Haikai (Japanese 俳諧 ''comic, unorthodox'') is a poetic genre that includes a number of forms which embrace the aesthetics of ''haikai no renga'', and what Bashō referred to as the "poetic spirit" (''fūga''), including haiku, renku (haikai no renga), haibun, haiga and senryū (though not orthodox renga, tanka or waka).

"Haikai" is sometimes used as an abbreviation for "haikai no renga".

Bashō and haikai

Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) is one of the most famous poets of the Edo period. For Bashō, haikai involved a combination of comic playfulness and spiritual depth, ascetic practice and involvement in human society.

Bashō’s haikai treated of the ordinary, everyday lives of commoners. In contrast to traditional Japanese poetry, he portrayed figures from popular culture such as the beggar, the traveller and the farmer. In crystallising the newly popular haikai he played a significant role in giving birth to modern haiku, which reflected the common culture.

References

Category:Japanese literature Category:Japanese poetry Category:Haikai forms Category:Japanese literary terms

eo:Hajkajo ja:俳諧 sl:Haikai

John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer, philosopher, poet, music theorist, artist, printmaker, and amateur mycologist and mushroom collector. A pioneer of aleatoric music, electronic music and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives.

Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition ''4′33″'', the three movements of which are performed without a single note being played. The content of the composition is meant to be perceived as the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed, rather than merely as four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence, and the piece became one of the most controversial compositions of the twentieth century. Another famous creation of Cage's is the prepared piano (a piano with its sound altered by placing various objects in the strings), for which he wrote numerous dance-related works and a few concert pieces, the best known of which is ''Sonatas and Interludes'' (1946–48).

His teachers included Henry Cowell (1933) and Arnold Schoenberg (1933–35), both known for their radical innovations in music, but Cage's major influences lay in various Eastern cultures. Through his studies of Indian philosophy and Zen Buddhism in the late 1940s, Cage came to the idea of aleatoric or chance-controlled music, which he started composing in 1951. The ''I Ching'', an ancient Chinese classic text on changing events, became Cage's standard composition tool for the rest of his life. In a 1957 lecture, ''Experimental Music'', he described music as "a purposeless play" which is "an affirmation of life – not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we're living".

Life

1912–31: Early years

Cage was born in Los Angeles. His father John Milton Cage, Sr. (1886–1964) was an inventor, and his mother Lucretia ("Crete") Harvey (1885–1969) worked intermittently as a journalist for the ''Los Angeles Times''. The family's roots were deeply American: in a 1976 interview, Cage mentioned "a John Cage who helped [George] Washington in the surveying of Virginia". Cage described his mother as a woman with "a sense of society" who was "never happy", while his father is perhaps best characterized by his inventions: sometimes idealistic, such as a diesel-fueled submarine that gave off exhaust bubbles, the senior Cage being uninterested in an undetectable submarine, John Milton Sr. taught his son that "if someone says 'can't' that shows you what to do." In 1944–45 Cage wrote two small character pieces dedicated to his parents: ''Crete'' and ''Dad''. The latter is a short lively piece that ends abruptly, while "Crete" is a slightly longer, mostly melodic contrapuntal work.

Cage's first experiences with music were from private piano teachers in the Greater Los Angeles area and several relatives, particularly his aunt Phoebe Harvey who introduced him to the piano music of the 19th century. He received first piano lessons when he was in the fourth grade at school, but although he liked music, he expressed more interest in sight reading than in developing virtuoso piano technique, and apparently was not thinking of composition. By 1928 Cage was convinced that he wanted to be a writer. That year he graduated from Los Angeles High School as a valedictorian and enrolled at Pomona College, Claremont. However, in 1930 he dropped out, believing that "college was of no use to a writer" by an incident described in the 1991 autobiographical statement:

I was shocked at college to see one hundred of my classmates in the library all reading copies of the same book. Instead of doing as they did, I went into the stacks and read the first book written by an author whose name began with Z. I received the highest grade in the class. That convinced me that the institution was not being run correctly. I left.

Cage persuaded his parents that a trip to Europe would be more beneficial to a future writer than college studies. He subsequently hitchhiked to Galveston and sailed to Le Havre, where he took a train to Paris. Cage stayed in Europe for some 18 months, trying his hand at various forms of art. First he studied Gothic and Greek architecture, but decided he was not interested enough in architecture to dedicate his life to it. Cage started travelling, visited various places in France, Germany and Spain, as well as Capri and, most importantly, Majorca, where he started composing. His first compositions were created using dense mathematical formulae, but Cage was displeased with the results and left the finished pieces behind when he left. Cage's association with theatre also started in Europe: during a walk in Seville he witnessed, in his own words, "the multiplicity of simultaneous visual and audible events all going together in one's experience and producing enjoyment."

1931–36: Apprenticeship

Cage returned to the United States in 1931.) and arts patron Galka Scheyer. in which Cowell suggested that Cage study with Arnold Schoenberg—Cage's musical ideas at the time included composition based on a 25-tone row, somewhat similar to Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. Cowell mentioned, however, that before approaching Schoenberg, Cage should take some preliminary lessons, and recommended Adolph Weiss, a former Schoenberg pupil.

Following Cowell's advice, Cage travelled to New York City in 1933 and started studying with Weiss as well as taking lessons from Cowell himself at The New School. Cage's routine during that period was apparently very tiring, with just four hours of sleep on most nights, and four hours of composition every day starting at 4 am. Several months later, still in 1933, Cage became sufficiently good at composition to approach Schoenberg. He could not afford Schoenberg's price, however, and when he mentioned it, the older composer asked whether Cage would devote his life to music. After Cage replied that he would, Schoenberg offered to tutor him free of charge.

Cage studied with Schoenberg in California: first at USC and then at UCLA, as well as privately. particularly as an example of how to live one's life being a composer. Schoenberg's methods and their influence on Cage are well documented by Cage himself in various lectures and writings. Particularly well-known is the conversation mentioned in the 1958 lecture ''Indeterminacy'':

After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, "In order to write music, you must have a feeling for harmony." I explained to him that I had no feeling for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall through which I could not pass. I said, "In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall."

Cage studied with Schoenberg for two years, but although he admired his teacher, he decided to leave after Schoenberg told the assembled students that he was trying to make it impossible for them to write music. Much later, Cage recounted the incident: "[...] When he said that, I revolted, not against him, but against what he had said. I determined then and there, more than ever before, to write music."

1937–49: Modern dance and Eastern influences

The newly married couple first lived with Cage's parents in Pacific Palisades, then moved to Hollywood. During 1936–38 Cage changed numerous jobs, including one that started his lifelong association with modern dance: dance accompanist at UCLA. He produced music for choreographies and at one point taught a course on "Musical Accompaniments for Rhythmic Expression" at UCLA, with his aunt Phoebe. It was during that time that Cage first started experimenting with unorthodox instruments, such as household items, metal sheets, and so on. This was inspired by Oskar Fischinger, who told Cage that "everything in the world has a spirit that can be released through its sound." Although Cage did not share the idea of spirits, these words inspired him to begin exploring the sounds produced by hitting various non-musical objects.

In 1938, with help from a fellow Cowell student Lou Harrison, Cage became a faculty member at Mills College, teaching the same program as at UCLA, and collaborating with choreographer Marian van Tuyl. Several famous dance groups were present, and Cage's interest in modern dance grew further.

Like his personal life, Cage's artistic life went through a crisis in mid-1940s. The composer was experiencing a growing disillusionment with the idea of music as means of communication: the public rarely accepted his work, and Cage himself, too, had trouble understanding the music of his colleagues. In early 1946 Cage agreed to tutor Gita Sarabhai, an Indian musician who came to the US to study Western music. In return, he asked her to teach him about Indian music and philosophy. Cage also attended, in late 1940s and early 1950s, D. T. Suzuki's lectures on Zen Buddhism, and read the works of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy.

1950s: Discovering chance

''Sonatas and Interludes'' were received well by the public. After a 1949 performance at Carnegie Hall, New York, Cage received a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation, which enabled him to make a trip to Europe, where he met composers such as Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez. More important, however, was Cage's chance encounter with Morton Feldman in New York City in early 1950. Both composers attended a New York Philharmonic Orchestra concert, where the orchestra performed Anton Webern's ''Symphony'', op. 21, followed by a piece by Sergei Rachmaninoff. Cage felt so overwhelmed by Webern's piece that he left before the Rachmaninoff; and in the lobby, he met Feldman, who was leaving for the same reason. The two composers quickly became friends; some time later Cage, Feldman, and Cage's pupil Christian Wolff came to be referred to as "the New York school."

In early 1951, Wolff presented Cage with a copy of the ''I Ching''—a Chinese classic text which describes a symbol system used to identify order in chance events. The ''I Ching'' is commonly used for divination, but for Cage it became a tool to compose using chance. To compose a piece of music, Cage would come up with questions to ask the ''I Ching''; the book would then be used in much the same way as it is used for divination. For Cage, this meant "imitating nature in its manner of operation": his lifelong interest in sound itself culminated in an approach that yielded works in which sounds were free from the composer's will:

When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic—here on Sixth Avenue, for instance—I don't have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound [...] I don't need sound to talk to me.

Although Cage had used chance on a few earlier occasions, most notably in the third movement of ''Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra'' (1950–51), the ''I Ching'' opened new possibilities in this field for him. The first results of the new approach were ''Imaginary Landscape No. 4'' for 12 radio receivers, and ''Music of Changes'' for piano. The latter work was written for David Tudor, whom Cage met through Feldman—another friendship that lasted until Cage's death. Tudor premiered most of Cage's works until early 1960s, when he stopped performing and concentrated on composition. The ''I Ching'' became Cage's standard tool for composition: he used it in practically every work composed after 1951.

Despite the fame ''Sonatas and Interludes'' earned him, and the connections he cultivated with American and European composers and musicians, Cage was quite poor. Although he still had an apartment, at 326 Monroe Street (which he occupied since around 1946) his financial situation in 1951 worsened so much that, while working on ''Music of Changes'', he prepared a set of instructions for Tudor as to how to complete the piece in the event of his death. Nevertheless, Cage managed to survive and maintained an active artistic life, giving lectures, performances, etc. In 1952–53 he completed another mammoth project—the ''Williams Mix'', a piece of tape music, which Earle Brown helped to put together. Also in 1952, Cage wrote down the piece that became his most well-known and most controversial creation: ''4′33″''. The score instructs the performer not to play the instrument during the entire duration of the piece—four minutes, thirty-three seconds—and is meant to be perceived as consisting of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed. Cage conceived "a silent piece" years earlier, but was reluctant to write it down; and indeed, the premiere (given by Tudor on August 29, 1952 at Woodstock, New York) caused an uproar in the audience. The reaction to ''4′33″'' was just a part of the larger picture, however: on the whole, it was the adoption of chance procedures that had disastrous consequences for Cage's reputation. The press, which used to react favorably to earlier percussion and prepared piano music, ignored his new works, and many valuable friendships and connections were lost. Pierre Boulez, who used to promote Cage's work in Europe, was opposed to Cage's use of chance, and so were other composers who came to prominence during the 1950s, i.e. Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis.

From 1953 onwards, Cage was busy composing music for modern dance, particularly Cunningham's dances (Cage's partner adopted chance too, out of fascination for the movement of the human body), as well as developing new methods of using chance, in a series of works he referred to as ''The Ten Thousand Things''. In Summer 1954 he moved out from New York and settled in a cooperative community in Stony Point, New York. The composer's financial situation gradually improved: in late 1954 he and Tudor were able to embark on a European tour. From 1956 to 1961 Cage taught classes in experimental composition at The New School, and during 1956–58 he also worked as an art director of a typography. Among the works completed during the last years of the decade were ''Concert for Piano and Orchestra'' (1957–58), a seminal work in the history of graphic notation, and ''Variations I'' (1958).

