; *Jakob Lenz* 33 Riley, Terry 129, 138 Rimski-Korsakov, Nikolai 76 *rin* (Japanese temple bell) 141, 232, 299, 318–319, 438 ring modulation 294 ritual 29, 34, 40, 45, 53, 77, 80, 125, 129, 137, 147, 217, 219, 221, 237, 258, 272, 275–276, 294, 298–299, 334, 342, 345, 348, 353–354, 357, 413, 419 Robertson, Roland 34, 75 Rockefeller Foundation 118, 123, 132, 270 *rōei* (Japanese traditional vocal genre) 110, 292, 406 Roemahlaiselan, A. F. 97 Roerich, Nicholas 77 Romanticism (see also pentatonic Romanticism) 237 Rose, Michael 85, 198 *rōshō* (category of vocal delivery in traditional Japanese music) 345–346, 348, 354–355 Rothbrust, Dirk 412 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 156; *Essai sur l'origine des langues* 337 Roussel, Albert 69, 104, 112 rowing song 158, 197 Roy, R.L. 120 Royal Ballet (UK) 120 Royal Dancers of Thailand 120 *rozhók* (Russian shawm) 76

*ruan* (*daruan, zhongruan*) (Chinese mandolins) 149, 243, 398, 418 Rudhyar, Dane 68, 73–74, 87, 93–95, 249 Ruppel, Karl H. 120 *ryūteki* (Japanese transverse bamboo f lute) 227, 291, 294–295, 335 **S**aager, P. 168 *sabi* (Japanese aesthetic concept) 261, 292 Sabiron, Georges 91 Sachsenhausen (concentration camp) 169, 194 *saenghwang* (Korean mouth organ) 408 *Saeya, saeya, pahrang saeya* (Bird, bird, blue bird) 229, 250, 412 *saibara* (Japanese traditional vocal genre) 164, 292 Said, Edward 39 Saitō Hideo 102 Sakka Keisei 120 Sakuma Shōzan 155 Salihara Festival Jakarta 412, 418 Sambamoorthy, Pichu 97 Samson, Jim 26, 37 Samuels, Robert 235 *San'nin no kai* (Group of Three) 126–127 Sánchez-Chiong, Jorge 153; *Teatro Shanghai – Bühnenmusik* **148**–149 Sang Tong 180–184, 187; *Yejing* (Night Scenery) 161, 182–**183**; *Zai na yaoyuan de difang* (In the Land, Far, Far Away) 161, 182, **184** *Sangnyŏngsan* (piece from the → *Yŏngsan hoesang* suite of the → Korean court music repertoire) 408–**409**, 412, 429 Sanguineti, Edoardo 130 *sangzi* (Beijing Opera voice) 348 *sanjo* (Korean musical genre) 139, 231, 251 *sanjo ajaeng* (Korean arched zither) 139 *sanjū* (vocal delivery technique in Japanese → *heikyoku*) 231–232, 345 *sankyoku* (Japanese musical genre) 103, 123–125 Sanskrit 89, 226, 354 Santos, Ramon P. 217 Saram, Rohan de 134 Sarduy, Severo; *De donde son los cantantes?*  (Where do the singers come from?) 149

Sarjono, Agus R. 422, 424; *Suatu Cerita dari Negeri Angin* (A Story from the Country of Hot Air) 418–419 Sartre, Jean-Paul 115 Satō Haruo 110 Satoh Somei 259 Satsuma Jirohachi 92 *sawari* (timbre / aesthetic concept in Japanese traditional music) 260–261, 295, 346 Scelsi, Giacinto 68, 74, 143, 223, 325, 353; *Canti del Capricorno* 341, 354, 437 Schaeffner, André 75 Schäfer, Christine 353 Scherchen, Hermann 65, 94 Schering, Arnold 327 Schiller, Friedrich; *An die Freude* (*Ode To Joy*) 204 Schlegel, Friedrich 50 Schloß, Julius 167, 182, 194 Schnabel, Artur 178 Schnebel, Dieter 71, 338–340, 353; *Glossolalie 61* 135, 340; *glossolalie* 135, 340 Schnittke, Alfred; Symphony no. 1 134 Schoenberg, Arnold 33, 36, 59–60, 84, 93, 97, 160, 162, 167, 182, 187–188, 208, 223, 346, 348, 362, 434; *A Survivor from Warsaw*  op. 46 65; *Erwartung* op. 17 340; Five Orchestral Pieces op. 16 132; *Harmonielehre*  (Theory of Harmony) 180, 432–433; *Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte* op. 41 170; *Pierrot lunaire* op. 21 85, 94, 341, 343, 351–**352**, 353, 361; *Six Little Piano Pieces* op. 19 85, 171; *Three Piano Pieces* op. 11 85 Schola Cantorum (Paris) 83 school songs (Jap. *shōka*, Chin. *xuetangge*) 155–156 Schubert, Franz 177, 180, 208, 270; *Die Krähe* 388; *Winterreise* 388 Schuh, Willi 120 Schumann, Robert 208, 380–383 Schütz, Alfred 56 Schwanitz, Dietrich; *Alles, was man wissen muß* 26 Sciarrino, Salvatore 353, 362; *Luci mie traditrici* 360–**361** *scioltezza* 360 Scriabin, Alexander 68, 95, 176, 182, 366

