The Music of Toru Takemitsu | |

Toru Takemitsu (1930-96) was the best known Japanese composer of his
generation, bringing aspects of Eastern and Western traditions together, yet he
remained something of an elusive figure. The composer’s own commentaries
about his music, poetic and philosophical in tone, have tended to deepen the
mystery and much writing on Takemitsu to date has adopted a similar attitude,
leaving many questions about his compositional methods unanswered. This book
is the first complete study of the composer’s work to appear in English. It is also
the first book in this language to offer an in-depth analysis of his music.
Takemitsu’s works are increasingly popular with Western audiences and Peter
Burt attempts for the first time to shed light on the hitherto rather secretive world
of his working methods, as well as place him in context as heir to the rich tradition
of Japanese composition in the twentieth century.

| PETER BURT is Vice-Chairman of the Takemitsu Society in the United Kingdom |

and editor of the Takemitsu Society Newsletter. He is currently editing a special
commemorative issue of Contemporary Music Review devoted to Toru Takemitsu.
Music in the Twentieth Century
GENERAL EDITOR Arnold Whittall

This series offers a wide perspective on music and musical life in the
twentieth century. Books included range from historical and biographical
studies concentrating particularly on the context and circumstances in
which composers were writing, to analytical and critical studies concerned
with the nature of musical language and questions of compositional
process. The importance given to context will also be reflected in studies
dealing with, for example, the patronage, publishing, and promotion of
new music, and in accounts of the musical life of particular countries.

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The Music of Toru Takemitsu

052178220 1 :
Peter Burt
The Music of
Toru Takemitsu

Peter Burt

CAMBRIDGE
0) UNIVERSITY PRESS
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge University Press |

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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

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© Peter Burt 2001 |

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exccption
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2001

Reprinted 2003
This digitally printed first paperback version 2006

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Burt, Peter, 1955—
The music of Téru Takemitsu / Peter Burt.
p. om. — (Music in the twenticth century)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0 521 78220 1
1. Takemitsu, T6ru — Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. II. Series.
ML410.T134 B87 2001
780°.92—dce21 00-045505

ISBN-13 978-0-521-78220-3 hardback

ISBN-10 0-521-78220-1 hardback

. ISBN-13 978-0-521-02695-6 paperback

ISBN-10 0-521-02695-4 paperback
for Sumine
BLANK PAGE |
 Contents

| Acknowledgements page ix |
Note on conventions xi |
Introduction 1
1 Pre-history: how Western music cameto Japan 4
2 Music and ‘pre-music’: Takemitsu’s early years 21
3. Experimental workshop: the years of Jikken Kdbd 39
4 The Requiemand itsreception 50
5 Projections on toa Western mirror 73
6 ‘“Cageshock’andafter 92
7 Projectionsontoan Eastern mirror 110
8 Modernist apogee: the early 1970s 132
9 Descent into the pentagonal garden 160
10 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s 175
11 Beyond the far calls: the final years 216
12 Swimming in the ocean that has no West or East 234

Notes 254
List of Takemitsu’s Works 269
Index 288 .
Select bibliography 281
BLANK PAGE| |
 Acknowledgements

So many have helped me in some way or another over the course of the
, seven years that I have been working on Takemitsu’s music that there are
bound to be some omissions in the list of names that follow. In particular
in Japan, where fabulous largesse seems to be a cultural norm, I have
received such generous assistance from so many people that I am certain to
have forgotten to mention one or two here, and I apologise in advance to
anyone who feels they have been left out.
Although wholly rewritten, this book has its origins in my doctoral
thesis, and in the first place thanks are therefore due to my supervisor,
Peter Manning, and other members of the music department staff at
Durham University who assisted me in various ways — in particular my
_ benefactor Michael Spitzer, who offered magnanimous hospitality when-
| ever I needed to seek shelter in Durham during my two years of exile in
London. Thanks are also due to Professor Manning for his assistance in
procuring me two valuable scholarships — from the Japan Foundation
Endowment Committee, and the Gen Foundation — and of course to the
staff of those institutions themselves for enabling me to make the two trips
to Japan without which my knowledge of Takemitsu would have remained
vague and incomplete indeed.
In Japan, my sincere appreciation is due to the former Principal of
Kunitachi College of Music, Dr Bin Ebisawa, as well as staff members
Cornelia Colyer and Hitoshi Matsushita, the librarian, for providing me
with such a royal welcome during the disorientating early days of my first
visit. | would also particularly like to thank the fellow researchers in my
| chosen field who have been so generous in sharing with me the fruits of
their knowledge: Yoko Narazaki, Noriko Ohtake and above all Mitsuko
Ono, a sort of walking encyclopaedia on Takemitsu who has been of
_ invaluable help in correcting my many factual errors. Further gratitude is
due especially to the flautist Hideyo Takakawa for introducing me to his
teacher Mr Hiroshi Koizumi, and to him in turn for first introducing me to
the composer’s widow Mrs Asaka Takemitsu and daughter Maki. I would
also like to thank the composer Mr Joji Yuasa for granting me the time to
interview him about his early years with Takemitsu in the Jikken Kobo, and
Fr. Joaquim Benitez of Elisabeth University, Hiroshima, who kindly agreed
ix to meet me in London and look over my thesis three years ago. Takebumi
 x Acknowledgements
, Itagaki, Kiyonori Sokabe, Masato H6j6 and Yaji Numano have also all
been of invaluable assistance, and above all, perhaps, I must express my
deepest gratitude to Ms Sumine Hayashibara and her mother Kiku on the
one hand, and Ms Emiko Kitazawa and her mother Etsuko on the other,
without whose offers of hospitality on, respectively, my first and second
visits to Japan I would have been unable to come here at all.
I must also mention here my friend Junko Kobayashi, Chairman of the
Takemitsu Society in London, who has been so helpful in checking over
Japanese proper nouns with me; as well as Sally Groves of Schott’s and her
Tokyo counterpart, Nanako Ikefuji, for lending me scores of Takemitsu’s
music. And finally, I must thank the music books’ Editor of Cambridge
University Press, Penny Souster, for having sufficient faith in the potential
of my thesis to undertake a book on Takemitsu. I hope what follows will in
some small measure repay the trust she has invested in me.
Toky6, July 2000
The author gratefully acknowledges the permission of the following pub-
lishers to quote copyright materials in the music examples:
Examples 31, 34 from Sacrifice and 43-6 from The Dorian Horizon ©1967
by Ongaku no Tomo Sha Corp.; used by permission
Examples 53-5 from Asterism (Edition Peters No. 6630064, ©1969 by C F
| Peters Corporation, New York), 56, 57 from November Steps (Edition Peters
No. 66299, ©1967 by C F Peters Corporation, New York) and 57-62, 64 from
Green (Edition Peters No. 66300, ©1969 by C F Peters Corporation, New
York) reproduced by kind permission of Peters Edition Limited, London
Examples 47 (Webern), 83(v), 105(i) and 118(1i) copyright Universal
Edition AG (Wien); reproduced by permission of Alfred A. Kalmus Ltd
Examples 9-11, 13, 18, 19, 21-7, 37-9, 47 (Takemitsu), 48, 50-2, 65-7, 69,
70, 72-4, 76-80, 81(i), 83(iv), 84(i), 85(i1), 86(1), 89, 90, 91(i-iii), 120(4),
129, 134 reproduced by permission of Editions Salabert, Paris/United
Music Publishers Ltd

Examples 82(i-—1i), 83(ii) reproduced by permission of Editions Alphonse

Leduc, Paris/United Music Publishers Ltd
Examples 82(iii), 83(i, iii), 84(ii), 85(ii), 86(ii-iii) reproduced by permis-
sion of Editions Durand S.A, Paris/United Music Publishers Ltd
Examples 1-3, 5, 6, 16, 17, 40-2, 81(ii-ii1), 87, 91 (iv—xii), 92-9, 101,
105(ii), 106-12, 114-15, 117, 118(4), 119, 120(ii-v), 122-3, 125-6, 128,
130-3 reproduced by permission of Schott & Co., Ltd
 Note on conventions

Throughout this book, Japanese personal names are rendered according

to the Western rather than Japanese convention, in which the family
name follows the given name (Toru Takemitsu, not Takemitsu Toru).
Transliteration of Japanese words follows the Hepburn system, and in the
interests of consistency — albeit at the risk of appearing pretentious — this
has been applied even to words generally given in English without diacriti-
cal marks (Toky6, Osaka, etc.).

xi
BLANK PAGE
 Introduction

The title of this book is ‘The Music of Toru Takemitsu’, and despite the
many other fascinating issues, biographical and artistic, that it is tempting
to explore in an examination of this many-faceted genius — composer, fes-
| tival organiser, writer on aesthetics, author of detective novels, celebrity
chef on Japanese TV — it is with Takemitsu’s legacy as a composer that the
following chapters are predominantly concerned. In fact, the book’s scope
is even narrower still, for although Takemitsu, as the worklist at the end of
, this volume will show, produced a vast amount of music for film, theatre,
television and radio as well as anumber of other pieces of more ‘populist’
character, such works lie beyond the remit of the present study, which for
the most part deals only with the composer’s ‘classical’ scores for the
concert platform. Right from the start, however, it should be emphasised
that such an approach focuses on only a small area of Takemitsu’s versatile
creativity, and it should always be borne in mind that these other areas of
activity were an ever-present backdrop to his ‘mainstream’ work, interact-
ing fruitfully with the latter in ways which it has been possible to hint at in
| the following pages, but — regretfully — not examine in more detail.
The bulk of this work, then — chapters 2 to 11 — is concerned with
descriptions of Takemitsu’s music for the concert room, examining the
principal scores in roughly chronological sequence, and including a certain
amount of biographical information to set them in context. Though this
section is continuous, the reader will probably soon realise that the
arrangement of these chapters reflects an implicit, provisional division of
_ the composer’s career into three ‘periods’, dealt with respectively in chap-
ters 2—4, 5-8 and 9-11 of the book. Although rather schematic and cer-
tainly no watertight compartmentalisation, this periodisation is
nevertheless one which, in its broad outlines at least, would appear to find
support amongst other writers on the subject. Certainly the suggested tran-
sition from ‘second’ to ‘third’ period represented, as we shall see, a change
| of style so dramatic that it has been hard for commentators to miss it: Yoko
Narazaki, for instance, who divides the composer’s music into two periods,
speaks of a ‘change from an “avant-garde” to a “conservative” style’! around
the end of the 1970s; Jun-ichi Konuma, more robustly, of a substitution of
‘eroticism’ for ‘stoicism’ in the composer’s Quatrainof 1975.2 |
1 | On this basis, it is true, it might be argued that a bipartite scheme,
2 Introduction
hinging on the incontrovertible fact of this obvious stylistic conversion,
constitutes an adequate working description of the composer’s develop-
ment, and that further sub-division would be hair-splitting and
superfluous. Nevertheless, I feel that there is a second, if less spectacular,
distinction to be made between the juvenilia from the first decade of
Takemitsu’s composing career (from 1950 onwards), and the works which
succeeded them from around the turn of the 1960s. The ‘journeyman’
works from the period prior to this point are of interest insomuch as they
reflect, in their purest form, the stylistic imprints of those American and
European composers by whom Takemitsu was initially most profoundly
influenced in his rather isolated situation in post-war Japan. By contrast,
the works from around 1960 onwards reveal a very rapid assimilation of all
the preoccupations Takemitsu became aware of as his knowledge of the
domestic and international music scene enlarged dramatically — not only
those of the modernist avant-garde, but also, and most importantly, of
John Cage and, through his influence, of traditional Japanese music. The
change wrought upon the musical language of the ‘first period’ by these
powerful outside influences has not escaped the attention of other writers
on the subject: Yukiko Sawabe, for instance, certainly agrees on the
appearance of at least two new elements in Takemitsu’s music around
1960, ‘traditional Japanese instruments and the discovery of “nature” in
music, a discovery in which the composer was encouraged by his encoun-
ter with John Cage’.’ Broadly speaking, too, the rather simplistic-sounding
picture of the composer’s career as a ‘beginning—middle—end’ triptych that
emerges from the addition of this second transitional point is not without
support from other commentators. Although he locates the two turning
points in 1957 and 1973/4, for instance, Kenjiro Miyamoto’s tripartite
scheme is in other respects more or less identical with my own;* while both
Takashi Funayama? and Miyuki Shiraishi,° speak, less specifically, of ‘early,
middle and late periods’ in the composer’s work.
The approach adopted towards Takemitsu’s music in the course of these
central chapters is, the reader will soon realise, primarily an analytical one.
This to a certain extent reflects the perceptual biases and academic training
of the author, and in particular the origins of this book in my own doctoral
thesis, rather than any intrinsic advantages such a method might have
when applied to Takemitsu’s music. In fact, the latter is emphatically not
carefully put together for the benefit of future academics to take apart
again, and analytic approaches towards it therefore have a tendency to take
the researcher up what eventually proves to be a blind alley. Takemitsu’s
own writing about music, significantly, rarely gives away any technical
information about his musical construction or contains music-type exam-
 3 Introduction
ples, concerning itself instead with abstract philosophical problems
expressed in a flowery and poetic language, and many commentators —
particularly in Japan — have followed his example in dealing with the music
| on this level, rather than venturing into the murkier waters of his actual
compositional method. One has the feeling, therefore, that one is going
against the grain of the composer's own preferred concept of appropriate
descriptive language by attempting to submit his music to dissection with
the precision tools of Western analysis, and is perhaps justly rewarded with
a certain ultimate impenetrability.
Nevertheless, as I have explained elsewhere,’ I do not believe that one
should for this reason be deterred from making the effort to understand
Takemitsu’s music on a more technical level. Such an enterprise, I would
suggest, is well worth undertaking, for two reasons in particular. First,
despite its shortcomings, it is able to uncover a good deal of the still rather
secretive goings-on behind the surface of Takemitsu’s music, as the follow-
ing pages will reveal. And secondly, by its very impotence to explain the
whole of Takemitsu’s creative thinking, it illustrates the extent to which the
construction of his music is governed by decisions of a more ‘irrational’
nature, which even the most inventive of scholars is powerless to account
for. Mapping out the area which is tractable to analysis, in other words, at
the same time gives the measure of that vaster territory which is not.
Why this should be so, why Takemitsu’s music should ultimately resist
analytical explanation, is a question to which I attempt to give some
answers in my twelfth and final chapter, which steps outside the bounds of
the remit I claimed for this book at the beginning of this introduction to
examine some of the more abstract and philosophical issues surrounding
_his work: offering an assessment of his status as a composer, an examina-
tion of some of his aesthetic views (to the extent that I understand them),
and an evaluation of some of the more frequent criticisms to which he has
been subject. The other place where my subject matter transgresses~
beyond the bounds of my own self-imposed limitations is at the very
beginning of the book. To understand fully the nature of Takemitsu’s
_ achievement, it is necessary to see him not only in relation to the interna-
tional Western music scene, but also in relation to the aesthetic preoccupa-
tions of the composers who preceded him in the decades since Western
music was first introduced to Japan. As, however, this is a history for the
most part almost entirely unfamiliar to Westerners, it has been considered
imperative to give a brief overview of the subject in the opening chapter. It
is with this pre-history, then — the story of the arrival of Western music in
Japan and the development of Japanese composition that succeeded it —
that The Music of Toru Takemitsu begins.
 1 Pre-history: how Western music came to Japan

Popular culture has ensured that at least one or two key elements in the
, story of Japan’s unique and often turbulent relationship with the Western
world have become familiar to a wider audience. Stephen Sondheim’s 1975
musical Pacific Overtures, for instance, charts the course of events subse-
quent to that momentous day in the nineteenth century when Japan was
finally rudely awakened from its quarter-millennium of feudal stability by
a dramatic intervention of modernity. The day in question was 8 July 1853,
when Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry of the United States Navy
sailed into Uraga harbour with his powerfully armed ironclad steamboats,
the kurofune (‘black ships’); and to understand the boldness and historical
significance of Perry’s adventure, one has to travel back in time a quarter of
a millennium further still, to 1603. For it was in that year that Ieyasu
Tokugawa finally acceded to an office familiar to Westerners, once again,
from populist sources, in this case James Clavell’s 1975 novel and its subse-
quent film and television versions: the title of military dictator of all Japan,
or Shogun.
Having attained this sovereign position at great cost by finally subjugat-
ing the powerful regional warlords (daimyo), the Tokugawa family was
understandably anxious to preserve the fragile centralised power it had
established. In particular, wary of the colonial ambitions of the foreign
nationals then resident in Japan — and of any alliance between these and
their daimyo subordinates — they embarked on a campaign of draconian
measures to protect their country from the perceived alien menace.
Japanese Christians were martyred, foreign nationals repatriated, and the
7 Japanese themselves forbidden to travel abroad, until by 1641 no contact
with the outside world remained except for a small community of Dutch
traders confined to their island ghetto of Deshima in Nagasaki harbour.
Japan, allowing its subjects no egress and outsiders no ingress, had suc-
, ceeded within a few decades in turning itself into a self-contained “hermit
kingdom’, and henceforth would enforce the most stringent measures to
ensure that — right up to the arrival of Perry’s ships over two hundred years
later — this exclusion policy would remain virtually inviolate.
‘Virtually’ inviolate, but not entirely so; despite the dire penalties risked
4 by those who sought to transgress against the exclusion order, from the
 5 Pre-history: how Western music came to Japan

eighteenth century onwards various seafarers — Russian, American,

British, French and Dutch — all made efforts to persuade the Japanese to
reopen their country to foreign commerce. Furthermore, while the
, Japanese could not travel to the outside world, or make contact with its
inhabitants, the educated classes, at least, could read about what was hap-
pening there — at first secretly, as various items of information were smug-
| gled in through approved Dutch and Chinese traders, and then more
openly, after the Shogun Yoshimune (1716-45) rescinded the ban on the
importation of foreign books (provided they contained no reference to
Christian teaching) in 1720. As a result of this new development, there
eventually came into existence the group known as the rangakusha or
| ‘Dutch Scholars’, whose painstaking efforts to translate works written in
| that language, starting from scratch, finally bore fruit when the first
European work to be published in Japan, an anatomy textbook, appeared
in 1774. Significantly, besides medicine, the other area of Western exper-
tise about which the Japanese were especially curious was military science
= and with good reason. In the following century Takashima Shihan
(1798-1866), who had learned about Western ordnance from textbooks,
| was to warn the governor of Nagasaki after the British success in the
, Anglo-Chinese war that Japan was no more capable of resistance than
China, and that the latter’s defensive measures had been ‘like child’s play’.
7 In the eyes of modernisers such as Shthan, Japan’s need to acquire mastery
of this particular branch of Western learning was no longer simply a
| matter of scholarly curiosity, but of his country’s very survival as an inde-
| pendent nation in the face of the predatory desires of an industrialised
West.
This gradual dissemination of Western ideas was one of a number of
factors by means of which the formerly impregnable edifice of the exclu-
sionist administration was brought increasingly under attack over the
course of the years. Other weapons in the armoury of the reforming
Zeitgeist included the revitalisation of traditional shintdé beliefs and the
beginnings of research into national history — both of which developments
tended to call into question the legitimacy of the Shdgun’s primacy over
: the Emperor, who had been reduced to the role of a mere puppet since the
Tokugawa ascendancy. But the force which was to act as perhaps the most
eloquent advocate for the abandonment of isolationism was operating on
a rather more mundane level than any of the above: that of everyday eco-
nomic transactions. The period of the Tokugawa Shogunate saw the emer-
| gence of a mercantile class in the cities, and of coin rather than rice as the
favoured medium of exchange through which they conducted their busi-
| ness. The ruling military élite (samurai) of Japan’s traditional feudal hier-
6 The music of Toru Takemitsu

