Interkulturelle Klangräume zwischen Japan und Deutschland: Toshio Hosokawa und die transnationalen Netzwerke der Darmstädter Ferienkurse (1980– 2006)Joevan de Mattos Caitano
ASIEN – Nr. 174/175 (2025) pp. 13–43
This article re-examines Toshio Hosokawa’s presence at the Darmstadt Summer Courses between 1980 and 2006, moving beyond interpretations that frame his work primarily as intercultural mediation between Japan and Europe. Instead, it situates his activities within historically evolving transnational networks, institutional constellations, and aesthetic debates that shaped the global field of contemporary music after 1945. Drawing on archival materials from the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt—including correspondence, registration documents, audio recordings, and programme texts—the study analyses the institutional and interpretive contexts through which Hosokawa’s music became legible within Darmstadt. Methodologically, the article distinguishes between compositional self-description, institutional positioning, and critical framing, while foregrounding programmatic and theoretical contexts rather than a systematic reconstruction of contemporary press reception. Building on theoretical perspectives by Rolf Elberfeld and Christian Utz, the article approaches “interculturality” not as an inherent property of musical works, but as a historically situated and institutionally mediated category. In this perspective, recurrent notions such as “breath”, “nature”, “silence”, and “spirituality” are understood less as essential cultural characteristics than as historically produced semantic constructions.
By embedding Hosokawa’s participation within a longer genealogy of Japanese composers at Darmstadt since the 1950s, the article argues that his role should not be understood as the late integration of a non-European composer into a European avant-garde. Rather, it demonstrates that Japanese composers were already constitutively involved in the formation of a polycentric modernity of contemporary music. Hosokawa’s trajectory from participant to influential artistic and institutional figure thus illuminates how interculturality was negotiated, institutionalized, and redefined within Darmstadt at the turn of the twenty-first century.
By embedding Hosokawa’s participation within a longer genealogy of Japanese composers at Darmstadt since the 1950s, the article argues that his role should not be understood as the late integration of a non-European composer into a European avant-garde. Rather, it demonstrates that Japanese composers were already constitutively involved in the formation of a polycentric modernity of contemporary music. Hosokawa’s trajectory from participant to influential artistic and institutional figure thus illuminates how interculturality was negotiated, institutionalized, and redefined within Darmstadt at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Keywords: Toshio Hosokawa, Darmstadt Summer Courses, interculturality, contemporary music, IMD Archiv, Japan