scripturality 48, 50, 53–55 *se* (Chinese ancient arched zither) 233 Second World War 32, 35, 72, 155, 157, 164, 335, 340 Seefehlner, Egon 120 Segall, Fritz 172–173 Seidel-Margolinski, Irene 176 self-referentiality 135, 309–310, 322 semantics 29, 114, 135, 235–236, 263, 332, 339, 361, 386, 389, 397, 404, 418, 423 semiotics 134, 138, 235, 338, 392 Senghaas, Dieter 32 *senritsukei* (vocal delivery techniques in Japanese → *gidayū-bushi*) 345 Seoul 249, 414 *se-piri* (Korean double-reed instrument) 253 serial music 32–33, 49, 60–61, 66, 71–72, 75–76, 114–118, 120–121, 123, 127–128, 133, 135–136, 161, 163–164, 211, 217, 221, 250, 275, 339, 353, 433–434 Shaanxi (Chinese Province) 158, 195–196 Shade, Nancy 97, 140 Shakespeare, William; *The Tempest* 237 *shakuhachi* (Japanese vertical f lute) 96, 122–124, 142, 166, 206, 210, 212, 404, 406, 417 shamanism 139, 210, 221, 233, 238, 300, 355, 357 *shamisen* (Japanese long-necked lute) 92, 96, 124, 162–163, 210, 225–227, 231–232, 260–261, 346–347, 354–355; *futozao shamisen* 346–347; *sero shamisen* 92; *teion shamisen* 92 *shan'ge* (Chinese mountain songs) 80, 348, 350 Shandong (Chinese Province) 195–196 Shang (Chinese dynasty) 147, 290 Shanghai Conservatory 160, 166, 175, 179, 223 Shanghai Municipal (Symphony) Orchestra (SMO) 172–180, 186–187 Shanghai Opera House 203 Shanghai Philharmonic Society 173 Shanghai Public Band 173 Shanghai Symphony Orchestra (SSO) 173 Shanghai 104, 147–149, 159–162, 166–170, 172–184, 186–189, 191–192, 194–196, 203, 223, 246, 279

Shankar, Ravi 45 Shanxi (Chinese Province) 195–196 Shen Bing-Kuang 265 Shen Chin-Tang 265 *Shen Qi Mi Pu* 437 Shen Zhibai 185 *sheng* (Chinese mouth organ) 135, 141, 147– 153, 195, 241, 243, 265–266, 270, 277–278, 282–283, 286–287, 290, 293, 307, 332, 385, 398–401, 413, 417, 431 Shi Kelong 241 Shi Wei-Liang 265–266 *shi yin* (real, continuous sounds) 272 Shi Yongkang 166; *Huanghe de gushi* (The Story of the Yellow Crane) 165 Shiba Sukehiro 120 *shidiao* (Chinese folk song type) 196 *shifan luogu* (patterns in Chinese percussion music) 80 Shih Pei-Yu 265 *Shijing* (Book of Songs) 241 Shim Kunsu 254, 263, 412; *cello/hören* **256**– 257; *Luf trand* 257–**258**; "Richtungslosigkeit oder Denken der unbegrenzten Gegenwart" 257; *Sense of Measure* 259 *Shimian maifu* (Ambush from Ten Sides; piece of the → *pipa* repertoire) 276 Shimoyama Hifumi; *Breath* 354, **356–357**; *Monolog* 354–355 *Shin Nihon ongaku* (New Japanese Music) 164 *Shin ongaku ha* (New Music Group) 102 *Shin ongaku renmei* (New Music Federation) 101, 104 *shinawi* (Korean musical genre) 250, 254 *shinkō* (Japanese cultural movement / period) 101–104, 163–164 *Shinkō sakkyokuka renmei* (Federation of Innovative Composers) 101–102, 104, 163–164 *shinkyoku* (pieces of the → *koto* repertoire) 163–164 Shinohara Makoto 259 *Shinsen shōteki fu* 306 Shioiri Kamesuke 102 *shirakoe* (vocal delivery technique in Japanese → *heikyoku*) 345