1960s: Fame

Cage was affiliated with Wesleyan University and collaborated with members of its Music Department from the 1950s until his death in 1992. At the University, the philosopher, poet, and professor of classics Norman O. Brown befriended Cage, an association that proved fruitful to both. In 1960 the composer was appointed a Fellow on the faculty of the Center for Advanced Studies (now the Center for Humanities) in the Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wesleyan, where he started teaching classes in experimental music. In October 1961, Wesleyan University Press published ''Silence'', a collection of Cage's lectures and writings on a wide variety of subjects, including the famous ''Lecture on Nothing'' that was composed using a complex time length scheme, much like some of Cage's music. ''Silence'' was Cage's first book. He went on to publish five more. ''Silence'', however, remained his most widely read and influential book. But by mid-1960s Cage was receiving so many commissions and requests for appearances, that he was not able to fulfill them. This was accompanied by a busy touring schedule; Subsequently Cage's compositional output from that decade was scant. As set forth by Cage, happenings were theatrical events that abandon the traditional concept of stage-audience and occur without a sense of definite duration. Instead, they are left to chance. They have a minimal script, with no plot. In fact, a "happening" is so-named because it occurs in the present, attempting to arrest the concept of passing time. Cage believed that theater was the closest route to integrating art and real life. The term "happenings" was coined by Allan Kaprow, one of his students, who defined it as a genre in the late fifties. Cage met Kaprow while on a mushroom hunt with George Segal and invited him to join his class. In following these developments Cage was strongly influenced by Antonin Artaud's seminal treatise ''The Theatre and Its Double'', and the happenings of this period can be viewed as a forerunner to the ensuing Fluxus movement. In October 1960, Mary Bauermeister's Cologne studio hosted a joint concert by Cage and the video artist Nam June Paik, who in the course of his ''Etude for Piano'' cut off Cage's tie and then washed his co-performer’s hair with shampoo.

In 1967, Cage's ''A Year from Monday'' was first published by Wesleyan University Press. Cage's parents died during the decade: his father in 1964, and his mother in 1969. Cage had their ashes scattered in Ramapo Mountains, near Stony Point, and asked for the same to be done to him after his death.

1969–87: New departures

Cage's work from the sixties features some of his largest and most ambitious, not to mention socially utopian pieces, reflecting the mood of the era yet also his absorption of the writings of both Marshall McLuhan, on the effects of new media, and R. Buckminster Fuller, on the power of technology to promote social change. ''HPSCHD'' (1969), a gargantuan and long-running multimedia work made in collaboration with Lejaren Hiller, incorporated the mass superimposition of seven harpsichords playing chance-determined excerpts from the works of Cage, Hiller, and a potted history of canonical classics, with fifty-two tapes of computer-generated sounds, 6,400 slides of designs many supplied by NASA, and shown from sixty-four slide projectors, with forty motion-picture films. The piece was initially rendered in a five-hour performance at the University of Illinois in 1969, in which the audience arrived after the piece had begun and left before it ended, wandering freely around the auditorium in the time for which they were there.

However, also in 1969, Cage produced the first fully notated work in years: ''Cheap Imitation'' for piano. The piece is a chance-controlled reworking of Erik Satie's ''Socrate'', and, as both listeners and Cage himself noted, openly sympathetic to its source. Although Cage's affection for Satie's music was well-known, it was highly unusual for him to compose a personal work, one in which the composer ''is'' present. When asked about this apparent contradiction, Cage replied: "Obviously, ''Cheap Imitation'' lies outside of what may seem necessary in my work in general, and that's disturbing. I'm the first to be disturbed by it." Cage's fondness for the piece resulted in a recording—a rare occurrence, since Cage disliked making recordings of his music—made in 1976. Overall, ''Cheap Imitation'' marked a major change in Cage's music: he turned again to writing fully notated works for traditional instruments, and tried out several new approaches, such as improvisation, which he previously discouraged, but was able to use in works from the 1970s, such as ''Child of Tree'' (1975).

''Cheap Imitation'' became the last work Cage performed in public himself. Arthritis had troubled Cage since 1960, and by early 1970s his hands were painfully swollen and rendered him unable to perform. Nevertheless, he still played ''Cheap Imitation'' during the 1970s, before finally having to give up performing. Preparing manuscripts also became difficult: before, published versions of pieces were done in Cage's calligraphic script; now, manuscripts for publication had to be completed by assistants. Matters were complicated further by David Tudor's departure from performing, which happened in early 1970s. Tudor decided to concentrate on composition instead, and so Cage, for the first time in two decades, had to start relying on commissions from other performers, and their respective abilities. Such performers included Grete Sultan, Paul Zukofsky, Margaret Leng Tan, and many others. Aside from music, Cage continued writing books of prose and poetry (mesostics). ''M (John Cage book)'' was first published by Wesleyan University Press in 1973. In January 1978 Cage was invited by Kathan Brown of Crown Point Press to engage in printmaking, and Cage would go on to produce series of prints every year until his death; these, together with some late watercolors, constitute the largest portion of his extant visual art. In 1979 Cage's ''Empty Words'' was first published by Wesleyan University Press.

1987–92: Final years and death

In 1987 Cage completed a piece called ''Two'', for flute and piano, dedicated to performers Roberto Fabbriciani and Carlo Neri. The title referred to the number of performers needed; the music consisted of short notated fragments to be played at any tempo within the indicated time constraints. Cage went on to write some forty such pieces, usually employing a variant of the same technique; together, these works are known as ''Number Pieces''. The process of composition, in many of the later Number Pieces, was simple selection of pitch range and pitches from that range, using chance procedures; ''One¹¹'' (i.e. the eleventh piece for a single performer), completed in early 1992, was Cage's first and only foray into film. Another new direction, also taken in 1987, was opera: Cage produced five operas, all sharing the same title ''Europera'', in 1987–91.

Already in the course of the eighties, Cage's health worsened progressively: he suffered not only from arthritis, but also from sciatica and arteriosclerosis. He suffered a stroke that left the movement of his left leg restricted, and, in 1985, broke an arm. During this time, Cage pursued a macrobiotic diet. Nevertheless, ever since arthritis started plaguing him, the composer was aware of his age, and, as biographer David Revill observed, "the fire which he began to incorporate in his visual work in 1985 is not only the fire he has set aside for so long—the fire of passion—but also fire as transitoriness and fragility." On August 11, 1992, while preparing evening tea for himself and Cunningham, Cage suffered another stroke. He was taken to the nearest hospital, where he died on the morning of August 12. According to his wishes, Cage's body was cremated, and the ashes scattered in the Ramapo Mountains, near Stony Point, New York, the same place where Cage scattered the ashes of his parents, years before. The composer's death occurred only weeks before a celebration of his 80th birthday organized in Frankfurt by the composer Walter Zimmermann and the musicologist Stefan Schaedler was due to take place. However, the event went ahead as planned, including a performance of the ''Concert for Piano and Orchestra'' by David Tudor and Ensemble Modern. Merce Cunningham outlived his partner by 17 years, and died peacefully in his home, of natural causes, on July 26, 2009.

Music

Early works, rhythmic structure, and new approaches to harmony

Cage's first completed pieces are currently lost. According to the composer, the earliest works were very short pieces for piano, composed using complex mathematical procedures and lacking in "sensual appeal and expressive power." Cage then started producing pieces by improvising and writing down the results, until Richard Buhlig stressed to him the importance of structure. Most works from the early 1930s, such as ''Sonata for Clarinet'' (1933) and ''Composition for 3 Voices'' (1934), are highly chromatic and betray Cage's interest in counterpoint. Around the same time, the composer also developed a type of a tone row technique with 25-note rows. After studies with Schoenberg, who never taught dodecaphony to his students, Cage developed another tone row technique, in which the row was split into short motives, which would then be repeated and transposed according to a set of rules. This approach was first used in ''Two Pieces for Piano'' (c. 1935), and then, with modifications, in larger works such as ''Metamorphosis'' and ''Five Songs'' (both 1938).

Soon after Cage started writing percussion music and music for modern dance, he started using a technique that placed the rhythmic structure of the piece into the foreground. In ''Imaginary Landscape No. 1'' (1939) there are four large sections of 16, 17, 18, and 19 bars, and each section is divided into four subsections, the first three of which were all 5 bars long. ''First Construction (in Metal)'' (1939) expands on the concept: there are five sections of 4, 3, 2, 3, and 4 units respectively. Each unit contains 16 bars, and is divided the same way: 4 bars, 3 bars, 2 bars, etc. Finally, the musical content of the piece is based on sixteen motives. Such "nested proportions", as Cage called them, became a regular feature of his music throughout the 1940s. The technique was elevated to great complexity in later pieces such as ''Sonatas and Interludes'' for prepared piano (1946–48), in which many proportions used non-integer numbers (1¼, ¾, 1¼, ¾, 1½, and 1½ for ''Sonata I'', for example), or ''A Flower'', a song for voice and closed piano, in which two sets of proportions are used simultaneously.

In late 1940s, Cage started developing further methods of breaking away with traditional harmony. For instance, in ''String Quartet in Four Parts'' (1950) Cage first composed a number of ''gamuts'': chords with fixed instrumentation. The piece progresses from one ''gamut'' to another. In each instance the ''gamut'' was selected only based on whether it contains the note necessary for the melody, and so the rest of the notes do not form any directional harmony.

Chance

Chart system was also used (along with nested proportions) for the large piano work ''Music of Changes'' (1951), only here material would be selected from the charts by using the ''I Ching''. All of Cage's music since 1951 was composed using chance procedures, most commonly using the ''I Ching''. For example, works from ''Music for Piano'' were based on paper imperfections: the imperfections themselves provided pitches, and the ''I Ching'' was used to determine the methods of sound production, or the rhythms, etc. A whole series of works was created by applying chance operations, i.e. the ''I Ching'', to star charts: ''Atlas Eclipticalis'' (1961–62), and a series of etudes: ''Etudes Australes'' (1974–75), ''Freeman Etudes'' (1977–90), and ''Etudes Boreales'' (1978). Cage's etudes are all extremely difficult to perform, a characteristic dictated by Cage's social and political views: the difficulty would ensure that "a performance would show that the impossible is not impossible"—this being Cage's answer to the notion that solving the world's political and social problems is impossible. Cage described himself as an anarchist, and was influenced by Henry David Thoreau.

Another series of works applied chance procedures to pre-existing music by other composers: ''Cheap Imitation'' (1969; based on Erik Satie), ''Some of "The Harmony of Maine"'' (1978; based on Belcher), and ''Hymns and Variations'' (1979). In these works, Cage would borrow the rhythmic structure of the originals and fill it with pitches determined through chance procedures, or just replace some of the originals' pitches. Yet another series of works, the so-called ''Number Pieces'', all completed during the last five years of the composer's life, make use of ''time brackets'': the score consists of short fragments with indications of when to start and to end them (e.g. from anywhere between 1′15″ and 1′45″, and to anywhere from 2′00″ to 2′30″).

Cage's method of using the ''I Ching'' was far from simple randomization, however. The procedures varied from composition to composition, and were usually complex. For example, in the case of ''Cheap Imitation'', the exact questions asked to the ''I Ching'' were these: # Which of the seven modes, if we take as modes the seven scales beginning on white notes and remaining on white notes, which of those am I using? # Which of the twelve possible chromatic transpositions am I using? # For this phrase for which this transposition of this mode will apply, which note am I using of the seven to imitate the note that Satie wrote? In another example of late music by Cage, ''Etudes Australes'', the compositional procedure involved placing a transparent strip on the star chart, identifying the pitches from the chart, transferring them to paper, then asking the ''I Ching'' which of these pitches were to remain single, and which should become parts of aggregates (chords), and the aggregates were selected from a table of some 550 possible aggregates, compiled beforehand.

