This chapter investigates flute performance as a space for exploring the relationship between tradition and innovation and traces the characteristics of the nohkan and its music. It examines the musical structure and nohkan melodic patterns of five traditional Noh plays. It also assesses the degree to which Issō School nohkan players maintain the continuity of their musical tradition in three contemporary Noh plays inspired by the twentieth-century Irish poet William Butler Yeats. The chapter reviews three contemporary works draw upon Yeats's At the Hawk's Well, which was influenced by Noh drama. The chapter argues that traditions of musical style and usage remain vastly influential in shaping contemporary Noh composition and performance practice, and that the freedom within fixed patterns can be understood through a firm foundation in Noh tradition.