*shō* (Japanese mouth organ) 40, 103, 123, 125, 139, 146–147, 153, 163–164, 206, 213, 227, 232, 259–260, 286, 289–301, 303–320, 322–323, 325, 327–333, 335, 404–407 *shōka* → school songs *shoko* (gong in Japanese → *gagaku*) 299 *shōmyō* (Japanese traditional Buddhist chant) 294, 345, 354, 359, 406 Shona (Zimbabwe native ethnic group) 363 Shostakovich, Dmitri 114, 240; Symphonies 9 to 13 65 Shreff ler, Anne C. 114–116, 118 *Shuang die cui* (Chinese melody) 195 Siagian, Toenggoel 418–419 Sibelius, Jean 30 Sichuan (Chinese Province) 80, 195–196, 240 Sichuan Opera → *chuanju* signification 309, 361, 388, 392 *sijo* (Korean traditional vocal music genre) 412–414 silence 78, 135, 137, 147, 212, 226, 255, 257–260, 263, 272, 286, 295, 300, 303, 308–309, 322, 332, 386, 414, 416–417, 425 *Sili Shanghai yinyue yuan* (Shanghai Private Music School) 180 silk and bamboo music (*sizhuyue*) 147, 158, 196, 279, 398, 429 Silk Road Ensemble 241 *sillabazione scivolata* 360–362 simplicity 147, 237, 240, 354 Singer, Gregory (Grisha) 187 Singh, Thakur J. 120 singing 59, 80, 110, 158–159, 238, 243, 248, 251, 274, 337–339, 342–343, 345, 348, 350–351, 353–354, 360, 380, 411 Sino-Japanese War, Second 172 *sitar* (Indian plucked long-necked lute) 96 *sixte ajoutée* 200 Slavina-Brown 177, 192 Sloutsky, Alexander 173 social history 47, 51 socialist realism 65, 116, 250 *Société Musicale Indépendante* 83, 86, 93 *Société National de Musique* 83 Society for Chinese Folk Music Research (*Zhongguo minzu yinyue yanjiushe*) 266 Society for Ethnomusicology 219

Society for Music Theory (SMT) 11 Society for the Improvement of National Music → *Guoyue gaijinshe* solmisation 198 Song (Chinese dynasty) 56, 189 songwriter / songwriting 180, 267, 274–275 sound cadence → *yinxiang zhongzhishi* sound families 323, 328, 434–435 sound structure 139, 221, 269, 411, 430 sound types 311, 322, 394, 407 sound typology 278, 385, 434 Southeast Asia → Asia Soviet Union 95, 116 Spahlinger, Mathias; *passage/paysage* 149 Spanjaard, Ed 410 Sparrer, Walter-Wolfgang 207–208, 211, 308 spectral analysis 325–327, 405 Speelman, Michel 169 Spengler, Oswald; *Der Untergang des Abendlandes* (The Decline of the West) 51, 73 spirituality 40–41, 68, 86, 94, 137, 143, 201, 225, 234, 237, 264, 280, 337, 350, 383 Spittel, Helmut 173 Spivacke, Harold 130 split sound (*Spaltklang*) 310, 324, 327 Spoliansky, Alexander 173 *Sprachkomposition* 133, 135, 343, 351–353 *Sprechgesang* 141, 351, 353 *Sprechstimme* 343, 351–353 *sprezzatura* 360 Spring and Autumn Period (China, 722–481 BCE) 276 *ssigimsae* (melodic variation in Korean traditional music) 251, 253 St. John's University (Shanghai) 188 Stäbler, Gerhard 299–301, 412; *Cassandra-Complex* 300; *]LIFE[* 300–**301**; *Palast des Schweigens* 300 standardization 12, 33–34, 63, 75, 141, 156–158, 225, 259, 261, 338 Staunton, George Leonhard 196 Steiner, Adolf 173 Steiner, Karl 167, 182, 194, 295 Steiner, Rudolf 295 stereotype 13, 27, 34, 37, 39–40, 46, 58, 75, 88, 100, 200, 208, 233, 237, 252–253, 287, 362 Sterev, Krassimir 152

Stern, Isaac 120, 175 Stiedry-Wagner, Erika 353 Stockhausen, Karlheinz 36, 68–75, 125, 129, 134–136, 140, 170, 274, 430, 434; *Der Jahreslauf* 125, 294; *Dienstag aus Licht* 294; *Gruppen* 366, 383; *Hymnen* 33, 70, 135; *Kreuzspiel* 33; *Licht* 125; *Telemusik* 33, 70–71, 135, 294 Stokes, Martin 43 strange multiplicity 39 stratification 243, 248, 314, 324, 383, 385, 393–396, 402, 408, 412–413 Straus, Joseph N. 62 Strauß, Johann 178 Strauss, Richard 101, 163, 176, 180 Stravinsky, Igor 30, 32, 59–61, 65–67, 75–78, 80, 82–83, 87, 92–93, 104, 114–115, 160, 182, 187, 384; *An Autobiography* 76; *Danse Sacrale* 77; *L'Histoire du Soldat* 168; *Petrushka* 76; *Symphony in Three Movements* 65–66; *The Firebird* 76; *The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps)* 76, 78; *Trois poésies de la lyrique japonaise (Three Japanese Lyrics)* 85, 89, 92 streaming / stream segregation → auditory streaming structural semantics 418 structural sound (*Strukturklang*) 310, 324, 327, 394, 433–434 Stuckenschmidt, Hans Heinz 120–121 Stuttgart Academy of Music 254 Su Dong-Bo (Su Shi) 190–191; "Frühlingsnacht" (*Chun xiao*) 190 Subotnick, Morton 133 Sudan 376–377 Sugawara Meirō 102 Sugawara no Michizane 155 *Suigyū* (Water Buffalo; Japanese music group) 357 *Sujech'ŏn* 208 *suling* (Southeast Asian bamboo f lute) 222– 223 super instrument 300 SuperCollider 152 superstar syndrome 37 Suppan, Wolfgang 153, 404; *Studie II* **152**