archy contracted huge debts to this newly emergent bourgeoisie, which

they then attempted to displace on to their already overstretched peasant
subjects. As a result, the agricultural economy started to crumble, to be
‘replaced by a mercantile economy which Japan was unable to support
without calling on the outside world’.* Even without the additional per-
suasive capacities of Commodore Perry’s superior firepower, therefore,
capitulation to the American demand for trading opportunities, when at
last it came, was by then a matter of stark economic necessity.
After the gunboats, the diplomacy: as follow-up to his first audacious
violation of the exclusion order in 1853, Perry returned with an aug-
mented force in February of the following year, and on this occasion made
the long-awaited breakthrough. An agreement concluded on 31 March
allowed him the use of the twin ports of Shimoda and Hakodate for
limited trade, and provided for consular representation for his country.
This success of Perry's soon prompted others to follow his example:
similar treaties were signed with the British in October of the same year,
and with the Russians and Dutch in February and November of the follow-
ing year respectively. Thereafter events moved inexorably to bring about
the eventual downfall of the ancien régime, although the force that was
finally responsible for toppling the ruling military dictatorship, or bakufu,
perhaps came from a somewhat unexpected quarter. For ultimately it was
forces loyal to the Emperor which brought about the resignation of the last
Shogun in 1867 and, after a brief civil war, the formation of a provisional
government and restoration of the Emperor to what was considered his
rightful place at the head of the political structure (the so-called “Meiji
Restoration’). There thus arose the somewhat paradoxical situation that
the foundations of what eventually proved to be the first Western-style
government in Japan were prepared by precisely those forces in society
which had initially viewed the bakufu’s accommodation with foreigners as
a betrayal, and whose battle-cry had once been ‘Sonno j0i!’ — “Revere the
Emperor and expel the barbarians!’
The conflicting ideologies which rendered this situation so paradoxical —
the ‘modernising’ spirit of the new administration, in opposition toasome-
times aggressive nostalgia for traditional Japanese certainties on the part of
those who had helped bring it to power — afford one of the first glimpses of a
clash of values that has had a central role in determining Japan's subsequent
cultural development right up to the present day. The historian Arnold
Toynbee (1889-1975), who took an especial interest in this aspect of Japan’s
cultural history, once coined a handy pair of expressions to describe these
kinds of opposing responses that may be ‘evoked in a society which has been
thrown on the defensive by the impact of an alien force in superior
7 | Pre-history: how Western music came to Japan

strength’.° The attitude of the progressives and ‘modernisers’, on the one

hand, he characterised as the ‘Herodian” position; that of ‘the man who
acts on the principle that the most effective way to guard against the danger
of the unknown is to master its secret, and, when he finds himself in the pre-
dicament of being confronted by a more highly skilled and better armed
opponent... responds by discarding his traditional art of war and learning
to fight his enemy with the enemy’s own tactics and own weapons’.” On the
_ other hand, in opposition to this receptive, mimetic attitude, Toynbee
posited the idea of ‘Zealotism’: the stance taken by ‘the man who takes
refuge from the unknown in the familiar, and when he joins battle with a
stranger who practises superior tactics and enjoys formidable new-fangled
weapons . . . responds by practising his own traditional art of war with
abnormally scrupulous exactitude’.®
, For Toynbee, the course of action ultimately chosen by the nineteenth-
century Japanese in response to their dramatic exposure to Western tech-
nological prowess constituted the “Herodian’ reaction par excellence: for
him, the Japanese were ‘of all the non-Western peoples that the modern
West has challenged . . . perhaps the least unsuccessful exponents of
“Herodianism” in the world so far’.’ Though at first sight this might
appear to be a sweepingly imperious, ‘etic’ pronouncement on the situa-
tion, it is nevertheless one that would appear to be given a certain ‘emic’
_ validation when one considers certain reactions on the part of the Japanese
, themselves — such as the remarks of Takashima Shtihan quoted a few para-
graphs previously, or the craze for wholesale Europeanisation that fol-
lowed in the wake of the Meiji restoration, when the desire of the Japanese
ruling classes to remodel themselves on the lines of their newly found
trading partners went far beyond the minimum necessary to acquire an
adequate military competence. But side by side with such sycophantic imi-
tation by a small élite there co-existed amongst the population at large
other, drastically less welcoming responses to the Western intrusion — of
such a nature to suggest that, as one leading authority on Japanese culture
expressed it, Western culture was ‘accepted as a necessity but its donors
were disliked’.8 And at this point one becomes aware that the image con-
jured by Toynbee, of a wholehearted subjugation to the “Herodian’ ideal,
might require a certain qualification, to say the least. In fact, the truth of
the matter would appear to be rather that the atavistic reaction described
by Toynbee as ‘Zealotism’ on no account perished with Perry, and has
indeed never really gone away since. To an extent it can be highly
profitable, indeed, to regard much of the subsequent cultural history of
Japan as ideologically motivated by the dialectical opposition between the
twin forces of progressive cosmopolitanism and regressive nationalism: an
 8 The music of Toru Takemitsu
oscillation, as the Takemitsu scholar Alain Poirier expresses it, ‘between
expressions of a nationalism, betraying itself sometimes in the form of
violent protectionism, and of a willingness to be open towards the
Occident’.?
This ‘oscillation’ described by Poirier, however, constitutes only one
mode of expression — what might be called the ‘diachronic’ — of the under-
lying opposition, betraying itself above all in the form of horizontal, his-
torical fluctuations of power between two polar positions, of which the
most dramatic in recent times have probably been the disastrous resur-
gence of political nationalism before and during the Second World War,
and the extreme receptivity towards Americanisation in the Occupation
years that succeeded it. But at the same time this fundamental tension also
expresses itself vertically, as it were ‘synchronically’, as a kind of basic and
ongoing schism in the Japanese psyche, what has been described as ‘a kind
of double structure or perhaps parallelism of lifestyle and intellectual atti-
tude of the modern Japanese’.'° In this compromise between ‘modern’
imperatives and ‘traditional’ instincts, experience tends to be compart-
mentalised, with Western behavioural codes operating in certain areas —
for example, in most areas of ‘public’, corporate life — but with other, pre-
dominantly private domains reserved as sites wherein citizens tend ‘con-
sciously or unconsciously to maintain the traditions passed on from
generation to generation’.'' In both of the above manifestations, this inter-
play of forces — not necessarily a destructive one — has played a crucial role
in shaping both the historical development and everyday orientation of
Japanese culture during the modern period. And —as we shall very shortly
discover — this has been as much the case with the composition of Western-
style music in Japan, as with any other form of cultural activity.
Horizontally, throughout the historical period that has elapsed since this
European art form was first transplanted to Japanese soil, we shall observe
fluctuations between imitation of the West and declarations of nationalis-
tic independence; vertically, taking a ‘slice of time’ through any particular
| moment in that history, we shall observe time and again in the work of
individual composers the same preoccupation with establishing their own
equilibrium between these recurrent, inimical forces — the centrifugal
force of adopting a Western idiom, the centripetal one of defining, by con-
trast, a uniquely ‘Japanese’ identity. Indeed — as Miyamoto has correctly
observed — this opposition between an imported foreign culture and their
own, and the manner of dealing with both, was long conceived as the
‘central problem’ facing Western-style Japanese composers."
The channels of transmission through which this Western music first
came to be re-established in Japan are essentially three in number. First,
 9 Pre-history: how Western music came to Japan

there was the reintroduction of Christian devotional music — silent since

the early years of the seventeenth century, but gradually being heard once
| again following the reopening of the ports in the 1850s, and especially after
the ban on Christianity was abrogated in 1873. Secondly, there was the
, incorporation of musical study into the school curricula, of which more
must be said shortly. But the most assiduous cultivation of Western music
of all initially occurred as a by-product of reform in that sphere in which
the spur towards modernisation was most keenly felt: the creation of a
, modern fighting force. Military drill on the Western model naturally
required Western-style martial music, and there thus came into being first
of all the simple fife-and-drum bands known as kotekikai, and then — after
, September 1869, when the Satsuma clan were loaned instruments and
given instruction by the Irish-born bandmaster John William Fenton
(1828— 2) — full-blown military bands on the Western model. Fenton’s
band acquired its own instruments from England in 1870 and later became
the official band of the Japanese navy, its directorship passing in 1879 to
the Prussian musician Franz Eckert (1852-1916); while the army was to
establish its own band in 1872, at first under the leadership of Kenzo Nishi,
and then subsequently — and in interesting contrast to the naval band —
under the direction of two French bandmasters: Gustave Charles Dagron,
who presided until 1884, and his successor Charles Edouard Gabriel
Leroux (1850-1926).
The importance of these developments for the wider dissemination of
Western music resides in the fact that, besides their proper function within
the armed forces, these bands also performed roles which demanded that
they appear in a more public situation. One such function was the provi-
- sion of ceremonial music for diplomatic occasions, out of which expe-
diency grew the creation of what still remains Japan’s national anthem to
this day, Kimi ga yo — possibly one of the earliest examples of “Western-
style’ composition to involve at least a partial Japanese input. But in addi-
tion, and more importantly still, the military bands played a vital role in
the reception of Western music in Japan by giving public recitals of it, to
such an extent that ‘until about 1879 .. . musical activity was organised
around the military band, and it was the band that pioneered the way in
what today we would call the public concert’.'°
It was during the 1880s that, alongside these military band concerts,
public recitals also began to be given by Japan’s first generation of music
school students. As already suggested, the institution of a public education
system on Western lines was the third and, ultimately, probably the most
decisive factor in the promulgation of Western music in Japan. For, in their
earnest efforts to imitate wholesale the pedagogic practices of the West, the
10 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ministry of Education had stipulated in its regulations of 1872 that singing

practice should form part of the school curriculum at elementary level,
and instrumental tuition at middle-school level. This was in spite of the
fact that at the time the facilities for putting such Utopian ideals into prac-
tice were totally lacking — “an act symptomatic of the progressiveness of the
authorities, who had received the baptism of the new spirit of the
Reformation’.'4
Much of the responsibility for turning such ambitious schemes into
reality was entrusted to an aristocratic Ministry official called Shuji Izawa
(1851-1917), who on the orders of the Ministry was sent to the United
States in 1875 to examine American pedagogic methods, and to study
music under the Director of the Boston Music School, Luther Whiting
Mason (1828-96). In October 1879, shortly after Izawa’s return to Japan, a
‘Music Study Committee’ (Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari — effectively a small
music college) was set up at Izawa’s recommendation, and in the same
month he set forth his ideals for musical education in his ‘Plan for the
Study of Music’. If the reception history of Western-style music in Meij1- ,
era Japan has up till now read rather like one of uncritical, if not necessar-
ily sympathetic, assimilation, then this document of Izawa’s supplies us
with one of our first glimpses of a counter-tendency. But at the same time,
Izawa was clearly too much of a realist to lapse into mere reaffirmation of
traditionalist certainties. Instead — and fascinatingly — by describing ‘three
general theories’, he sets out his argument for the future direction of
Japanese musical studies in almost classical dialectic fashion. First comes
the ‘thesis’, to the effect that since “Western music has been brought to
almost the highest peak of perfection as a result of several thousand years
of study since the time of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras’, it would be
better to cultivate such music exclusively and abandon the ‘inadequate
Eastern music’ entirely. Next comes an ‘antithetical’ proposition: since
every country has its own proper culture, it would be absurd to try to
import a foreign music, and therefore the best policy would be to bestow
the utmost care on the cultivation of one’s own musical heritage. So far, it
is easy to discern in these two opposing arguments fairly conventional
statements of classic “Herodian’ and ‘Zealotist’ positions respectively. But
it is at this point that Izawa adds something new, something that we have
so far not directly encountered at any point in our discussion of this topic.
As a third possible option — and it is clearly the one which Izawa himself
favours — he suggests a ‘synthesis’ of the above antithetic alternatives: the
possibility of ‘taking a middle course between the two views, and by blend-
ing Eastern and Western music establish[ing] a new kind of music which is
suitable for the Japan of today’.'° And it is here that one catches sight, for
11 Pre-history: how Western music came to Japan

the first time, of a yearning that was to prove something of an idée fixe for
so many Japanese musicians throughout the hundred-plus years that have
subsequently elapsed: the desire for a resolution, on a musical level at least,
of that “double structure’ in the Japanese psyche already referred to, the
_ quest for some sort of synthesis of Japanese and European musics in a
a higher unity. |
In Izawa’s own case, however, the means he considered adequate for the
realisation of this ambitious project seem, with hindsight, almost embar-
rassingly naive. Shdgaku Shéka-Shii, the collection of primary-school
songs which embodied Izawa’s theories, and of which the first set eventu-
ally appeared in November 1881, was compiled from three sources of
material, each of which reflects one of the ‘three general principles’
referred to in the text of the “Plan for the Study of Music’ mentioned above.
Thus the conservative, ‘Zealotist’ approach is reflected in the incorpora-
tion of “Works employing materials from gagaku and popular song’;’® a
progressive, forward-looking attitude finds expression in the inclusion of
‘Newly composed works’; while the third, synthetic option is represented
by what are described as ‘Famous Western tunes supplied with Japanese
lyrics’. It is with the last of these in particular, however, that the inade-
quacy of Izawa’s rather amateurish approach becomes especially apparent.
Essentially this attempt at reconciling the two cultures reflected his belief
that it was only in their advanced forms that Eastern and Western musics
diverged, their basic elements — such as those found in children’s songs —
apparently being ‘strikingly similar’. But the one enduring achievement of
the manner in which this philosophy was put into practice seems to have
been to sow in Japanese minds such confusing ideas — prevalent to this day
— as, for example, that Auld Lang Syne is actually a traditional Japanese
folksong called Hotaru no Hikari. Moreover, while it had been Izawa’s orig-
inal intention that traditional Japanese and Western music should be
studied alongside one another, as the years passed the former option was
gradually abandoned, to be revived again only after the Second World War.
Thus his idealistic vision of an accommodation between Eastern and
Western traditions began to fade, and Japanese musical education began to
devote its energies, for the most part, towards an unequivocal pursuit of
excellence in the ‘European’ tradition.
Most of these energies were, of course, directed towards the acquisition
of performance skills, but it was nevertheless a comparatively short time
before the first efforts at Western-style composition by academically
trained Japanese musicians began to manifest themselves. Unusually —
given the course of subsequent history — the credit for producing the first
instrumental work of this kind goes to a woman composer, Nobu[ko]
12 The music of Toru Takemitsu

K6da (1870-1946), whose Violin Sonata appeared in 1897;'” while in the

sphere of ‘serious’ vocal music, the title of pioneer is conventionally
accorded to Rentar6 Taki (1879-1903), many of whose songs, such as Kojé
no Tsuki or Hana, are still well known to most Japanese today, and, despite
the obvious diatonicism of their material, often mistakenly thought of as
‘traditional’ in origin. Additionally, in his final years before his premature
death from tuberculosis, Taki contributed some of the earliest specimens
of solo piano music to the Japanese repertory — a Menuetto in B minor in
1900, and the interesting Urami (‘Regret’) of 1903.
Taki’s brief career also included a period of foreign study at the Leipzig
Conservatoire: a form of finishing which was obviously considered highly
desirable for any musician wishing to be taken seriously at this period,
, when all but one of the teachers at the Toky6 Music School (which the
‘Music Study Committee’ had become in 1887) were of German extrac-
tion, and Japanese musicians tended ‘to think of the German traditions as
the only ones’.'® Thus we find Taki’s example emulated a few years later by
the colourful figure whom Japan still reveres as the first great patriarch in
its canon of domestic composers, Kosaku Yamada (1886-1965). After
graduating as a singer from the Toky6 Music School in 1908, Yamada
moved to Berlin to study for four years at the Hochschule with Max Bruch
and Karl Leopold Wolf, where in 1912 he produced Japan’s first ever home-
grown symphony, Kachidoki to Heiwa (‘Victory and Peace’), followed in
1913 by a late Romantic-style tone poem, Mandara no Hana (‘Flower of
the Mandala’). It was in order to perform such ambitious works as these
that in 1915, after his return to Japan, he organised the first Japanese sym-
phony orchestra; a second orchestra which he founded in 1924 — after the
financial collapse of the former — was eventually to develop into the
present-day orchestra of the NHK.'? Yamada was also closely involved with
the struggle to establish opera in Japan, forming his own troupe, the Nihon
Gakugeki Kyokai (‘Japanese Music Drama Association’), in 1920; and in
addition to such activities, he somehow found time to produce an esti-
mated 1,500 or so instrumental, vocal and operatic scores, throughout
which the influence of his Germanic training is evident — perhaps, indeed,
is reflected in the very fact of his choosing to bequeath the world such a
monumental legacy. Yet even here, in the case of this most thoroughly
Occidentally trained of early Japanese composers, one catches sight in
later years of a counteracting assertion of national difference. It surfaces,
for instance, in the composer’s search for a manner in which a style of vocal
music conceived to suit the contours of German speech might be adapted
to reflect adequately the very different intonational patterns of Japanese —
a quest which oddly parallels the efforts of European composers such as
 13 Pre-history: how Western music came to Japan _

