* Both a cappella and ikebana were born of religious traditions. You’re probably familiar with the origin of the word “a cappella,” and the role a cappella music played in the early days of Christian liturgical music (from Gregorian chant and the beginnings of notated music to the birth of polyphony and choral harmony). Ancient Japanese animism revered nature: the kami-mukae (deity welcoming) festival relied on tall tree trunks to serve as guideposts or antennae for the gods, with flower displays perched on top to attract them.
As Japanese life moved indoors, the tradition continued in formalized flower displays: ikebana. Traditional forms (verticality, incorporation of branches) continue today in the Japanese art of flower arranging, just as two thousand years of religious choral traditions impact a cappella (voice leading, harmonic language)
* Architecture has played a role in both traditions as well. A cappella traditions in the Catholic church have been influenced by the buildings in which it was intended to be performed: the slow phrases of Chant and later choral music a necessity within Cathedral’s lofted, echoing walls, and the continued tradition of a cappella in smaller chapels when organs were installed.
Chinese Buddhist temple architecture deeply influenced the Heian Japanese aristocracy, with its forecourt and inner gardens. Indoor living became the norm, with internal displays of plants in a form of tray landscape called suhama (“sandy beach”) that began the shift from religious to decorative (not unlike the shift a cappella has taken from the religious to the secular).
* Early Japanese flower offerings were fairly limited in their scope, featuring evergreen branches and lotus blossoms. As the tradition spread in scope and variety, the tradition expended to incorporate a wide variety of plant life, and other natural objects. Similarly, a cappella in the Western tradition began primarily within the church, but those traditions moved into secular music (via madrigals) and eventually encircled the globe, with a cappella music found within and reflecting virtually every musical style and tradition.
* Western a cappella music began as a fairly rarified tradition: only men were allowed to sing, and then boys were added when their vocal range was necessary for more complex music. As time progressed and music grew beyond the church grounds, the local everyman (and everywoman!) were able to participate. Ikebana started as a religious tradition for men alone, then moved through royal courtyards into everyone’s hands and homes.
As such, both have a deep sense of tradition, with a reverence for the past, and a freedom to create the future: a flexibility to incorporate new forms, be they fresh musical styles or previously unavailable plants. And ironically, both singing in a choir and arranging flowers have a distinctly feminine appeal, at least in modern Western and Japanese culture.
* Ikebana has been described as the art of seeing beyond the flower into its inner heart, thereby bringing to life the true nature and beauty within all of the elements of an arrangement. As an a cappella arranger, I view my role similarly; I aspire to find within the essence of every song the elements that make it great and will be best represented in a particular collection of voices. Although it’s certainly not an expectation, I consider the greatest successes to be the ones where the song, the arrangement and the performance all find a unity such that an audience member will remark “Wow - that was better than the original.”
* The practice of Ikebana is one that is meant not only to create beauty but to inspire a deep sense of harmony and connectedness within the practitioner. Obviously this was the case with original liturgical a cappella, and it continues today within all forms of a cappella. I’ll bet there’s not a single person reading this who has not experienced a deep, transformative connection and sense of harmony while singing with others. The best art, be it a painting, a dance, a flower arrangement or vocal harmony, is at its core a search for truth that can both inspire others and the self.
* There are branches of Ikebana to reflect different plants and occasions. Tatehana is public, formal arranging, usually in a vase, with a traditional vertical, balanced form. It’s not unlike notated a cappella music, with a place for every element that’s been informed by centuries of tradition. Nageire is almost the opposite, incorporating wild flowers that are almost thrown into a bowl with a studied casualness, not unlike the importance of improvisation within a cappella, e.g. turn-of-the-century barbershop and street-corner doowop.
* Music theory is just that: a theory, born of curious minds who study the great music of the past. Similarly, much documentation exists about flower arrangements dating back a thousand years, with many scrolls and paintings that can be studied. However, the masters never codified their practice into strict rules, so that has been left to later theorists. In both cases, there’s a great deal to be learned from the study of theory, and yet the greatest lesson of all comes when a student with a mind full of this knowledge learns how and when to apply it, and when to allow the melody or flower to dictate a different path.
* The primary elements (flowers, branches) in your arrangement should be allowed to be themselves, and only verily slightly altered, if at all, just as the melody of an arrangement should be left alone. These principle elements are the foundation upon which and around which all else is placed.
* It can take years to be a successful master of Ikebana or a cappella arranging, for the simple reason that it can be extremely difficult to make something look or sound natural. Within flower arranging you want the overall impression to be that of overwhelming beauty: a state of sensory satisfaction. In a cappella arranging, you want the music to flow through the singer and into the audience, without their awareness of anything beyond the experience of the music. There are times to make your arrangement about the art of arranging, and as such draw attention to itself, but those moments are rare, and it’s a selfish, narcissistic arranger who insists on making each work draw attention to his or her craft. True success in arranging is one where your hand has so deftly brought out the natural beauty in a flower, or a voice, that no one notices that there has been any intervention.
Perhaps too many years of formal Western education and the seemingly endless essays have resulted in my ability to find similarities between any two things (next week’s column: “A Cappella and Monster Truck Rallies: Separated at Birth!”), but it does seem after a brief foray into the tradition of Ikebana that there is much in common between our approach to music and their approach to flowers. Perhaps the next time you’re stuffing a recently received bouquet into a vase take a little time to adjust the flowers. If you listen closely enough, you might just hear them singing “Good “Ol A Cappella...”
Click on the wrench in the upper left-hand corner to see what else you can do.