*surbahār* (Indian plucked long-necked lute) 87–88 Suzuki Daisetz Teitaro 136, 335 Suzuki Fumio 102 Suzuki Kayoko 165 Suzuki Shigetaka 35 *Suzuki* (piece of the Japanese → *heikyoku* repertoire) 345–**346** Swamigal, Ramalinga (Swamy) 89 synthesis 46, 67, 70, 74, 126, 129, 142, 159, 163, 185–187, 213, 248–249, 263, 270, 282, 286, 407; synthesis by nothing 255 *tabla* (Indian twin hand drums) 89 *taegŭm* (Korean transverse f lute) 251, 253, 408, 410 Tagalog 217, 219 *tagutok* (Philippine bamboo scrapers) 219, 222 Taipei National University of the Arts (*Taibei yishu daxue*) 267 Taipei Symphony 270 Taipei 146–147, 267–272, 276–279, 282–284, 286 Taira Yoshihisa 286 Taiwan Provincial Symphony Orchestra (*Taiwan sheng jiaoxiang yuetuan*) 266, 270 Taiwan 116, 147, 263–270, 274–275, 277–287 Taiwanese Opera → *gezaixi* Takada Kazuko 231, 354 Takada Yumiko 265 Takahashi Yūji 56, 215, 230, 259, 263, 272, 284, 354–355, 396; *Aki no uta* 231; *Aomori gaeru* 231; *Ariake* 231; "Bach as a Failure" 229; *Bai gui yexing huijuan* 231; *Bosatsu kangen dennōdate* 231, 306; *Dream of Heaven* 233; *Hanagatami* 1 231; *Hiru wa moetsukita* 231; *Insomnia* 231; *Kagehime no michiyuki* 231; *Kanashimi o sagasu ut* 231; *Kasuka ni* 231; *Kaze ga omote de yonde iru* 231; *Koto nado asobi* 225, **226–227**, 231; *Kotsu no utau* 231; *Kwangju, May* 1980 229, 250, 412; *Mangalasutta* 233; *Mimi no ho* 213, 231, **304–305**; *Momoka momoyo* 231; *Mono-Gatari* 231; *Nasuno kasane* 231, 261–**262**; *Nasuno ryōjō* 231, 261; *Ne monogatari* 231; *Oinaru shi no monogatari* 231; *Ongaku no* 

*Oshie* 231; *Palindrome* 231; *Samushiro* 231; *Sangen sanju* 231–232; *Sinubi* 231; *Sōjō rinzetsu* 231, 305, **306**–307; *Tabibito ka herazu* 231; *The Song of the Blue Sword* 229–**230**; *Thread Cogwheels* 231; *Three Pieces for Ichigenkin* 231; *To-i* 231; *Tori mo tsukai ka* 225, 227–**228**; *Tori mo tsukai ka II* 231; *Tori no asobi* 233; *Tsuginepu to itte mita* 231; *Unebiyama* 233, 355, 357, **358**–359; *Ware wo tanomete konu wotoko* 231; *While I Am Crossing the Bridge* 231; *Yūgao no ie* 231; *Yume* 231; *Zanshi no kyoku* 233 Takano Tatsuyuki 162 Takemitsu Tōru 26, 35, 78, 110, 129, 211–212, 259, 354; *Ceremonial* 213, 294–295; *Distance* 213–**214**, 294–295; *Eclipse* 165, 212; *In an Autumn Garden* 213, 294–295; *November Steps* 134, 165–166, 206, 212–213, 225, 396, 429 Takemoto Gidayū 346 Takemoto Sumitayū 347 *tāla* (rhythmic-metric structures in traditional Indian music) 96, 98 Tamada Kitaro 122 Tamil 86, 89 Tan Dun 59, 200–206, 236–238, 263, 276, 346, 348–350; *Fu, Fu, Fu* 348; *Ghost Opera* 206, 237, 385; *Internet Symphony "Eroica"* 28; *Marco Polo* **350**, 396; *Nine Songs* 80–82, 348; *On Taoism* 80, 348; *Silk Road* 241, **349**–350; *Symphony 1997. Heaven – Earth – Mankind* 194–195, 198–**201**, 202–205, 237; *The Fire* 27; *The Map* 73, 243, 248 Tan Shuzhen 175 Tan Xiaolin 187 Tanaka Shōhei 164; *Nihon wasei no kiso* (Foundations of Japanese Harmony) 106 Tanaka Yumiko 231 *Tan'b'oloko se?* (song from a fairy tale of the → Yoruba) **377** Tang (Chinese dynasty) 189, 215, 276, 280, 285, 290–292 Tang Zhengfang 181 Tanizaki Jun'ichiro; *In Praise of Shadows (In'ei Raisan)* 257–258 *tanpura* (Indian plucked long-necked lute) 89 Tansman, Alexandre 103–104

