Continuity in Composing the American Cross-Cultural: Eichheim, Cowell, and Japan

Abstract

Abstract Japanese music has repeatedly served as an exotic model for those American composers seeking “ultra-modern” status. Henry Eichheim's and Henry Cowell's engagements with Japan offer rich case studies for reconsidering our common critical approaches to cross-cultural works, prompting us to question the temporal, geographic, generic, and high/low boundaries typically employed in modernist taxonomy. I find that attempts to employ categorically such terms as “appropriation” and “influence” and “modernist” and “post-modernist” in evaluating cross-cultural compositions limits our experience of such works and that specific examples tend to demonstrate the full contradictory and multifaceted nature of musical exoticism. I turn first to the impact of literary japonisme and travel on Eichheim and consider his aesthetic and didactic motivations. The writings of Lafcadio Hearn provided Eichheim with ready-made impressions of Japan and directly shaped his compositional responses. I note the influence of gagaku and shōō pitch clusters and briefly compare Eichheim's work with that of Hidemaro Konoye (Konoe). I then chronicle Cowell's lifelong encounters with Japanese music, focusing on his study of the shakuhachi with Kitaro Tamada, his experiences at the 1961 Tokyo East-West Music Encounter Conference, and his collaboration with the koto performer Kimio Eto, which reveal the limits of Cowell's embrace of musical hybridity. I argue that Cowell's mature Japanese-inspired works should be considered within the context of American Cold War cultural diplomacy and contemporaneous works of popular, jazz, and film music.

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