Bartok, for instance, to rid their vocal music of the inappropriate accents
of the Austro-German hegemony. And it also emerges clearly, of course, in
the picturesque titles bestowed on the instrumental pieces, or the texts and
subject matter chosen for his songs and operas — for example, in his most
successful work, Kurofune (‘Black Ships’, 1940), which is loosely based on
the famous relationship between the Japanese girl Okichi-san and the
American Consul, and which Eta Harich-Schneider has neatly described as
‘a Puccini opera from the Eastern standpoint’.”°
The example of Taki and Yamada established the foundations of a recog-
nisable ‘school’ of German-style composition in Japan, and in the foot-
steps of these two pioneers there followed a whole generation of
‘Germanic’ composers, with a particular interest in vocal music: Ryutaro
Hirota (1892-1952), Shinpei Nakahama (1887-1952), Nagayo Moto’ori
(1885-1945) and Kiyoshi Nobutoki (1887-1965). One notes in the
manner in which this particular style was propagated a very Japanese form
of cultivation: an initial mimesis of another culture is then faithfully
reproduced as composers working in the same style form themselves into
groups, or as their method is transmitted by the conservative, Confucian
, method from revered teacher to reverent pupil. A similar pattern emerged,
for example, a generation later, after Saburo Moroi (1903-77) returned
from his period of study in Berlin (1934-36) with Leo Schrattenholz to
| found what he described as his ‘analysis school’ of composers rigorously
trained on the Germanic model: Yoshiro Irino (1921-80), Minao Shibata
(1916-96), and his own son Makoto Moroi (1930—).
| However, the one exception to the German monopoly on instruction at
the Téky6 Music School — the French conductor Noél Péri — points to the
early establishment of a tentative alternative to the Germanic model: one
that subsequently would exert considerable appeal for Japanese compos-
ers, precisely because so many fin-de-siécle French artists had themselves
been turning their sights towards ‘the East’ in the hope of discovering an
, alternative to the oppressive weight of their own cultural history. One
thinks here, for example, of Van Gogh’s reinterpretations of Hiroshige
woodcuts, or (most pertinently for our present purposes) of Debussy’s
epiphanic exposure to Asiatic music at the 1889 Paris Exposition and his
choice of a Hokusai engraving to embellish the score of La Mer. It was not
long, therefore, before some Japanese composers turned to this alternative
tradition to further their studies — the pioneer being Tomojir6 Ikenouchi
(1906-91), the first Japanese to enter the Paris Conservatoire, where he
studied composition under Paul Henri Biisser (1873-1972) from 1927 to
1936. Ikenouchi’s pupils were to include several distinguished figures in
Japanese music, such as Saburo Takata (1913—), Akio Yashiro (1929-76),
14 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Toshir6 Mayuzumi (1929-97) and Akira Miyoshi (1933-—); while the

shadow of French influence was also to fall heavily upon such composers
as Meiro Sugawara (1897-1988) and Kunihiko Hashimoto (1904-48).
Of course, the fascination exerted on these composers by ‘impressionis-
tic’ music in particular was in no small measure due to the fact that, pre-
cisely for the reasons outlined at the beginning of the previous paragraph,
it reflected back at them, from a European perspective, many of the preoc-
cupations of their own indigenous musical culture. The modally based,
‘non-functional’ harmonic idiom was eminently adaptable for use with
the scales of traditional Japanese music, and both traditions shared a fond-
ness for timbral finesse and, on a broader level, for extra-musical reference
to picturesque, naturalistic subject matter. All this was hardly to be won-
dered at, considering that the Japanese were working with a European
reflection of deep structures to be found within their own culture — a
process of that type which Takemitsu, himself a devotee of Debussy’s
music, was many years later to describe as “reciprocal action” — musical
art which was reimported to Japan’.”’ Yet perhaps at this insecure stage of
Japanese musical history, it was necessary that the ‘Oriental’ in art be
exported and reimported in this way, in order that it might return home
stamped with the endorsement that would ensure its acceptance in the
post- Meiji intellectual climate — the seal of Western legitimation.
Soon, however, a school of composition was to emerge in Japan which
would abolish such cultural customs officers entirely and work directly
with the indigenous materials of its own heritage. In the years leading up
to the Second World War a new voice began to make itself heard, one
which eschewed the imitation of European models favoured by more ‘aca-
demic’ composers and substituted for it the expression of a distinctly
‘national’ identity. One cannot be sure to what extent individual compos-
ers associated with this movement harboured nationalistic sentiments in
| the broader, political sense of the term, but it is certainly true that the
, ascendancy of the pre-war ‘nationalist’ school in Japanese composition
coincided with the period in modern Japanese history when attitudes
towards the West had swung to the opposite extreme from the receptivity
which characterised the early Meiji era. Furthermore, this isolationist
stance was not without its impact on the composers of the ‘nationalist’
school in at least one respect, inasmuch as few of them underwent the
course of ‘foreign study’ in Europe deemed so essential by many of their
predecessors, and indeed one or two — notably Ifukube and Hayasaka —
were largely self-taught. Japanese composers closely associated with this
movement include Akira Ifukube (1914—), Kishio Hirao (1907-53), Shir6
Fukai (1907-59), Fumio Hayasaka (1914-55) (on whose film scores
15 Pre-history: how Western music came to Japan

Takemitsu would later work as an assistant), Shtkichi Mitsukuri

(1895-1971), Yoritsune Matsudaira (1907—), and the composer usually
cited as Takemitsu’s only formal ‘teacher’, Yasuji Kiyose (1899-1981) — the
last three of whom formed the Shinko Sakkyokuka Renmei (‘Progressive
Composers’ League’, later to become the Japanese branch of the ISCM) in
1930.
Strictly speaking, the descriptive term for this tendency here translated
| as ‘nationalism’ — minzokushugi-—also carries with it connotations pertain-
ing to the word for ‘folk’ or ‘race’ (minzoku), and this provides a clue as to
the manner in which these composers tended to operate, working (as one
Japanese commentator puts it) “with folk-music and folklore in the same
manner as the Hungarian composer Béla Barték’.*? Thus Ifukube, for
example, produced ‘complicated polymetres and instrumental combina-
tions learned from years of listening to Ainu melodies in Hokkaido’;””
while Mitsukuri— though educated under Georg Schumann in Berlin, and
in many respects closer to the German Romantic tradition than the other
composers named above — made a scientific study of the elements of tradi-
tional music, deriving from them a unique method of harmonisation
based on the intervals of a fifth, which he described as his ‘oriental har-
monic system’ (t0ydwaonteikei) and to which he gave theoretical expres-
sion in his publication Ongaku no Toki (‘The Moment of Music’) in 1948.
| But while there are obvious similarities between such procedures and
the methods of composers like Barték in the West, there are also important
differences. For example, in the case of Bart6k the “folkloristic’ input tends
, to be counterbalanced by features drawn from the broader tradition of
European art music, such as the rigour of the constructional method or the
‘avant-gardism of the chromatic harmony. This is not generally the case in
the music of Japanese ‘nationalists’, in which folk-derived materials tend
to be stated baldly, often in rather crude harmonisations, and developed as
often as not by simple repetitive devices. Furthermore, whereas Barték and
Kodaly did not limit their researches to their own country, but recognised
instead a deeper structural unity between various folk musics transcend-
ing national boundaries, the Japanese composers preoccupied themselves
exclusively with traditional Japanese music, conveniently ignoring what-
ever features it shared with other musics of the Far East. In addition, the
| Japanese regarded both popular songs and highly sophisticated genres like
gagaku indiscriminately as expressions of the ‘national’; they did not see
the fundamental binary opposition as consisting of a social one between
‘folk’ and ‘art’ music, and neither was the ‘regional’ — for example the Ainu
melodies with which Ifukube worked — viewed as differing from the
‘national’, despite the distinct racial and cultural identity possessed by
 16 The music of Toru Takemitsu

such minorities. Instead the fundamental duality perceived by this genera-

tion of composers was that between ‘Japanese’ and ‘Western’; between the
‘nationalistic’ and the academic, pedagogical and derivative. In all of the
above respects, then, the music of these Japanese minzokushugi composers
bears less resemblance to the work of Barték and Kodaly than to that of
their nineteenth-century European forebears — to artists from the period
when for the first time “folk art came to be regarded as a national, rather
than a regional or social, phenomenon’.”* Indeed, as we have already seen,
such an identification is implicit in the very semantics of the term conven-
tionally used to describe them.
Music by minzokushugi composers nevertheless appears to have enjoyed
a considerable vogue in pre-war Japan, and even today Japanese orchestras
visiting the West have a habit of surprising their audiences with bombastic
encore pieces in the minzokushugi vein, usually delivered with an appro-
priately passionate, kamikaze-like conviction. In general, however, outside
Japan music of this sort is today little heard of, and the judgement of
musical history has not been especially generous towards those composers
‘who have been unable to see greater possibilities in their native idioms
than merely the harmonisation of Japanese tunes’.? Such judgements
reflect rather more than changing tastes in musical fashion: they point to
intrinsic weaknesses in the method of procedure, as becomes readily
apparent to anyone who has heard the works of certain of these compos-
ers. Although it is unfair to single out one particular work as emblematic
of a whole artistic tendency — and although the time is long past when
music written for the cinema was somehow considered intrinsically infe-
rior — it might nevertheless serve to conjure for the modern reader some
aural image of this type of music by referring to the creation of Akira
Ifukube that has undoubtedly received the widest public exposure: his
music for Inoshiro Honda’s (in)famous 1954 ‘monster movie’ Gojira
(‘Godzilla’). Most modern listeners would, I think, agree that the kinds of
excesses typified by such works do not constitute a very imaginative
attempt at East-West integration. The folk-like materials tend to be pre-
sented in crude harmonisations and orchestrated with thick instrumental
doublings, underpinned bya massive and hyperactive percussion section —
devices which seem to have the effect of battering out of them whatever
vitality they might originally have possessed. Ultimately, one comes to the
same regretful conclusion as Robin Heifetz, when he notes that ‘generally,
| the results of these “folklorists” were not successful’;”° but a discussion of
the precise reasons for this ‘failure’ must be postponed for the moment,
until the time comes to consider the very different approach adopted by —
composers such as Takemitsu in the concluding chapter of this book.
 17 Pre-history: how Western music came to Japan

As already suggested, the years which saw the ascendancy of this musical
‘nationalism’ were also those which witnessed the rise in Japan of its polit-
ical namesake — which finally erupted to such spectacularly destructive
effect in World War II. The immediate post-war years were harsh and
deprived in the extreme, affording little opportunity for formal musical
study, but eventually — and in particular, from the 1950s onwards —
Japanese compositional activity began to rise out of the ashes.
Furthermore, much of the work undertaken in those years can still be
categorised in the same terms used to describe the old pre-war ‘schools’ of
compositional thought. Thus once again there emerged composers of
‘academic’ bent who took their cue from developments in Europe and
often travelled there to study, and once again these may be divided into
composers of ‘French’ or “Germar inclination. To the former category, for
Instance, belong composers such as the Ikenouchi pupils Akio Yashiro and
, _ Akira Miyoshi, both of whom studied in Paris (under Nadia Boulanger
, and Raymond Gallois-Montbrun, respectively); while under the latter
heading one might subsume the three pupils of Saburo Moroi already
referred to: Yoshiro Irino, Makoto Moroi and Minao Shibata. However,
there was by now of course a great difference in the European musical
scene from those days when Yamada went to assimilate the methods of
German late Romanticism, or Ikenouchi those of the French impression-
ists, and these developments find their echo in the more up-to-date preoc-
| cupations of post-war composers. Irino, for instance, was the first
Japanese to compose a twelve-note work, his Concerto da Camera for seven
instruments of 1951, while Shibata’s activity in the 1950s ran the whole
| gamut of post-war techniques and styles, experimenting with twelve-note
method, integral serialism, musique concréte, electronic music and electric
Instruments. In later years all of the composers listed above were addition-
ally to experiment with works employing traditional Japanese instru-
| ments, often in combination with Western resources: for example, Irino’s
Wandlungen ‘for grand orchestra with two shakuhachis of 1973, and
Shibata’s intriguingly described Leap Day’s Vigil for “kokyu, san-gen and
electro-acoustic devices’ of 1972. .
| While it is hardly surprising that composers with an ‘academic’ outlook
should be turning their attention to the new developments in post-war
Western music, what is less to be expected is that many composers who
continued to follow in the ‘nationalist’ tradition — what Judith Ann Herd
refers to as ‘the neonationalist movement — should also exploit the wealth
of new sound resources now available to them, rather than simply the
_ Japanese tunes and pentatonic harmonies that had satisfied their pre-war
counterparts. Amongst the many groupings of Japanese composers that
18 The music of Toru Takemitsu

sprang up in the 1950s, two in particular came to be associated with this

tendency. The first was the Yagi no Kai (‘Goat Group’), initially formed in
1953 by Hikaru Hayashi (1931- ), Yaz Toyama (1931— ) and Michio
Mamiya (1929- ), to be joined five years later by Toshiya Sukegawa (1930- ).
The second was the Sannin no Kai or ‘Group of Three’, founded (also in
1953) by Yasushi Akutagawa (1925-89), Ikuma Dan (1924— ) and the most
famous of Ikenouchi’s pupils, Toshir6 Mayuzumi. Admittedly these com-
posers varied in the degree to which ‘modernist’ devices were assimilated
into the essentially ‘nationalist’ aesthetic. Members of the Yagi no Kai, for
instance, admired Barték’s example, and Mamiya used folksong material
more or less directly in his own work, whereas Hayashi tended to experi-
ment with more unusual forms of vocal technique, or used motifs from
traditional music as the starting point for more chromaticised, quasi-serial
procedures (a similar method is to be found in the post-war ‘serial gagakwv
compositions of the older ‘nationalist’ composer Yoritsune Matsudaira).
And at the opposite extreme from Mamiya, perhaps the most technically
radical of all these composers was Mayuzumi, who was for a spell during
the 1960s quite well-known in the West as well as in Japan, partly as the
result of his score for the John Huston film The Bible (1965). Mayuzumi
studied under Tony Aubin at the Paris Conservatoire from 1951 to 1952,
where he not only assimilated the techniques of Varése, Messiaen and
Boulez but also visited Pierre Schaeffer’s studio, completing soon after his
return to Japan both the first ever specimen of musique concrete to be com-
posed in that country (Oeuvre pour Musique Concrete x, y, z, 1953), and the
first Japanese example of elektronische Musik (Shisaku I, 1955). Within a
few years of his return to Japan, too, he was placing the wealth of new-
found techniques he had mastered at the service of his own ‘pan-Asian’
vision. In particular, his researches into timbre led him to study the over-
tone structures of Buddhist temple bells, thereby applying the most
advanced techniques of his day to a sound-material powerfully symbolic of
Asiatic identity. It was as a result of these researches that he produced
probably the most remarkable achievement of his early career: inventing a
kind of “spectral music’ decades before its emergence in the work of
| Europeans such as Murail or Grisey, he used the partials of a Buddhist bell
as pitch-material for what is perhaps one of the unsung eccentric master-
pieces of post-war music, his Nehan Kokydkyoku (‘Nirvana Symphony’) of
1958. Perhaps it is therefore a little dispiriting to learn that the composer of
this impressive score was one for whom musical ‘nationalism’ did, for
once, most certainly go hand in glove with its political equivalent. Even in
these early works, Mayuzumi seems a little too concerned with his identity
as a Japanese, and, as the years progressed, this concern was to express itself
 19 Pre-history: how Western music came to Japan

ever more in the form of active involvement with the political right — cul-
minating in his work as Chairman of an organisation which styled itself
| the ‘Council for the National Defence of Japan’ (Nippon o Mamoru
Kokuminkaigi) between 1981 and 1991. In this respect, Mayuzumi reveals
a close spiritual kinship with another outspoken critic of Japanese society
whom he had first met in Paris in 1952: the famous novelist Yukio Mishima
(1925-70). It was upon one of the latter’s best-known short stories that he
| was to base one of the most substantial works of his later years: the opera
Kinkakuji (‘The Temple of the Golden Pavilion’), commissioned by the
Deutsche Oper of Berlin, and first performed there in 1976.
Yet alongside the ‘academically’ trained composers working in their
own interpretation of a translocated ‘European’ tradition, and the ‘neona-
tionalists’ asserting by contrast what they believed to be their own
‘uniquely Japanese’ identity, there was possibly a third force in operation
in post-war Japanese music. Amongst the various groupings that sprang
up in the 1950s alongside such affiliations as Yagi no Kai or Sannin no Kai,
there was at least one whose constitution was radically different. Its mem-
_ bership comprised not only composers but artists working in other media;
- furthermore, the composers working within this group were autodidacts
who had received almost no formal education in music, and were thus
somewhat marginal to the ‘official’ Japanese composing community. The
group in question was called Jikken Kobo, the ‘Experimental Workshop’,
and its presence on the map of post-war Japanese music marks one of the
beginnings of the emergence of a true avant-garde, of an alternative to
‘academic’ tradition or ‘nationalist’ rhetoric. Composers associated with
this tendency wished rather to distance themselves from the discredited
pre-war traditions, as they ‘diligently tried to rid themselves of the
wartime stigma of existing nationalistic models’ — a task in which they
were assisted in the early post-war years by the policy of the Occupation
forces, who strictly limited outward displays of nationalism, while
affording ample opportunities to gain access to the new styles currently
enjoying vogue in Europe and the United States. Rather like their counter-
parts in a devastated Germany, composers of this persuasion wanted more
or less to return to a Nullstunde and start from scratch, and thus found
themselves in peculiar sympathy with the post-Webernian generation’s
desire for a new ‘international’ music, as well as — later on — with the aes-
thetics of Cage and the American experimentalists. One of the founder
: , members of the particular association mentioned above — Jikken Kobo —
was a young man who had just celebrated his twenty-first birthday, Toru
Takemitsu.
Throughout this chapter, the reader will observe, the focus of attention
20 The music of Téru Takemitsu

has been gradually narrowing: from the broad perspective across Japanese
history with which it began, via a concentration specifically on the devel-
opment of Japanese music, to the history of Western-style composition
outlined in the preceding pages. Now, in order to continue the story, it will
, be necessary to narrow the focus even further — to revert from the general-
ised to the particular, and examine how the ongoing dynamics of the rela-
tionship between Japan and Western music came to express themselves in
the career and work of one individual. The detailed investigation of both
the life and music of this individual, Takemitsu, will form the matter for
discussion in the chapters which follow.
 2 Musicand ‘pre-music’: Takemitsu’s early years

Encrypted at one point in the music of Takemitsu’s late work Family Tree —
Musical Verses for Young People (1992) is a kind of coded biographical allu-
sion. When the girl narrator, introducing us in turn to each member of her
family, comes to her father, the music launches suddenly into something
like pastiche big-band jazz of the swing era. For the listener familiar with
the biographical details of Takemitsu’s earliest years, his private reasons for
considering ‘jazz’ an apt metaphor for the paternal at this point are easily
fathomed. Although born — on 8 October 1930 — in the Hongo district of
Toky6, within a month of his birth Toru Takemitsu had joined his father
Takeo at his place of employment, the town of Dalian (Luda) in the region
| of China then known to the Japanese as Manchuria, and administered by
themasa colony. There, enjoying a privileged lifestyle as a member of the
expatriate community, Takeo Takemitsu had been able to indulge one of
his favourite passions more frequently than might otherwise have been
possible: the performance of jazz records from his vast personal collection.
, He had one or two other musical enthusiasms too, which it is just possible
might have had some influence on the developing musical sensibilities of
his son: the Takemitsu biographer Kuniharu Akiyama notes that he was for
a while ‘fanatical’ about playing the shakuhachi,' and won first prize at a
competition for making imitation bird sounds.” But it was his parent’s
constant rehearsal of his favourite ‘Dixieland, New Orleans Style’ discs
that clearly left the most indelible impression on the fledgling composer, to
the extent that nearly half a century later, in conversation with Seiji Ozawa,
Takemitsu could still recall such names as ‘Kid Ory and his Creole Band’
from those days, adding that ‘a little of this jazz music still remains inside
me’.
This assessment is indeed borne out by the composer’s mature music in
several ways — and not simply in those instances where jazz music is
directly parodied, such as the passage in Family Tree, or the skilful jazz pas-
, tiches in the soundtracks for such films as Karami-ai,* Tokyo Sensé Sengo
Hiwa? and Natsu no Imoto.° In Takemitsu’s mature ‘concert’ works as well,
__ the traces of jazz influence are palpable in such features as the suave har-
monic language (in part arrived at through the influence of George
Russell’s ‘Lydian Chromatic’ theories) and even, towards the end of the
21 composer's career, a certain ‘big band’ style of orchestration. But in more
22 The music of Toru Takemitsu

general terms, the point to be noted at this stage is that the strongest
musical impressions of Takemitsu’s earliest years stemmed from a source
that was ‘Western’ in origin, and that his reactions to this stimulus, as vin-
dicated by later developments, were unambiguously positive in nature.
The situation was to prove otherwise with regard to traditional Japanese
music. At the age of seven, Takemitsu was sent back to Toky6 to commence
his primary schooling, his father following him a year later on account of
ill-health, and dying at Kagoshima in 1938 (his mother Raiko was to
survive until 1983). Takemitsu stayed in the Akebonoché district with his
uncle, whose wife taught the koto,’ and it was perhaps the association of
this constant musical presence with a period of such unhappiness in the
composer’s personal life which caused him to react as negatively as he did
to this early encounter with traditional Japanese music. “When I was a
child I lived in Tokyo with my aunt, a koto teacher’, the composer was later
to recall. ‘I heard traditional Japanese music around me all the time. For
some reason, it never really appealed to me, never moved me. Later,

the war.” ,
hearing traditional Japanese music always recalled the bitter memories of