*tanso* (Korean vertical f lute) 253 Tao [Yami] (Taiwanese indigenous people) 243, 265, 282 *taqsīm* (*maqām*-improvisation in Arab and Turkish music) 231 Taruskin, Richard 47–48, 50, 59–60, 75–76, 78, 89, 114 Tateyama Noboru 164 *táwi* (singing of Hopi Native Americans) 342 Taylor, Charles 41, 55 Taylor, Timothy 100 *tayū* (reciter in Japanese → *bunraku*) 346–347, 361 Tcherepnin composition prize 104, 163 Tcherepnin, Alexander 103–104, 160, 163, 167, 182, 185, 187; "Music in Modern China" 159 techno-essentialism 37, 48 Temiar (Western Malaysian ethnic group) 357 Tenney, James 281 Tenzer, Michael 48, 217, 384 *te-utsuri* (changes of finger position of the → *shō* in → *gagaku*) 292–293, 299, 312 Thailand 120, 123, 307, 343 Thayi, Coimbatore 88 Theater of the Absurd 45 Third Generation (*Che Sam Sedae*; Korean composers' group) 250, 254 Thomson, Virgil 120 Thorau, Christian 388, 390 Thurner, Berndt 412 Tiananmen square massacre 81, 236, 282 Tibet 69, 196, 272 timbre 87–88, 162–163, 200, 212, 220–221, 231–232, 234, 241, 243, 254, 261, 278, 303, 309, 312, 319, 346, 348–350, 385, 413, 418, 423, 430, 432, 435 Time-Unit Box System 373, 378–379 Tinctoris, Johannes; *Terminorum Musicae Dif finitorium* 54 *tí:ngava* (chant of Hopi Native Americans) 342–343 *tōgaku* (Japanese court music genre) 104, 124–125, 128, 139, 213, 290–292, 294–295, 298–300, 306–307, 312, 332, 398 Tokyo Music School 106

tonality 26, 52, 59, 102, 156–157, 159–160, 163–164, 175, 188, 197, 200, 221, 231, 241, 250, 259, 263, 280, 284, 294, 310–311, 322–323, 328, 332, 351, 365, 370, 380, 383–386, 392, 394, 433–434 Tonghak movement / rebellion (Korea) 250, 412 total Westernization (*quanpai xifanghua*) 80, 156 *tou – fu – wei* (phases of vocal sound production in Beijing Opera) 350 Toyama, Kazuyuki 120 *tōyō dōtoku, seiyō gakugei* (Eastern ethics, Western technical learning) 155 Toyohara no Muneaki; *Taigen shō* 306 Toyohara Tatsuaki; *Hōshō ryo ritsu kan* 306 Toyohara Toshiaki; *Kofu ritsu ryo kan* 306 traditionalism 128, 253, 255, 310; anti-traditionalism 300; radical traditionalism 412 Tran Van Khe 120 trance 233 transcription 76, 86–88, 134, 170, 192, 195–198, 200, 233, 299, 306, 311, 345, 347, 353, 376, 406, 413–414, 430–431 transculturality 38, 61 transethnicism 74, 123, 129, 134 transfer 27, 36–37, 58, 60, 135, 148, 275, 280, 295, 304, 388, 390 transformation 12, 48, 61, 63, 76, 82, 143, 167, 204, 217, 223, 278, 289, 307, 330, 335, 346, 390, 395–396, 404, 406, 418, 422–423, 429, 436 translation 43–44, 69, 87, 89, 140, 157, 190– 191, 197, 208, 210, 225, 241, 253, 331–332, 418, 422, 424 Tsugaru 354 *tsugaru-jamisen* (Japanese narrative genre) 354 Tsunoda Tadanobu 261 *Tsurukame* (Japanese *nō* / *kabuki* play) 163 Tudor, David 212 Tung Chao-Ming 265, 282–284, 286; *Die Gesichter des Buddha* 285; *Formosa* 263, 267, 279, 282, **283–284** Tung Kwong-Kwong (Dong Guang-Guang) 178