Finally, some of Cage's works, particularly those completed during the 1960s, feature instructions to the performer, rather than fully notated music. The score of ''Variations I'' (1958) presents the performer with six transparent squares, one with points of various sizes, five with five intersecting lines. The performer combines the squares and uses lines and points as a coordinate system, in which the lines are axes of various characteristics of the sounds, such as lowest frequency, simplest overtone structure, etc. Some of Cage's graphic scores (e.g. ''Concert for Piano and Orchestra'', ''Fontana Mix'' (both 1958)) present the performer with similar difficulties. Still other works from the same period consist just of text instructions. The score of ''0'00"'' (1962; also known as ''4'33" No. 2'') consists of a single sentence: "In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action." The first performance had Cage write that sentence. ''Musicircus'' (1967) simply invites the performers to assemble and play together. The first ''Musicircus'' featured multiple performers and groups in a large space who were all to commence and stop playing at two particular time periods, with instructions on when to play individually or in groups within these two periods. The result was a mass superimposition of many different musics on top of one another as determined by chance distribution, producing an event with a specifically theatric feel. Many Musicircuses have subsequently been held, and continue to occur even after Cage's death. This concept of circus was to remain important to Cage throughout his life and featured strongly in such pieces as ''Roaratorio, an Irish circus on Finnegans Wake'' (1979), a many-tiered rendering in sound of both his text ''Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake'', and traditional musical and field recordings made around Ireland. The piece was based on James Joyce's famous novel, ''Finnegans Wake'', which was one of Cage's favorite books, and one from which he derived texts for several more of his works.

Improvisation

Since chance procedures were used by Cage to eliminate the composer's and the performer's likes and dislikes from music, Cage disliked the concept of improvisation, which is inevitably linked to the performer's preferences. However, in a number of works beginning in the 1970s, he found ways to incorporate improvisation. In ''Child of Tree'' (1975) and ''Branches'' (1976) the performers are asked to use certain species of plants as instruments, for example the cactus. The structure of the pieces is determined through the chance of their choices, as is the musical output; the performers had no knowledge of the instruments. In ''Inlets'' (1977) the performers play large water-filled conch shells – by carefully tipping the shell several times, it is possible to achieve a bubble forming inside, which produced sound. Yet, as it is impossible to predict when this would happen, the performers had to continue tipping the shells – as a result the performance was dictated by pure chance.

Visual art, writings, and other activities

Although Cage started painting in his youth, he gave it up in order to concentrate on music instead. His first mature visual project, ''Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel'', dates from 1969. The work comprises two lithographs and a group of what Cage called ''plexigrams'': silk screen printing on plexiglas panels. The panels and the lithographs all consist of bits and pieces of words in different typefaces, all governed by chance operations.

From 1978 to his death Cage worked at Crown Point Press, producing series of prints every year. The earliest project completed there was the etching ''Score Without Parts'' (1978), created from fully notated instructions, and based on various combinations of drawings by Henry David Thoreau. This was followed, the same year, by ''Seven Day Diary'', which Cage drew with his eyes closed, but which conformed to a strict structure developed using chance operations. Finally, Thoreau's drawings informed the last works produced in 1978, ''Signals''.

Between 1979 and 1982 Cage produced a number of large series of prints: ''Changes and Disappearances'' (1979–80), ''On the Surface'' (1980–82), and ''Déreau'' (1982). These were the last works in which he used engraving. In 1983 he started using various unconventional materials such as cotton batting, foam, etc., and then used stones and fire (''Eninka'', ''Variations'', ''Ryoanji'', etc.) to create his visual works. In 1988–1990 he produced watercolors at the Mountain Lake Workshop. The only film Cage produced was one of the Number Pieces, ''One¹¹'', commissioned by composer and film director Henning Lohner who worked with Cage to produce and direct the 90-minute monochrome film. It was completed only weeks before his death in 1992. ''One¹¹'' consists entirely of images of chance-determined play of electric light. It premiered in Cologne, Germany, on September 19, 1992, accompanied by the live performance of the orchestra piece ''103''.

Throughout his adult life, Cage was also active as lecturer and writer. Some of his lectures were included in several books he published, the first of which was ''Silence: Lectures and Writings'' (1961). ''Silence'' included not only simple lectures, but also texts executed in experimental layouts, and works such as ''Lecture on Nothing'' (1959), which were composed in rhythmic structures. Subsequent books also featured different types of content, from lectures on music to poetry—Cage's mesostics.

Cage was also an avid amateur mycologist: he co-founded the New York Mycological Society with four friends, and his mycology collection is presently housed by the Special Collections department of the McHenry Library at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Reception and influence

Cage's pre-chance works, particularly pieces from the late 1940s such as ''Sonatas and Interludes'', earned him a considerable measure of critical acclaim: the ''Sonatas'' were performed at Carnegie Hall in 1949. However, Cage's adoption of chance operations in 1951 cost him a number of friendships and led to numerous criticisms from fellow composers. Adherents of serialism such as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen dismissed indeterminate music; Boulez, who was once on friendly terms with Cage, criticized him for "adoption of a philosophy tinged with Orientalism that masks a basic weakness in compositional technique." Prominent critics of serialism, such as the Greek composer Iannis Xenakis, were similarly hostile towards Cage: for Xenakis, the adoption of chance in music was "an abuse of language and [...] an abrogation of a composer's function."

An article by teacher and critic Michael Steinberg, ''Tradition and Responsibility'', criticized avant-garde music in general:

The rise of music that is totally without social commitment also increases the separation between composer and public, and represents still another form of departure from tradition. The cynicism with which this particular departure seems to have been made is perfectly symbolized in John Cage's account of a public lecture he had given: "Later, during the question period, I gave one of six previously prepared answers regardless of the question asked. This was a reflection of my engagement in Zen." While Mr. Cage's famous silent piece [i.e. 4′33″], or his ''Landscapes'' for a dozen radio receivers may be of little interest as music, they are of enormous importance historically as representing the complete abdication of the artist's power.

Cage's aesthetic position was criticized by, among others, prominent writer and critic Douglas Kahn. In his 1999 book ''Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts'', Kahn acknowledged the influence Cage had on culture, but noted that "one of the central effects of Cage's battery of silencing techniques was a silencing of the social."

While much of Cage's work remains controversial, his influence on countless composers, artists, and writers is undeniable. After Cage introduced chance, Boulez, Stockhausen, and Xenakis remained critical, yet all adopted chance procedures in some of their works (although in a much more restricted manner); and Stockhausen's piano writing in his later Klavierstücke was influenced by Cage's ''Music of Changes'' and David Tudor. Other composers who adopted chance procedures in their works included Witold Lutosławski, Mauricio Kagel, and many others. Music in which some of the composition and/or performance is left to chance was labelled ''aleatoric music''—a term popularized by Pierre Boulez. Helmut Lachenmann's work was influenced by Cage's work with extended techniques.

Cage's rhythmic structure experiments and his interest in sound influenced an even greater number of composers, starting at first with his close American associates Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff (and other American composers, such as La Monte Young), and then spreading to Europe. For example, almost all composers of the English experimental school acknowledge his influence: Michael Parsons, Christopher Hobbs, John White, Gavin Bryars, who studied under Cage briefly, and even Howard Skempton, a composer seemingly very different from Cage, and one whose work has been described as "the emancipation of consonance." Cage's influence is also evident in the Far East: one of Japan's most prominent classical composers of the 20th century, Tōru Takemitsu, was influenced by his music.

Cage's influence was also acknowledged by rock bands, such as Sonic Youth (who performed some of the Number Pieces) and Stereolab (who named a song after Cage), composer and rock and jazz guitarist Frank Zappa, and various noise music artists and bands: indeed, one writer traced the origin of noise music to ''4′33″''. The development of electronic music was also influenced by Cage: in the mid-1970s Brian Eno's label Obscure Records released works by Cage. Prepared piano, which Cage popularized, is featured heavily on Aphex Twin's 2001 album ''Drukqs''. Cage's work as musicologist helped popularize Erik Satie's music, and his friendship with Abstract expressionist artists such as Robert Rauschenberg helped introduce his ideas into visual art. Cage's ideas also found their way into sound design: for example, Academy Award-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom cited Cage's work as a major influence.

==Archives==

The archive of the John Cage Trust is held at Bard College in upstate New York..

The John Cage Music Manuscript Collection held by the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts contains most of the composer's musical manuscripts, including sketches, worksheets, realizations, and unfinished works.

The John Cage Papers are held in Special Collections and Archives department of Wesleyan University's Olin Library in Middletown, Connecticut. They contain manuscripts, interviews, fan mail, and ephemera. Other material, including clippings, gallery and exhibition catalogs, a collection of Cage's books and serials, posters, objects, exhibition and literary announcement postcards, and brochures from conferences and other organizations

The John Cage Collection at Northwestern University in Illinois contains the composer's correspondence, ephemera, and the ''Notations'' collection.

Cultural references

Sonic Youth on their ''SYR4'' album perform two realizations of Cage's piece ''Six'' and one of ''Four⁸''.

"John Cage Is Dead" is a track on Mickey Hart's ''Mystery Box'' album.

''Who Put John Cage on the Guestlist?'' is the name of an album by Norwegian electronic research group Hemmelig Tempo.

"Jaune d'Oeuf en Cage" ("Yolk in a Cage") is a track by David Fenech on his first album ''Grand Huit''. It is a joke based on the John Cage / Jaune Cage homophone in French.

In the musical ''Rent'', Cage's name is mentioned during the song "La Vie Bohème" among other artists.

In December 2010, 18 years posthumously, Cage made his debut in the UK singles charts with "4' 33" (Cage Against the Machine Version)". The piece peaked at number 21 on the Christmas UK chart.

Footnotes

Notes

References

Bernstein, David W., and Hatch, Christopher, eds. 2001. ''Writings through John Cage's Music, Poetry, and Art''. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226044076

Boulez, Pierre, and Cage, John. 1995. ''The Boulez-Cage Correspondence''. Edited by Robert Samuels and Jean-Jacques Nattiez, translated by Robert Samuels. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521485584

Brown, Kathan. 2001. ''John Cage Visual Art: To Sober and Quiet the Mind''. Crown Point Press. ISBN 1891300164, ISBN 978-1891300165

Cage, John. 1973. ''Silence: Lectures and Writings'', Wesleyan University Press Paperback (first edition 1961). ISBN 0-8195-6028-6

Eldred, Michael 1995/2006 Hölderlin and John Cage'' www.arte-fact.org

Eldred, Michael 2010 Quivering of Propriation: A Parallel Way to Music'', Section II.3 New Music is the Other Music (Cage) www.arte-fact.org

Fetterman, William. 1996. ''John Cage's Theatre Pieces: Notations and Performances''. Routledge. ISBN 3718656434

Haskins, Rob. 2004. ''"An Anarchic Society of Sounds": The Number Pieces of John Cage''. PhD dissertation, Musicology, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester.

Kostelanetz, Richard. 2003. ''Conversing with John Cage'', Routledge. ISBN 0-415-93792-2

Nicholls, David (ed.). 2002. ''The Cambridge Companion to John Cage''. Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0521789680

Nicholls, David. 2007. ''John Cage''. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252032152

Patterson, David W. (ed.). ''John Cage: Music, Philosophy, and Intention, 1933–1950''. Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0815329954

Perloff, Marjorie, and Junkerman, Charles. 1994. ''John Cage: Composed in America''. University of Chicago Press, 1994. ISBN 0226660575

Pritchett, James. 1993. ''The Music of John Cage''. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521565448

Revill, David. 1993. ''The Roaring Silence: John Cage – a Life''. Arcade Publishing. ISBN 1559702206, ISBN 978-1559702201

Taruskin, Richard. 2005. ''Oxford History of Western Music, The''. Vol. 5. Oxford: Oxford UP, Inc. ''Indeterminacy'' pp. 55–101.