As this quotation suggests, the aversion to traditional Japanese music

was intensified by the experiences of the war years, when — for reasons
hinted at in the previous chapter — ‘Japanese’ music became associated
with the dominant culture of militarism, while, as in Nazi Germany, other
genres were vilified as so much entartete Musik (or, as the equivalent
Japanese expression had it, tekiseiongaku — ‘music of hostile character’).
And it was precisely at this point that an experience occurred which was
not only to reaffirm the positive connotations with which Western music
had become imbued for Takemitsu, but which, in the musically deprived
context of the war years, was to strike him with such force as to change the
subsequent course of his life.
Appropriately enough, it was once again a form of American popular
music — or, at least, an American popular musician — that was responsible
for Takemitsu’s epiphanic conversion. With mobilisation in 1944,
Takemitsu’s formal education was abruptly curtailed, and he was sent to
work at a military provisions base in Saitama prefecture, lodged in an
underground dugout deep in the mountains; ‘the experience’, the com-
poser later confessed, ‘was an extremely bitter one’.? On one occasion,
however, a newly graduated officer cadet secretly took a number of the
internees into a back room for a clandestine recital of proscribed music,
using a wind-up gramophone with a carefully sharpened piece of bamboo
as a needle. One of the first items he played, apparently, was Lucienne |
Boyer singing Parlez-moi d’amour; and for Takemitsu at least, accustomed
 23 Music and ‘pre-music’: Takemitsu’s early years

, by this time to a musical diet consisting solely of patriotic war songs, the
, experience of this music had a revelatory impact which he was to remem-
ber for the rest of his life. “For me, hearing that music came as an enormous
shock; I was stunned, and for the first time I suddenly realised the splendid
quality of Western music.”"”
As well as reawakening Takemitsu’s dormant musical sensibilities, then,
this revelatory moment also confirmed the Occidental bias of his musical
preferences. And with the cessation of hostilities this bias was to extend to
| far more than matters of musical taste alone. Like many Japanese of the
| post-war years, Takemitsu eagerly embraced a decidedly ‘Herodiar’ atti-
tude of reaction against the discredited nationalism of the immediate past
— ‘a kind of gut-level response that whatever was Japanese should be
rejected’'! — coupled with an enthusiasm for all things Western. The ideo-
logical climate of the post-war American occupation was to afford the
young Takemitsu ample opportunity to cultivate this predilection for
Western culture, and in particular for modern Western music. The occu-
pying US government established what the composer has described as a
‘very big library’ in T6ky6 to which he went ‘every day to look at scores — all
from America, none from Europe’, with the inevitable result that he “knew
American music first, before 1 knew Schoenberg or Webern’.”” They also
set up a radio station called WVTR, and Takemitsu, at this period fre-
quently bed-ridden on account of ill-health, was able to spend “all my time
listening to the US Armed Forces network’,!* who ‘played various kinds of
music (George Gershwin, Debussy and Mahler)’.'* (And Messiaen too, at
least according to Kuniharu Akiyama, who recalled hearing Stokowski
- conduct L’Ascension around 1948, and applied to the station for a copy of
the recording to perform at a concert of works on disc.)'> But — according
to Takemitsu’s later testimony, at least — it is to none of these modern
masters that thanks are due for the young Takemitsu’s decision to become a
composer, but rather to the unlikely stimulus of César Franck. Hearing a
radio broadcast of the latter’s Prelude, Chorale and Fugue for piano, the
composer was struck as profoundly by the quality of Western instrumental
music as he had been by the vocal artistry of Boyer. ‘I had discovered a
second kind of music, namely the instrumental, the absolute kind. In
Japan, word and sound cannot be separated. But here I was hearing an
instrument being played alone and awakening astonishing feelings in me.
It seemed to me like a song of peace, a prayer or an aspiration, after I had
lived through so much suffering ... At that moment, I decided to become a
composer.’!®
Takemitsu’s later self-assessment as ‘almost an autodidact, a self-taught
composer’!’ is certainly lent credibility by the manner in which he set out
24 The music of Téru Takemitsu

initially to realise this ambition without professional guidance or encour-

agement of any sort; but at the same time one should not fall into the error
of thinking that these earliest musical efforts were undertaken in utter iso-
lation and solitude. For instance, Takemitsu became a member of an
amateur chorus, and it was at the house of the choir’s conductor, Tokuaki
Hamada, that he met another young composer, Hiroyoshi Suzuki (1931-),
who was to become something of a comrade-in-arms during these early
years of struggle.'® Together the pair pored over Rimsky-Korsakov’s
Orchestration and the scores that lined the shelves of Hamada’s home —
already with a significant preference for the works of French composers
, such as Roussel, Fauré and (once again) Franck. Shortly after this — just
before Christmas 1946 — there occurred yet another signal event in
Takemitsu’s life linked in some way with American popular music. The
young composer obtained a year’s employment at a ‘PX’ (‘post exchange’,
or recreational facility) attached to the US Army camp at Yokohama,
where it was agreed that, in return for playing jazz records to the Gls by
| night, he might make use of the piano in the unoccupied hall during the
day. The luxury this opportunity represented for the young Takemitsu in
those years of desperate post-war privation cannot be overemphasised:
until then, the lack of a piano on which to try out his compositional
experiments had reduced him to such extreme ruses as knocking on the
houses of complete strangers to obtain access to one, or even fabricating a
‘paper keyboard’ which could produce sounds only in his own aural
imagination. ,
In spite of Takemitsu’s professed aversion for anything ‘Japanese’ at this
period, both he and Suzuki nevertheless appear to have been interested in
their own traditional music as well, and even to have made efforts to
assimilate elements from it into the language of modern Western composi-
tion. Such, at least, was the opinion of Akiyama, who claimed that the
young composers were at this period experimenting with the possibilities
afforded by the ry6, ritsu and in scales of traditional music — a preoccupa-
tion which apparently bore fruit in a series of pentatonic-derived pieces
which the seventeen-year-old Takemitsu produced at this time, such as the
rather oddly named Kakehi (‘Conduit’).'? The story which Takemitsu
himself was to tell regarding the genesis of this work, however, is rather
different: he claimed that he was so shocked to discover that these penta-
tonic elements, with their negative ‘nationalistic’ connotations, had crept
into his work subconsciously that he later destroyed the piece.”°
Whichever version of events is correct, however, it is clear that both
Takemitsu and Suzuki were at this period more sympathetically disposed
towards the previous generation of Japanese composers, and in particular
 25 Music and ‘pre-music’: Takemitsuw’s early years

the ‘nationalist’ school, than might be expected from the militantly pro-
Western stance Takemitsu claims to have espoused. In fact one of the pas-
times of both composers at this time was combing the shelves of the Koga
second-hand bookshop in Kanda for pre-war sheet music, and it was here
that they came across the Flute Sonatina by the Japanese ‘nationalist’ com-
poser Kishio Hirao, to whom they turned in their first attempt to put their
musical studies on a more official footing. Unfortunately, they elected to
accomplish this by means of the rather naive stratagem of simply turning
up unannounced at the composer's house, and — perhaps unsurprisingly —
the unsolicited and, by all accounts, somewhat shabby visitors were turned
away at the gate. Six years later, however, when both Hirao and Takemitsu
were in hospital together, the elder composer repented of his former brus-
, querie and promised the young man a significant propitiatory gift: a copy
, of his forthcoming translation of Messiaen’s Technique de mon langage
musical.*! Unfortunately, his death soon afterwards prevented him from
honouring this pledge.
Rather better fortune was to attend Takemitsu’s next effort to apprentice
' himself to an established senior composer. While buying a ticket for the
| ‘Nichi-Bei Contemporary Music Festival’ of 1948, he revealed his ambi-
, tions to the business manager of the T6h6 Music Association, who offered
, to provide him with an introduction to another composer of ‘nationalist’
bent, Yasuji Kiyose. When in due course Kiyose agreed to meet the younger
composer, the latter rushed to his house immediately, only to find him
absent; but Takemitsu refused to be deterred a second time after his experi-
ence with Hirao, and remained outside the composer’s home like a Zen
, acolyte until he returned in the evening. According to Takemitsu’s version
of the story, Kiyose then played some of his music at the piano and paid
him a compliment that seems particularly apt in the light of his subse-
- quent reputation for timbral finesse: “He told me that the sound was beau-
tiful, that I was welcome to come again with more scores; and I was
overjoyed to hear such things, spoken by a figure for whom I had such
respect’ .??
| Kiyose accepted both Takemitsu and Suzuki as pupils, and, later that
month when the ‘Nichi-Bei’ event took place, introduced them to two
other senior figures in the Japanese ‘nationalist’ compositional world:
Yoritsune Matsudaira and Fumio Hayasaka. This pair — plus Kiyose
himself, Kunio Otsuki, Akihiro Tsukatani (b. 1919) and others — had
formed a composers’ association, the Shinsakkyokuha (“New Composition
| Group’), to present their works, to which the young newcomers were
granted admission two years later. Thus it transpired that an organisation
founded to further the interests of a group of conservative and ‘nationalist’
26 The music of Toru Takemitsu

composers provided the platform for Takemitsu’s first exposure to the lis-
tening public. The seventh Shinsakkyokuha recital, in December 1950,
included the premiére of Takemitsu’s solo piano work Lento in Due
Movimenti; but the reception afforded the newcomer by the Japanese criti-
cal fraternity appears to have been a cool one, to say the least. In conversa-
tion with Seiji Ozawa many years later, Takemitsu was to recall — still with
obvious bitterness — how he had bought a newspaper in Shinjuku after the
performance, and had read the harsh review with its crushing final remark:
‘It’s “pre-music”’.”° ‘Everything went totally dark in front of my eyes...
there was a cinema right in front of me, I bought a ticket, went inside, and
in a corner of the pitch blackness . . . I just wanted to cry, and so I cried,
thinking it would be best not to write music any more.’*
Yamane’s remark about ‘pre-music’ in fact turned out to be remarkably
apt, for Takemitsu was to withdraw both this work and its companion
piece from the Shinsakkyokuha years, Distance de Fée (for violin and piano,
premiéred at the eighth recital of the group in 1951). Both pieces are
omitted from the work list which appears in the composer’s manuscript
score of Tableau Noir (1958), which acknowledges instead the first
Uninterrupted Rest of 1954 as his “Op. 1’, and, additionally, the score of the
Lento was — as the composer later expressed it in his preface to the score of
Litany — subsequently ‘lost’. Nevertheless, as matters turned out, some

offered.
musical documentation of this period was to survive in one form or
another, and it is on the basis of this that the following speculations on the
compositional preoccupations of Takemitsu’s ‘pre-musical’ years are

- Début of ‘the Lento composer’

Takemitsu may have destroyed the score of Kakehi, but he did not succeed
in eradicating all evidence of his juvenile pentatonic-nationalist sympa-
thies. In the possession of the Documentation Centre for Modern
Japanese Music in Toky6 is the manuscript score of a short piano composi-
tion dated ‘26 June 1949’ and bearing the title Romance.” The score is pref-
aced by a ‘respectful dedication to Kiyose sensei’,”® and most of the music
in the three pages which follow would have been very much in accord with
the aesthetic ideals of the nineteen-year-old composer’s folkloristic-
minded teacher. The most immediately striking of such preoccupations is
the modal and, specifically, the ‘Japanese’-sounding character of the
musical material. Throughout the work, only eight pitch-classes are
sounded — G, G#, A, Bb, C, C#, D and E} — but, of these, C# is not heard
again after bar 19, and both this pitch and G# clearly function only as
27 Music and ‘pre-music’: Takemitsu’s early years

Res a
2k 22, 23 24
a Ex. 1 Romance, bars 21-7

2) /..2_.@
Wy
iW eeeee
42 “Ane ee
ee eee
eee eee
3-9 OO L’IS0 00 —@aM@maMoooOoONnnuUux@o0c*-"’.’..”

LAE Dien Es Ee SE,

Sed O28 Mls SERS DERE DO Rn,“ ce WY

25 26 27
NS EE
2m/e Tn”
Seeeee eee
eee 0’
SS | PP EYeee
EE eee
1 oe
. eee oooeoTNTNTNONOOOOOOeT_EOENEOOOOOOooO
“eee”

mm f¢ —
td! Of 0) sn ee eee =e
12 ped

adjuncts to the basic six-note ‘minor’ mode. Furthermore, such passages

as the melody which eventually emerges in bar 21 (Ex. 1) suggest that this
six-note scale is in reality the conflation of two pentatonic scales of
‘Japanese’ origin: the descending form of the in scale (here
D-Bb—A-—G-E} ), which is employed as far as the Bb in bar 24, and the same
scale’s ascending version (D-E}—-G-—A-C), which is used from the follow-
ing Ch onwards.
Another marker which locates the work firmly within the Japanese-
nationalist tradition is the ‘non-functional’ harmony derived from verti-
| calisations of pitches abstracted from the basic modal collection, with
_ particular emphasis on interval classes other than the major and minor
thirds of traditional Western practice. For example, in bars 46—7, the
falling fourth incipit of Example 1 is accompanied by a bass collection
which, together with the Ak of the melody, projects all five pitches of the
descending in scale simultaneously. Such collections tend to be highly dis-
sonant, of course, and it is as intensifiers of this dissonance that the extra-
neous C# and G# make their appearance, always occurring in close
proximity, respectively, to the Ck and Gb of the basic modal collection, like
‘out-of-tune’ versions of the ‘correct’ pitches. This perhaps reflects an
28 The music of Toru Takemitsu
| anecdotal intention, and one which again relates the work to the aesthetics
of the ‘nationalist’ school: the attempt by such means to simulate the
microtonal inflections of traditional Japanese instruments.
On the other hand, although there is clearly much that is derivative of
that tradition within this early work, there are also many prophetic point-
ers towards Takemitsu’s later development. One such feature is that most
prominently ‘nationalistic’ aspect of the work itself, its use of modality —a
technical feature which was to provide the foundations for a harmonic and
melodic style that lasted Takemitsu throughout his creative life. The com-
poser once confessed that he was ‘seriously interested in the idea of
mode’,’” and as Akiyama was to note, ‘this is something which has not
changed from his very early period up to the present day’.*® What did
change, however, was the type of modal material in which Takemitsu was
interested: the Japanese pentatonic scales, with their negative nationalistic
associations, were soon to be jettisoned, yet the basic methods of manipu-
lating them which Takemitsu had learned were to serve him well when
applied to other scale collections. Thus Timothy Koozin is surely right
when he asserts that ‘the idea of a scale-based compositional idiom’ as
found in these early works ‘sets an important precedent for Takemitsu’s
later use of octatonic and whole-tone collections in the piano works”?
(although the types of materials employed, as we shall see, derived from a
far wider-ranging thesaurus of scales than simply the two types Koozin
mentions here). In particular, the verticalisation of modally derived pitch-
materials as a source of harmony was to prove a life-long resource of the
composer’s technical vocabulary; as was the intensification of such collec-
tions by the addition of ‘chromatic’ pitches external to the mode in ques-
tion: ‘mode’, the composer once explicitly acknowledged, ‘interests me
because it does not reject sounds from outside the scale’.*° And if the above
assumption concerning the function of such extraneous pitches in
Romance is correct, it is perhaps ironic that this powerful harmonic
resource might have had its origins in an early, anecdotal desire to imitate
the sounds of traditional Japanese music.
Another prophetic hint of what was to become something of a
Takemitsu trademark is the literal repetition of whole passages — and espe-
cially, as here, the repetition of the opening material as a sign of imminent
closure. But perhaps the most characteristic traits of all are those implied
by the performance indications at the head of the score: ‘Adagio sostenuto
~ nobile funeral [sic]’. Takemitsu once remarked in a film interview that
‘Japanese people have no sense of Allegro’,*! and while this is not necessarily
true of all Japanese music (which includes, for example, some quite lively
folksongs), it certainly reflects the composer’s own general predilection for
29 , Music and ‘pre-music’: Takemitsu’s early years

slower tempo categories. Examples abound in his scores of tempo values

that lie at the lower end, or even outside the range, of those to be found ona
conventional metronome: for example, the first movement of
Uninterrupted Rest has the indication ‘J = 48’ and the second is prefaced by
the instruction to perform whole bars at the tempo ‘MM20 = 3 sec.’; while
in Autumn the sub-metronomic tempo of ‘Extremely slow, J= 30’ is
required at one point. According to the conductor Hiroyuki Iwaki, this
absence of Allegria reflects Takemitsu’s own technical awkwardness as he
composed at the keyboard in those early years — in the same way that the
composer’s fondness for soft dynamics originally stemmed from a desire
not to be a nuisance to his benefactors when practising at the houses of
strangers. But it is at the same time surely a reflection of a personal tem-
_ peramental propensity, one revealed by the second part of the Romance
performing directions. The obvious influence of composers such as
Debussy and Messiaen on Takemitsu’s musical language has tended to
result in an emphasis among commentators upon the ‘im-pressionistic’
qualities of his music; but, at the same time, it should not be overlooked
that his music from the very beginning permitted itself the ex-pression of
at least one emotional state as well: that of a profound, dignified melan-
choly. “This may indeed be a personal feeling’, Takemitsu was to confess at
one point, ‘but the joy of music, ultimately, seems connected with sadness.
The sadness is that of existence. The more you are filled with the pure hap-
piness of music-making, the deeper the sadness is.’*?
_ These typical qualities of mood and tempo are of course implicit in the
very title of the Takemitsu composition which marked the official “début”
of the artist Funayama was later to describe as ‘the Lento composer’.*4 As
noted above, the score of this work — Lento in Due Movimenti — has been
‘lost’, and while urban myths of its survival in some form abound amongst
the Toky6 musical community, no documentation of this work has been
available for the present author’s researches. Two textual sources do never-
theless exist to provide the commentator with materials for a certain
amount of ~ albeit very tentative — speculation. The first is a reconstruc-
tion of the composer’s sketches for the pianist Fujiwara, which exists as a
CD recording played by Kazuoki Fuji; the second is Litany — In Memory of
Michael Vyner (1990), a work Takemitsu described as a ‘recomposition
from memory of the original, and whose title perhaps suggests some
cryptic word-play ~ the Japanese for ‘litany’, renté, being a near-homo-
phone of the title of the original work. There are considerable differences
between these two versions, and of course in the case of the recorded
version no score exists to support definitively any close analytical readings;
but with these qualifications in mind, it is still possible to make some
 re
30 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 2 LitanylI, bars 1-3

Adagio (¢=54—63ca.)
p | —~porsee2 aie
con rubato fn
A.
same _ up.
FO ORS Fe CE OF / SP Ee Hl ny Senna me

uo° zf
general observations about certain typical aspects of the work. For
example, both versions begin with a characteristic Takemitsu gesture: a
single, unaccompanied sustained pitch which here, as in many other
instances, reveals itself as the first note of a melodic phrase. The actual
notes of this melody are the same in both versions, but are accompanied
differently; the ‘harmonisation’ as it appears in Litany is given in
Example 2.
This emergence out of niente at the beginnings of works is complemen-
tary to the dissipation of works into silence which is the standard gesture
of final closure in almost all of Takemitsu’s music. It suggests a conception
of music as contiguous with, rather than separate from, the silence sur-
rounding it which is essentially ‘Eastern’ rather than Occidental in nature
and which —as we shall examine more fully in the final chapter of this work
— in later years, Takemitsu was to relate specifically to the Japanese aes-
thetic concept of ma. Examination of the uppermost, melodic voice in this
example reveals something else about Takemitsu’s musical language at this
period: the continuing persistence of stylistic traits derivative of the
Japanese ‘nationalist’ tradition. In this instance, what Akiyama refers to as
the work’s ‘plaintively sombre pentatonic main theme’* begins by expos-
ing all pitches of the same ascending in scale found at the beginning of
Romance, in the transposed form C-—D>)—F—G-—Bb. Curiously, when
Takemitsu came to recompose this work as Litany, he added a passage not
contained in the recording of the original Lento which lies entirely within
the ambit of this mode (Ex. 3) — thus, paradoxically, including in a work
written as late as 1990 a few bars which are probably the most superficially
‘Japanese’-sounding in the composer’s entire acknowledged output.
Such ‘Japanese’ elements apart, however, the composers whose influence
31 Music and ‘pre-music’: Takemitsu’s early years

Ex. 3 LitanyI, bars 17-18

"In" scale ascending

(Transposed)

—LYa en...
Litany, I, bb. 17 - 18

7.2 Sl 90) >

2 es
Ee ee.
LN AE, 2 BE =e. eee. ee
(oO)

es
Or ,
Sie
2 (ee

EL ACOE?
eee eee ee eee
Ce
ee =
eee"

70)DSaeEE RS DS Dh
7 RE; SE
Ne
ee
ee eeeee
eee ee
eee

on the sound-world of Lento/Litany is most palpable tend to be French.

