[continued]
But Cage’s application of I Ching did not take the text into consideration; he merely translated each hexagram into a pre-assigned musical value.
In regard to performance practices called for in aleatory music, varying from the controlled open form of Boulez to the decontrolled indeterminacy of Cage, it should be noted that the improvisation involved is very different from that employed in Eastern music. First of all, not many types of Eastern music actually employ improvisation. Secondly, in some types the only improvisatory aspect is in an “elastic” as opposed to a “plastic” realization of the composed work. Finally, in the performance of a raga, where the art of improvisation is the kernel of the music, the performer must have been trained in the centuries-old tradition of the music and be thoroughly immersed in the material at hand: the tonal structure of the raga, the expressive values of the constituent strutis, the meaning of the motivic fragments, the gamakas to be applied on certain tones, the manner in which the tala is to be elaborated, how the various forms of augmentation and diminution are permutated, when variants of the tala may be used, which other talas it can be combined with, and above all how these interacting factors are coordinated and musical events evolved according to the character and the structure of the raga and the tala and according to certain formal schemes. Clearly, then, this Indian art is highly disciplined, far from being “uncontrolled” or “unconscious” or “nonrational,” as is commonly assumed when it is cited as precedent in support of current aleatory practice. The Asian concept of improvisation, which could doubtless enrich contemporary music, is yet to be fully understood and seriously studied by Western composers.
Even more intriguing is Messiaen’s penchant for verbal imagery in prescribing the character of his rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, and timbral ideas. This not only echoes the Indian concept of rasa, but also finds a distant precedent in the Chinese ch’in music, in which each finger technique and tone quality has a specific poetic and pictorial reference that defines the state of mind needed to express the meaning of the musical event. Some of Messiaen’s images find close counterparts in ch’in imagery: “bee in the flower” / “butterfly over flowers, distant carillon” / “fading reverberations of a temple bell,” “a gust of wind” / “like the sound of wind.” In view of his great influence on European music, Messiaen’s thinking and teaching must be regarded as another major step forward in the integration of Western and non-Western musical concepts and techniques.
Perhaps he [Mahler] closed the door on musical regionalism — unobserved and not quite intentionally. Perhaps, too, Messiaen, Bartók, and others, each faithful to his own tradition and yet in quest of new pastures, have opened the gate for the confluence of musical currents, Western and non-Western — not quite unobserved and certainly not unintentionally.