The scope of this book reflects its aim to comprehend the unity and the multiplicity of Dane Rudhyar's creative work, thought, aesthetics, and life. Despite his ongoing struggle against artistic isolation, his immigrant status, and esoteric leanings, he fully embraced and contributed to American paradigms of selfsufficiency and self-definition. This book documents Rudhyar's lifelong quest to advance and nourish American cultural life by embracing both the individual and the collective. Introducing an extremely colorful yet unfairly neglected French-American composer, it intends to clarify, realign, and situate Rudhyar through three geocultural domains—Europe, the Orient, and America—which define the special position he occupies. The narrative begins in early twentiethcentury Europe, then explores analogues in the Orient (mainly represented by India and Japan), and concludes with their merging in America through the vision, work, and persona of Rudhyar.

As his wider impact on culture, the arts, and humanities has so far been overlooked, there is a pressing need for a closer reading of his creative and speculative output. It is hoped that this book will prompt more comprehensive and critical studies of Rudhyar than there have been to date. This project, which is motivated by a strong desire to reassess his position, is particularly timely, given the current musicological focus on multicultural, transdisciplinary, and esoteric topics. Rudhyar—whose impact extended to so many areas, lives, and art forms— deserves a proper investigation that secures his musical and sociocultural position as a twentieth-century American pioneer. His influence extends to musical, literary, artistic, astrological, philosophical, and other cultural areas (including modern dance as well as journalism), and his work has recently generated a steady increase of scholarly interest. Cultural historians are discovering that his remarkably rich and kaleidoscopic life as a French-American composer and thinker influenced the activities of many more notable figures; and astrologers recognize him as the man who rejected popular astrology in favor of a revolutionary approach that integrated the discipline with philosophy and humanistic psychology. He is also of interest for scholars of modern dance: his involvement with and influence on early American modern dance (through Ruth St. Denis and Martha Graham) have been addressed in recent doctoral dissertations.

Rudhyar's creative activities further extended to the visual arts and literature: his involvement with the West Coast's Transcendental Painting Group, for example, places him on the map of modernist America.