Ronald Squibbs
Joji Yuasa (b. 1929) is one of the pre-eminent Japanese composers of the second half of the twentieth century. Throughout his career, Yuasa has eschewed a naive, imitative approach to the incorporation of traditional Japanese elements into his music. He has instead favored a disciplined synthesis of symmetrically structured, post-tonal harmonies and characteristic rhythmic structures inspired by the austere, ceremonial style of music for the traditional Japanese Noh theater. Yuasa's Cosmos Haptic for piano, written in 1957, is a result of the creative confrontation between Eastern and Western influences. In this work Yuasa uses symmetrical pitch-class collections as the basis for directed motions in pitch space. His use of symmetrical pitch-class collections appears to have been influenced by Messiaen, while the slow unfolding of structures in pitch space resembles procedures found in the music of Varèse. These distinct yet complementary aspects of the work's pitch structure are given shape by an elastic rhythmic structure that is conceptually related to Noh music. The result is a music of uncommon integrity that is both genuinely modern and authentically Japanese.