Sound exists in opposition to silence, and music must reflect this basic fact. Sounds take their being from silence and return to it. The inner nature of sound seems to be connected in some mysterious fashion to its transitory character. There is also in sound a sense of continual change, a "becoming," an inexorable leading from tone to tone and finally back into silence.

Western music aesthetics is based upon the concept of a discrete tone as a building block of larger forms, which are in turn combined at various architectonic levels to create a movement or complete piece (for instance, the notes C,E,G may sound simultaneously as a chord, or sequentially as part of a melodic phrase; the chord or phrase may be combined with other chords or phrases to produce harmonic or melodic sections, which are in turn combined to produce sub divisions of movements, et cetera).

However, Zen music refuses to establish fixed pitch levels as building blocks, rather connects sounds together which are continually becoming one another, coalescing. From these sounds, longer melody lines are developed, but there is never a sense of architectonic structure, always free movement from idea to idea.

In no music, which is primarily composed of utai or singing and hayashi or orchestra, the rhythmic element is the underlying key. And the rhythm of no music is constructed in a fashion similar to that just discussed in connection with pitch level organization. Rather than a series of rhythmic building blocks on a fixed time constant as in Western music, no music utilizes a continually varying time structure, which effectively suggests varying degrees of kinetic tension. Each sound has its own rhythmic point in space time, and is not thought of as part of a pattern based on fixed clock time; it is itself and not related to any imaginary superimposed pattern.

Another genre, the music of the shakuhachi fits this aesthetic perfectly. It is primarily a melodic instrument (an open, vertical flute) and is extremely difficult to play; the performer gently coaxes the tones out of the instrument, producing an incredible variety of timbre and pitch gradation. The Chinese predecessor of this instrument (hsiao) was considerably easier to play and could manage discrete tones without any trouble. The influence of Zen on the nature of this instrument began when it came to Japan.

III. Zen and Contemporary Western Art

Artists and philosophers have long been faced with the problem of what is expressed in a work of art (or, put in another way, what is created in a work of art). At the beginning of this century many Western artists found traditional answers to this problem unsatisfactory, being disturbed by the difficulty in pinpointing meaning as felt by different audiences. The same work of art, they found, was likely to instill quite different feelings in any two audiences, both of which may be opposite to the artist's intention; the question then arises: who is right? is anyone right? The plethora of aesthetic theories resulting from this soul searching resulted in general agreement on the side of formalism as opposed to referentialism. In music, formalism means that the music is thought of as not expressing or meaning anything outside of itself (except through specific learned habit responses); music cannot refer to a specific external happening or emotion; however there remains disagreement as to the exact nature of this internalized musical expression. Stravinsky holds that music cannot express anything but music: we follow the evolution of a musical idea with purely intellectual interest (Stravinsky 1956). Leonard Meyer posits a semiconscious level of emotional affect caused by basic psychological responses to musical sound terms (Meyer 1956). The differences between Meyer and Stravinsky are not so great, however, as those between the formalists in general and the recent group of musicians under the intellectual leadership of John Cage. Cage says:

. . . the support of the dance is not to be found in the music but in the dancer himself, on his own two legs, that is, and occasionally on a single one

Likewise the music consists of single sounds or groups of sounds which are not supported by harmonies but resound within a space of silence From this independence of music and dance a rhythm results which is not that of horses' hooves or other regular beats but which reminds us of a multiplicity of events in time and space--stars, for instance, in the sky, or activities on earth viewed from the air.

We are not, in these dances and music, saying something. We are simpleminded enough to think that if we were saying something we would use words. We are rather doing something. The meaning of what we do is determined by each one who sees and hears it. At a recent performance . . . a student turned to a teacher and said, "What does it mean?" The teacher's reply was, "Relax, there are no symbols here to confuse you. Enjoy yourself! I may add there are no stories and no psychological problems. There is simply an activity of movement, sound, and light ... (Cage 1961: 94 96).