External links

General information and catalogues

A Project by John Cage called ORGAN2/ASLSP is the longest concert ever created.

John Cage Database, includes a complete catalogue of Cage's music with details on individual compositions, as well as a discography, a bibliography and a list of forthcoming performances of Cage's work.

A John Cage Compendium, website by Cage scholar Paul van Emmerik, in collaboration with performer Herbert Henck and András Wilheim. Includes exhaustive catalogues and bibliography, chronology of Cage's life, etc.

Larry Solomon's John Cage Pages, a complete catalogue of Cage's music and a filmography, as well as other materials.

James Pritchett: Writings, articles on Cage's music in HTML and PDF form by Cage scholar James Pritchett.

Edition Peters: John Cage Biography and Works, Cage's principal publisher since 1961.

Guide to the John Cage Mycology Collection

Silence/Stories: related texts and poems by, among others, Lowell Cross, AP Crumlish, Karlheinz Essl, Raymond Federman, August Highland, George Koehler, Richard Kostelanetz, Ian S. Macdonald, Beat Streuli, Dan Waber, Sigi Waters and John Whiting

Link collections

John Cage Online

Specific topics

Kasper, Ulrike. "Sounds Visions, The Work of Jacques Pourcher, Perspectives on John Cage", essay on the exhibition "John Cage and Jacques Pourcher, Works on Paper", Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, USA.

The Music of Chance, article from the UK ''Guardian'' newspaper, quotes from various people who knew Cage.

ORGAN²/ASLSP: As Slow as Possible – John-Cage-Orgelprojekt Halberstadt, Web site about a current ongoing performance of As Slow As Possible, which began in 2001 and is scheduled to have a duration of 639 years

'Silence and Change / Five Hanau Silence': Articles and documents on a project of John Cage, Claus Sterneck and Wolfgang Sterneck in benefit of a squated culture center in Hanau (Germany) in 1991, (English / German).

Listening

In Conversation with Morton Feldman, 1966, Part 1

In Conversation with Morton Feldman, 1966, Part 2

In Conversation with Morton Feldman, 1966, Part 3

In Conversation with Morton Feldman, 1966, Part 4

In Conversation with Morton Feldman, 1966, Part 5

Media

John Cage at UbuWeb: historical, sound, film.

John Cage's etchings at the Crown Point Press website

Art of the States: John Cage, six works by the composer

Indeterminacy, Cage's short stories taken from various publications and accessed in random order.

FontanaMixer: computer program by Karlheinz Essl which generates a realtime version of John Cage's "Fontana Mix" (1958)

Other Minds Archive: John Cage interviewed by Jonathan Cott, streaming audio

Other Minds Archive: John Cage and David Tudor Concert at The San Francisco Museum of Art (January 16, 1965), streaming audio

27, 2002 Suite for Toy Piano (1948) performed by Margaret Leng Tan at the Other Minds Music Festival in 1999 at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco.

1982 performance of ''Speech'' for 5 radios and reel (1955) on YouTube

''Water Walk'' on YouTube from Cage's appearance on the game show ''I've Got a Secret'' in January 1960.

The Anarchy of Silence. John Cage and Experimental Art (2009) a lecture by Julia E. Robinson on occasion of Cage's exhibition at the MACBA, Barcelona

Notes towards a re-reading of the “Roaratorio” the work of John Cage and his special relationship to radio at Ràdio Web MACBA

The Rest isn't Silence... it doesn't exist! Analytical material and recordings going back to the first rehearsal and performance of Imaginary Landscape No 4 in 1951.

Category:1912 births Category:1992 deaths Category:20th-century classical composers Category:American anarchists Category:American composers Category:American writers Category:Anarchist poets Category:Harvard University people Category:Anarchist musicians Category:Experimental composers Category:Fluxus Category:Guggenheim Fellows Category:LGBT musicians from the United States Category:LGBT composers Category:Opera composers Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:Western mystics Category:Black Mountain College faculty Category:Wesleyan University faculty Category:Contemporary classical music performers Category:American Zen Buddhists Category:American experimental musicians Category:Avant-garde pianists Category:Cornish College of the Arts faculty

ca:John Cage cs:John Cage cy:John Cage da:John Cage de:John Cage et:John Cage el:Τζων Κέιτζ es:John Cage eo:John Cage fa:جان کیج fr:John Cage fy:John Cage gl:John Cage ko:존 케이지 io:John Cage it:John Cage he:ג'ון קייג' ka:ჯონ ქეიჯი lv:Džons Keidžs li:John Cage hu:John Cage nl:John Cage ja:ジョン・ケージ no:John Cage nn:John Cage oc:John Cage pl:John Cage pt:John Cage ro:John Cage ru:Кейдж, Джон scn:John Cage simple:John Cage sk:John Cage sh:John Cage fi:John Cage sv:John Cage tl:John Cage th:จอห์น เคจ tr:John Cage uk:Джон Кейдж vi:John Cage zh:約翰·凱吉

Coordinates	16°48′″N96°09′″N
name	Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉)
alt	A statue of Matsuo in Hiraizumi, Iwate
pseudonym	Sōbō (宗房)Tōsē (桃青)Bashō (芭蕉)
birth name	Matsuo Kinsaku (松尾 金作)
birth date	1644
birth place	Near Ueno, Iga Province
death date	November 28, 1694 (aged 50)
occupation	Poet
nationality	Japanese
notableworks	''Oku no Hosomichi''
influenced	Imagism, Beat Generation; Robbie Basho, Steffen Basho-Junghans }}

, born , then , was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative ''haikai no renga'' form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as a master of brief and clear haiku. His poetry is internationally renowned, and within Japan many of his poems are reproduced on monuments and traditional sites.

Bashō was introduced to poetry at a young age, and after integrating himself into the intellectual scene of Edo he quickly became well-known throughout Japan. He made a living as a teacher, but renounced the social, urban life of the literary circles and was inclined to wander throughout the country, heading west, east, and far into the northern wilderness to gain inspiration for his writing. His poems were influenced by his firsthand experience of the world around him, often encapsulating the feeling of a scene in a few simple elements.

Early life

Bashō was born in 1644, near Ueno, in Iga Province. His father may have been a low-ranking samurai, which would have promised Bashō a career in the military, but not much chance of a notable life. It was traditionally claimed by biographers that he worked in the kitchens. However, as a child, Bashō became a servant to , who shared with Bashō a love for ''haikai no renga'', a form of collaborative poetry composition. The sequences were opened with a verse in 5-7-5 mora format; this verse was named a ''hokku'', and would later be renamed ''haiku'' when presented as a stand-alone work. The ''hokku'' would be followed by a related 7-7 mora verse by another poet. Both Bashō and Yoshitada gave themselves , or ''haikai'' pen names; Bashō's was , which was simply the on'yomi reading of his adult name of . In 1662 the first extant poem by Bashō was published; in 1664 two of his hokku were printed in a compilation, and in 1665 Bashō and Yoshitada composed a one-hundred-verse ''renku'' with some acquaintances.

Yoshitada's sudden death in 1666 brought Bashō's peaceful life as a servant to an end. No records of this time remain, but it is believed that Bashō gave up the possibility of samurai status and left home. Biographers have proposed various reasons and destinations, including the possibility of an affair between Bashō and a Shinto ''miko'' named , which is unlikely to be true. Bashō's own references to this time are vague; he recalled that "at one time I coveted an official post with a tenure of land", and that "there was a time when I was fascinated with the ways of homosexual love", but there is no indication whether he was referring to real obsessions or even fictional ones. He was uncertain whether to become a full-time poet; by his own account, "the alternatives battled in my mind and made my life restless". His indecision may have been influenced by the then still relatively low status of ''renga'' and ''haikai no renga'' as more social activities than serious artistic endeavors. In any case, his poems continued to be published in anthologies in 1667, 1669, and 1671, and he published his own compilation of work by him and other authors of the Teitoku school, , in 1672.

Rise to fame

In the fashionable literary circles of Nihonbashi, Bashō's poetry was quickly recognized for its simple and natural style. In 1674 he was inducted into the inner circle of the ''haikai'' profession, receiving secret teachings from Kitamura Kigin (1624–1705). He wrote this ''hokku'' in mock tribute to the Shogun:

:''kabitan mo / tsukubawasekeri / kimi ga haru'' ::the Dutchmen, too, / kneel before His Lordship— / spring under His reign. [1678]

He gave himself the ''haigō'' of Tōsei and by 1680 he had a full-time job teaching twenty disciples, who published , advertising their connection to Tōsei's talent. That winter, he took the surprising step of moving across the river to Fukagawa, out of the public eye and towards a more reclusive life. His disciples built him a rustic hut and planted a in the yard, giving Bashō a new ''haigō'' and his first permanent home. He appreciated the plant very much, and was not happy to see Fukagawa's native miscanthus growing alongside it:

:''bashō uete / mazu nikumu ogi no / futaba kana'' ::by my new banana plant / the first sign of something I loathe— / a miscanthus bud! [1680]

Despite his success, Bashō grew dissatisfied and lonely. He began to practise Zen meditation, but it seems not to have calmed his mind. In the winter of 1682 his hut burned down, and shortly afterwards, in early 1683, his mother died. He then traveled to Yamura, to stay with a friend. In the winter of 1683 his disciples gave him a second hut in Edo, but his spirits did not improve. In 1684 his disciple Takarai Kikaku published a compilation of him and other poets, . Later that year he left Edo on the first of four major wanderings.

Traveling in medieval Japan was immensely dangerous, and at first Bashō expected to simply die in the middle of nowhere or be killed by bandits. As the trip progressed, his mood improved and he became comfortable on the road. He met many friends and grew to enjoy the changing scenery and the seasons. His poems took on a less introspective and more striking tone as he observed the world around him:

:''uma wo sae / nagamuru yuki no / ashita kana'' ::even a horse / arrests my eyes—on this / snowy morrow [1684]

The trip took him from Edo to Mount Fuji, Ueno, and Kyoto. He met several poets who called themselves his disciples and wanted his advice; he told them to disregard the contemporary Edo style and even his own ''Shriveled Chestnuts'', saying it contained "many verses that are not worth discussing". He returned to Edo in the summer of 1685, taking time along the way to write more ''hokku'' and comment on his own life:

:''toshi kurenu / kasa kite waraji / hakinagara'' ::another year is gone / a traveler's shade on my head, / straw sandals at my feet [1685]

When Bashō returned to Edo he happily resumed his job as a teacher of poetry at his ''bashō'' hut, although privately he was already making plans for another journey. The poems from his journey were published as . In early 1686 he composed one of his best-remembered haiku:

:''furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto'' ::an ancient pond / a frog jumps in / the splash of water [1686]

Historians believe this poem became instantly famous: in April, the poets of Edo gathered at the ''bashō'' hut for a ''haikai no renga'' contest on the subject of frogs that seems to have been a tribute to Bashō's ''hokku'', which was placed at the top of the compilation. Bashō stayed in Edo, continuing to teach and hold contests, with an excursion in the autumn of 1687 when he traveled to the countryside for moon watching, and a longer trip in 1688 when he returned to Ueno to celebrate the Lunar New Year. At home in Edo, Bashō sometimes became reclusive: he alternated between rejecting visitors to his hut and appreciating their company. At the same time, he enjoyed his life and had a subtle sense of humor, as reflected in his ''hokku'':

:''iza saraba / yukimi ni korobu / tokoromade'' ::now then, let's go out / to enjoy the snow... until / I slip and fall! [1688]

''Oku no Hosomichi''

Bashō's private planning for another long journey culminated on May 16, 1689 (Yayoi 27, Genroku 2), when he left Edo with his student and apprentice on a journey to the Northern Provinces of Honshū. Bashō and Sora headed north to Hiraizumi, which they reached on June 29. They then walked to the western side of the island, touring Kisakata on , and began hiking back at a leisurely pace along the coastline. During this 150-day journey Bashō traveled a total of 600 ''ri'' (2,400 km) through the northeastern areas of Honshū, returning to Edo in late 1691.

