[silence] "Unison of differences"

[David Badagnani]

Thank you, Daniel, for this excellent post.  Does the "unison of differences" have relationship with Cage's other concept of "multiplicity of centers"?  Both concepts are extremely interesting and rich with possibility.

Interestingly, Alan Hovhaness studied and learned to play the gagaku instruments you mention, as well as the sho, in Hawaii and Japan in the early 1960s, and was particularly taken by the 3-part netori (introductory canonic entrances of the wind instruments in free rhythm), which he lamented, in lectures he gave on the subject, were performed increasingly rarely.  Many of his works from the 1960s onwards contain more or less literal (not "cheap") imitations of this traditional Japanese technique.

Of course Cowell initiated the course "Music of the World's Peoples," and Lou Harrison inherited this course and continued to teach it at San Jose State.  I think Richard Dee (who played zheng in Harrison's Chinese ensemble) may still carry on this tradition at the same university.

The term "Japanese canon" (where exactly, did Cowell use this term, by the way?) recalls the "Korean unison" Cage specifies in the orchestral version of "Ryoanji"; as discussed earlier on this list it's not entirely clear what Cage meant by this, but it may refer to the not-always-together entrances heard in the ultra-slow Korean Confucian ritual musics such as a-ak, Jongmyo Jeryeak, and Munmyo Jeryeak.  Cage may have also picked up this term from Cowell, who may have coined it.  I think as we continue to study the music of Cage and his colleagues (and as musicologists become more and more familiar with traditional Asian musics), the influence of Asian musical and philosophical concepts will become more apparent in many of these composers' works--particularly those Californians (and Washingtonians) whose names come up so often on this list.

--
David Badagnani
Kent, Ohio
USA

--- On Fri, 2/6/09, Daniel Wolf <djwolf@snafu.de> wrote:
From: Daniel Wolf <djwolf@snafu.de>
Subject: [silence] "Unison of differences"
To: silence@list.mail.virginia.edu
Date: Friday, February 6, 2009, 10:29 PM

I believe that the notion of a "unison of differences" comes to Cage
via  
Henry Cowell and refers to simultaneous variations upon the same basic  
melodic material, an ensemble technique common from the Mediterranean to  
East Asia, as well as in the Anglo-Irish instrumental traditions.  Lou  
Harrison describes this well in his Music Primer.

Another, related, technique is that which Cage refers to as a "Japanese  
canon", another enthusiasm of Cowell's, which Cowell identified in the
 
netori (modal "tuning up")  hichiriki and ryuteku passages in which a
 
group of the same instruments (typically three) play through the same  
melodic material, entering canonically, but varying the rhythms so that  
one instrument may sometimes be ahead of and sometimes behind the others.

In the adaptation of both these techniques, Cage (and Cowell) could be  
fairly characterized as identifying and isolating a single (and in the  
case of the brief netori, possibly a minor feature) consituent feature of  
a traditional music and radically recontextualizing that feature as a  
central idea in a new work.

Daniel Wolf

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