Recent Pasts 20/21 Words Series - Andrew Imbrie and Milton Babbitt, Page 5

IMBRIE:

Japan  

Having been trained as a Japanese translator during World War II, I was curious about what Japan was like, never having been there.  I decided to apply for a grant so that during my sabbatical year in 1960-61, my wife Barbara and I were able to travel to Tokyo with our two year-old son.  I spent much of my time composing, as was expected, but I was fascinated by the opportunity also to expand my limited linguistic skills and listen to Japanese music of various kinds.  I became acquainted with some of the living composers there, as well as with traditional folk music, some of which dates back many centuries.  Of course, I was not an expert on Japanese musical history, nor was I at all fluent in the language, but I still treasured the experience.

At that time the Japanese were becoming increasingly interested in Western music.  Many composers and performers had been trained in Europe and their symphony orchestras were of very high quality.  In later years, more and more young composers from the Orient traveled to Europe and eventually to the United States, as well.  This is particularly true of Korean students, as many of you may already know.  A number of these Korean students came to Berkeley to continue their studies.  One of them, Hi Kyung Kim, worked with me and eventually married another student of mine, John Sackett.  Since her father had died, she asked me to give the bride away at the wedding.  I was amazed and flattered by this request and learned that Korean students regard their teachers as almost equal in importance to their parents.  She is now an associate professor at the Santa Cruz Campus of the University of California and has been very active in promoting international programs of contemporary music, both at that campus and elsewhere.  (For example, she helped to arrange a program in Australia involving both composers and ethno-musicologists from the United States, Korea and elsewhere). 

At the same time she remained in contact with her teacher in Korea, Sung Je Li.  My acquaintance with Sung Je Li goes back several years.  I met him first in 1990 when I came there for a music festival in Korea.  I was also invited by ACL Korea (Asian Composers League) in 1997 and returned in 2002 for another international festival.  His hospitality to me and my wife and our friends on our trips to Seoul were a constant source of pleasure.  He showed us the impressive musical center, its concert hall and rehearsal spaces and the university where he taught.  He also invited us to join him at concerts and opera as well.

I was much impressed by his compositions and by his thorough knowledge of the music of Korea, both in the folk and in the concert categories.  He is, of course, keenly aware of the music of Europe, Asia and America as well.  It is clear that he has made a profound contribution by training Korean composers who are active today.  He has proved to all of us that one can evolve one’s own style as a result of different and important worldly influences.  This is, in my opinion, an important issue nowadays.  As never before, people from different cultures are getting to know one another and are becoming more and more fascinated by each other’s music. 

Scholarship in this area is now known by the name ‘ethnomusicology’.  All of a sudden we begin to hear the term ‘musics’, in the plural.  I find this word both thought-provoking and puzzling.  On the one hand it recognizes the validity of each separate culture.  On the other hand, it suggests a kind of eternal separation of one from the other.  Nowadays, our musical awareness is enriched by our increasing familiarity with various cultures throughout the world.  Scholars attempt to classify these various styles.  As a result we now hear this term ‘musics’.  This bothers me because, for me, music is a fundamental human creation.  No society lacks music.  It can only inspire us through its diversity.  For example, I have known students from Korea who were generally inspired by their own national traditions and who have at the same time acquired a strong capability to express themselves through Western harmonic, contrapuntal and rhythmic means.  As a result, their music has often acquired a convincing stylistic unity.