By the time Bashō reached Ōgaki, Gifu Prefecture, he had completed the log of his journey. He edited and redacted it for three years, writing the final version in 1694 as . The first edition was published posthumously in 1702. It was an immediate commercial success and many other itinerant poets followed the path of his journey. He made a living from teaching and appearances at ''haikai'' parties until late August of 1693, when he shut the gate to his ''bashō'' hut and refused to see anybody for a month. Finally, he relented after adopting the principle of ''karumi'' or "lightness", a semi-Buddhist philosophy of greeting the mundane world rather than separating himself from it. Bashō left Edo for the last time in the summer of 1694, spending time in Ueno and Kyoto before his arrival in Osaka. He became sick with a stomach illness and died peacefully, surrounded by his disciples. Although he did not compose any formal death poem on his deathbed the following, being the last poem recorded during his final illness, is generally accepted as his poem of farewell:

:''tabi ni yande / yume wa kareno wo / kake meguru'' ::falling sick on a journey / my dream goes wandering / over a field of dried grass [1694]

Influence and literary criticism

Rather than sticking to the formulas of , which remain popular in Japan even today, Bashō aspired to reflect his real environment and emotions in his ''hokku''. Even during his lifetime, the effort and style of his poetry was widely appreciated; after his death, it only increased. Several of his students compiled quotations from him about his own poetry, most notably Mukai Kyorai and Hattori Dohō.

During the 18th century, appreciation of Bashō's poems grew more fervent, and commentators such as Ishiko Sekisui and Moro Nanimaru went to great length to find references in his ''hokku'' to historical events, medieval books, and other poems. These commentators were often lavish in their praise of Bashō's obscure references, some of which were probably literary false cognates. In 1793 Bashō was deified by the Shinto bureaucracy, and for a time criticizing his poetry was literally blasphemous.

It was not until the late 19th century that this period of unanimous passion for Bashō's poems came to an end. Masaoka Shiki, arguably Bashō's most famous critic, tore down the long-standing orthodoxy with his bold and candid objections to Bashō's style. However, Shiki was also instrumental in making Bashō's poetry accessible to leading intellectuals and the Japanese public at large. He invented the term ''haiku'' (replacing ''hokku'') to refer to the freestanding 5-7-5 form which he considered the most artistic and desirable part of the ''haikai no renga''.

Critical interpretation of Bashō's poems continued into the 20th century, with notable works by Yamamoto Kenkichi, Imoto Nōichi, and Ogata Tsutomu. The 20th century also saw translations of Bashō's poems into languages and editions around the world. His position in Western eyes as the ''haiku'' poet ''par excellence'' gave him great influence, and by virtue of Western preference for ''haiku'' over more traditional forms like the ''tanka'' or ''renga'', have rendered him the archetype of Japanese poets and poetry, with some western scholars even believing that he invented haiku. The impressionistic and concise nature of his verse influenced particularly Ezra Pound and the Imagists, and later the poets of the Beat Generation. Claude-Max Lochu, on his second visit to Japan, created his own "travel painting", inspired by Bashō's use of travel as inspiration. Robbie Basho and Steffen Basho-Junghans were also influenced by him.

List of works

''Kai Ōi'' (The Seashell Game) (1672)

''Minashiguri'' (A Shriveled Chestnut) (1683)

''Nozarashi Kikō'' (Record of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton) (1684)

''Fuyu no Hi'' (Winter Days) (1684)

''Haru no Hi'' (Spring Days) (1686)

''Kashima Kikō'' (A Visit to Kashima Shrine) (1687)

''Oi no Kobumi'', or ''Utatsu Kikō'' (Record of a Travel-Worn Satchel) (1688)

''Sarashina Kikō'' (A Visit to Sarashina Village) (1688)

''Arano'' (Wasteland) (1689)

''Hisago'' (The Gourd) (1690)

''Sarumino'' (The Monkey's Raincoat) (1691)

''Saga Nikki'' (Saga Diary) (1691)

''Bashō no Utsusu Kotoba'' (On Transplanting the Banana Tree) (1691)

''Heikan no Setsu'' (On Seclusion) (1692)

''Sumidawara'' (A Sack of Charcoal) (1694)

''Betsuzashiki'' (The Detached Room) (1694)

''Oku no Hosomichi'' (Narrow Road to the Interior) (1694)

''Zoku Sarumino'' (The Monkey's Raincoat, Continued) (1698)

English translations

Notes

References

Takarai, Kikaku (2006). ''An Account of Our Master Basho's Last Days'', translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa in ''Springtime in Edo''. Hiroshima, Keisuisha. ISBN 4-87440-920-2

Matsuo, Bashō (1966). "The narrow road to the Deep North", translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa. Harmondsworth, Penguin. ISBN 0140441859

External links

Various poems by Bashō, in original and translation. Comparison of translations by R. H. Blyth, Lucien Stryck and Peter Beilenson of several Bashō haiku. Translations of renku by Bashō and his disciples, by Sean Price. Travels along the path Matsuo Bashō followed for Oku no Hosomichi. Photography by Mike Yamashita. Interactive Travelogue of Howard Norman's journey in Basho's footsteps, including a map of the route taken. A translation by Nobuyuki Yuasa of an important manuscript by Takarai Kikaku, also known as Shinshi, one of Bashō’s followers.

Category:1644 births Category:1694 deaths Category:Japanese poets Category:Japanese Zen Buddhists Category:Japanese writers of the Edo period

ar:ماتسوو باشو an:Matsuo Bashō az:Matsuo Basyo ba:Мацуо Басё be:Мацуа Басё be-x-old:Мацуа Басё bo:མ་ཏི་སུའོ་བ་ཤོ། bs:Matsuo Basho br:Matsuo Bashō bg:Мацуо Башо ca:Matsuo Bashō cs:Macuo Bašó cy:Bashō da:Matsuo Basho de:Matsuo Bashō et:Matsuo Bashō el:Ματσούο Μπασό es:Matsuo Bashō eo:Matsuo Basho eu:Matsuo Basho fa:ماتسوئو باشو hif:Matsuo Bashō fr:Bashō Matsuo gl:Matsuo Basho ko:마쓰오 바쇼 haw:Matsuo Bashō hy:Մացուո Բասյո hr:Macuo Bašo id:Matsuo Basho is:Matsuo Bashō it:Matsuo Bashō he:מאטסואו באשו jv:Matsuo Basho ka:მაცუო ბასიო sw:Matsuo Bashō la:Basho lv:Macuo Basjo lb:Matsuo Bashō lt:Macuo Bašio li:Matsuo Bashô lmo:Matsuo Bashō hu:Macuo Basó mk:Мацуо Башо ml:മത്സുവോ ബാഷോ mr:मात्सुओ बाशो arz:ماتسوو باشو ms:Matsuo Bashō mn:Мацүо Башо nl:Matsuo Basho new:मात्सुओ बाशो ja:松尾芭蕉 no:Matsuo Basho nn:Matsuo Bashō oc:Matsuo Bashō pnb:میٹسو باشو pms:Matsuo Bashō pl:Bashō Matsuo pt:Matsuo Bashō kaa:Matsuo Bashō ro:Bashō Matsuo rue:Мацуо Башо ru:Мацуо Басё sah:Матсуо Басө sco:Matsuo Basho scn:Matsuo Basho simple:Matsuo Basho sk:Bašó Macuo sl:Matsuo Bashō srn:Matsuo Bashō sr:Мацуо Башо sh:Matsuo Basho fi:Matsuo Bashō sv:Basho tl:Matsuo Bashō ta:மட்சுவோ பாஷோ roa-tara:Matsuo Bashō th:มะสึโอะ บะโช tr:Matsuo Bashō uk:Мацуо Басьо ur:ماتسو باشو vi:Matsuo Bashō vo:Matsuo Bashō war:Matsuo Bashō yo:Matsuo Bashō zh-yue:松尾芭蕉 bat-smg:Matsuo Bashō zh:松尾芭蕉

Olivier Messiaen (; December 10, 1908 – April 27, 1992) was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex (he was interested in rhythms from ancient Greek and from Hindu sources); harmonically and melodically it is based on ''modes of limited transposition'', which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations. Many of his compositions depict what he termed "the marvellous aspects of the faith", and drew on his deeply held Roman Catholicism.

He travelled widely and wrote works inspired by diverse influences such as Japanese music, the landscape of Bryce Canyon in Utah and the life of St. Francis of Assisi. He said he perceived colours when he heard certain musical chords, particularly those built from his modes (a phenomenon known as synaesthesia); combinations of these colours, he said, were important in his compositional process. For a short period Messiaen experimented with the parametrisation associated with "total serialism", in which field he is often cited as an innovator. His style absorbed many exotic musical influences such as Indonesian gamelan (tuned percussion often features prominently in his orchestral works). He was one of the first composers to use an electronic keyboard—in this case, the ondes Martenot—in an orchestral work.

Messiaen entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 11 and was taught by Paul Dukas, Maurice Emmanuel, Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré, among others. He was appointed organist at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité in Paris in 1931, a post held until his death. He taught at the Schola Cantorum de Paris during the 1930s. On the fall of France in 1940, Messiaen was made a prisoner of war, during which time he composed his ("Quartet for the end of time") for the four available instruments—piano, violin, cello and clarinet. The piece was first performed by Messiaen and fellow prisoners for an audience of inmates and prison guards. He was appointed professor of harmony soon after his release in 1941, and professor of composition in 1966 at the Paris Conservatoire, positions he held until his retirement in 1978. His many distinguished pupils included Pierre Boulez and Yvonne Loriod, who became his second wife.

He found birdsong fascinating, believed birds to be the greatest musicians, and considered himself as much an ornithologist as a composer. He notated bird songs worldwide and incorporated birdsong transcriptions into most of his music. His innovative use of colour, his conception of the relationship between time and music, his use of birdsong and his desire to express religious ideas are among features that make Messiaen's music distinctive.

Life and career

Youth and studies

Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen was born in Avignon, France, into a literary family. He was the elder of two sons of Cécile Sauvage, a poet, and Pierre Messiaen, a teacher of English who translated the plays of William Shakespeare into French. Messiaen's mother published a sequence of poems, ("The Budding Soul"), the last chapter of ("As the Earth Turns"), which address her unborn son. Messiaen later said this sequence of poems influenced him deeply and he cited it as prophetic of his future artistic career.

At the outbreak of World War I, Pierre Messiaen enlisted and Cécile took their two boys to live with her brother in Grenoble. There Messiaen became fascinated with drama, reciting Shakespeare to his brother with the help of a home-made toy theatre with translucent backdrops made from old cellophane wrappers. At this time he also adopted the Roman Catholic faith. Later, Messiaen felt most at home in the Alps of the Dauphiné, where he had a house built south of Grenoble where he composed most of his music.

He took piano lessons having already taught himself to play. His interest included the recent music of French composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, and he asked for opera vocal scores for Christmas presents. Around this time he began to compose. In 1918 his father returned from the war and the family moved to Nantes. He continued music lessons; one of his teachers, Jehan de Gibon, gave him a score of Debussy's opera , which Messiaen described as "a thunderbolt" and "probably the most decisive influence on me". The following year Pierre Messiaen gained a teaching post in Paris. Messiaen entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1919, aged 11.

