Music inspired by East Asia

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

The traditional music of China and Japan in particular are some of my favourite types of music on Earth, and East Asian music, philosophy and culture in general has had a huge influence on western classical composition. John Cage is one composer who has taken a lot of inspiration from Zen Buddhism and I Ching. Perhaps not so well known is his composition for solo sho 'One9' (which may be performed as part of '108' for large orchestra).

Peter Sculthorpe I believe also stated in an interview that it was Asian music in particular which influenced his personal style the most.

Personally, I do find some similarities between both of those composers, as to what it really comes down to is probably this influence more than anything else!

What do you enjoy?

[Madiel]

Funnily enough, just yesterday I found out about an album called (if you translate the title) Danish Songs with Far Eastern inspiration. So there's enough even in that limited category (Danish songs) for an entire album. It includes song cycles by Holmboe and Schierbeck that I already know and like very much, as well as compositions by Nørgård and a composer called Berg.

And then it got me thinking that are quite a lot of song cycles with lyrics from China or Japan, such as Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, and Stravinsky had some Japanese Lyrics (which I don't really know besides the title). I'm sure there are many, many others I haven't mentioned.

In terms of instrumental music, Debussy is the obvious one for me. Ravel received at least some influence, as he has a "Pantoum" movement which is based on a Malay verse form.

[Mirror Image]

Bloch's Evocations always seemed to evoke East Asia to me:

https://www.youtube.com/v/OdPJ3jhUNP4

Of course, there are countless other examples, but this one stood out most immediately in mind at the moment.

[Spineur]

If I remember correctly Debussy's Dances Sacrée et profanes use a couple chinese motifs.

[Cato]

Check out the works of Alexander Tcherepnin:

https://www.youtube.com/v/5E-SyjjoMs4

and e.g.

https://www.youtube.com/v/w2mRyRnOVK4


Also, not to be forgotten: Lou Harrison !

e.g.

https://www.youtube.com/v/StRcYYSoYpE

[Dax]

Henry Cowell's orchestral Ongaku (1957) is a pretty clear and effective.

1. Gagaku
2. Sankyoku

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR4o1qfvDPs

[relm1]

Jacob Avshalomov's "The Taking of T'ung Kuan":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UflLGcY4ZZk

Aaron Avshalomov's Peking Hutangs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXtZpr8Ruwo

[vandermolen]

Jacob Avshalomov's "The Taking of T'ung Kuan":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UflLGcY4ZZk

Aaron Avshalomov's Peking Hutangs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXtZpr8Ruwo

Also:
[asin]B000026C7V[/asin]
[asin]B000H4VZAS[/asin]
The long first movement of the Hayasaka Piano Concerto written in memory of his brother was one of my best discoveries of recent years.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

So many works I've never heard of! Such a variety of style and approach too. I like that Tcherepnin up there.

[Cato]

So many works I've never heard of! Such a variety of style and approach too. I like that Tcherepnin up there.

We welcome all to the world of Alexander Tcherepnin !   

[North Star]

I thought of the Tcherepnin when I first saw this thread. No surprise to see Cato posting it.

Here's Tcherepnin's Piano Concerto No. 4 (the rest of the piece is on YT, too)
https://www.youtube.com/v/3-s52cSAZrk



Britten's ballet The Prince of The Pagodas has a fair bit of Gamelan in it, although only after 62 minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/v/0so4O92hIk4

And an early instance of Gamelan influence is in the interlude 'Sunday Morning' from Peter Grimes
https://www.youtube.com/v/Pd24UgBqXVY


Britten was heavily influenced by Colin McPhee's Gamelan-drenched music
https://www.youtube.com/v/HXZHifFLtWc  https://www.youtube.com/v/nR5ftwX7Dw0

Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos is also influenced by Gamelan
https://www.youtube.com/v/V87wGyfUQiQ

[Karl Henning]

Britten's Curlew River also borrows somewhat from the Noh theatre aesthetic.

[Monsieur Croche]

Gamelan, Gamelan, Gamelan... Javanese, Balinese, whatever it is called depending upon the dates of name change for the same place and culture...

completely altered Debussy's ideas about music (it was after his hearing it that he turned to incorporating the use of the whole tone scale) and the music radically revised his ideas and deployment of counterpoint. He heard this music in the Javanese pavilion at the Exposition Universelle, Paris 1889, and for him the exposure was revelatory.

A touch of Gamelan's musical workings got to Poulenc, i.e. the ending of the first movement of his Concerto for two pianos and orchestra. Thereafter, similar short passages in his music become one of his signature gestures.

John Adams' Dharma at Big Sur for six-string electric violin and orchestra -- is more than a little tip of the hat to those American west coast predecessor composers who were also heavily influenced by Gamelan and other Asian and East Indian musics.  Specifically, the first movement is an homage to Lou Harrison; the second an homage to Terry Riley (who wrote the seminal prototypical minimalist In C.)

Regardless of any other mixed influences, the earlier 'sound of minimalism,' (and the procedures which make it minimalism) ala Riley's in C, somewhat early to middle Philip Glass, Steve Reich to a degree, Adams' earlier China gates [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebG96uv2zeE ], Shaker Loops;/i], and Common Tones in Simple Time -- would just not be what they are or sound as they do without their composer's awareness of Gamelan music.

