As put by Curtis (2008, 31), the national in music does not ultimately exist “in music but in the discourse about music.” Likewise, the recognition of certain musical characteristics as “national” changes with time as a response to historical events (e.g. Dahlhaus 1989, 80). This leads to a more specific contextualization: as Stokes (ed. 1997) and White and Murphy (eds. 2001) suggest, musical representations of the national should be examined individually in each (music) culture. To be able to identify and understand the meaning of a national element, one has to be familiar with that particular
76 Steinberg (2004, 4) has phrased this as a question of seeking to understand what music “was trying to do” instead of what it “is trying to do,” thus putting more emphasis on the origins of works rather than their artistic contents as perceived today.
77 Naturally, an allusion is not always as clear-cut as in a quotation. This is discussed further below for example with more abstract characteristics interpretable as “Japanese qualities.”
culture and the idea of what is regarded as national—both on a general level and by the composer whose works are discussed. Still, expressing the national in music has also involved certain similar aspects in different cultures.
Therefore, before discussing Japan as an individual case, some remarks need to be made on general issues of locating the “national” in music.
The simplest approach is to regard the national quality as an inevitable characteristic resulting from the cultural or ethnic—that is, “national”—
background of a composer. This idea has its roots in Herder’s nineteenth-century philosophy, according to which a national quality originated inevitably from an innate “folk spirit” (Volksgeist) (e.g. Krosny 2003, 1194–1195). It is thus emphasized as a perpetual quality rather than as something that alters in response to historical factors. It makes composers “little more than an expressive tool for this vague and mystical spirit of the people” (Curtis 2008, 28). This essentialistic view has already long been questioned (e.g. Dahlhaus 1989, 80), but it is an important issue to recognize not only as a typical discourse on national-style composition in older writings but also in those related to Japanese culture. Although it surfaced in nineteenth-century European nationalism, the idea of a “Japanese spirit” has been a persistently recurring issue in views about music and culture in the postwar period as well.
This is discussed in more detail below.
A more substantial, yet simplifying definition of national qualities is that they differ from a “universal” language of music—universal meaning, in this context, primarily style composition. The “universality” of German-style composition has already long been challenged (e.g. Vaughan Williams 1934, 3–22), but the idea of recognizing national qualities as musical elements different from it has been widely applied in studies on music (e.g. in Abraham 1949, 247–270). This arises from historical circumstances. Eighteenth-century Germany was such a culturally dispersed area that there was originally no need to stress any national quality. This resulted in composer Johann Joachim Quantz’s (1697–1773) famous statement that ideal music appealed to the widest audience by fusing the best qualities of different nations. According to Quantz (1752, 333), this “universality” was best represented by German music: anyone could easily compose in a national style—such as Italian or French—whereas mastering German techniques of composition required sophistication. In this context, national elements are characteristics that do not fit into the “neutral,” universal compositional style, and thus introduce a new, distinctive quality to the music.
The problem of defining national elements solely as characteristics different from a universal musical language is, however, that the same musical element can be regarded as a “national” quality in the work of composers representing different nationalities. Open fifths and lydic fourths applied by both Chopin and Grieg, for example, have been regarded as particularly
“Polish” in Chopin’s case and “Norwegian” in Grieg’s (see Dahlhaus 1989, 95).
Another example is Yamada Kōsaku, who tended to use the subdominant in the place of the dominant in some of his works. Galliano (2002, 46) regards
this as an expression of a particularly “Japanese” aesthetic sensibility, whereas Kojima (1962b, 34) presents a more practical viewpoint: by applying the subdominant, early Japanese composers like Yamada wanted to prove more profound knowledge of Western-style composition than those who understood only the more typical tonic-dominant relations. Numerous similar interpretations have been made about works by composers from non-central European countries (Dahlhaus 1989, 95). The use of the subdominant in the place of the dominant has, for example, been regarded as particularly “Russian”
in the case of Russian music as well (see Frolova-Walker 1997, 28).
As these examples show, the identification of “national qualities” is often based on the fact that a composer comes from outside central European countries, and easily results in circular reasoning. A more analytical approach is to study national elements as distinctive musical characteristics associable with the culture or nationality that they supposedly represent. At the simplest, this may include adoptions of scales used in traditional music, or the use of a traditional melody as a basis of a composition. For analytical purposes, it is necessary to recognize two different discourses related to national elements defined in this way: the idea of a “national idiom” of composition, and the adoption of “national elements” as musical material. The former is a quality seen as characterizing the music overall, whereas the latter is regarded as a more technical approach. This division serves as a useful analytical tool in recognizing both intentional approaches and discourses by and about composers—not least because both involve certain issues.
The discourse of a national idiom is closely related to the idea of
“authenticity,” which has been addressed in several studies.78 According to Finscher (1984, 55–56), “successful” national composers like Janáček and Bartók were connected by their profound studies of the music cultures they were influenced by, and their strong intention of building a national idiom of composition based on these studies. Similar ideas were also proposed by Riemann. He saw that concrete allusions—such as quoting folk melodies—
would result in music that bears significance only within a limited area, and that one should rather apply a more complex synthesis of national qualities and the so-called universal style to construct a truly national idiom (see Foster 1990, 29). These views stress the notion that to construct an “authentic”
national idiom, one should be able to integrate “alien” elements to “universal”
Western art music. The idea has often been illustrated by a comparison with language, that is, original music having “not only its original vocabulary but original syntax and grammar as well” (see Frolova-Walker 2001, 106).