At the Conservatoire, Messiaen made excellent academic progress. In 1924, aged 15, he was awarded second prize in harmony, having been taught in that subject by professor Jean Gallon. In 1926, he gained first prize in counterpoint and fugue, and in 1927 he won first prize in piano accompaniment. After studying with Maurice Emmanuel, he was awarded first prize for the history of music in 1928. Emmanuel's example engendered an interest in ancient Greek rhythms and exotic modes. After showing improvisation skills on the piano Messiaen studied organ with Marcel Dupré and inherited the tradition of great French organists (Dupré had studied with Charles-Marie Widor and Louis Vierne, Vierne in turn was a pupil of César Franck). Messiaen gained first prize in organ playing and improvisation in 1929. After a year studying composition with Charles-Marie Widor, in the autumn of 1927 he entered the class of the newly appointed Paul Dukas, who instilled in Messiaen a mastery of orchestration. In 1930 Messiaen won first prize in composition.

While a student he composed his first published works—his eight ''Préludes'' for piano (the earlier ''Le banquet céleste'' was published subsequently). These exhibit Messiaen's use of his modes of limited transposition and palindromic rhythms (Messiaen called these ''non-retrogradable rhythms''). His public début came in 1931 with his orchestral suite ''Les offrandes oubliées''. That year he first heard a gamelan group, sparking his interest in the use of tuned percussion.

La Trinité, ''La jeune France'', and Messiaen's war

In the autumn of 1927, Messiaen joined Dupré's organ course. Dupré later wrote that Messiaen, having never seen an organ console, sat quietly for an hour while Dupré explained and demonstrated the instrument, and then came back a week later to play Johann Sebastian Bach's ''Fantasia in C minor'' to an impressive standard. From 1929, Messiaen regularly deputised at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité, Paris, for the organist Charles Quef, who was ill at the time. The post became vacant in 1931 when Quef died, and Dupré, Charles Tournemire and Widor among others supported Messiaen's candidacy. His formal application included a letter of recommendation from Widor. The appointment was confirmed in 1931, and he remained the organist at la Sainte-Trinité for more than sixty years.

He married the violinist and composer Claire Delbos in 1932. Their marriage inspired him to both compose works for her to play (''Thème et variations'' for violin and piano in the year they were married) and to write pieces to celebrate their domestic happiness, including the song cycle ''Poèmes pour Mi'' in 1936, which he orchestrated in 1937. ''Mi'' was Messiaen's affectionate nickname for his wife. In 1937 their son Pascal was born. The marriage turned to tragedy when Delbos lost her memory after an operation and spent the rest of her life in mental institutions.

In 1936, along with André Jolivet, Daniel-Lesur and Yves Baudrier, Messiaen formed the group ''La jeune France'' ("Young France"). Their manifesto implicitly attacked the frivolity predominant in contemporary Parisian music and rejected Jean Cocteau's 1918 ''Le coq et l'arlequin'' manifesto in favour of a "living music, having the impetus of sincerity, generosity and artistic conscientiousness". Messiaen's career soon departed from this polemical phase.

In response to a commission for a piece to accompany light-and water-shows on the Seine during the ''Paris Exposition'', in 1937 Messiaen demonstrated his interest in using the ondes Martenot, an electronic instrument, by composing ''Fêtes des belles eaux'' for an ensemble of six. He included a part for the instrument in several of his subsequent compositions. During this period he composed several multi-movement organ works. He arranged his orchestral suite ''L'ascension'' ("The Ascension") for organ, replacing the orchestral version's third movement with an entirely new movement, ''Transports de joie d'une âme devant la gloire du Christ qui est la sienne'' ("Ecstasies of a soul before the glory of Christ, which is its own glory"). () This movement became one of Messiaen's most popular pieces. He also wrote the extensive cycles ''La Nativité du Seigneur'' ("The Nativity of the Lord") and ''Les corps glorieux'' ("The glorious bodies"). The final toccata of ''La Nativité'', ''Dieu parmi nous'' ("God among us"), has become another favourite recital piece.

At the outbreak of World War II, Messiaen was drafted into the French army. Due to poor eyesight, he was enlisted as a medical auxiliary rather than an active combatant. He was captured at Verdun and taken to Görlitz in May 1940, and was imprisoned at Stalag VIII-A. He met a violinist, a cellist and a clarinettist among his fellow prisoners. He wrote a trio for them, which he gradually incorporated into his ''Quatuor pour la fin du temps'' ("Quartet for the End of Time"). The quartet was first performed in January 1941 to an audience of prisoners and prison guards, with the composer playing a poorly maintained upright piano in freezing conditions. Thus the enforced introspection and reflection of camp life bore fruit in one of 20th-century European classical music's acknowledged masterpieces. The title's "end of time" alludes to the Apocalypse, and also to the way in which Messiaen, through rhythm and harmony, used time in a manner completely different from his predecessors and contemporaries.

Tristan and serialism

Shortly after his release from Görlitz in May 1941, Messiaen was appointed a professor of harmony at the Paris Conservatoire, where he taught until his retirement in 1978. He compiled his ''Technique de mon langage musical'' ("Technique of my musical language") published in 1944, in which he quotes many examples from his music, particularly the Quartet. Although only in his mid-thirties, his students described him as an outstanding teacher, who, rather than imposing his own ideas, encouraged his pupils to find their own voice. Among his early students were the composers Pierre Boulez and Karel Goeyvaerts and the pianist Yvonne Loriod. Other pupils included Karlheinz Stockhausen in 1952, Alexander Goehr in 1956–57, György Kurtág in 1957, Tristan Murail in 1967–72 and George Benjamin during the late 1970s. The Greek composer Iannis Xenakis was referred to him in 1951; Messiaen urged Xenakis to take advantage of his background in mathematics and architecture in his music.

In 1943, Messiaen wrote ''Visions de l'Amen'' ("Visions of the Amen") for two pianos for Loriod and himself to perform. Shortly thereafter he composed the enormous solo piano cycle ''Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus'' ("Twenty gazes on the child Jesus") for her. Again for Loriod, he wrote ''Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine'' ("Three small liturgies of the Divine Presence") for female chorus and orchestra which includes a difficult solo piano part. In this way, Messiaen continued to bring liturgical subjects to the piano recital and concert hall.

Two years after ''Visions de l'Amen'', Messiaen composed the song cycle Harawi, the first of three works inspired by the legend of Tristan and Isolde. The second of these works about human (as opposed to divine) love was the result of a commission from Serge Koussevitsky. Messiaen stated that the commission did not specify the length of the work or the size of the orchestra. This was the ten-movement ''Turangalîla-Symphonie''. It is not a conventional symphony, but rather an extended meditation on the joy of human union and love. It does not contain the sexual guilt inherent in Richard Wagner's ''Tristan und Isolde'' because Messiaen believed that sexual love is a divine gift. Messiaen visited the United States in 1947, where his music was conducted by Koussevitsky and Leopold Stokowski. His ''Turangalîla-Symphonie'' was first performed in America in 1949, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

Messiaen taught an analysis class at the Paris Conservatoire, and in 1947 he taught in Budapest and in 1949 at Tanglewood. During the summers of 1949 and 1950 he taught in the new music summer school classes at Darmstadt. While he did not employ the twelve-tone technique, after three years teaching analysis of twelve-tone scores, including works by Arnold Schoenberg, he experimented with ways of making scales of other elements (including duration, articulation and dynamics) analogous to the chromatic pitch scale. The results of these innovations was the "Mode de valeurs et d'intensités" for piano (from the ''Quatre études de rhythme'') which has been misleadingly described as the first work of total serialism. It had a large influence on the earliest European serial composers including Pierre Boulez, Karel Goeyvaerts, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. During this period he also experimented with musique concrète, music for recorded sounds.

Birdsong and the 1960s

When in 1952 Messiaen was asked to provide a test piece for flautists wishing to enter the Paris Conservatoire, he composed the piece ''Le merle noir'' for flute and piano. While he had long been fascinated by birdsong, and birds had made appearances in several of his earlier works (for example ''La Nativité'', ''Quatuor'' and ''Vingt regards''), the flute piece was based entirely on the song of the blackbird.

He took this development to a new level with his 1953 orchestral work ''Réveil des oiseaux''—its material consists almost entirely of the birdsong one might hear between midnight and noon in the Jura. From this period onwards, Messiaen incorporated birdsong into all of his compositions and composed several works for which birds provide both the title and subject matter (for example the collection of thirteen pieces for piano ''Catalogue d'oiseaux'' completed in 1958, and ''La fauvette des jardins'' of 1971). Far from being simple transcriptions of birdsong, these works are sophisticated tone poems evoking both place and atmosphere. Paul Griffiths observed that Messiaen was a more conscientious ornithologist than any previous composer, and a more musical observer of birdsong than any previous ornithologist.

Messiaen's first wife died in 1959 after a long illness, and in 1961 he married pianist Yvonne Loriod. He began to travel widely, to attend musical events and to seek out and transcribe the songs of more exotic birds in the wild. Loriod frequently assisted her husband's detailed studies of birdsong while walking with him, by making tape recordings for later reference. In 1962 he visited Japan, where Gagaku music and Noh theatre inspired the orchestral "Japanese sketches", ''Sept haïkaï'', which contain stylised imitations of traditional Japanese instruments.

Messiaen's music was by this time championed by, among others, Pierre Boulez, who programmed first performances at his Domaine musical concerts and the Donaueschingen festival. Works performed included ''Réveil des oiseaux'', ''Chronochromie'' (commissioned for the 1960 festival) and ''Couleurs de la cité céleste''. The latter piece was the result of a commission for a composition for three trombones and three xylophones; Messiaen added to this more brass, wind, percussion and piano, and specified a xylophone, xylorimba and marimba rather than three xylophones. Another work of this period, ''Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorem'', was commissioned as a commemoration of the dead of the two World Wars and was performed first semi-privately in the Sainte-Chapelle, then publicly in Chartres Cathedral with Charles de Gaulle in the audience.

His reputation as a composer continued to grow and in 1959, he was nominated as an ''Officier'' of the ''Légion d'honneur''. In 1966 he was officially appointed professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, although he had in effect been teaching composition for years. Further honours included election to the Institut de France in 1967, the Erasmus Prize in 1971, the award of the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal and the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 1975, the Sonning Award (Denmark's highest musical honour) in 1977, and the presentation of the ''Croix de Commander'' of the Belgian Order of the Crown in 1980.

Transfiguration, Canyons, St. Francis, and the Beyond

Messiaen's next work was the enormous ''La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ''. The composition occupied him from 1965 to 1969 and the musicians employed include a 100-voice ten-part choir, seven solo instruments and large orchestra. Its fourteen movements are a meditation on the story of Christ's Transfiguration. Shortly after its completion, Messiaen received a commission from Alice Tully for a work to celebrate the U.S. bicentennial. He arranged a visit to the USA in spring 1972, and was inspired by Bryce Canyon in Utah, where he observed the canyon's distinctive colours and birdsong. The twelve-movement orchestral piece ''Des canyons aux étoiles…'' was the result, which was first performed in 1974 in New York.

In 1971, he was asked to compose a piece for the Paris Opéra. While reluctant to undertake such a major project, he was persuaded in 1975 to accept the commission and began work on his ''Saint-François d'Assise''. The composition was intensive (he also wrote his own libretto) and occupied him from 1975 to 1979; the orchestration was carried out from 1979 until 1983. Messiaen preferred to describe the final work as a "spectacle" rather than an opera. It was first performed in 1983. Some commentators at the time thought that the opera would be his valediction (at times Messiaen himself believed so), but he continued to compose. In 1984 he published a major collection of organ pieces, ''Livre du Saint Sacrement''; other works include birdsong pieces for solo piano, and works for piano with orchestra.

In the summer of 1978, Messiaen retired from teaching at the Conservatoire. He was promoted to the highest rank of the ''Légion d'honneur'', the ''Grand-Croix'', in 1987. An operation prevented his participation in the celebration of his 70th birthday in 1978, but in 1988 tributes for Messiaen's 80th included a complete performance in London's Royal Festival Hall of ''St. François'', which the composer attended, and Erato's publication of a seventeen-CD collection of Messiaen's music including recordings by Loriod and a disc of the composer in conversation with Claude Samuel.

