by Rob Haskins
As is well known, John Cage's appropriations of Japanese culture had a profound impact on his aesthetics and compositional methods. In addition to his interactions with the Buddhist scholar D. T. Suzuki, he remained connected to Japanese individuals and culture throughout his lifetime. One of the most decisive of these connections came through his teaching of Tōshi Ichiyanagi, then a young composer who had long admired his work. As a member of the Fluxus movement, Ichiyanagi and others helped to explore Cage's call for an art that is identical with life. For his part, Cage responded to Fluxus with a series of pieces in which, more than ever before, he dissolved all the conventions of the musical work: changing the typical venues for its performance, ignoring the idea of duration as the defining element of the work, and significantly expanding the notion of musical content. My paper clarifies some of the fertile cross-relationships among Cage, Japan, Ichiyanagi, and Fluxus. First, I consider the effect of Cage's aesthetic on two Ichiyanagi works from the 1960s, as well as Cage’s Fluxus-inspired works and their impact on the understanding of his later career. Finally, I turn to Cage’s interactions with Japanese culture and Fluxus in his final years, concentrating on his late works Ryoanji (1983-85); his performance of the Fluxus-like One3 (1989) in connection with his award of the Kyoto Prize; and aspects of Two2 (1989), a composition that Cage described as a renga.
[Presented at the national meeting of the American Musicological Society, Houston, Texas, November 14-16, 2003.]