John Cage's Ryōanji -- inspired by the world-famous rock garden in the Ryōan-ji Zen temple; Kyoto, Japan -- is a damned near replicate / (imo very successful) transliteration of the antique Japanese classical court music, Gagaku.

Chou Wen-Chung's chamber ensemble orchestration of his piano piece The Willows are new ingeniously conjures up both the ancient musical style and the timbres and of the very antique Chinese seven-(silk) stringed zither, the Guqin.

[Monsieur Croche]

Some of the pieces cited in this thread -- no, I'm not naming names -- don't really take much from Asian music or techniques, but rather 'borrow' a bit of a scale or mode more associated with an ethnic music vs. actually being from that music, and therein proceed to still write very western music only tinged with something thought to be 'local color' from the culture suggested.

This is a genre apart, of which numerous pieces from the late 19th century abound, i.e. the suggested 'Orientalism' while being thoroughly western.   Nicholas Slonimsky dubbed the genre and in naming it, his withering dismissal, or at least very low assessment of its worth, is more than implied:  Musical Exoticism.

I, or someone, has also dubbed the genre Postcard Music, in that it is like those very typical picture post-cards marketed to tourists with representations of the locale and its peoples while leaving the viewer completely shielded from just about all realities about the people and their culture.  Ditto re: an absence of the culture's actual kind of music, it's inherent procedures, and what those might import / signify.

A shining graphic illustration of this sort of 'exoticism,' or 'orientalism' are completely manifest in the Scottish artist David Roberts' famous mid-19th century lithographs of Egypt and the Near East.  They're lovely, they are picturesque, and are imbued with a middle class European sentimentality of 'exotic peoples and places' without having a scrap of the reality of the place or culture represented :-)

https://www.google.com/search?q=david+roberts&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiS9cP95tLOAhXELyYKHTTzB_EQ_AUICCgB&biw=1024&bih=528

The Bacchanal from Saint-Saens' Sampson et Delilah, Bantock's In a Persian Market, Copland's El Salon Mexico, Ernest Bloch's Schelomo, and numerous others (there is more than a smattering of examples of the genre in many a late romantic era symphony, ballet, opera) more than readily fit into this niche category.  Think of these -- and the genre -- as the musical version of "Having a wonderful time.  Wish you were here. 

[Madiel]

*shrug* The thread title says inspired by East Asia. It doesn't say "accurately reproducing the music of East Asia".

[Mirror Image]

*shrug* The thread title says inspired by East Asia. It doesn't say "accurately reproducing the music of East Asia".

Exactly my thoughts. The title of the thread explains it all.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

The thread title doesn't even specify whether it is music inspired by east asian music either. Could be inspired by east asian philosophy, art, architecture, history, geography...anything really! I would like to see a broad range of individual styles including, but certainly not limited to, what M. Croche calls 'postcard music.'

[Monsieur Croche]

The thread title doesn't even specify whether it is music inspired by east asian music either. Could be inspired by east asian philosophy, art, architecture, history, geography...anything really! I would like to see a broad range of individual styles including, but certainly not limited to, what M. Croche calls 'postcard music.'

(Sheesh, that post was about an apart and readily identifiable sub-genre, not a call to arms to burn all copies of said sub genre.  Remind me, Jessop, to never send anyone an email or postcard saying "Having a wonderful time, wish you were here!" lest they mistake its intent, take offense where there was none and then thrill to getting their knickers in a twist :-)

Mahler ~ Das Lied von der Erde

Hindemith ~ Metamorphosis on themes of Karl Maria von Weber [the Weber sourced is from his incidental music for Carlo Gozzi's play, Turandot, ergo the pentatonic Chinoiserie. Gozzi's play based on that legend preceded the later

Puccini ~ Turandot / Madama Butterfly

Stravinsky ~  Le Rossignol / Three Japanese Lyrics (Trois poésies de la lyrique japonaise)

John Adams ~ Nixon in China.

Debussy ~ Estampes; I: Pagodes / Images, book II; Poissons d'or was catalyzed by a Japanese lacquer box he owned that depicted two goldfish (Koi), a view from above the water with some vegetation, the two fish swirling in a soixante-neuf configuration (not coincidental, I think, that configuration of two fish is also the composer's astrological birth sign.).

Ravel ~ Ma mère l'Oye; III. Laideronnette, impératrice des pagodes

[Monsieur Croche]

Britten's Curlew River also borrows somewhat from the Noh theatre aesthetic.

The line is more direct than that. 

"The work is based on the Japanese noh play Sumidagawa (Sumida River) of Juro Motomasa (1395–1431), which Britten saw during a visit to Japan and the Far East in early 1956. Beyond the noh source dramatic material, Britten incorporated elements of noh treatment of theatrical time into this composition." ~ Wikipedia

The play was re-cast as an English medieval 'church parable' drama, or miracle play.

It is lovely, and tremendously effective if heard / seen as staged.


Best regards.

[Spineur]

If I remember correctly Debussy's Dances Sacrée et profanes use a couple chinese motifs.

Debussy father actually owned a shop specialized in chinese product.  Toward the end of his life he was working on an anglo-chinese ballet called No-Ja-Li.  I am not sure that this project was ever completed by him or his students.

Actually according to an internet search No-Ja-Li was reconstructed by Robert Orledge in 2006.  Never heard the piece.
Robert Orledge also reconstructed "La chute de la maison Usher" also composed at the end of Debussy's life as he was fighting cancer.