Although in considerable pain near the end of his life (requiring repeated surgery on his back) he was able to fulfil a commission from the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, ''Éclairs sur l'au-delà…'', which was premièred six months after his death. He died in Clichy-la-Garenne.

On going through his papers, Messiaen's widow discovered that he had been composing a concerto for four musicians he felt particularly grateful to, namely Loriod, the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, the oboist Heinz Holliger and the flautist Catherine Cantin (hence the title Concert à quatre). Four of the five intended movements were substantially complete; Yvonne Loriod undertook the orchestration of the second half of the first movement and of the whole of the fourth with advice from George Benjamin. It was premiered by the dedicatees in September 1994.

Music

Messiaen's music has been described as outside the western musical tradition, although growing out of that tradition and being influenced by it. Much of his output denies the western conventions of forward motion, development and diatonic harmonic resolution. This is partly due to the symmetries of his technique—for instance the modes of limited transposition do not admit the conventional cadences found in western classical music.

His youthful love for the fairy-tale element in Shakespeare prefigured his later expressions of what he called "the marvellous aspects of the Roman Catholic Faith"—among which may be numbered Christ's Nativity, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, Transfiguration, the Apocalypse and the hereafter. Messiaen was not interested in depicting aspects of theology such as sin; rather he concentrated on the theology of joy, divine love and redemption.

Messiaen continually evolved new composition techniques, always integrating them into his existing musical style; his final work still retains the use of modes of limited transposition. For many commentators this continual development made every ''major'' work from the ''Quatuor'' onwards a conscious summation of all that Messiaen had composed up to that time. However, very few of these major works lack new technical ideas—simple examples being the introduction of communicable language in ''Meditations'', the invention of a new percussion instrument (the geophone) for ''Des canyons aux etoiles...'', and the freedom from any synchronisation with the main pulse of individual parts in certain birdsong episodes of ''St. François d'Assise''.

As well as discovering new techniques, Messiaen found and absorbed exotic music, including Ancient Greek rhythms, Hindu rhythms (he encountered Śārṅgadeva's list of 120 rhythmic units, the deçî-tâlas), Balinese and Javanese Gamelan, birdsong and Japanese music (see ''Example 1'' for an instance of his use of ancient Greek and Hindu rhythms).

While he was instrumental in the academic exploration of his techniques (he compiled two treatises: the later one in five volumes was substantially complete when he died and was published posthumously), and was himself a master of music analysis, he considered the development and study of techniques to be a means to intellectual, aesthetic and emotional ends. Thus Messiaen maintained that a musical composition must be measured against three separate criteria: it must be interesting, beautiful to listen to, and it must touch the listener.

Messiaen wrote a large body of music for the piano. Although a considerable pianist himself, he was undoubtedly assisted by Yvonne Loriod's formidable piano technique and ability to convey complex rhythms and rhythmic combinations; in his piano writing from ''Visions de l'Amen'' onwards he had her in mind. Messiaen said, "I am able to allow myself the greatest eccentricities because to her anything is possible."

Western artistic influences

Developments in modern French music were a major influence on Messiaen, particularly the music of Claude Debussy and his use of the whole-tone scale (which Messiaen called ''Mode 1'' in his modes of limited transposition). Messiaen very rarely used the whole-tone scale in his compositions because, he said, after Debussy and Dukas there was "nothing to add", but the modes he did use are all similarly symmetrical.

Messiaen had a great admiration for the music of Igor Stravinsky, particularly the use of rhythm in earlier works such as ''The Rite of Spring'', and his use of colour. He was further influenced by the orchestral brilliance of Heitor Villa-Lobos, who lived in Paris in the 1920s and gave acclaimed concerts there. Among composers for the keyboard, Messiaen singled out Jean-Philippe Rameau, Domenico Scarlatti, Frédéric Chopin, Debussy and Isaac Albéniz. For him there were no modal, tonal or serial compositions, only music with or without colour. He said that Claudio Monteverdi, Mozart, Chopin, Richard Wagner, Mussorgsky and Stravinsky all wrote strongly coloured music.

In certain of Messiaen's scores, he notated the colours in the music (notably in ''Couleurs de la cité céleste'' and ''Des canyons aux étoiles...'')— the purpose being to aid the conductor in interpretation rather than to specify which colours the listener should experience. The importance of colour is linked to Messiaen's synaesthesia, which he said caused him to experience colours when he heard or imagined music (he said that he did not perceive the colours visually). In his multi-volume music theory treatise ''Traité de rythme, de couleur, et d'ornithologie'' ("Treatise of Rhythm, Colour and Birdsong"), Messiaen wrote descriptions of the colours of certain chords. His descriptions range from the simple ("gold and brown") to the highly detailed ("blue-violet rocks, speckled with little grey cubes, cobalt blue, deep Prussian blue, highlighted by a bit of violet-purple, gold, red, ruby, and stars of mauve, black and white. Blue-violet is dominant").

When asked what Messiaen's main influence had been on composers, George Benjamin said, "I think the sheer [...] colour has been so influential, [...] rather than being a decorative element, [Messiaen showed that colour] could be a structural, a fundamental element, [...] the fundamental material of the music itself."

Symmetry

Many of Messiaen's composition techniques made use of symmetries of time and pitch.

Time

From his earliest works, Messiaen used non-retrogradable (palindromic) rhythms (''Example 2''). He sometimes combined rhythms with harmonic sequences in such a way that if the process were allowed to proceed indefinitely the music would eventually run through all the possible permutations and return to its starting point. For Messiaen, this represented the "charm of impossibilities" of these processes. He only ever presented a portion of any such process, as if allowing the informed listener a glimpse of something eternal. In the first movement of ''Quatuor pour la fin du temps'' the piano and cello together provide an early example.

Pitch

Messiaen used modes which he called ''modes of limited transposition''. They are distinguished as groups of notes which can only be transposed by a semitone a limited number of times. For example the whole-tone scale (Messiaen's Mode 1) only exists in two transpositions: namely C–D–E–F♯–G♯–A♯ and D♭–E♭–F–G–A–B. Messiaen abstracted these modes from the harmony of his improvisations and early works. Music written using the modes avoids conventional diatonic harmonic progressions, since for example Messiaen's Mode 2 (identical to the ''octatonic scale'' used also by other composers) permits precisely the dominant seventh chords whose tonic the mode does not contain. For Messiaen the modes possessed colours.

Time and rhythm

Messiaen considered his rhythmic contribution to music to be his distinguishing mark among modern composers. As well as making use of non-retrogradable rhythms, and the Hindu decî-tâlas, Messiaen also made use of "additive" rhythms. This involves lengthening individual notes slightly or interpolating a short note into an otherwise regular rhythm (see ''Example 3''), or shortening or lengthening every note of a rhythm by the same duration (adding a semiquaver to every note in a rhythm on its repeat, for example). This led Messiaen to use rhythmic cells that irregularly alternate between two and three units, a process which also occurs in Stravinsky's ''The Rite of Spring'', which Messiaen admired.

A factor that contributes to Messiaen's suspension of the conventional perception of time in his music is the extremely slow tempos he often specifies (the fifth movement ''Louange à l'eternité de Jésus'' of ''Quatuor'' is actually given the tempo marking ''infiniment lent''); and even in his quick music he often uses repeated phrases and harmonies to make the speed seem static.

Messiaen also used the concept of "chromatic durations", for example in his ''Soixante-quatre durées'' from ''Livre d'orgue'' (), which is built from, in Messiaen's words, "64 chromatic durations from 1 to 64 demisemiquavers [thirty-second notes] – invested in groups of 4, from the ends to the centre, forwards and backwards alternately – treated as a retrograde canon. The whole peopled with birdsong."

Harmony

thumb|300px|alt=A fragment of printed piano music, labelled with the French word "Loriot". The music is marked "Bien modéré" with a tempo of 100 quaver (quarter-note) beats per minute, "san sourd" on the upper stave and "coulé, doré" on the lower.|''Example 4''. The song of the golden oriole from ''Le loriot'', part of ''Catalogue d'oiseaux''. The birdsong played by the pianist's left hand (notated on the lower staff) provides the fundamental notes, and the quieter harmonies played by the right hand (on the upper staff) alter their timbre. In addition to making harmonic use of the modes of limited transposition, he cited the harmonic series as a physical phenomenon which provides chords with a context which he felt to be missing in purely serial music. An example of Messiaen's harmonic use of this phenomenon, which he called "resonance", is the last two bars of his first piano ''Prélude'', ''La colombe'' ("The dove"): the chord is built from harmonics of the fundamental base note E.

Related to this use of resonance, Messiaen also composed music in which the lowest, or fundamental, note is combined with higher notes or chords played much more quietly. These higher notes, far from being perceived as conventional harmony, function as harmonics that alter the timbre of the fundamental note like mixture stops on a pipe organ. An example is the song of the golden oriole in ''Le loriot'' of the ''Catalogue d'oiseaux'' for solo piano (''Example 4'').

In his use of conventional diatonic chords, Messiaen often transcended their historically banal connotations (for example, his frequent use of the added sixth chord as a resolution).

Birdsong

Birdsong fascinated Messiaen from an early age, and in this he found encouragement from his teacher Dukas, who reportedly urged his pupils to "listen to the birds". Messiaen included stylised birdsong in some of his early compositions (including ''L'abîme d'oiseaux'' from the ''Quatuor pour la fin du temps''), integrating it into his sound-world by techniques like the modes of limited transposition and chord colouration. His evocations of birdsong became increasingly sophisticated, and with ''Le réveil des oiseaux'' this process reached maturity, the whole piece being built from birdsong: in effect it is a dawn chorus for orchestra. The same can be said for "Epode", the five-minute sixth movement of "Chronochromie", which is scored for eighteen violins, each one playing a different birdsong. Messiaen notated the bird species with the music in the score (''Examples 1 and 4''). The pieces are not simple transcriptions; even the works with purely bird-inspired titles, such as ''Catalogue d'oiseaux'' and ''Fauvette des jardins'', are tone poems evoking the landscape, its colours and atmosphere.

Serialism

For some compositions, Messiaen created scales for duration, attack and timbre analogous to the chromatic pitch scale. He expressed annoyance at the historical importance given to one of these works, ''Mode de valeurs et d'intensités'', by musicologists intent on crediting him with the invention of "total serialism".