Noriko Ohtake notes that by this time Takemitsu had acquired a rented
Pleyel piano which possessed ‘a sort of nasal sound as in the French lan-
guage’ and on which he played ‘a lot of Debussy and Fauré, which suited the
instrument’.*” On the evidence of the second movement of Lento, he would
appear also to have played a lot of a more recent French composer as well.
Thanks to Toshi Ichiyanagi, he had by this time come into possession of a
score of Olivier Messiaen’s 8 Préludes, and it would seem hard to disagree
with Akiyama’s assertion that the second movement of Lento/Litany is
‘music in which the influence of Messiaen’s Préludes can be seen’.*® The
most audible reflection of this new influence is the addition of a new
resource to Takemitsu’s modal vocabulary, and one not tainted with the
pejorative connotations of the pentatonic forms employed hitherto: the
octatonic scale ({0,1,3,4,6,7,9, 10] ), which, in the shape of the ‘second mode
of limited transposition’, Messiaen had contrived to make so much his
own. Although Takemitsu once claimed that he ‘made use of the octatonic
32 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex.4 Litany II, reduction of uppermost voice, bars 1—3

ny, fe « fe = # * § oy
———————
DANS 9 RS SE LN SERN TR SEIU

collection before ever hearing it in the music of Messiaen, and that he

arrived at it intuitively, using it as well as other modes of his own inven-
tion’,*? it has hard to overlook this synchronism between Takemitsu’s first
exposure to the French composer’s music, and the incorporation into his
musical style of what was, in fact, henceforth to remain one of the most
consistent features of the composer’s harmonic vocabulary for the remain-
der of his creative life.
The most obvious excursions into ‘Mode IT occur in the middle section
of the movement, ‘Allegro con moto’ (a rare instance, it will be observed, of
this most “‘un-Japanese’ of tempo indications in Takemitsu’s music), where
substantial sections lie almost wholly within the ambit of one of the three
available transpositions of the basic scale. Generally speaking, this aspect
of Takemitsu’s octatonic practice is a unique feature not shared by his han-
dling of other modal materials: while the latter are generally used only as
source collections for individual harmonies, or occasionally melodic lines,
Takemitsu frequently uses the octatonic mode exclusively for extended
passages, and it is this feature above all others which is probably most
responsible for the “Messiaenic’ flavour exuded by so much of his music.
But the outer sections of the second movement of Lento/Litany as well,
, though not exclusively octatonic, also contain several chords and short
passages derived from “Mode II’, in promiscuous combination with other
harmonies of decidedly ‘impressionistic’ character.
It is also possible to detect Messiaen’s influence in the textural layout of
much of these outer sections, for example at the very beginning of the
piece. Whereas in the previous movement the texture had been clearly
divided into melody and accompaniment, here the melody emerges as the
uppermost voice of the harmony in a way that strongly recalls Messiaen’s
practice. Furthermore, the melodic line thus projected interestingly
reveals a horizontal modal organisation which is distinct from the vertical
modal derivations of individual harmonies. The uppermost pitches of
bars 1-3, for instance, all lie within the ambit of a six-note collection com-
prising the notes of a ‘D-major’ scale (or one of its modal equivalents)
minus Bb, as shown in Example 4.
While Miyamoto, with a certain justification, considers this opening
| 4, SS
33 Music and ‘pre-music’: Takemitsu’s early years

S-SH
tS Ex.5 Litany II, bar 30

| ee ee. ‘
. isoe*
| | section to be centred around a D tonality, in my example it will be seen
that I have highlighted the emphasis on F# and, to a lesser extent, C¥ that
appears when the melody is abstracted from its harmonic context. The
reasons for this emphasis are to be found in the overall tonal direction of
this movement. The first movement of Lento/Litany is given an F-minor
| key signature, and ends in that key; the second movement, like the famous
finale of Schoenberg’s second string quartet, eschews key signatures but
closes unexpectedly on a chord of F# major (spelt as Gb major in
Takemitsu’s case). Unexpected as this tonal closure may be, Example 4
| shows that it is not entirely unprepared: the emphasis on F# and its “domi-
nant in this phrase, which is repeated twice during the course of the move-
ment, subtly establish a precedent for its ultimate tonicisation at the work’s
close.
| Moreover, the quasi-‘diatonic’ modalism revealed on the horizontal
plane by Example 4 is found occasionally here in the vertical dimension as
, well. For example, the chord quoted above (Ex. 5) sounds all notes of a
standard heptatonic collection simultaneously — in this case (perhaps
significantly for Takemitsu’s future development) of a “D Lydian’ mode.
| Since this chord appears in the original Lento as well (at least as far as the
aural evidence of the recording can suggest), its presence here indicates
, another early instance of a practice that was to remain constant through-
out Takemitsu’s career.
Tonal closure — on an unambiguous Eb-major triad — is also featured in
the second work from Takemitsu’s Shinsakkyokuha years, the violin and
piano duo Distance de Fée (1951).*! Furthermore, the octatonic scale intro-
duced into the second movement of Lento is here used with such frequency
that it is easier to list the few passages not based on this mode than to iden-
tify all its occurrences; a factor which, not surprisingly, imparts to the work
perhaps the most “Messiaenic’ sound of any surviving Takemitsu score.
 a)
34 The music of Toru Takemitsu

& nel wn
ly Pp
Ex.6 Distance de Fée, bar 5

2D’
4.0 2.0ee
eee
7...) eeeSf
et2| ee
eeeee| Gee
* | ee
ee 2 eee
ee ee
«35:eee
|PS
a. 8
a3 7. “Ee ee ee ee ee ee. & be.
>’ AT. De a Se

a)wo: aae
. 7.“ eee ee eee
i7..W7) 0
eee eeeee"
Ss iS ES «| YX a+e
ee ee 0 eee
eee
2’ A... Ral ..Atl)
Dp
eeeeee Ek
eee*EE)
ee
irou.
7.
as a rc
if...)
GY.
tS re
Wi eae
6 Cee eee
ee &
BG.“ © 2 es Se
(Indeed in Japan, where it is possible to buy a recording of this work with
the solo executed on the ondes martenot,” one writer on Takemitsu has con-
fessed to mistaking it for Messiaen when playing his CD without reference
to the liner notes!*°) Of the ‘non-octatonic’ passages referred to above, of
particular interest is bar 47, where apparently for the first time Takemitsu
| makes horizontal use of another addition to his modal vocabulary,
Messiaen’s “first mode of limited transposition’, in other words the conven-
tional whole-tone scale. But of even greater interest — and, for Takemitsu’s
future development, much more significant — is the harmony to be found in
bar 5 (Ex. 6). The first chord here perhaps indicates Takemitsu’s early famil-
iarity with another of the modes in Messiaen’s system, Mode III (of which
more will be said with reference to later works), since its seven pitches lie
within the gamut of nine available from that collection. The rising, quasi-
‘jambic’ pattern marked “a’is also of interest inasmuch as it prefigures what
was to become a typical melodic gesture of the composer. But the greatest
interest of all attaches to the chord marked ‘b’, generated by adding one
extraneous pitch — E} — to the six pitches of a whole-tone scale. The pitch-
collection resulting from this operation, [0,1,2,4,6,8,10], was to become
such a distinctive signature of the composer’s harmonic vocabulary that —
since necessity henceforth demands that I shall make continued reference
to it—I propose simply to refer to this ‘pc set’ by the shorthand it acquires in
Allen Forte’s theoretical system: *7-33’.‘*
The powerful harmonic resource which this technique of adding extra-
neous, semitonally dissonant pitches to modal forms represented for
Takemitsu cannot be over emphasised. Koozin has suggested that the prac-
35 Music and ‘pre-music’: Takemitsu’s early years

tice may have taken its cue from Messiaen’s own hints on disguising modes
in this way in his Technique de mon langage musical, but, since this text
did not appear in Japanese translation until 1954, it is uncertain whether
Takemitsu could have acquired the technique by such means. A more likely
explanation may be the suggestion already advanced: that it represents a
refinement of the intensification of a mode by means of external, disso-
nant pitches seen in Romance, now devoid of the anecdotal, ‘Japanese’ _
associations which attached to the practice in that context.
As in Romanceand (in its revised form) Litany, literal repetition plays an
important structural role in Distance de Fée, and in particular the reap-
pearance of the opening material is once again a clue that the work is
drawing to its close. In other places, however, Takemitsu favours not so
much a literal remembrance of things past as a sort of ‘paramnesic’ recol-
lection of earlier material, in which various features are subjected to
minute, apparently arbitrary, alteration in one way or other, and this too
was to become a distinctive feature of the composer’s style. Furthermore,
the specific types of deviation from pre-established models that are
| revealed by this process suggest the manifold ways in which Takemitsu
may have handled his materia musica in general: subjecting it to arbitrary
change in a manner which contrasts sharply with the deterministic rigour
of many of his Western colleagues. For both of these reasons, then, it will
be profitable to examine more closely some of the ways in which the repeti-
tions of material in Distance de Fée differ from their model.
Example 7 illustrates, on the uppermost system, the first five piano har-
monies of Distance de Fée and, beneath them, three passages which derive
. in various ways from this original. Comparison of these versions with their
| model reveals various standard techniques of Takemitsu for altering and
‘disguising’ materials when they are repeated. Most obviously of all, for
example, chord ‘4’ of the original sequence is omitted completely from
every subsequent version. Secondly, when chord ‘3’ reappears in bar 20,
the note density is not only increased by the addition of two extra pitches
(Es and Gb), but the pitches are also reorganised horizontally to transform
the single attack into a kind of falling major-second “appoggiatura’ figure
_ which is retained as a consistent feature in bar 29 and reappears indepen-
dently in bar 40. (This also relates to the falling major-second motif in the
melodic line, highlighted in Ex. 8.) Thirdly, one observes that at its third
appearance the material is globally transposed upwards by a whole-tone,
and that the single event in bar 40 is a semitone lower than the correspond-
ing chord of the original. Next, examination of the right-hand part of
chord ‘5’ reveals that two pitches (Ab and E) are replaced by arbitrary sub-
stitutions at the equivalent point in bar 20 (respectively Cb and Fs).
36 The music of Toru Takemitsu

b.1l. 2.
beyo 3.
2. i1.=
) )
as
4.5.) ,
Ex.7 Distance de Fée, transformations of opening materials

r_ be
}, ta
CE
agy |,
) DE)PE
DE<P
NSF ES SP T.. tAae EV
ee PeeeS
ee8+
lo Ql) ] DE... 7 4) ae ee * eee ee

efGRE
in i__t eee
it Whe Fo (0
es ee BE 6
St f }——_—_——_—_1ft._—-——_—__++-}4 EE ee — gt yf

n be 42 he b
b.20
|) SET
.72nn
C4 ees
EE. ).
Te + A?)
1 a.a)
Se iA,| eee
b.. Aan
| "eee eee)

, SE> —— :
} r,

@ te , DV
p2 Le ¢ o 4 Le
OI
QD
Bt QS 2sanno”
EE PE Le |
](_----__i>[-’-Nr"’"-N7’"---’._B LL Te

y.

> oO te y Ab roll
NSE SS Ts |S WR ancl” Rn SO

i) 2 .
ee’
b.40

in eee1eei.eee”
7 EHOETCOEHE

} ’,
otaa
SEEN

NS 0 eae ©
fan
“15 Yall

PP prog y y
Interestingly, when this chord is transposed a tone higher in the third
appearance of the progression, the Cb duly rises to an enharmonicall
notated C#, but the Fb is raised by only a semitone to F# — in other words, it
reverts to a ‘correct’ reading of bar 1 a whole-tone higher. Another kind of
pitch substitution operates when chord ‘2’ is rehearsed in bar 20: in this
specific instance, Takemitsu selects a different pitch for octave doubling in
37 Music and ‘pre-music’: Takemitsu’s early years

the right hand, resulting in a revoicing of the harmony. Finally, with regard
to chord ‘5’, one notes that in the second version at bar 20, the right-hand
part remains at the original pitch (with the substitutions referred to
above), but the left-hand part is transposed down a minor third. This
global transposition of one segment of a pitch-collection by a different inter-
vallic factor from the remainder is also typical of Takemitsu. It will be noted
that it implies a division of the harmony into certain autonomous ‘strata’
which are then treated as independent units for the purposes of further
transformation — and that, in this particular instance, the division of these
strata according to their allocation to the pianist’s hands clearly points to
the music’s keyboard origins.
If all the above tends to give the impression — at least to a Western reader
— of a certain imprecision on Takemitsu’s part, it may be well to end by
giving a description of a facet of Distance de Fée that displays a contrasting
rigour: its thematic process. For the most part, the work is clearly divided
into a number of phrases, in each of which the violin sings a long, expres-
sive melodic line. A closer examination of these phrases shows that they
are in fact quite artfully constructed out of a number of recurrent smaller
motifs, and that the manner in which these are reconstituted to provide
new material reveals the workings of a considerable compositional disci-
pline. In Example 8, the pitches of the violinist’s first phrase have been so
displayed as to make this type of construction readily apparent. In this
- paradigmatic’ representation, the unfolding of the melodic line ‘syntag-
matically’ is to be read from left to right, and continuously from the end of
one staff to the beginning of the next. The vertical partitions show how all
this seamlessly unfolding melos can in fact be divided into three principal
motivic categories — A, B and C — with the exception of two notes (X)
which do not appear to fit into the scheme. The repeated pitches in this
diagram, such as the Ebs in the second staff, do not correspond to actual
pitch repetitions in the score, but rather illustrate an important device
whereby Takemitsu overcomes and to a certain extent ‘disguises’ the
potentially fragmentary nature of this type of constructional method: the
use of certain notes as pivots, common to the end of one motivic unit and
the beginning of the next. This kind of concatenation may, in its turn, gen-
erate higher-level motivic units which can reappear as melodic features:
the overlapping of notes 2—4 of “B’ with notes 2—4 of ‘A’, found in the fifth
and sixth staves of the example, gives rise to one such distinctive melodic
turn.
, Distance de Fée owes both title and inspiration to a poem by the colour-
ful figure whose acquaintance Takemitsu had made the previous year, the
Japanese surrealist poet Shuzo Takiguchi (1903-76). And although techni-
cally a product of the Shinsakkyokuha years, in reality this work, with its
38 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 8 Distance de Fée, melodic construction of first phrase

,|) i,eeirrbeeee
—
f’ oe , “Sa eee ee ee
Eee
|) 2 Es
Ce
bebe | i
he ie e¢ = fhe ; he be

\——
|f\ qe2 be., ee
NS FE TEE TERS
-_oC-r~w>~m..m—v[Tn@Ja TE EEE

eo
SF ES TAD NEE

Oe ,
, JEE,be,
\ES
tO A A A
be : :
}LNAs!
REETee
——————————— ae
RE

Messiaenic harmonies, already belongs to the next period of Takemitsu’s

creative life — a period over which the personality of Takiguchi was to cast a
long shadow. It is to a discussion of this next phase in Takemitsu’s artistic
career, then, and the artistic alliances that coalesced as a result partly of
Takiguchi’s influence, that attention must now be turned.
 3 Experimental workshop: the years of Jikken Kobo

