Top 10 Most Wabi-Sabi Pieces you've heard

[Scion7]

Shogun  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4c0MOoLUI4

[Brian]

What's so "wabi-sabi" about the cello tune in Schubert's quintet? Why impermanent? It's the most distinguishable "regular square tune" in the whole movement and it is repeated many times, so I don't quite get this. I'd rather say, it's one of the least "wabi-sabi" passages in that piece but I may not have grasped that concept well and as I said, I don't really understand how a musical theme/moment/passage could be anything else but fleeting and transient; this is simply the way of this art.
Whereas it might be unusual and interesting in art works that are usually "permanent", e.g. Michelangelos David vs. a wabisabi stone garden.

I'll admit it's a totally personal connection for me, to do with my own listening experience and the way my brain works. I appreciate the simplicity of that tune, and the way it does so much with so little. But also, the beauty is so captivating for me that already in the moment, I think about how the moment will be ending soon and will just be a memory again.

[Karl Henning]

I'm enjoying this thread.  (That is all.)

[kishnevi]

I will admit that if a piece named Wabi-Sabi ...... eventually appears in the HenningWerkeVerzeichnis, I would not be greatly surprised.

WabiSabi Waltz.....?

[Karl Henning]

0:)

[Brian]

I think I'd follow the amw/Janacek cue and compose a suite of wabi-sabi piano miniatures, meself. Or even string quartet fragments.

[Jo498]

I really have to focus to not always read "wasabi" in the title.

as for Schubert, I'd rather nominate a passage at the end of the slow movement of the G major quartet. This is overall a movemen oscillating between despair and rage about the desperate situation, but at the end there is a very brief moment of peace, like a glimpse of hope or so but very fragile. It's extremely moving and I think most people who know the piece will know the passage I mean.

[Luke]

I have been very interested in wabi-sabi in the last few years - I actually mention it a few times on my composer's thread (and Karl, it gets dug out in pianissimo too, did you notice?). It is art which focuses on what is natural, unforced, unvarnished, prone to decay; art which follows the grain and which does not try to impose itself. The aesthetic of wabi-sabi, which welcomes small imperfections and works with them, is not temperamentally very suited to the aesthetic of classical music, which is built around the idea of slowly perfecting a work until its corners are all smooth and stand the test of time, and which often functions as a statement of individuality and also, I suppose, of power (the composer's power to control material to their will, for a start).

For those sensible souls who haven't looked at my composer's thread: for a few years I was composing short pieces in a way which I felt was rather wabi-sabi. They deliberately went with the grain of the idea with its flow; they tried not to impose themselves; they were small and humble, mostly for solo piano or even for solo clavichord. They became so fragile that, in fact, eventually I pretty much stopped composing, and I've hardly written anything for quite a while now. But if I started again, it would be with pieces like that.

Music which seems to possess a wabi-sabi sense to me would be the obvious suspects - Cage, Takemitsu, Satie... EDIT....and Feldman, of course, too.

[Mirror Image]

Shogun  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4c0MOoLUI4

Takemitsu's soundtrack to Ran gets the larger nod here I would think:



An excerpt from Takemitsu's Ran soundtrack:

https://www.youtube.com/v/9AihYYpfk8c

[Spineur]

There are pretty different branches of Japanese thoughts that are  put into "wabi-sabi". I am questioning the notion of putting the cosmic and Zen branches of buddhism together with the tea ceremony.

Anyway, if we are talking about the cosmic branch of buddhism, I would say that Henri Dutilleux "Tout un monde lointain" embodies perfectly its spirit
For the Zen branch, I think Messian "Le quatuor pour la fin du temps" gives the required serenity
For the ceremony of tea, it is the perfection of a simple gesture that should be evoqued.  So why not Bach inventions: simple and precise

   

[Karl Henning]

I have been very interested in wabi-sabi in the last few years - I actually mention it a few times on my composer's thread (and Karl, it gets dug out in pianissimo too, did you notice?).

I did.  I shouldn't be surprised if that recent read is what has kept the idea mid-mind.

[jochanaan]

I'm enjoying this thread.  (That is all.)

Very wabi-sabi of you.

I think of Bruckner's works in this context. Is it a coincidence that one of the greatest Bruckner conductors, Takashi Asahina, is Japanese?

[springrite]

Let's not confuse wabi-Sabi with Wasabi.

[Karl Henning]

Let's not confuse wabi-Sabi with Wasabi.

Do I hear the voice of experience here?

[Luke]

I think of Bruckner's works in this context. Is it a coincidence that one of the greatest Bruckner conductors, Takashi Asahina, is Japanese?

You see, I don't get that. Not a slight on Bruckner at all, nor anyone else, but I don't see the connection between Bruckner and wabi-sabi.. It's as I said earlier - wabi-sabi is concerned in part with a humility and a willingness to be subservient to materials which doesn't match up to the aesthetics of classical music. Despite all the things which make Bruckner so very special and so different, in essence his symphonies and masses are still large scale works in which the composer wrests his material into large, imposing shapes concerned with symmetry and cumulative effect. There is a sense of struggle, of power being exerted, of mountains being climbed and climaxes attained, all of which is utterly wonderful but which doesn't accord with wabi-sabi. I have a good book on wabi-sabi by Andrew Juniper, which summarises it in the following way:

The term wabi sabi suggests such qualities as impermanence, humility, asymmetry, and imperfection. These underlying principles are diametrically opposed to those of their Western counterparts, whose values are rotted in a Helenic worldview that values permanence, grandeur, symmetry, and perfection.
Japanese art, infused with the spirit of wabi sabi, seeks beauty in the truths of the natural world, looking to nature for its inspiration. It refrains from all forms of intellectual entanglement, self-regard, and affectation in order to discover the unadorned truth of nature. Since nature can be defined by its asymmetry and random imperfection, wabi sabi seeks the purity of natural imperfection.

and elsewhere

Taken from the Japanese words wabi, which translates to less is more, and sabi, which means attentive melancholy, wabi sabi refers to an awareness of the transient nature of earthly things and a corresponding pleasure in the things that bear the mark of this impermanence. As much a state of mind—an awareness of the things around us and an acceptance of our surroundings—as it is a design style, wabi sabi begs us to appreciate the simple beauty in life—a chipped vase, a quiet rainy day, the impermanence of all things.... For the Japanese, who have a long tradition of spiritual training and an appreciation for sublime simplicity, the beauty captured in the opening of a single bud or the patina of an antique bamboo vase will be far more evocative than an expression of wealth, power, or opulence.... Wabi sabi is an intuitive appreciation of a transient beauty in the physical world that reflects the irreversible flow of life in the spiritual world. It is an understated beauty that exists in the modest, rustic, imperfect, or even decayed, an aesthetic sensibility that finds a melancholic beauty on the impermanence of things.

Apart from composers like Cage, (some) Satie, Feldman and Takemitsu (who I mentioned earlier) I struggle to identify any of the 'big names' in classical music to whom this applies. Although earlier today it did strike me that something like the Bach cello suites might do - simple, humble and for the most part unshowy, working with the grain of its materials and their self-imposed limitations in a very natural way. Already by the violin Sonatas and Partitas, though, with their more frequently overt virtuosity and most extrovert use of form, I feel the wabi-sabi nature is being lost.

Just IMO of course.

[North Star]

Mompou's Musica callada comes to mind. Scelsi and Silvestrov, too.

As far as the big names, Bach's chorales and Schubert's piano works.

[kishnevi]

Many many lieder would qualify, I should think.

[Spineur]

Mompou's Musica callada comes to mind. Scelsi and Silvestrov, too.

Excellent suggestions.  In the same spirit

https://www.youtube.com/v/JAVyKDDsM3s
https://www.youtube.com/v/Yu4KObwynSc


Lieders ?  They tend to have a fair amount of intensity which I do not associate with Wabi Sabi.  Maybe Fauré songs.  But since I dont like most of them because of their lack of meanifulness...
I would go more for plaint chant - Guillaume de Machault, Josquin Desprez.  Serene, peaceful  music...

[Luke]

Mompou's Musica callada comes to mind. Scelsi and Silvestrov, too.

Definitely. Those very Mompou pieces were one of the factors that pushed my own composing down the wabi sabi road, actually. And the unforced quality of something like Silvestrov's Silent Songs is really very wabi sabi indeed. Scelsi, to me, is a little too specific in his notation and too 'inwardly-directed' to feel truly wabi sabi, though of course Tibet and Japan and Buddhism are vital in his music.

[some guy]

"The acceptance of transience and imperfection."

"Beauty that is 'imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete'."

"Asymmetry, asperity (roughness or irregularity), simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy, and appreciation of the ingenuous integrity of natural objects and processes."

OK, Karl. I'm not ready to participate, yet, but I'm going to anyway. There is a huge project looming in my life that I can avoid for a few minutes longer if I do participate, so....

The two things that immediately sprang to my mind were improvisation and Sachiko M. Of course, Sachiko is a well-regarded improviser, so....

A lot of other things came crowding in as I thought about this, particularly what Cage once used to say about the purpose of music being to calm the mind, making it susceptible to divine influences. That word "calm" trips some people up, so Cage also explained (I do not have my books with me, so this is my recollection only) that that does not refer to any of the qualities of the music, which can be loud and abrasive (as in "asperity") but still serving to calm the mind.

An anecdote: I was driving from Redlands to San Diego with my youngest son and some of his friends. It's about a two hour trip. I put on a Merzbow CD at one point--pretty sure it was Venereology. My son went to sleep and then, when he woke up said "Merzbow is so soothing, isn't it?"

"Yes, son. Yes it is."

I think his comrades may have drawn other conclusions.

Well, it's hard to think about transience in the age of recording technology. But certainly imperfection. And who I think of first in that regard is Francisco Meirino, who has made a career out of the noises that broken audio equipment can make. One of his albums is entitled "Connections, Opportunities for Mistakes," which pretty well sums up the attitude.

Incomplete I think refers to a design decision not to happenstance, but I could be wrong about that one. Anyway, if I'm right, Schubert's eighth and Bruckner's ninth don't qualify because they were not designed to be incomplete. They were designed to be complete, so incompleteness is a flaw. I see incompleteness in the current context more as an idea, as an orientation--pieces that begin softly, for example, and then go on for awhile and then end. No formal or ostentatious ENDING as in Bill Walton's first symphony ( ) but just simply stopping. There is so much music like this, I wouldn't know where to begin. Perhaps mentioning Francisco means I already have. I heard went to a concert of Feldman's Three Voices a couple of days ago. It goes on for awhile and then just stops.

And that's just about time. 4'33" is incomplete in a sense. It does not supply any of the sounds you are likely to hear at a performance of it. They will happen, of course. But if there's any completing to do--making those sounds that happen into "a piece," for instance, you have to do that. If you're into that kind of thing. You can also just listen.

Well, this post is certainly incomplete. And probably rough and imperfect and asymmetrical, too. Kinda falls down on the simple, economical, and modest aspects, though. Heigh ho.