twelve-tone technique 132, 161, 166, 170, 182, 189, 191–192, 223, 225, 303, 422 twentieth-century music 58, 62–63, 68, 210, 233, 265, 333, 338, 388 Tzeng Shing-Kwei 265 *ū* (Japanese mouth organ) 12, 29, 39, 54–55, 62, 70, 74, 84, 104, 107–108, 111, 116, 123–125, 131–132, 150, 163, 187, 194, 198, 205, 214, 233–234, 239–240, 242, 300, 302–303, 313, 322, 334, 343–344, 354, 365–367, 372, 375, 403, 409, 416, 438–439 Ueda Shizuteru 335 Union of Soviet Composers 64 United States 11, 37, 60, 74, 82–83, 94–96, 112, 114–118, 120–124, 129–130, 132, 138, 146, 168–169, 172, 178–179, 182, 187–188, 191, 215, 236, 249, 264, 272, 281, 343, 435 universal history 50, 58 universal language 67, 136, 228 Universal Peace Congress (Paris 1889) 63 universalism 32–33, 46, 48, 50–52, 58–59, 61, 63, 66–75, 77, 79, 81, 98, 100–101, 117, 120–124, 129, 134–136, 140, 171, 228, 234, 294, 342, 352, 361, 363 University of California Los Angeles 215 utilitarianism 138, 156, 203, 264, 287 utopia 40, 74, 309, 402 Uttar Pradesh (Indian state) 86 Utz, Christian; *Abstract Voyage* 413; *Glasakkord* 402, **404–407**, 408, 413, 417–418, 430; *Interference* **397–399**, 410, 417, 429; *repercussion.camouf lage.report* 63, 412, 417; *sheng – yue – lü* 413; *Site* 404; *specula* 404, 413; *telinga – mulut* 411, **417–427**; *the wasteland of minds* **399–403**, 404, 406, 413, 417, 430–**431**; *time freeze* 437; *together//apart* (*hamkke//ttŏrŏjyŏ*) **408–411**, 412, 417, 429– 430; vier epigramme 404, 413; walls 85, 429, **435–439**; Zersplitterung (pusŏjin chogak) 404, 411, **412–417**, 418, 423

**V**alenti-Ferro, Enzo 120 Valéry, Paul; "La cimitière marin" 132 Valesby, Leonora 178 Varèse, Edgard 36, 59–60, 62, 65, 94–95, 217, 219, 223, 432

Varian, John 95–96; *The Harp of Life* 95 Varian, Russel 95 Vatsyayan, Kapila 120 Vaughan Williams, Ralph 182 Venda (South African ethnic group) 53 Vertovec, Stephen 31, 35 Vienna Academy of Music 286 Vietnam War 27, 121 Vieuxtemps, Henri; *Ballade et Polonaise* G major op. 38 177 Vinci, Leonardo da 331 Viswanathan, T. 120 Vlad, Roman 120 vocal music 87–88, 97, 110, 187, 338–342, 345, 359, 361–362, 422 vocalization 337, 346, 348, 406 voice / voices 12, 29, 48, 51, 80, 89–90, 92, 97, 100, 105–106, 110, 141, 161, 166, 171, 196–197, 200, 215, 219, 227, 231, 233–235, 237–238, 248, 253, 260–261, 272, 274–276, 300, 310, 324, 331, 337–343, 345–346, 348–356, 358, 360, 362, 378, 380, 411–412, 416, 422–423, 428, 432, 435 voice leading 433 Vuillermoz, Émile 85

**W**agner, Richard 58, 68; *Parsifal* 55 *waiata* (Maori song) 342 *waka* (Japanese poetic genre) 91 Wakasugi Hiroshi 162 Wakatake Gagaku Society Yamaguchi 404 *wakauta* (Japanese song / poetic genre) 358 *wakon kansai* (Japanese spirit, Chinese technique) 155 *wakon yōsai* (Japanese Spirit and Western Technology) 155 Waldemar Meyer String Quartet 168 Waldmann, Guido; *Zur Tonalität des deutschen Volksliedes* 52 Wang Changling 280 Wang Guangqi 186 Wang Hesheng 205 Wang Kang Hou 96 Wang Ming 265, 285; *Ballade* 286 Wang Ningyi 161 Wang Shifu; *The West Chamber (Xi Xiang Ji)* 195–196

Wang Sue-Ya 265, 285 Wang Tuoh 267 Wang Xieru; *Zhui bai qiu* (see also Qian Decang) 195, 202 Wang Ying 36 Wang Zhengya 181, 184 Wang Zhenya; *Hanzu diaoshi hesheng* (Han Chinese Musical Modes and Harmonies) (see also Li Yinghai) 157; *Wusheng yinjie ji qi hesheng* (The Pentatonic Scale and Its Harmonies) 157 *wangka* (speech of Australian → Nyangumata) 342 Warananingtyas, Palupi 422 Warschauer, Max 176 Watsuji Tetsurō 43 Weaver, William 198, 200 Weber, Carl Maria von 178 Webern, Anton 97, 112, 166, 170, 225, 303, 339; *Symphonie* op. 21 436; Variations for piano op. 27 398, 429 Wei Zhongle 186 Weingartner, Felix 104 Wellesz, Egon 162 Welsch, Wolfgang 38–39, 41, 61 Wen Deqing 348 Wen Long-Hsin 265 Wen Yan 181 *Wenhua fuxing yundong* (Cultural Renewal Movement) 267 *wenhua shamo* (cultural desert) 265 *wenren* (Chinese literary aesthetics) 240 West German Radio (*Westdeutscher Rundfunk*, WDR) 207 Western exceptionalism 136 Western music 25, 49–50, 52, 54, 59, 61, 63, 72, 83, 86, 96–97, 101, 113, 119, 122–124, 135, 137–138, 143, 155–156, 160, 163–164, 185–187, 200, 208–209, 234, 236, 240, 249, 252, 263–264, 269–270, 340, 350, 364, 376, 382, 384, 396 Westernization 33–35, 78, 80, 101, 156, 206, 220, 231 Westernization and Self-Strengthening Movement → *Yangwu ziqiang yundong* Willner, Channan 382–383 Winkler, Eugen 173