The same arguments about “authenticity” have been suggested by several composers. For example, Bartók (1976, 343–344) argued that the most profound level of national composition is achieved when a composer writes music completely in the “atmosphere” of the folk songs of a particular culture
78 E.g. Abraham (1949, 249); Finkelstein (1960, 251–279); Finscher (1984, 55–56);
Bohlman (2004, 17–18).
or region.79 Bartók also defined different levels of national-style composition that strongly emphasize the superiority of a “national idiom” as compared with the adoption of individual musical elements. While considering the first two levels—quoting a folk song, or slightly modifying a folk melody—superficial, the third and “highest” level in Bartók’s classification is a musical style in which influences from traditional music are expressed in a manner that does not necessarily contain any distinct allusions, but manages to capture the essence of this music so well that it overall characterizes its spirit.
But does, and can, an “authentic” national idiom exist? Who can define it, and on what grounds? Issues related to the ambiguity of this concept ultimately come back to the complexities of defining “nationalities” in general.
Finscher (1984, 55–56), for example, echoes Bartók’s views and argues that Bartók synthesized the rural folk songs of Hungary and neighboring countries with Western art music and was thus able to construct a “truly national style.”
With closer examination, however, definitions such as these prove problematic in that they typically regard composers ultimately as embodiments of nations.
While seemingly recognizing and analyzing national elements as substantial musical material, they still end up implying the existence of the Volksgeist in that the most “successful” national idiom is ultimately defined by the question of national identity: it cannot be achieved by representatives of other nationalities. As put by Curtis (2008, 28), the French cannot write truly
“Norwegian” music, and vice versa.
Consequently, the reason that composers like Janáček and Bartók are regarded as “successful” in this sense is their connection with their own
“nationality.” This is, however, a problematic idea resulting from the difficulty of defining “nations”—not to be confused with nation-states—in general: it does not sufficiently recognize the range of influences that several “national composers” were inspired by. For example, seeing Bartók’s music as
“Hungarian” is misleading, resulting from the vast range of the songs of different Eastern European ethnicities he actually adopted characteristics from (e.g. Cooper 2001; Schneider 2006). Similarly, Glinka’s celebrated
“Russian idiom” was, in reality, based on a mixture of influences from folk songs of different Russian-speaking peoples rather than any single source representing an exclusively “Russian” nationality (Frolova-Walker 2001, 106).
As these examples show, the existence of what have been regarded as “truly”
national idioms does not, after all, exist “in music but in the discourse about music” Curtis (2008, 31). For example, there is ultimately nothing objectively
“Finnish” in Sibelius’s work—rather, it was simply his individual style that came to be associated with “Finnishness” because the composer was globally seen as the embodiment of the Finnish nation (Finscher 1984, 50).
By contrast, recognizing the discourse on the claimed existence of “national idioms” is also important in the context of understanding the intentions of composers. Rather than trying to prove the existence of a national idiom—an
79 Naturally, this remark applies not only to folk songs but other music traditions as well.
assessment based ultimately on subjective perception and analytically vague definitions—inspecting methods and ideas that composers have adopted in terms of aiming at the creation of a national idiom offers an important perspective on their work and compositional philosophy. In this context, the value judgement between “successful” and “superficial” approaches is of secondary importance. For example, composers such as Bartók and Janáček—
as well as the Russian national school of the mid-nineteenth century—
undoubtedly had the conscious goal of creating national idioms (e.g. Ther 2014, 221). In these cases, acknowledging the existence of such a goal and examining the methods applied to reach it link with the aim of this study to understand the different reasons to adopt national elements in music.
In the distinction between “national elements” and a “national idiom of composition,” the former stands for any musical allusions to the culture that they represent—be it a quotation or a more complex element—whereas the latter signifies a compositional style based on the overall aesthetics of the traditional music or some other aspect of the culture or nationality it represents. The difference between the two is best exemplified in Finkelstein’s comparison of Janáček and Stravinsky. While Finkelstein (1960, 269–270) joins many other scholars by praising Janáček’s approach of incorporating speech patterns and intonation of the Czech language into his musical work, he notes that by contrast Stravinsky did not aim at a national idiom but adopted national elements—such as folk song quotations—in a “mechanical”
way (ibid., 260–261). Still, judging Stravinsky’s approach as superficial, or stating that it did not communicate any further meaning, would neglect important aspects about the use of the quotations. In many cases, the
“mechanical” use of national elements also becomes an expression of identity.
That Stravinsky used elements from Russian music and Japanese composers from Japanese music instead of other music cultures is not merely a
“mechanical” technique—regardless of its application—but also an expression of their own culture, and thus a way of positioning themselves in a global musical context. This is why the present study focuses on national elements as an intentional compositional tool, but also seeks to reach beyond the mere analysis of method to grasp the further meanings that they imply. To further clarify these viewpoints related particularly to the study of Japanese music, the following sections examine the issues and methods of analysis related specifically to Japanese music.