Page 317 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

CONTEMPORARY 315

See also: Das Lied von der Erde 198–201 ■ Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
228–231 ■ Quartet for the End of Time 282–283 ■ 4´33˝ 302–305

“one tone of the shakuhachi can
become Hotoke [God].” That is, a
single tone can embody cosmic
nature. In the West, by contrast,
tones are joined together into
I am a gardener of time. melodies, rhythms, and harmonies.
I want to create a garden Takemitsu never used conventional
connecting to infinite time. Western musical forms. Most of
Toru Takemitsu his works are short, reflecting
characteristics of Japanese
literature, such as Haiku poetry. Toru Takemitsu
Colorful sonorities are one
hallmark of Takemitsu’s music. As Born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1930,
the Western orchestra possesses Takemitsu briefly studied
perhaps the greatest capacity to composition with Yasuji Kiyose
shade of sound” and what he called create different tone colors, it is in 1948 but was essentially
a “density of tones.” From Messiaen, no coincidence that he wrote a self-taught. In 1951, he
Takemitsu learned “the conception large number of orchestral works. organized the experimental
of the form and color of time,” as Takemitsu also devised unique workshop “Jikken Kobo” with
he put it, and in fact wrote his compositional techniques, later the poet Shuzo Takiguchi and
piano piece Rain Tree Sketch II adopted by younger Japanese others pursuing avant-garde
(1992) in memory of the composer. composers. In the piano piece methods. Takemitsu’s
Unlike Messiaen, Takemitsu did Les yeux clos (“Eyes closed,” 1979), Requiem for Strings (1957),
not belong to a particular religion he created layers of simultaneous written after the death of
composer Fumio Hayasaka
but considered himself a religious melodies with slightly different note whom he adored, was praised
person. The act of composing was values so that each note makes a by Stravinsky. A decade later,
for him a prayer: he likened it to tiny anticipation, or delay, erasing the success of November Steps
“taking out a part of an eternal the sense of beats and creating a established his international
‘river of sound’ running through fluidlike texture. Takemitsu’s reputation as the leading
the world surrounding us.” Like music is wholly original—a unique Japanese composer. From the
his close friend John Cage, who juxtaposition of Japanese and 1970s, he used fewer Japanese
was fascinated with fungi, and Western musical traditions. ■ instruments in his works,
Messiaen, a passionate bird lover, preferring conventional
Takemitsu related deeply to the Western instruments and
natural world. As the titles of many more tonal sonorities, as
of his works indicate, he felt his in pieces such as A String
music was intimately linked to around Autumn (1989). He
both nature and the universe. composed a large number of
A Western tone walks works with Western idioms
Silence and sound horizontally but a tone and wrote music for more than
90 Japanese films. Takemitsu
Takemitsu had a profound interest of the shakuhachi rises died in Tokyo in 1996.
in the relationship between silence vertically like a tree.
and sound. The Eastern concept of Toru Takemitsu
“Ma,” an intense silence between Other key works
sounds, was for him contrary to the 1957 Requiem for Strings
Western idea of a musical “rest”— 1979 In an Autumn Garden
literally, a resting silence. In the 1994 Archipelago S.
East, too, according to Takemitsu,

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