Takemitsu’s first exposure to public criticism may ultimately have ended in

tears, but the Shinsakkyokuha evening which featured his compositional
début was not without its positive side. In the green room after the perfor-
mance, Takemitsu met two figures who were to become important allies:
the composer Joji Yuasa (1929- ), and the poet and music critic Kuniharu
Akiyama (1929-96). It was as a result of encounters with these and other
kindred spirits over the course of the next year or so that a decision was
made to found a new artistic alliance that would reflect their common aes-
thetic ideals. Thus it was that in September 1951 Takemitsu and eight idea-
listic young colleagues launched the new organisation which was to
become such a colourful feature of the Japanese avant-garde landscape for
_ the next six years; an organisation which, at the suggestion of the inspira-
tional figure behind much of its activity, Shizo Takiguchi, was given the
name ‘Experimental Workshop’: Jikken Kobo.
This switch of loyalties from the Shinsakkyokuha (from which both
Takemitsu and Suzuki withdrew their membership in the following year)
was a significant one for Takemitsu. The new grouping differed from the
old in two important respects, both of which were to have far-reaching
repercussions for Takemitsu’s artistic development. First, it had a decid-
edly anti-academic bias — in fact, it seems that any kind of formal musical
education was a barrier to membership, and this naturally helped consoli-
, date Takemitsu’s position as an outsider to the highly conservative world of
| the institutional Japanese academic establishment at this period. Secondly,
whereas the elder composers’ association had been a platform for exclu-
sively ‘musical’ presentations of works in a conservative and ‘nationalistic’
vein, the youthful Jikken Kob6 membership embraced a variety of artists in
different media, and aimed at an interdisciplinary meeting between them.
This aspect of its activities was also to set an important precedent for
Takemitsu, who for the rest of his life was to enjoy close friendships with a
number of prominent writers, painters, sculptors and film directors in
addition to his musical acquaintances, and whose musical philosophy was
to be profoundly influenced by these “synaesthetic’ encounters with the
other arts. One is reminded by Takemitsu’s example, indeed, of what
Morton Feldman once described as the ‘painterly’ quality of American
39 music, and the whole Jikken Kébé phenomenon seems, in retrospect, to
 40 The music of Toru Takemitsu

possess uncanny parallels with the manner in which the aesthetics of con-
temporaneous American ‘experimental’ composers were enriched by an
exchange of ideas with artists in other media. However, it would appear
that the Japanese group was unaware of these developments across the
Pacific, and that their role-models were instead such pre-war European
artistic coteries as the Blaue Reiter or Bauhaus. At precisely the period,
then, when in the West avant-garde art was beginning to be assimilated
into the establishment as the official language of academia, in Japan it was
still in the position of a subversive ‘alternative’ to the dominant tradition;
and much of the paraphernalia of the Jikken Kobé movement, with its
strong echoes of the polemic tone typical of pre-war European artistic
movements, reflects this oppositional status. Takiguchi’s exuberant
expression of the group’s aims in 1955, for instance, reads somewhat like a
pre-war artistic ‘manifesto’: ‘by using dance, film “autoslides” and televi-
sion in a so-called “audio-visual” synthesis of the arts’, he claims, ‘the ulti-
mate aim is that the experimental domain of new art will be infinitely
expanded’.!
These interdisciplinary aspirations of the Jikken Kobo were reflected ina
membership which (besides Takemitsu and his fellow-composer Suzuki)
also comprised the writer already referred to, Kuniharu Akiyama; the
pianist Takahiro Sonoda; the stage producer Hideo Yamazaki; and the
artists Sh6z6 Kitajiro, Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, Hideko Fukushima and Naoji
Ima.” They were also reflected by the group’s first public production: the
premiére of the ballet [kiru Yorokobi (‘Joie de vivre’) on 16 November 1951
demanded the talents of all the above members, as well as Takemitsu who,
besides conducting the performance, wrote the score in collaboration with
Suzuki over the course of ten sleepless days and nights, and suffered physi-
cal breakdown as a result. The activities of Jikken Kobo during the follow-
ing six years of its existence assumed a number of forms. There was
continuing experimental exploration of new artistic media; for example,
the fourth Jikken Kobo recital, on 30 September 1953, unveiled to the
public the new device mentioned by Takiguchi in the passage already
| quoted, the oto suraido or ‘autoslide’ created for the organisation by Tokyo
Tsishin Kégy6, the forerunner of the Sony Corporation. In this contrap-
tion, pieces of metallic paper, attached to the reverse side of a conventional
magnetic tape, acted as switches to change the transparency being pro-
jected on to a screen, thus enabling a primitive ‘multimedia’ synchronisa-
tion between taped sounds and projected images. Three years later, on 4
February 1956, the group gave its first concert employing what has since
proved a more durable technology. It was at this recital of musique concréte
41 Experimental workshop: the years of Jikken Kobo

and ‘electronic music’ that — alongside works by Mayuzumi and Minao

_ Shibata — Takemitsu’s own inaugural venture into the medium, his Relief
Statique, received its first exposure to the concert-going public. |
Alongside these forays into more ‘experimental’ territory, however, the
Jikken Kobo was also responsible for conventionally staged musical perfor-
| mances, the programming of which clearly reflects two major imperatives.
The first was the desire to introduce to the Japanese public the works of rel-
atively ‘advanced’ Western composers still unknown to them. Thus
Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps was given at the second Jikken
Kobo recital on 20 January 1952, and (according to Eiko Kasaba) his 8
Préludes and Visions de PAmen also featured amongst the works performed
during the years of the group’s existence.’ Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire was
another piece which received its historic Japanese premiére under the
group’s auspices, an event which — amazingly — took place as late as 10
September 1954. But besides the work of such important Western figures
as these, the Jikken Kobo also provided a platform for the more advanced of
the younger generation of Japanese composers — specifically, of course, for
its own members. Besides Relief Statique, for example, two of Takemitsu’s
works from this period were given their first performances by the organ-
isation: the original one-movement version of the solo piano
Uninterrupted Rest, first heard on 9 August 1952; and a Chamber Concerto
premiered on 12 July 1955 (and now lost).
But important as Jikken Kobo was for Takemitsu’s creative development,
one should not fall into the error of assuming that his music in this period
was circumscribed to the few performances which took place under its
umbrella. The fact that so few scores have survived gives a distorted picture
of Takemitsu’s compositional activity at this time, which ranged far
beyond the confines of conventional performances for the concert room.
Mention has already been made, for example, of his tentative first experi-
| ments with musique concréte; another area into which Takemitsu first ven-
tured during these years, and which in places overlaps with his
electro-acoustic experimentation, is that of providing incidental music for
various dramaturgical media. In the discussion of Takemitsu’s music
_ which follows, then, an examination of the one surviving printed musical
text from these years — the first movement of Uninterrupted Rest ~ will be
followed by brief discussions of Takemitsu’s work in these other areas.
Since textual support for a thorough investigation of the latter is mostly
lacking, however — and since, in the case of the incidental music, the
subject in question really lies beyond the professed scope of this book — it
has been thought best to offer here only a general overview of each of these
42 The music of Téru Takemitsu

areas spanning the whole of the composer’s career, and thereafter to refer
to them only in those contexts where some relationship between them and
Takemitsu’s ‘concert’ music makes such reference absolutely necessary.

The music of the early Jikken Kobo years: Uninterrupted Rest I

As noted above, the only work to have survived in the form of a fully
notated and published text from the early Jikken Kobo years is the move-
ment which was eventually to form Part I of the triptych entitled
Uninterrupted Rest, originally performed as an independent work under
that title by its dedicatee, Takahiro Sonoda, in August 1952. The instruc-
tion (in English) with which this work is prefaced — ‘Slowly, sadly and as if
to converse with’ — is very much in keeping with the general mood already
established by “the Lento composer’ in previous works, and these verbal
indications ‘reverberate’ in musical terms which translate their evocative
sense with exact fidelity: a rather ‘Messiaenic’ tempo marking of J = 48,
plus the performance directions Triste and quasi parlando. The work’s
opening gesture, too, follows an established precedent: like Lento/Litany, it
begins with a single unsupported pitch (here provided with an anacrusis a
semitone higher) emerging out of the silence. Whereas in the earlier work,
however, this pitch was sustained to become the first note of the melodic
line, here it is tied to an inner voice of the supporting harmony, and the
melodic line continues in the voice above (Ex. 9).
Like Distance de Fée, Uninterrupted Rest owes its title to a poem by Shtizo
Takiguchi,* and like the earlier work too, this first movement clearly owes
much to Messiaen’s example — most obviously in its frequent use of the
octatonic scale, and of a texture in which the melodic line is the uppermost
voice of a homophonic harmonic movement. Yet at the same time
Uninterrupted Rest represents a considerable advance in the handling of
these derivative features. Gone are the triadic, tonal closures with which
the phrases of Distance de Fée were periodically punctuated; gone too are
the bars of regularly notated, if changing, metres in a basic minim pulse, to
be replaced by a score layout in which solid and dotted barlines enclose
irregular multiples of small durational values, in a manner very akin to
that of Messiaen’s keyboard music. The adherence to Messiaen’s modal
system is also far less literal than in the earlier work, with more frequent
use of pitches extraneous to the locally prevalent octatonic collection, or
passages which resist analysis in terms of that scale altogether. One such
usage occurs at the climactic moment of the work’s middle section (Ex.
10), where the uppermost melodic voice rises through four notes of a
whole-tone scale to arrive on a chord which contains all six notes of the
 ie
43 Experimental workshop: the years of Jikken Kobo

—
Ex.9 Uninterrupted Rest, opening

Triste [J=48]
, quasi parlando
rN .—————————— :

) 1 pp’ aa
—

scale at the same transposition, plus an extraneous Bb: the ubiquitous ‘7-
33° collection again.

Musique concrete
Though it represented an advance on Takemitsu’s previous work, the
musical language of Uninterrupted Rest still, of course, lagged far behind
the latest developments in the West. Yet within a few years Takemitsu was
to venture into an area that represented one of the most advanced
resources available to a composer of his time, and was to continue experi-
menting with it for several years alongside his more conservative instru-
mental offerings. As already narrated in chapter 1, it was Toshiro
Mayuzumi’s example that had made Japanese composers aware of this new
resource, with his pioneering experiments in both musique concréte and
elektronische Musik. But it is already significant of Takemitsu’s aesthetic
inclinations that — with the single major exception of some oscillator-
generated sine waves in Stanza II for harp and tape (1972) —the composer’s
interests were to focus exclusively on the former means of production. The
mathematical manipulation of sounds as ‘quantitative’ phenomena found
in works such as Mayuzumi and Moroi’s Variations on a Numerical
Principle of 7 was clearly already anathema to Takemitsu, who preferred
instead to work in a much more intuitive fashion with the rich sounds of
the ‘concrete’ world, considered in their ‘qualitative’ aspect. Takemitsu’s
musique concrete at the same time differs from Schaeffer’s in that it does
not necessarily avoid the anecdotal associations of his sound-material, but
 5
Posh
eae
mp
Pte tee

a ————
ae
SZ A A1DebThs
hb
44 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 10 Uninterrupted Rest1, bar 6

f ae+tHiesop
jy oF
rt :

gl :8bES
em::
>
=

often actively encourages the listener’s recognition of them. While

Schaeffer laboured for hours over his steam-train and casserole sounds in
an effort to ‘abstract the sound from its dramatic context and elevate it to
the dignity of musical material’,? Takemitsu seems to have delighted in
offering his listeners sounds drawn more or less recognisably from the
natural world — lending to his work a ‘radiophonic’ quality that has made
much of it especially suitable for use as accompaniment to dramatic pres-
entations of various kinds.
In fact Takemitsu’s first effort in the new medium began life — as did so
many of his later tape compositions — in the form of incidental music. It
was material originally realised in the studios of the commercial broad-
casting station Shin Nihon Hoso for Yasuji Inoue’s 1955 radio drama Hono
(‘Flames’) that, reworked, provided Takemitsu with his first acknowledged
tape composition: Relief Statique, heard for the first time at a Jikken Kobo
concert in1956. The work was to be followed by no fewer than four com-
positions in the new medium within that same year: a triptych of pieces
deriving from his incidental music for the Anouilh play Eurydice; Tree, Sky
and Birds, Clap Vocalism; and — another Shin Nihon Hésé commission —
Vocalism A.I. This last exemplifies well the anecdotal quality of much of
Takemitsu’s tape music. A collaboration with the poet Shuntar6 Tanikawa,
it was originally planned as a tape montage on the single Japanese word ai
(love) lasting seventy-two hours; mercifully the final version runs for only
four minutes and five seconds, making it (in Takemitsu’s words)
 45 Experimental workshop: the years of Jikken K6b6

: Tanikawa's ‘shortest and longest love-poem’. The two phonemes of the

Japanese word alone provide all the basic sound-material for the work,
| recited in various ways — sung, spoken, whispered, groaned, etc. — by a
male and female speaker; and despite Akiyama’s assertion that the work’s
title refers not only to ‘the love that flows in the veins of lovers’ but also to
‘the love of which small birds sing . . . love such as that revealed in the
inside of stones’, the overriding impression gained from this male—female
dialogue is nevertheless often the very literal one of a certain playful eroti-
cism. Certainly it is this quality that Y6ji Kuri takes as the starting point for
the scenario of his 1963 animated film Love, which uses Takemitsu’s work
| as its soundtrack.
Similar anecdotal references, albeit partly of more metaphorical kind,
pervade Sky, Horse and Death (1958), originally composed for a radio
| drama four years earlier. Here the three elements of the title are repre-
sented, respectively, by birdsongs, the neighing of a horse, and the crack-
ing of a whip to simulate gunshots. A more concrete form of reference still
is to be found in Water Music (1960), whose source materials consist
entirely of various sounds produced with the aid of the medium which
gives the work its title. In parenthesis, it is amusing to learn that some of
the original recording sessions that eventually produced this evocative and
poetic soundscape occurred in the most prosaic of locations. Takemitsu
had wanted to record the sound of stones being dropped into a deep well,
but at the same time he did not want to capture the sound of splashing
water. The solution he eventually hit upon was to substitute for his ‘deep
well’ a flushing lavatory in the bathrooms of the Sdgetsu Arts Centre in
Tokyo. As Heuwell Tircuit, who was privy (if that is the word) to
Takemitsu’s secret, noted: ‘I seriously suspected that the audience might
laugh, that someone or other might get wind of what was going on.
Nobody laughed.”
Of course, the source sounds from which these pieces are derived are not
always presented in recognisable form: the usual repertory of studio treat-
ments is employed to transform them in ways that run the whole gamut of
recognisability. The droplet sounds of Water Music, for example, are often
given highly percussive envelopes that make them sound like a traditional
Japanese instrument such as the tsuzuki® of the no? ensemble, and appro-
_ priately enough the work exists in a second version with three additional
flute parts as accompaniment to a nd dance. This use of studio manipula-
tion to confuse the listener’s perception of sound-materials is taken to a
, high degree of sophistication in Takemitsu’s music for Masaki Kobayashi’s
1964 film Kwaidan, parts of which also exist in the form of an independent
| tape composition of the same name. Here Takemitsu goes so far as to blur
46 The music of Toru Takemitsu
the traditional distinctions between ‘sound effects’ and ‘incidental music’
(or indeed ‘diagetic’ (on-scene) music such as the heikebiwa" narrations
required by the plot of the story Hoichi the Earless). For example, sounds
usually categorised as ‘effects’, such as the splitting of wood and creaking
of doors, are electronically treated and artfully arranged into a ‘musical’
composition. Conversely, sounds that the listener interprets in an illustra-
tive fashion, such as the howling of a snowstorm or the roar of the ocean,
turn out to be electronic metamorphoses of ‘musical’ sounds of a shakuha-
chi or slowed-down no chanting: transformed so as to be longer recognis-
able as such, yet at the same time no longer ‘realistic’ and imparting to
these ghost stories an eerie, dream-like quality.
After Kwaidan, however, there are only a few, widely spaced electronic
works to be found in the Takemitsu catalogue: Toward (1970), Wonder
World (1972), A Minneapolis Garden and The Sea is Still (both 1986). As
with so many other composers of his generation, Takemitsu’s brief
flirtation with electronics did not blossom into a lifelong relationship. For
all that, his excursion into this field was highly significant for his future
development, enabling him to work directly with the raw timbres of
natural sound without the mediation of instruments and their notation.
In the early years of his career, the lessons gleaned from this experience
were not, it is true, reflected in his instrumental output, which by contrast
retained a relatively conservative idiom; but it was not long before
Takemitsu’s new-found awareness of timbre was to bear fruit in the
domain of his instrumental music as well, as subsequent chapters of this
study will show.

Music for dramatic media

While Takemitsu’s period of most intense involvement with musique con-
, crete may have been short-lived, the situation was to prove otherwise with
an area of artistic activity already mentioned in passing: the provision of
‘incidental music’ for various dramaturgical media. As early as 1952,
Takemitsu was already engaged in this type of work, writing a score for a
film about the artist Hokusai to a scenario by Shtizo Takiguchi — although,
in the event, owing to a change in production staff his music was never
used. Over the course of the next few years, however, he was to begin
writing music for both radio productions and live theatre in earnest, and it
is interesting to note how many of the commissions for the latter came
from the Shiki (‘Four Seasons’) theatre troupe, a former member of which
had been the actress Asaka Wakayama, who — on 15 June 1954 — became
Takemitsu’s wife.!! Reference to the worklist at the end of this volume will
47 Experimental workshop: the years of Jikken K6b6

give the reader some idea of just how much music Takemitsu was eventu-
ally to provide for both stage and radio (and later, television) — music
_ which is mostly unknown today, and indeed in many cases may have van-
ished altogether. But it is with the composition, in collaboration with
Masaru Sato, of his first full-length feature-film score — for K6 Nakahira’s
Kuratta Kajutsu (‘Crazed Fruit’) in 1956 — that Takemitsu embarked on the
production of the particular form of ‘incidental music’ on which his repu-
tation in this field today largely rests. This was to prove the first in a long
list of film scores to which Takemitsu continued to add right up to the year
preceding his death - amounting in the end to over ninety titles, and

tracks. :
including such artistic and commercial highpoints as his scores for Akira
Kurosawa’s epic Ran (1986) and the Hollywood blockbuster Rising Sun
(Philip Kaufman, 1993), as well as countless other award-winning sound-

Sadly, this important body of work lies outside the scope of the present
study, but a few general points should nevertheless be made. The first is
that the film music — or at least, those portions of it available on disc —
often reveals quite different aspects of Takemitsu’s creative personality to
those found in most of his concert music. In fact, the picture that emerges
of Takemitsu the film composer is that of a highly skilled, professional pas-
tiche artist who can turn his hand to a whole range of stylistic codes, each
of which is perfectly adapted for the scenario in question. For example, if a
film such as Tanin no Kao’ contains a scene in a beer hall, Takemitsu pro-
vides a kind of Kurt Weill-soundalike “German waltz’; if it deals with a
Puerto Rican boxer, as does Teshigahara’s earlier Jose Torres (1959),
Takemitsu’s music simulates an appropriately “Latin’ style. Furthermore,
many of the musical codes which Takemitsu employs to these ends are
obviously decidedly ‘populist’ and tonal in character, and as such consti-
tute an area of musical activity radically divergent from the modernist pre-
occupations of his contemporaneous concert scores: an area which,
however, was increasingly to make its presence felt as an alternative to
‘modernism’ in Takemitsu’s concert music as the language of the latter
developed over the years.
Takemitsu’s decision to finance his career as a composer largely by
means of such activity (and also, in the early years, by means of detective
novels which he wrote under a pseudonym) had important repercussions
too, insomuch as it granted him a certain financial independence: in par-
ticular, it allowed him to eschew the form of remuneration which became
the staple resource of many of his Western colleagues — teaching in higher
education (a choice which had significant consequences for his aesthetic
priorities, as the final chapter of this book will reveal). It would be unjust
48 The music of Téru Takemitsu

to assert, however, that Takemitsu’s continuing involvement with inciden-

tal music was motivated solely by pecuniary imperatives. Among the many
other attractions it afforded, one was certainly that it offered him tempo-
rary release from the restrictive solitude of his composing studio into a
world peopled by other creative spirits — functioning as what he described
as a ‘liberty passport’.'° More pertinently for the topic to which this study
is devoted, however, Takemitsu’s ‘hands-on’ experimentation with sound-
materials in his dramatic music often had direct consequences for later
concert-hall works: ‘the film scores seem a sort of sketch-pad for concert
music, a place where he could experiment with new ideas and work out
musical problems before incorporating them into a work of abstract music
for the concert stage’.'* On occasion, this relationship between film and
concert music might even take the form of direct quotation, or reworking,
of the same materials; more generally, however, the film music afforded
Takemitsu the opportunity to experiment freely with timbral, notational
and even — as has been suggested — stylistic devices which might later find
their way into his concert work.
But as suggested above, there are a number of instances in which the
relationship of Takemitsu’s concert-hall work to his incidental music is a
direct one, consisting of actual quotation or reworking of the same materi-
als. Towards the end of his life in particular, Takemitsu was to release a
whole succession of arrangements of his film and television work as
concert pieces, but his plundering of this vast resource had actually begun
much earlier. His music for the 1961 film Fury6é Shénen,'° for instance, was
to provide the material for two concert pieces: Bad Boy for two guitars
(1993), and Maru to Sankaku no Uta (‘A Song of O’s [Circles] and A’s
[Triangles]’), the fifth number in the a cappella choral cycle Uta of |
1979-92. In a more subtle manner, direct quotations from Takemitsu’s
more ‘commercially’ orientated work had found their way into his ‘serious’
music earlier still: such well-known concert pieces as Requiem for Strings
and The Dorian Horizon draw their materials in part from, respectively,
music for stage and screen. And, finally, this kind of derivative relationship
between concert music and film score could, on occasion, operate the
other way round: part of the composer’s music for the film Gishiki'® is a
reworking, for violin and string orchestra, of his Hika for violin and piano
of 1966.
Takemitsu’s early embarkation on this long career as a film composer
had been considerably facilitated by the elder composer and fellow
Shinsakkyokuha member Fumio Hayasaka — nowadays best known in the
West (if at all) as creator of the music for such early Kurosawa films as
Rashomon (1950) and The Seven Samurai (1954). Working as Hayasaka’s
49 Experimental workshop: the years of Jikken Kobo

assistant, Takemitsu had gained invaluable experience of the practicalities

of composition and performance, and the news of his mentor’s sudden
death — which occurred while Takemitsu was working on Relief Statique in
1955 — left him stunned. Yet out of this grief was to come the work which —
as the next chapter will reveal — was to change the course of the composer’s
career irrevocably.
 4 The Requiem and its reception