Wiora, Walter; *Die vier Weltalter der Musik* 52, 67 Wittenberg, Alfred 54, 173 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 44, 434 Wolf, Christa 300, 351 Wolf, Hugo 177 Wolf, Karl 162 Wolff, Christian 228 Wolfsohn, Alfred 338 *Worere* (dance song of the → Naxi minority in China, see also *O ssei sseil*) 248 work concept 47, 54–55, 263, 309–310, 312, 320, 322, 330, 339 work history 47 world exhibitions 64, 290 World Festival of Youth and Students 203 world literature 66, 138 world music 13, 33, 43, 48, 60, 66–67, 71–74, 96, 118, 134, 136 worldliness 392 *wu ai yuan rong* (unimpededness and interpenetration) 135 *Wu ren yueji* (Five Man Music Group) 266 Wu Ting-Lien 265, 282 Wu Wei 147, 152, 241, 243, 399 *wu xing* (five elements) 27, 278 Wu Yuan-Fang 265 *Wu yue huahui* (Painters of May) 266 *wuchang* (Beijing Opera percussion music) 238, 270 **X**enakis, Iannis 36, 98, 118, 120, 125, 219, 223, 328; *Pithoprakta* **217** *xi ti zhong yong* (Western as substance, Chinese as means of use) 155 Xian Xinghai 186; *Huanghe dahechang* (Yellow River Cantata) 158

*Xiandai yuefu* (Modern Music Bureau) 266 *Xiangrikui yuehui* (Sunf lower Group) 266

*Xiangtu wenxue* (Nativist Literature) 266–267, 281

*Xianhua* (Fresh Flower) (see also *Molihua*) 194–195, 197–198, 202 *xiao* (Chinese vertical f lute) 156, 179–180,

190–191, 195, 202, 237, 265–266, 277–278, 385, 398, 418

*Xiao bai cai* (Little white cabbage) 237, 385

Xiao Erhua 265 Xiao Liu*; Xiao hui ji* 195, 202 Xiao Youmei 156, 179–180, 266 *xiaodiao* (Chinese folk song type) 196, 237 *xiaoluo* (small Chinese opera gong) 270 *Xin wenhua yundong* (New Culture Movement) → May Fourth Movement *Xin yue chu zou* (Music Premiere) 266 *xinchao* (new wave) 37, 80, 182, 201, 223, 241, 243, 267, 276, 286 *Xing jie* 398, 429 *xu – po – ji* (three-part form in Chinese → *daqu*) 276 Xu Fengxia 147, 241 Xu Shuya; *Vacuité/Consistance* 241 *xu yin* (empty sound) 272 Xue Yan 181 *xuetangge* → school songs *xun* (Chinese ocarina) 241, 277, 396, 399, 401–402, 417, 431, 435, 437 *xungen* (root) 80, 248

**Y**amada Kengyō; *Nasuno* 261 Yamada Kōsaku 84, 102–103, 166; *Kurai to* 101; *Nagauta Symphony "Tsurukame"* 162–163; *Ochitaru tennyo* 101; Symphony in F major "Peace and War" 101; *Yoake – Kuro Fune* 158, 163 Yamamoto Naotada 102–103 Yamata Kikou; *Sur les lèvres japonaises* 89 Yang Chien-Chang 11–12 Yang Liqing 166 Yang Tsung-Hsien 265 Yang Yinliu; *Zhongguo gudai yinyue shi gang* (A Draft History of Ancient Chinese Music) 186; "Guoyue qiantu jiqi yanjiu" (The Future of National Music and Its Study) 186 Yang Yong 181 Yang Yushi 181–182 *yangbanxi* → model works *yangqin* (Chinese hammered dulcimer-zither) 149, 243, 277, 386, 398 *Yangwu ziqiang yundong* (Westernization and Self-Strengthening Movement) 156 Yao (Chinese minority) 159, 200, 202 Yao Ruolong 202