Works

Compositions

Published

''Le banquet céleste'' ("The heavenly banquet"), organ (1928, a recomposition of a section from his unpublished orchestral piece ''Le banquet eucharistique'')

''Préludes'', piano (1928–29)

''Diptyque'' ("Diptych"), organ (1930)

''La mort du nombre'' ("The death of numbers"), soprano, tenor, violin and piano (1930)

''Les offrandes oubliées'' ("The forgotten offerings"), orchestra (1930)

''Trois mélodies'', song cycle (1930)

''Le Tombeau Resplendissant'', orchestra (1931)

''Apparition de l'église éternelle'' ("Apparition of the eternal church"), organ (1932)

''Fantaisie burlesque'', piano (1932)

''Hymne au Saint Sacrement'' ("Hymn to the Holy Sacrament"), orchestra (1932, lost 1943, reconstructed from memory 1946)

''Thème et variations'', ("Theme and Variations") violin and piano (1932)

''L'ascension'' ("The Ascension"), orchestra (1932–33; organ version including replacement movement, 1933–34)

''La Nativité du Seigneur'' ("The Lord's nativity"), organ (1935)

''Pièce pour le tombeau de Paul Dukas'' ("Piece written as a memorial of Paul Dukas"), piano, (1935)

''Vocalise'', voice and piano (1935)

''Poèmes pour Mi'' ("Poems for ''Mi''"), song cycle (1936, orchestral version 1937)

''O sacrum convivium!'', choral motet (1937)

''Chants de terre et de ciel'' ("Songs of earth and heaven"), song cycle (1938)

''Les corps glorieux'' ("Glorious bodies"), organ (1939)

''Quatuor pour la fin du temps'' ("Quartet for the end of time"), violin, cello, clarinet, piano (1940–41)

Rondeau, piano (1943)

''Visions de l'Amen'' ("Visions of the Amen"), two pianos (1943)

''Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine'' ("Three small liturgies of the Divine Presence"), women's voices, piano solo, ondes Martenot solo, orchestra (1943–44)

''Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus'' ("Twenty gazes on the Christ-child"), piano (1944)

''Harawi: Chants d'amour et de mort'', ("Harawi: Songs of love and death") song cycle (1944)

''Turangalîla-Symphonie'', piano solo, ondes Martenot solo, orchestra (1946–48)

''Cinq rechants'', 12 singers (1948)

''Cantéyodjayâ'', piano (1949)

''Messe de la Pentecôte'' ("Pentecost mass"), organ (1949–50)

''Quatre études de rythme'' ("Four studies in rhythm"), piano (1949–50)

# ''Île de feu 1''

# ''Mode de valeurs et d'intensités''

# ''Neumes rhythmiques''

# ''Île de feu 2''

'' Le merle noir '' ("Blackbird"), flute and piano (1952)

''Livre d'orgue'', organ (1951–2)

''Réveil des oiseaux'' ("Dawn chorus"), solo piano and orchestra (1953)

''Oiseaux exotiques'' ("Exotic birds"), solo piano and orchestra (1955–56)

''Catalogue d'oiseaux'' ("Bird catalogue"), piano (1956–58)

*Book 1

**i ''Le chocard des alpes'' ("Alpine chough")

**ii ''Le loriot'' ("Golden oriole") (''loriot'' and ''Loriod'' are homophones)

**iii ''Le merle bleu'' ("Blue rock thrush")

*Book 2

**iv ''Le traquet stapazin'' ("Black-eared wheatear")

*Book 3

**v ''La chouette hulotte'' ("Tawny owl")

**vi ''L'alouette lulu'' ("Woodlark")

*Book 4

**vii ''La rousserolle effarvatte'' ("Reed warbler")

*Book 5

**viii ''L'alouette calandrelle'' ("Short-toed lark")

**ix ''La bouscarle'' ("Cetti's warbler")

*Book 6

*x ''Le merle de roche'' ("Rufous-tailed rock thrush")

*Book 7

**xi ''La buse variable'' ("Buzzard")

**xii ''Le traquet rieur'' ("Black wheatear")

**xiii ''Le courlis cendré'' ("Curlew")

''Chronochromie'' ("Time-colour"), orchestra (1959–60)

''Verset pour la fête de la dédicace'' ("Verse for the festival of dedication"), organ (1960)

''Sept haïkaï'' ("Seven haikus"), solo piano and orchestra (1962)

''Couleurs de la cité céleste'' ("Colours of the Celestial City"), solo piano and ensemble (1963)

''Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum'' ("And I look forward to the resurrection of the dead"), wind, brass and percussion (1964)

''La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ'' ("The Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ"), large 10-part chorus, piano solo, cello solo, flute solo, clarinet solo, xylorimba solo, vibraphone solo, large orchestra (1965–69)

''Méditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité'' ("Meditations on the mystery of the Holy Trinity"), organ (1969)

''La fauvette des jardins'' ("Garden warbler"), piano (1970)

''Des canyons aux étoiles…'' ("From the canyons to the stars..."), solo piano, solo horn, solo glockenspiel, solo xylorimba, small orchestra with 13 string players (1971–74)

''Saint-François d'Assise'' ("St Francis of Assisi"), opera (1975–1983)

''Livre du Saint Sacrement'' ("Book of the Holy Sacrament"), organ (1984)

''Petites esquisses d'oiseaux'' ("Small sketches of birds"), piano (1985)

''Un vitrail et des oiseaux'' ("Stained-glass window and birds"), piano solo, brass, wind and percussion (1986)

''La ville d'en-haut'' ("The city on high"), piano solo, brass, wind and percussion (1987)

''Un sourire'' ("A smile"), orchestra (1989)

''Pièce pour piano et quatuor à cordes'' ("Piece for piano and string quartet") (1991)

''Éclairs sur l'au-delà…'' ("Illuminations on the beyond..."), orchestra (1988–92)

Unpublished, posthumously published, or lost

A number of Messiaen's compositions were not sanctioned by the composer for publication. They include the following, some of which have been published posthumously, and some of which are lost.

''La dame de Shallott'', for piano (1917)

''La banquet eucharistique'', for orchestra (1928)

''Variations écossaises'', for organ (1928)

Mass, 8 sopranos and 4 violins (1933)

''Fantaisie'', for violin and piano (1933; published 2007)

''Fêtes des belles eaux'', for six ondes Martenots (1937)

''Musique de scène pour un Œdipe'', electronic (1942)

''Chant des déportés'', chorus and orchestra (1945, then lost, rediscovered 1991)

''Timbres-durées'', musique concrète (1952), realised by Pierre Henry in the radiophonic workshop of French radio, an experiment which Messiaen later deemed a failure

''Feuillets inedits'' for piano and ondes martenot (published 2001)

''Concert à quatre'' ("Quadruple concerto"), piano, flute, oboe, cello and orchestra (1990–91, almost finished at the time of his death, completed by Loriod and Benjamin)

Treatises

''Technique de mon langage musical'' ("The technique of my musical language"). Paris: Leduc, 1944.

''Vingt leçons d'harmonie'' ("20 harmony lessons"). Paris: Leduc, 1944.

''Traité de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie'' (1949–1992) ("Treatise on rhythm, colour and ornithology"), completed by Yvonne Loriod. 7 parts bound in 8 volumes. Paris: Leduc, 1994–2002.

''Analyses of the Piano Works of Maurice Ravel'', edited by Yvonne Loriod, translated by Paul Griffiths. [Paris]: Durand, 2005.

References and further reading

General references

Bruhn, Siglind (2007). ''Messiaen's Contemplations of Covenant and Incarnation: Musical Symbols of Faith in the Two Great Piano Cycles of the 1940s''. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press. ISBN 978-1-57647-129-6.

Bruhn, Siglind (2008). ''Messiaen's Explorations of Love and Death: Musico-poetic Signification in the Tristan Trilogy and Three Related Song Cycles''. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press. ISBN 978-1-57647-136-4.

Bruhn, Siglind (2008). ''Messiaen's Interpretations of Holiness and Trinity. Echoes of Medieval Theology in the Oratorio, Organ Meditations, and Opera''. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press. ISBN 978-1-57647-139-5.

Winner of the 2009 Max B Miller Award from the American Guild of Organists.

Conversations with the composer

Films

Apparition of the Eternal Church – Paul Festa's 2006 film about responses of 31 artists to Messiaen's music.

''Messiaen at 80'' (1988). Directed by Sue Knussen. BFI database entry.

''Olivier Messiaen – The Crystal Liturgy'' (2007 [DVD release date]). Directed by Olivier Mille.

''Olivier Messiaen: Works'' (1991). DVD on which Messiaen performs "Improvisations" on the organ at the Paris Trinity Church.

''The South Bank Show: Olivier Messiaen: The Music of Faith'' (1985). Directed by Alan Benson. BFI database entry.

Other references

Benitez, Vincent P. (2004). "Aspects of Harmony in Messiaen's Later Music: An Examination of the Chords of Transposed Inversions on the Same Bass Note." ''Journal of Musicological Research'' 23/2:187-226.

Bernard, Jonathan W. (1986). "Messiaen's Synaesthesia: The Correspondence between Color and Sound Structure in His Music." ''Music Perception'' 4:41–68.

Burns, Jeffrey Phillips (1995). "Messiaen's Modes of Limited Transposition Reconsidered". M.M. thesis, Madison: University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Gillock, Jon (2009). ''Performing Messiaen's Organ Music: 66 Masterclasses''. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana. ISBN 978-0-253-35373-3

Kraft, David (2000). "Birdsong in the Music of Olivier Messiaen". PhD diss., University of Middlesex.

Matossian, Nouritza. 1986. ''Xenakis''. London: Kahn and Averill. ISBN 1-871082-17-X

Toop, Richard (1974). “Messiaen / Goeyvaerts, Fano / Stockhausen, Boulez.” ''Perspectives of New Music'' 13, no. 1 (Fall-Winter): 141–69.

Notes

External links

BBC Messiaen Profile

Online Messiaen resource by Malcolm Ball

Infography about Olivier Messiaen

oliviermessiaen.net, hosted by the Boston University Messiaen Project [BUMP]. Includes detailed information on the composer's life and works, events, and links to other Messiaen websites.

www.philharmonia.co.uk/messiaen, the Philharmonia Orchestra's Messiaen website. The site contains articles, unseen images, programme notes and films to go alongside the orchestra's series of concerts celebrating the Centenary of Olivier Messiaen's birth.

David Schiff, Music for the End of Time, ''The Nation'', posted January 25, 2006 (February 13, 2006 issue). Formally a review of ''Messiaen'' by Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, but provides an overview of Messiaen's life and works.

"Couleurs de la Cité Céleste d’Olivier Messiaen" by Philippe Lalitte (Multimedia Analysis).

Nigel Simeone, ''Olivier Messiaen: A Biographical Sketch'' from the Messiaen Music Festival 2008 website

Music and the Holocaust – Olivier Messiaen

Listening

Louis Thiry playing «La Messe de Pentecôte» by Olivier Messiaen on the Sint-Bavokerk's organ in Haarlem (Nederlands)

Thème et variations – Helen Kim, violin; Adam Bowles, piano Luna Nova New Music Ensemble

Le merle noir – John McMurtery, flute; Adam Bowles, piano Luna Nova New Music Ensemble

Quatuor pour la fin du temps – Luna Nova New Music Ensemble

''Regard de l'esprit de joie'' from ''Vingt regards...'', Tom Poster, pianist

Birdsong in Messiaen

Example of Birdsong in Messiaen played on a Mühleisen pipe organ

In-depth feature on Olivier Messiaen by Radio France International's English service

Category:1908 births Category:1992 deaths Category:20th-century classical composers Category:Alumni of the Conservatoire de Paris Category:Composers for pipe organ Category:Erasmus Prize winners Category:French classical organists Category:French composers Category:French military personnel of World War II Category:French Roman Catholics Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Members of the Académie des beaux-arts Category:Grand Croix of the Légion d'honneur Category:Order of the Crown (Belgium) recipients Category:Organ improvisers Category:People from Avignon Category:People with synesthesia Category:Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Category:Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists Category:Schola Cantorum de Paris faculty Category:Wolf Prize in Arts laureates Category:World War II prisoners of war held by Germany

zh-min-nan:Olivier Messiaen bg:Оливие Месиен ca:Olivier Messiaen cs:Olivier Messiaen da:Olivier Messiaen de:Olivier Messiaen et:Olivier Messiaen el:Ολιβιέ Μεσιάν es:Olivier Messiaen eo:Olivier Messiaen fa:الیویه مسیان fr:Olivier Messiaen gl:Olivier Messiaen ko:올리비에 메시앙 hr:Olivier Messiaen it:Olivier Messiaen he:אוליביה מסייאן la:Olivarius Messiaen lv:Olivjē Mesiāns lb:Olivier Messiaen hu:Olivier Messiaen mk:Оливие Месијан nl:Olivier Messiaen ja:オリヴィエ・メシアン no:Olivier Messiaen nn:Olivier Messiaen pl:Olivier Messiaen pt:Olivier Messiaen ro:Olivier Messiaen ru:Мессиан, Оливье simple:Olivier Messiaen sk:Olivier Messiaen sl:Olivier Messiaen fi:Olivier Messiaen sv:Olivier Messiaen uk:Олів'є Мессіан zh:奥利维埃·梅西安