Two years after the death of Hayasaka, Takemitsu himself was obliged to
take to his sickbed, and it was in this incapacitated state that he worked on
a commission he had received from the Téky6 Symphony Orchestra,
sometimes managing to complete only a single bar, or even half a bar,
during the course of a day. The work that eventually emerged from these
painstaking efforts, Requiem for Strings, received its first performance in
June 1957, and the composer’s comments at the time certainly gave the
impression that this intensely elegiac work was intended as a memorial to
his departed mentor: while Takemitsu claimed he had not written the piece
‘grieving over the death of any specific person’, as he was writing it he
‘gradually came to think about Fumio Hayasaka, and mourn his passing’.!
In subsequent years, however, Takemitsu was to give a slightly fuller
account of the Requiem’s genesis, and hint at the presence of a second pos-
sible dedicatee. In one of his many conversations with Takashi Tachibana,
for instance, he observed that ‘at that time especially I was seriously ill, and
since I finally realised that I didn’t know when I myself was going to die, I
ended up thinking that one way or another I’d like to create one piece
before my death... I thought I ought to write my own requiem’.” This later
version of events, in which the composer himself becomes the object of
déploration, is corroborated by remarks made by Takemitsu in other con-
texts.> Nevertheless, as the composer went on to elaborate in the above
interview with Tachibana, it was indeed as a result of Hayasaka’s death that
Takemitsu decided to turn the piece — previously entitled Meditation— into
a Requiem; and it was the same stimulus that granted him what he had pre-
viously found lacking, the strength of resolve and clarity of image needed
to embark on the project. The work thus ended up becoming both ‘a
requiem for Hayasaka and, at the same time, my own requiem’.*
Whatever the circumstances of its inspiration, the mood of Requiem is
very much in harmony with that sombre tone which, as we have seen, had
by this time already become a hallmark of Takemitsu’s style. And once
again, this gravity of mood is reflected in the choice of generally very slow
tempi. Although Example 11, for example, may bear a metronome mark of
66, this refers to crotchet beats in a work whose basic pulse is for the most
part the minim, making the actual tempo a sub-metronomic 33 beats per
50 minute. At this speed it is certainly hard to perceive any higher-level metri-
51 The Requiem and its reception
cal organisation, and it is perhaps to this quality that Takemitsu is referring
by his enigmatic English phrase when he notes that ‘the work is con-
structed on a “one by one” rhythm’.” Yoko Narazaki has noted that the fre-
, quent division of the beat into very slow triplets also undermines any sense
of pulsation, inducing ‘the feeling of suspension of sounds at the surface
level’,° and for a great deal of the time the overriding impression is indeed
one of a profound desire to subvert any notion of regular pulse or metrical
grouping. Takemitsu’s choice of a string orchestra as medium for this
threnody is also in accord with its sombre tone, creating a dark, mono- :
chromatic film noir sonority to which the composer was frequently to
return in passages for strings alone in his mature orchestral music. This
string orchestra medium was also to enter the lexicon of musical codes by
means of which the composer identified his film music with the subject of
the scenario in question: in this case, as vehicle for a certain kind of tragic
lamentation. For instance, Takemitsu’s scores for Tékyo Saiban,’ which
deals with the post-war Toky6 Trials, and Kuroi Ame,’ whose subject is the
Hiroshima bomb, both make exclusive use of the string orchestra to
convey a very Requiem-like pathos.
As with the incipits of Lento and Uninterrupted Rest I quoted in the pre-
vious chapter, the opening gesture of Requiem is the emergence of a single
pitch out of silence which — like its counterpart in Uninterrupted Rest I -
then becomes the uppermost pitch of the harmony against which the
melody unfolds (Ex. 11).
This melody apparently derives from a trumpet tune Takemitsu wrote as
part of some incidental music for the Shiki theatre troupe in 1956: the pro-
| duction in question, Semushi no Seijo, was a reworking of Anouilh’s Ardeéle,
ou la Marguérite.? It is an expansive, intensely expressive cantilena theme:
Alain Poirier has commented on its relationship to ‘neo-classical
American lyricism’,'° and indeed one cannot help but wonder whether one
of the items particularly favoured by the American radio station to which
the invalid Takemitsu listened might have been that old warhorse of string
orchestra repertory, Samuel Barber’s Adagio. Like the melodic line of
Distance de Fée, that of Requiem is clearly segmented into a number of
phrases, articulated here by means of silences or morendo endings, and
parallelisms of melodic contour — the second phrase, in bar 4, for instance,
beginning as a transposed variant of the first a whole-tone higher. And
_ while the working out of this melodic material over the course of the
movement does not appear to proceed with quite the same degree of
motivic rigour as that found in Distance de Fée, this opening melody obvi-
ously possesses a structural, ‘thematic’ significance — indeed Takemitsu
himself describes the work in his programme note as based on a single
52 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 11 Requiem, opening

f con
Lent sord,
‘ = 66 —
poco pont. pour orchestre 4 cordes

ee TO
poco pont,
s > NN ¢rr
a 25 “VR <7 + +4. 6 ee (yes
Violons I © { "fp ——- 2
, IV.M —
con sord. Pp —< B_ | ————
Z con sord. poco pont. —
5Hohe
vee —
f poco =— —pon.
SS
—
SS ES
of te nn inner tite tintntnntntbeennstneint
con sord. pw__—_——
GS ss +b ee
et
Altos con_sord.
a
r Pr
PP —
espr. et
Y aa
FL
Tous. he” 2 be Ce OH te FS te
PP
nT... Te se 2 oe ae sean atte tet eee me toate ed a 2 paemertrnemmT—ngrinptep—e manent

bes... iemmnnentntets eee ee eee eee

1°con_sord,
Solo y ————~
ra = — ee — Peet i — |
r~Y __ 1 ; : 1 Oo os pe ee
. [a Ne oo eee
con sord.
Violoncelles
Les
—div.en autres
| he—poco
{4-4
|. | —————————_—
-_§.33-o20—CeqouNn.”-
| ee eepont
a J
eaneiimemneee
2 | BP —= | P Peto pont, —
he eT
con sord, {=>
rat ee eee eee ae
a fi
= . acne
Contrebasses ee aap NUON On oe
PRB — —_—_—_—_—_— mfp ———————- — 7p

theme.'! One can perhaps gain some idea of what is meant by this asser-
tion from Example 12, which compares the various forms assumed by this
_ ‘& material during the course of the work. While clearly not identical,
these nevertheless fall conspicuously into two types, each repeated more or
less consistently in its appropriate context. Furthermore, each type is
related to the other in various ways — most obviously in terms of the three-
note head-motif, which differs only in the substitution of a minor for a
major second between the first two pitches.
 b.l
53 The Requiem and its reception

A US...
Ex. 12 Variants of main theme in Requiem

MANLY. , . ,

mS ;
b.18 vin.

reel he ot
A 4 =." aH BE {
A Pr)
é en iin : :mn:

|4 .i>
—b.22

nmr

Ary :=
2 oT
—
b.4

AC Og tt SN PT Se: bse
b.15

A 3 —-P-O-—-—— hr ELA tT _ _ he... O_O

Takemitsu’s programme note also observes that the work has no clearly
differentiated beginning or end, and invokes a favourite metaphor of his:
that of the ‘stream of sound’ running through humanity and the world, of
which the composer has simply extracted a segment.” The origins of this
| concept, according to Takemitsu, date from a journey by underground
train he undertook in 1948, in which he began to wonder whether it might
be possible to incorporate sounds such as those he heard around him into
instrumental music. “To express it a little more precisely, I understood that
“to compose” equalled “to attach meaning to” (signifier) the “stream of
sound” flowing through the world around us.’!? In the present context, this
reference to the ‘stream of sound’ implies, yet again, that the work’s initial
emergence out of its ambience shall be balanced by a fading into nothing-
ness at its close (Ex. 13) — both of these events, of course, at the same time
being imbued with the quality of ma referred to previously.
The eight-note collection from which this final chord is constructed is
 aeee
54 . The music of Téru Takemitsu

me
Ex. 13 Requiem, final bar

7oNT$=TETT
oOo OOO 1, 7,7, "<06€€_

oa
)Le

aL |
>->7-.--.-..rn-.....T
7T7T 1,70, L]

fmel
QO i. 7.v.--w..’””"9—9”u™m@uw/-_=&€€_

Oe OT U8...||
ooo .N1#"[_™—”.....--
:ieu..........”..
fe >—_—en’n.-n’-.0’-”7Nnn’”.W”

er
—_) - ooo>=T—E—=———————— OT
iy’ , CARREY
Px OOOO CREE" eB
U-'io>09#4nn"-...."...
oi -nmn—--0"-1 2x2.”“:.’............

SF
p
KK
a
cf
aieoOoOOojQqQ
he 85 eT
{>“0.-'--w-...

et
Q ~~ nnn
3H... EET |
FRoO.-.--nnN0000Aae.-.._T
[4 aA0-0."’-.---.-.n..I-mnn.’-.

Sho...
Pee
eta

|
CC fo
hs AL
\ Heer neuen aetna ease.
oOC!oaa".n--’”-———E
..2.-«-.-nvnuw.--X---.
Le ‘[D”"-—....v--n-.........

te .. mnmnn- 1
e¥.-3Hovnv------".'.--'..--N-.-n----’-7” 7
ee S..------°-xuNw--...-..-

bo TR
(~\ PPP
3) .°---0.----n-—>"0v-..0-._ 0)
ORs eo 0nn700702.77202— OS ———x"—"_0O TY)

oP fe PF
fo _."n.’.-.-.2r21}.-.....wzzwv7”._
E27 OOwOaQO0-XNNONNNND0OonN”’--W?E_OIOEEET

SY PS 8
Fe .I38$3Hr......
yo _ 6) -=eo@n--’-Nn..’’-—— ST
Sf OS OO o_.x.cn@””0 —
rm Ppp |
CV sp.---o-----.
he —Q ot
> _-....---.-nv-..... TT
Ft as>>déOnV-.-.----"vw. —...........1_|

f¢\

8peft ..-..-22-......---nn--....
ee GQ ort
yo. sy nv’0mnmr-”.’’"*"09"0"00.....'-'v-'nw”T.
.33jn-............ TF.
TF
 ySa| =| ,
55 The Requiem and its reception

Ex. 14 Requiem, chords from bar 2 and bar 1

: QO —— rt
(A) (B)

of considerable interest, inasmuch as it indicates the adoption of another

scale from Méessiaen’s system besides the octatonic: ‘Mode III
({0,1,2,4,5,6,8,9,10]), of which this harmony projects all but one note (C#)
of the second transposition. In the specific context of Requiem, this partic-
ular chord is also significant since it expresses in its fullest form a recurrent
chordal type that gives the work much of its characteristic harmonic
flavour. This type is not always presented in a consistent form, like the ‘ref-
erential’ chord which we shall shortly examine in the second movement of
Uninterrupted Rest; rather, it appears in a number of guises, all of which
_ Share one or more common features with each other and with Example 13.
Two such common features are: (i) reference to the “Mode II? collection,
and (ii) a clear stratification of the harmony, often into triadic forms of
which the lowest tend to be in ‘open’ position and those superimposed
above it in ‘close’ position. For example, the ‘Mode IIT collection may be
segmented into three augmented triads a semitone apart, and the voicing
of Example 13 emphasises two of these in particular: an ‘open’-position
augmented chord on ‘G’ in the bass, and one based on ‘D’ in harmonics.
Between these, the remaining pitches imply other, overlapping triads: B
minor, D major/minor. The second chord from bar 2 of the work, exclusive
of the melody note (Ex. 14a) is a subset of this concluding harmony, and
like it is clearly stratified into an ‘open’-position (Eb first inversion) triad
on the same root in the bass, and a ‘close’-position augmented chord above
it. Addition of the Fh found in Example 13 an octave lower adds to the ‘Eb-
minor implications of this composite sonority the further complication of
a Bb-major triad, yielding the very first accompanying chord of the piece
_ (Ex. 14b) — the work thus beginning with a close variant of the chord with
which it is to end.
Between this emergence from the ‘stream of sound’ and return thereto,
the music of Requiem unfolds a structure which, like those of the
56 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 15 Form of Requiem

1-3 4-6.2 6.3-7 8 9 10-14 18-17 18-19 Codetta 4 os

B* (viola

pu | 2
18
22-25 26-28 29-31 32-36
AD 8 6CBS.hCUOCBSS SOAS

37 38 39-40 ea ae 45 4847 |
E: EB , E> E* B
eee
48-58 59-60Codetta 2

2.
Bz Exact repeat of 37 - 47 F (viola sola)
61-67 68-72 CODA 73
, Exact repeat B’ (Violin
A Exact repeat of 1-7 of 15-19

Takemitsu works already cited in previous chapters, relies heavily on repe-

tition. Typically of the composer, this repetition often takes the form of the
recycling of whole ‘blocks’ of material with note-for-note exactitude, and
with an abruptness of transition that more frequently recalls the tech-
niques of the studio splice than the well-prepared retransitions of Classical
music. In other places, the material may be re-presented with minor alter-
ations of some kind, transposed by a given intervallic factor, or both of
these simultaneously. A complex pattern of repetitions of various kinds
thus emerges, some of which are themselves nested within repetitions at a
higher level, giving rise to an overall structure of which a schematised
illustration is shown in Example 15.
Here, at the highest structural level, there are three exact duplications of
material, identified as such in the diagram; while, occurring partly within
these, there are also transposed repeats of bars 10, 37 and 45 as bars 11, 38
and 46 respectively. This particular form of repetition, in which a transpo-
sition immediately succeeds its model, is highly typical of Takemitsu,
giving rise to patterns that have something of the character of a ‘sequence’
 57 , The Requiem and its reception

in tonal music (although without the implication of an ongoing tonal

, coherence which applies in the latter context). Transformed repetition is
exemplified by the restatement of the opening material with a new, more
rhythmically active accompaniment in bars 22—5, while both transposi-
tion and transformation operate together to generate the more radical
reworking of the opening material offered in bars 18-19. And, as in
Distance de Fée, this inexactitude in the recollection of previous material
again operates here at the microcosmic level: pitches may be added or
removed from individual chords or melodic lines, or different pitches sub-
stituted for them. Finally, one observes that the largest section of literal
-- repetition is, in line with the composer’s already established practice, once
| again a signifier of imminent closure.
It requires no more than a cursory glance at Example 15 to fathom that
the overall structure of this work adds up to rather more than the sum of
, its parts, and that the pattern of repetitions operates to reinforce this
, formal articulation. The composer himself stated that ‘roughly speaking,
the work... is ina free three-section form... the tempo sequence of which
is Lent — Modéré — Lent’:'* in other words, a no-nonsense ‘Classical’ ABA
structure of a kind described by Seiji Ozawa as “easy for Western people to
understand’.’° And it is easy (even for Westerners) to see how the arrange-
ment of the repeated materials reinforces this ternary organisation. On the
one hand, the final ‘A2’ section consists of a literal repeat of the opening
and closing sections of ‘Al’; at the same time, this outer pair of repeated
sections encloses an internal repetition of the central section, “B2’ being an
exact repeat of ‘B1’; and, additionally, the outermost sections of ‘Bl’ are
closely related to one another in that they offer varied repeats of the same
material, just as the outermost sections of ‘Al’ had done. Finally, the three
codette, each affording a prominent role to a solo instrument, serve as
landmarks to identify the end of each of the three principal segments,
setting the seal on a structure which Ozawa describes as ‘perfectly
formed’.'®
However, ‘perfect’ though this ternary organisation may be, its presence
here is an indication that Takemitsu has not yet arrived at that individual
attitude to formal organisation which is to distinguish his mature work. In
, general, the individual musical moments of Takemitsu’s later music —
which may or may not include repeated materials — do not add up to some-
thing like an overall pattern of organisation which may be apprehended as
‘form’ in the Western sense. Occasionally, it is true, they may suggest other
types of formal organisation; but in most instances the arrangement of
musical ‘objects’ simply is the form: the whole area of intermediary con-
ceptualisation implied by that term, of a ‘design’ into which the material is
58 The music of T6ru Takemitsu

poured as into a mould, is no longer present. The lingering presence of

such a concept in Takemitsu’s music in this period, then, is a sign that, ona
formal level at least, his instrumental music has not yet had the temerity to
transgress beyond the limits of what might be ‘easily understood’ by a
} Westerner.
Other orchestral music of the 1950s
The scale of Requiem for Strings, and the fact that it was commissioned by
the Té6ky6 Symphony Orchestra, are indications that by this stage
Takemitsu was already embarking on more ambitious and prestigious pro-
jects than the modest chamber productions of Jikken Kobo. In fact, over
the course of the next two years, Takemitsu was to produce three more
fairly substantial works for the Japanese national broadcasting service, the
NHK — although he was subsequently to withdraw the third of these, Scene
for cello and orchestra, and the composer's publisher was unwilling to
make a copy available for the present author’s researches. Of the other two
works, the first appeared in July 1958, as part of the NHK’s entry for the
Italia Prize that year, which was a triptych entitled “Three Forms for Words
and Music’. Parts II and III of this project consisted of works by Hikaru
Hayashi and Yoshiro Irino respectively; Takemitsu’s contribution was Part
I, Tableau Noir, a work for reciter and small orchestra to a poem by
Kuniharu Akiyama. The instrumental forces employed for this seven-
minute work are already unusual and idiosyncratic: in particular, the
string section omits violins (with the exception of a violin solo), the wood-
wind parts consist of lower-register instruments only (bass flute, cor
anglais and bass clarinet), and the keyboard instruments include organ
and claviolin. As in Requiem, literal repetition has its role to play in the
articulation of the work’s overall structure, and as in much of the com-
poser’s music from Lento/Litany II onwards, the octatonic scale continu-
ally makes its presence felt: one of the work’s thematic ideas, in fact,
consists simply of an eight-note chord verticalising the whole collec-
tion, which is then transposed in parallel with an octatonic melodic line
(bars 31-2). Whole-tone-derived materials also appear, and at one point
there is a suggestion too that Takemitsu is referring to yet another of the
‘modes of limited transposition’ from Méessiaen’s system, Mode VI
((0,1,2,4,6,7,8,10]), perhaps best thought of as a whole-tone scale to which
two extraneous semitones have been added, a tritone apart. Certainly the
chord on the fourth beat of the bar at letter “L’ (Ex. 16) verticalises all eight
notes of one of this scale’s transpositions (whole-tone scale on C#, plus G#
and D).
59 The Requiem and its reception
Ex.16 Tableau Noir, L/1

Wl
————
3

A Fes
Only four months after the broadcast of the above work, in November
1958, NHK’s listeners had the opportunity to hear yet another commis-
sion from Takemitsu: Solitude Sonore, for large orchestra including triple
wind and two guitars. This new piece was dedicated to Toshir6 Mayuzumi,
who four years earlier, without ever having met the composer, had sent the
newly married Takemitsu the unexpected gift of a small upright piano —a
gift which he was to cherish for the remainder of his life. Once again the
work’s initial tempo indication (J = 38-42) prescribes an extremely lei-
surely pace, and one which — as in Requiem — is subject to the constant
fluctuations of a rubato; while any sensation of a regular pulse is again
further undermined by extremely slow triplet formations. Furthermore,
| the overall mood is typically very grave: a rather intense, Requiem-like
passage for strings alone from bar 22 onwards bears the indication ‘Triste’.
For those accustomed to the suave nuances of much of Takemitsu’s mature
music, however, the initial performance direction ‘Quietment [a word not
in my French dictionary!], avec sonore cruel’ might come as something as
a surprise — although it would be less surprising to pianists familiar with
the second movement of Uninterrupted Rest, which bears the indication
‘Quietly, and with a cruel reverberation’, or to those members of the NHK
orchestra who had participated in the premiére of Takemitsu’s Chamber
Concerto three years earlier, and had been instructed to play “quietly and
with a brutal sound’. Perhaps too Takemitsu’s performance instruction
may hit the mark in an unintended sense; for, compared with the finesse of
Takemitsu’s later instrumental style, the orchestration of the work is cer-
tainly rather basic.
Once again, the score contains passages of exact as well as inexact repeti-
tion: in fact, and unusually for Takemitsu, there is a rather old-fashioned
instruction to repeat an entire section ‘dal segno’ before the Coda, result-
ing in an overall ABCB!D form. Octatonicism and reference to other
60 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 17 Solitude Sonore, bar 22

ae
oh yo _————

ra _ be

modal collections also reappear, and there is a particularly interesting

usage of the latter in bar 22, where the final chord of the accompaniment
verticalises all five notes of a “black note’ pentatonic scale over the extrane-
ous pitches E, A and G in the bass: prophetic hint, perhaps, of the type of
harmonic constructions that the composer was to use nearly twenty years
later as the basis of A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden (Ex. 17).

