Ryoanji

The pieces, or set of pieces, originate from John Cage’s drawings, Where R=Ryoanji, inspired by a visit to the rock garden, Ryoanji, in Kyoto. He traced around rocks on paper, simulating the placement of rocks of a rock garden. These sets of pieces, written during 1983-1985, are based around these drawings and the idea of the rock garden. Ryoanji is to be performed with any number of the “melodic” instruments (oboe, voice, flute, double bass, and trombone), always with percussion (“metal” and “wood”). Each “melodic” part consists of several pages of line drawings (glissandi) in a rectangle, with the horizontal and vertical dimensions loosely representing time and pitch, respectively. The percussion part consists of precisely notated rhythm that happens simultaneously with the melodic parts.

By this time, this style of notation and specified instruction to the performers was a lot more traditional than much of Cage’s work. Ryoanji, however, compared to other Cage works, was specifically based on the Japanese rock garden. As a result, Cage used the music to embody the structure and therefore chose a more traditional notational style. The sound world of the piece evokes classical Japanese music with its “melodic” glissandi, representing the rocks, and sparse percussion, representing the sand.

(Wells Leng)

Ryoanji garden in Kyoto, Japan

Where R=Ryoanji Excerpt from oboe part

Excerpt from percussion part