Yasser, Joseph 188 Yayin opera group 267 *yayue* (Chinese Tang-dynasty ceremonial court music) 276, 280 Yeh Jiuan-Reng 399 Yi (Chinese minority) 248 Yi Ji-Young 251 *yi zhong bu xi* (using the Chinese to complement the Western) 156 *Yijing* (Book of Changes) 137, 278, 280 *yinxiang yijing* (sound content) 278 *yinxiang zhongzhishi* (sound cadence) 278 *Yŏngsan hoesang* (→ Korean court music suite) 408, 412 Yoo Byung-Eun; *Shinawi no. 5* 250 Yoon Jong-Ah 412, 415 Yoruba (West African ethnic group) 377 Yoshi 96 Yoshica 96 Yoshida Hidekazu 120 Yoshikawa Tadayasu; *Kaika sakuron* 155 Yoshizumi Kosaburo 162 You Chang-Fa 265 Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) 176 Young, La Monte 138 Young, Samson 37 YouTube Symphony Orchestra 28 Yu Siu Wah 204 Yuan (Chinese dynasty) 196 *yuanzhumin* (Taiwanese indigenous peoples) 268 Yuasa Jōji; *Toi* 340; *Utterance* 340; *Voices Coming* 340 *yugen* (Japanese aesthetic concept) 261 Yuize Shinichi 120 *yūkara* (→ Ainu epic singing) 358 *yun* (Chinese aesthetic concept) 272 Yun Isang 35–36, 59, 75, 78, 206–211, 249, 252, 278, 396; *Exemplum in memoriam Kwangju* 250; *Gagok* 211, 340; *Glissées* 211; "Musik und Instrumente des alten Korea" 207– 208; *Memory* 340; *Naui dang, naui minjokiyo* (My country, my people!) 250; *Piri* 211; *Réak* 36, 211; Symphony no. 4 *"Im Dunkeln singen"* 413; *Together* 408, 412, 429

*yunbai* (Beijing Opera vocal delivery techni que) 270, 349–350 Yunnan (Chinese province) 307 Yuzuru Ike 102 **Z**akharoff, Boris 177 Zehme, Albertine 351 Zen Buddhism 102, 107–109, 136–137, 140, 202, 272, 355 Zenck, Martin 76, 114–115, 342, 382 Zender, Hans 41, 74, 137–142, 388, 396; *Chief Joseph* 139, 206; *Fūrin no kyō* 140–141, **142**, **144–145**, 213 Zeng (Chinese State) 204, 357 Zhang Guoling 182 Zhang Hao 180–181 Zhang Ninghe 181 Zhang Zhidong 155, 203 Zhdanov, Andrej 65, 116 *zheng* (Chinese arched zither) 147, 149, 161, 238, 241, 243, 277, 285, 349, 386, 396, 398–402, 418, 429–430, 435, 437 Zheng Yinglie 161 *Zhi yue xiao ji* (Composers' Forum) 266 *zhonghu* (Chinese knee fiddle) 398 *zhongruan* → *ruan zhongxue wei ti, xixue wei yong* (Chinese thin king as substance, Western thinking as means of use) 155, 203 *Zhongzhou yun* 349 Zhou (Chinese dynasty) 204 Zhou Guangren 170, 179, 181, 184 Zhu Jian 184 Zhu Jian'er; Sinfonietta 165; Sympho ny no. 1 165; Symphony no. 2 165–**166**; Symphony no. 4 165; Symphony no. 6 243, **246–247**, 248–249; Symphony no. 10 243 Zhuangzi 204, 278; *Qi wu lun* 205 Zidarić Györek, Petra 143 Zimmermann, Bernd Alois 60, 223, 384, 395; *Die Soldaten* 375, 383; *Requiem für einen jungen Dichter* 134 Žižek, Slavoj 31–32, 41, 43

# Musikwissenschaft

Dagobert Höllein, Nils Lehnert, Felix Woitkowski (Hg.) Rap – Text – Analyse Deutschsprachiger Rap seit 2000. 20 Einzeltextanalysen

Februar 2020, 282 S., kart., 24 SW-Abbildungen 34,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4628-3 E-Book: 34,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4628-7

Helen Geyer, Kiril Georgiev, Stefan Alschner (Hg.) Wagner – Weimar – Eisenach Richard Wagner im Spannungsfeld von Kultur und Politik

Januar 2020, 220 S., kart., 6 SW-Abbildungen, 5 Farbabbildungen 34,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4865-2 E-Book: kostenlos erhältlich als Open-Access-Publikation, ISBN 978-3-8394-4865-6

Rainer Bayreuther Was sind Sounds? Eine Ontologie des Klangs

2019, 250 S., kart., 5 SW-Abbildungen 27,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4707-5 E-Book: 24,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4707-9

Leseproben, weitere Informationen und Bestellmöglichkeiten finden Sie unter www.transcript-verlag.de

# Musikwissenschaft

Eva-Maria Houben Musical Practice as a Form of Life How Making Music Can be Meaningful and Real

2019, 240 p., pb., ill. 44,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4573-6 E-Book: 44,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4573-0

Marianne Steffen-Wittek, Dorothea Weise, Dierk Zaiser (Hg.) Rhythmik – Musik und Bewegung Transdisziplinäre Perspektiven

2019, 446 S., kart., 13 Farbabbildungen, 37 SW-Abbildungen 39,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4371-8 E-Book: 39,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4371-2

 Anna Langenbruch (Hg.) Klang als Geschichtsmedium Perspektiven für eine auditive Geschichtsschreibung

 2019, 282 S., kart., 19 SW-Abbildungen 34,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4498-2 E-Book: PDF: 34,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4498-6

Leseproben, weitere Informationen und Bestellmöglichkeiten finden Sie unter www.transcript-verlag.de