Joji Yuasa - member of Jikken Kobo group, with Takemitsu, Akiyama, and others in the 1950's; one of first Japanese composers to take an interest in musique concrete, computer music, and multi-media forms; winner of two Italia prizes, ISCM (Rotterdam), Berlin Cinema Festival, Grand Prize from Japanese Government Art Festival; commissions from NHK, Koussevitzky Foundation; residencies: West Germany DAAD (Berlin), NY Japan Society, New South Wales Academy (Sydney, Australia), IRCAM and CRMEMU (Paris); currently Professor of Music at University of California, San Diego
Thank you for the introduction, Professor Richards. And thank you for coming.
Every year, at the very beginning of class for my composition students, I tell them to "nourish your curiosity," and "strive to learn more about whatever you are interested in, besides music, in order to unleash your cosmology so that it enhances what is in your composition." I consider that music inherently reflects a composer's own cosmology. What I mean by cosmology, here, is that which is framed by several elements - mainly by what one has experienced, by what one has learned, and by the direction that one wants to head for. This is why I tell my students to proceed deeper with their interests so that they can extend and enrich their cosmology. The word creativity seems to me to be one of the most important key words for evaluating art work. However, what the word creativity really signifies seems rather ambiguous. I have once written an article on this issue for Perspectives of New Music - an American music journal.
True creativity in music is deeply connected to redefinition of the word "music." Unlike "light," "water," and the "sun," the word "music" has no fixed meaning, because music is always created by human beings. As men and societies change, so music changes. This is why I believe that the act of composing music challenges the very nature of music, and this challenge asks us to redefine ourselves as human beings. From this, the question arises as to the significance of art in general for human beings; after all, the ability of the human creature to perceive art distinguishes humankind from other creatures.
In such a context, a type of archaeological investigation back into the essential nature of human beings is necessary to clarify the significance of composing music. From this vantage point, two aspects of human universality emerge: one which is derived from the genesis of art, culture, language, and mankind; the other which is derived from locality - that is, from the tradition-oriented aspects of human culture. The former encompasses activities such as music, theater, ritual, rites, and so forth, where these transcend differences of race and geography. In contrast, the latter is inseparable from its host language.
No matter what language one speaks, one's way of thinking, one's perceptions, and, to a certain extent, even one's sensibilities are essentially ruled by that language. Metaphorically speaking, each outreach of the senses is defined by language activity. Since language, as a sieve for screening things, has its own mesh, this screening process differs from one culture to another depending on the different characteristics of the host languages. In time, the host language shapes its own culture. Thus, language activities are closely linked to issues of cultural identity.
Not long after I chose to become a composer, I came to realize that, as a Japanese, rather than unconsciously receiving my own tradition, I wished to consciously inherit and extend it, while at the same time exploring the universal language of all human beings. However, for me, the inheritance of my tradition implied a way of thought and perception rather than simply the adoption of superficial phenomena such as the pentatonic scale, or the simple usage of traditional instruments such as the shakuhachi, biwa, and koto. In other words, for me, remaining within a tradition meant retaining a system of thinking. It follows that this broader definition of "tradition" produced, and continues to produce, diverse concrete results.
Anyway, I've been composing music in between two polarities - namely, universality and individuality. The work based on the former - universality - expresses my interest in spatial temporal structure. Such a point of view holds that music is an entity of transition of sonic energy on a time axis. For instance, the following titles of pieces of mine may show such a nature. They are: Chronoplastic for Orchestra, Time of Orchestral Time, Projection Topology for Piano, Projection in Plastic for white noise - terms of temporal detailing, and so on. The other works based on the latter - individuality, or locality - are: Interpenetration for 2 flutes, Scenes from Basho for Orchestra, Projections on Basho's Haiku for mixed chorus, Mai-Bataraki for noh flute, Nine Levers by Zeami for quadrophonic computer-tape and chamber ensemble, and so on.
As for my own cosmology as a composer, I can tell you that it has been formed by the following elements - namely....first of all, almost all of Western classic music - especially Bach, Chopin. As for contemporary music, I have been shocked, impressed and changed by Edgard Varese, Anton von Webern, Gyorgi Ligeti, and Iannis Xenakis. Speaking of American music, I have had some influence from such composers as McDowell, Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, Morton Feldman, and John Cage. The most important elements besides music by which I have been influenced, and linked to the formation of my cosmology, are: noh theater, space and time in noh plays, Zen philosophy (especially books written by Daisetsu Suzuki), Existentialism by Jean-Paul Sartre, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemmingway, natural anthropology, cultural anthropology, structuralism, linguistics, semiotics, contemporary visual art from Klee, Escher, and Ernst to David Hockney, Jasper Johns, and so on....topology, astrophysics, psychology, and so forth.
Now, I'd like to play two compositions from my recent works. First, a piece of computer music entitled Study in White, which consists of two independent movements based on texts of Basho's haiku and English psychiatrist R. D. Lang. Here I'm using human voices and white noise, and their cross-synthesized amalgamation for both pieces by means of computer technology. The text for the first piece is by Basho. I'm using both English and Japanese at the same time....I'm combining them.
the sea darkens voices of sea gulls sound faintly white.
The second piece, using a text by R.D. Lang, is a very short verse from his book Do You Love Me? This is:
I've lost it. Lost what? Have you seen it? Seen what? My face....no.
I'm repeating the text three times in different ways so that one can recognize what is spoken, but sometimes I'm changing the component of the voice to one-hundred percent composed white noise so that in the formant of the voice, white noise speaks - there is no component of a man's voice. In other words, I'm composing components of the voice itself as music, because I think essentially that our spoken language has musical elements like speed, pitches, tones, sonic expression, and so on. This work was composed in 1987 at the Center for Musical Experiment (CME) at the University of California, San Diego.
TAPE
The next work is an excerpt of three short movements from Nine Levers by Zeami for computer tape and chamber ensemble of 17 players. Zeami is the founder of noh theater, about 600 years ago. He was not only an actor, but also a writer and composer. This work is based on nine levers - how to master noh - so this work has nine movements. Today I'll play the first piece ("The Style of Inceptive Beauty"), and the last two pieces ("The Style Strong and Dedicated," and "The Supreme Flower").
TAPE
This work was composed in 1987, and commissioned and performed by IRCAM and the Ensemble Inter-Contemporaine in Paris. I don't think that the first piece that you just heard (A Study in White) shows obvious Japanese characteristics, even in the piece based on Basho's haiku. However, in this piece (Nine Levers by Zeami) I tried to maintain and extend some Japanese traditional characteristics. I was urged to do so. Otherwise, I couldn't have expressed this particular aspect of my musical image. This performance sounds very Japanese to me, and yet it is performed by French players. Now I'm sure that you have guessed how I've been composing astride two polarities - universal and personal.
Thank you very much.
[transcribed and edited by E. Michael Richards]