Early adventures in serialism

While such features of the harmonic language of Tableau Noir and Solitude
Sonore as those quoted above indicate that Takemitsu was still to a large
extent dependent on modal derivations, in other works of the same period
he was already experimenting with a much freer exploration of the total-
chromatic. The stimulus for such exploration almost certainly lay in his
exposure to the music of the Second Viennese School, specifically Webern:
mention has already been made of the Jikken Kobo’s pioneer performances
of the music of Schoenberg’s circle, and whether Takemitsu first received
his initiation into Webern’s music by this medium or not, certainly by the
end of the 1950s he was — like all good avant-garde composers of his day —
‘enslaved’!” by the music of the Austrian master.
There are unambiguous hints of this new ‘enslavement’ in Le Son
Calligraphié I, first of a trio of works with this title for double string
quartet. It received its premiére — appropriately enough — at what Poirier
describes as ‘the Japanese equivalent to Darmstadt’,'® the Karuizawa
Festival of Contemporary Music, in August 1958, and its fragmented,
‘pointillist’ texture of angular, jagged, rhythmically irregular shapes clearly
reflects the ‘post-Webernian’ aesthetics of the period in which it was
written. Beneath this apparently typical ‘avant-garde’ surface, however,
closer examination of the score reveals the continuing presence of many of
the harmonic traits Takemitsu had developed over the course of the pre-
 ge
61 The Requiem and its reception

| 3 "1
Ex. 18 Le Son Calligraphiél, bars 1-4

(Via. D consord be sul pont.

Pp esp. ——_______ nf p —=—_mp

PO. [~~ 3 [~— 3 con sord.

na
mfi —
4 — ote bt Oe
sub.
; ~ _ poco pont. __ (Vin. I) | ——

~. | PP
T~p— mp pW PP

ceding few years. In particular, modally derived materials continue to

occur: the second chord of bar 23, for instance, is a revoiced presentation
of precisely the same pitches as those of Example 16, in other words, of the
same ‘Mode VI’ collection; while the harmony on the first beat of bar 21
verticalises all pitches but one (G) of a diatonic scale (C major), and the
work’s final fading-out is preceded by a complete verticalisation of the
whole-tone scale beginning on C$.
But it is what happens in the work’s very first bars that is perhaps most
interesting. As Example 18 shows, the work begins with a typically angular
viola solo containing ten pitches, to which the A of the third violin in bar 4
adds an eleventh. Of these eleven pitches, there is reason to believe that the
first EL in bar 2 may be a misprint — certainly the octave leap up to the same
pitch-class is hardly idiomatic within the norms of this style, and further-
more, when the pitch-material of this bar reappears a perfect fifth higher
in bar 21, a Bk is ‘correctly’ substituted at this point, suggesting that the
correct spelling here should be Eb. If this is so, then the twelve pitches
exposed here comprise the total-chromatic, and the passage constitutes
the historic first presentation in Takemitsu’s music of a twelve-note
‘series .
This reading of the opening material is further corroborated by another
passage near the end of the work, where the same dodecaphonic set is
heard transposed up by an octave and a diminished fifth, with some varia-
| tions in the note-ordering from the eighth pitch-class onwards (b. 27ff).
_ What is perhaps more interesting still, however, is that these two state-
ments, plus the partial statement in bar 21, constitute the only passages in
 62 The music of Toru Takemitsu

the work unambiguously derived from this ‘serial’ material. Takemitsu

thus begins by offering what appears to be a clear signal that he is about to
embark on some kind of exercise in ‘twelve-tone’ composition — and then
proceeds, for the most part, not to write serial music at all. Chung-Haing
Lee’s observation that his techniques ‘are similar to those used by Webern
and Schoenberg, yet do not have the procedural precision of the set theory
as in the music of the Second Viennese School’!? is thus something of an
understatement, to say the least.
Interestingly, the title of Le Son Calligraphiéalso constitutes an early ref-
erence to Takemitsu’s own Japanese background, alluding as it does to the
traditional Japanese art of calligraphy: a hint already that Takemitsu’s self-
professed negative stance towards his own culture was not absolute.
Similar ‘Eastern’ connotations attach to Masque, the work for two flutes
which Takemitsu wrote for the 1959 Karuizawa festival. Takemitsu’s pro-
gramme notes explicitly relate this work to the mask worn by né actors to
simulate a female character, and — on a less directly anecdotal level — to
more abstract “Eastern’ conceptions of the temporal process: the work
‘exists in that inner world of time that cannot be grasped by means of so-
called “Western” ideas about metre’”’ and, like Requiem, is to be played in a
‘one-by-one’ rhythm. It is possible that in this work Takemitsu also makes
an early attempt to simulate actual Japanese instrumental praxis: a handful
of pitches conclude with brief quarter-tone glissandi, for which the com-
poser devised his own unique notation —a long-held note tied to an acciac-
catura value at the same pitch in an enharmonic spelling, with the
indication ‘port.’ above it.
Alongside such traditional ‘Eastern’ elements, however, one detects
once again the presence of a method that is decidedly twentieth century
: and Western in origin. The first of the work’s two movements,’! for
example, contains passages of such obvious serial derivation as that
quoted in Example 19 — the upper part of which, purely arbitrarily, will be
taken as the ‘prime form’ of Takemitsu’s basic series for purposes of further
analysis.
Here the retrograde relationship between the two voices marks an
advance on the application of the method in Le Son Calligraphié I where, it
will be recalled, manipulation of the series was limited to the transposition
operation only. The remaining two transformational tools of classic
dodecaphonic practice — inversion and retrograde inversion — also appear
unambiguously for the first time in this movement. This can be seen from
Example 20, which gives a reduction of the second flute’s pitch-material
from bars 2 to 17. Here the technique of retrograde inversion appears in
the guise of a global operation applied to both parts from bar 11 onwards;
iipape
a i tt
63 The Requiem and its reception

p”
é 18
123
‘ ‘ae
, 196 eeeDip
| 12
Ex. 19 Masquel, bars 18-20

I eS ; a
ro :Ste =
fo As 789 10 11 molto sub, LP

— epoeLF»
ae
ee
4| ‘$ 7: ~~
eae, a ——) -— ——hw—
hd‘ 6$ aac
a : r—4
DY -é¢ =® ==
oe ee seamen cy 0) Se £9) co ‘

R 1 23 4 11 5 6 78 910 12

for this reason, the pitches of the canzicrans version (lower staff of the
system) have been shown in reverse order, so that they line up with their
equivalents in the ‘prime’ ordering.
The use of simple inversion of sets is also apparent here in the upper
system, where a statement of the prime form in transposition (P’) is fol-
lowed by the first and second hexachords, respectively, of two transposi-
tions of the inverted form (I’ and I°). At the same time, however, this
presentation of two incomplete six-note sets already constitutes a solecism
in terms of orthodox dodecaphonic practice, and further slight deviations
from a literal adherence to the underlying pre-compositional method
emerge as the passage progresses. Thus the second of the above two hexa-
chords is reordered, while the material in the lower system contains one or
two of the same kinds of arbitrary alteration that are also typical of
Takemitsu’s handling of repeated material: substitution of different pitch-
| classes in two instances, and the global transposition of a whole passage by
a semitone upwards.
However, even this much compositional rigour is rather untypical of the
movement, which displays an odd mixture of ‘extravagance’ of musical
materials alongside the relative “economy with which these are occasion-
ally handled. The second movement is even more freely composed, and
makes no use of the first movement’s serial materials. It is however linked
thematically to the first movement by means of a somewhat older device,
~ and one which had figured prominently in the pre-serial vocabulary of the
Viennese atonalists. This is the device of motivic construction, using the
four-note cell labelled ‘x’ in Example 20, which appears initially on the first
flute in bar 2. When the opening bars of the first flute part are repeated a
semitone lower at bar 22, this four-note idea is presented in retrograde,
 77
64 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Lb
Ex. 20 Masquel, bars 2-17, reduction of second flute part

e 1° re-ordered
=te it he is —~_
fp
r) foooo
SANS
te —T—
W (1. VR eee
AEE eo j aEEO
ee eee.
OE
ma : _—OO
L..4“PS
‘am beI
Ee,» 2|4.ee
cee+
eeeaee,
12345 67 8 91011121 23 345 6 g 9 10 111212 7
,@ /..tS bet Le be he 12 he |
|
WR |S: , ee. L.A, | eee. |. eee ee_ .. ceeeeeS
SNS 9 EE 51 Tb Ws EY | * PE VR ee - :

(should be (globally (should be ¢—______—_

"ce" ) transposed "f)
+ 1 semitone)

giving rise to a new form which is itself then repeated in bar 34. It is by
means of this motif alone that Takemitsu forges some sort of link between
Masque’s two disparate movements: in its original ordering, as in bar 1 of
the second movement (Ex. 21), or in the retrograde version, as in bars 9
and 34 (Ex. 22).
These fleeting reminiscences apart, the two movements of Masque are
quite different, not least in the matter of their contrasting textures: abra-
sive, fragmentary and ‘pointilliste in the case of the first movement, more
unified in the second, with the two instruments here sharing frequent
simultaneous attacks, and even on occasion playing in rhythmic unison. A
? similar contrast of textural types emerged as a result of Takemitsu’s deci-
sion, in 1959, to add two subsequent movements to his Uninterrupted Rest
for piano of 1952. The extant movement projected a largely ‘homophonic’
texture, in which — as in the second movement of Litany — the melodic line
appeared as the upper voice in a series of homorhythmic chords in a
manner recalling much of Messiaen’s music. In the new version, this was
now supplemented by a third movement which opted for a contrasting
hierarchical or ‘melody and accompaniment allocation of roles, with an
upper melodic line in long notes supported by sporadic chordal attacks,
and a second movement constructed from simultaneous chordal attacks
like the first, but with these now separated from one another in time and
register, so that few overall melodic shapes emerged. Yoko Narazaki makes
great claims for this textural variety, observing that, although the work
uses ‘clusters of chords’? in the manner of Messiaen, ‘in contrast to
Messiaen, who uses his “clusters of chords” almost always according to the
same pattern of textural types, Takemitsu, by making changes to the
65 The Requiem and its reception

. t-—~ 3 3]
Ex.21 Masque UH, bar 1

| C\_ ee9)|
b Flatt. san be
NS)
ee ee
| K,_.¢.¢__|_._.___---»-----------.----__ RRR RnR RNENEEE anne

(et
f—-——_. ff nf =
X

| Ex. 22 Masque II, bars 8-9

A m3 4
1a) aa Tea
LASZLO
[7 .@GE
tt (1. NN
/ EE ee
I 01)eee
f ——____ > auf
2 Ee Ee Ee
ee eee ee ee
ee
_a| X

texture, transforms the latter into a structural element’.*’ While the invidi-
ous comparison with Messiaen may be a little exaggerated, Narazaki is
surely correct here in drawing attention to the highly individual contribu-
tion to the musical language which Takemitsu makes by this kind of formal
| delineation according to textural type.
Once again there are fleeting, inconsequential allusions to serial method
in this newly composed material: specifically, in the second movement of
Uninterrupted Rest. Here, as shown in Example 23, Takemitsu also intro-
| duces a new, partly ‘proportional’ rhythmic notation, which allows the
: performer a certain liberty in the placing of events within ‘bars’ of three
, seconds duration.
, As the annotations here also illustrate, and as other commentators have
pointed out, these opening bars are guided by the application of dodeca-
phonic principles. A twelve-note collection in the first two bars (P°) is fol-
lowed by its transposition upwards by three semitones (P*), with an
inverse registration which according to Koozin forms ‘an arch shape of
antecedent and consequent‘ (there is also perhaps an analogy here with
66 The music of Toru Takemitsu

2| ’ell12nei aa
af aan
Ex. 23 Uninterrupted Rest II, bars 1-5

ca = M.M. 20 =3" P P

. Ty
wee | Sane
SS A TS «NS SNES MN 6 Ne AW. BS A TTS GOON ...celeESI TRS

Takemitsu’s favoured device of transposed, ‘sequential’ repetition).

Funayama, who also identifies this twelve-note series, adds the interesting
observation that the movement contains twelve gradations of dynamics
from pppp to sfff— although at the same time he wisely cautions that ‘this is
not “integrated-serialist” music’.”° In fact, of course — as one might predict
from Takemitsu’s attitude to dodecaphonic materials in the above exam-
ples — it is not serial music of any sort. Already in the third bar of this
example, for instance, the “integrity of the series’ is destroyed by the omis-
sion of its third pitch (G4), and while it is possible to continue the analysis
in terms of serial transformations for a few more bars (Ex. 24), to do so
involves the analyst in increasingly tortuous description, so complex are
the aberrations from serial rigour. Essentially this passage begins with
another statement of P® in which pitches 1 and 11 have been inter-
changed;*° however the ninth pitch, Dk, is held in reserve, and the twelfth,
Bb, acts as a pivotal pitch to telescope the series with a statement of I’ (here
numbered in italics to distinguish it from the preceding statement of P°).
Pitch 2 of this new form, also Dk, is again ‘held in reserve’, eventually
appearing as part of the chordal attack in the third bar of the example;
while the tenth pitch of I’, also omitted, perhaps appears in the form of the
sustained G in the bar following the passage quoted. One notes here, in
passing, that the cavalier attitude to pitch succession implied by all these
arbitrary reorderings and omissions is another general feature of

derived or not. |
Takemitsu’s manipulation of materials, whether the latter are serially

Beyond this point, however — with the exception of the unequivocal

statement of I° in bars 21~3, and a reminiscence of the opening bars at bar
31 — any attempt to analyse the work in serial terms would be foolhardy,
since it is quite clear that Takemitsu is no longer deriving his material in
this manner. Having set out what would appear to be the initial premises of
67 The Requiem and its reception
Ex. 24 Uninterrupted Rest Il, bars 6-11

ee
chord
a" >

AS AEE 9 LETTE a Es HF A SETS | ARISEN

p® [iy r _ , —
I” Io _i">nnuW”-"F70»~zoqe-”P_.”nrnr”..-.-mnmm=rnruwwnn_ .uwVvw”...n”nn..-E

a serial argument, he leaves any expectation that such a discourse will

ensue almost provocatively unfulfilled, and instead uses his basic material
simply as a partial resource for a very free study in timbre and texture.
However, this initial display of serial artifice is not without its repercus-
sions for the rest of the movement. In Example 24, for instance, it will be
observed that a specific vertical collection arising from this reordering of
the basic materials has been labelled chord ‘A’. This harmony is interesting
for two reasons. First, the pitch-class set of which it is comprised,
[0,2,3,4,6,8], is one of the four possible six-note subsets of the ‘7-33’ col-
lection introduced in the previous chapter, and a favourite vertical form of
the composer. (As the ‘7-33’ collection is in turn a subset of Messiaen’s
‘Mode VI, the present chord also lies within the ambit of that scale, which
is how Koozin parses it.””) Secondly, within the context of this movement
what Koozin describes as a ‘referential meaning’ attaches to this particular
collection, in this particular voicing. In bar 25, for instance, it is heard in
three different transpositions successively as part of a dramatic gesture
utilising Takemitsu’s favoured device of harmonic parallelism (Ex. 25),
and reappears three more times when the same passage is repeated in a ret-
rograde transposition in bars 32-3.
. The second consequence of the serial process in this movement relates
to the constructional rationale of serial method in general rather than the
specific pitch-materials of the present instance. As shown in part by
Example 20, in Masque the composer applied the basic transformational
operation of inverted retrogression globally to a whole section (bars 4—10,
repeated al rovescio as bars 11-17), reversing not only the pitch succession
but also (with slight modifications) the durational values and even such
timbral features as the first flute’s ‘quasi-fluttertonguing’ in bar 8. Now, in
the second movement of Uninterrupted Rest, Takemitsu took the impor-
, _ tant step of applying this technique of global reversal, which has its origins
 68 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 25 Uninterrupted Rest I, bar 25

A
AA
4 ae
na— oT -——
—=— = :
| ff =
in serial practice, to materials which are not in themselves serially derived.
} All the pitches from bar 14 up to the high Ek in bar 18, for instance, appear
in reverse order in bars 38-41; in addition, the sequence of three chords in
bar 24 is heard backwards, and in two different transpositions, in bars 34
and 48, and the three-chord pattern of bar 25 (Ex. 25) is heard in trans-
posed retrograde in bars 32-3.
This kind of wholesale reversal of musical succession, which may have
derived from Webern’s or Berg’s example (or possibly certain instances in
the works of Messiaen), clearly exerted a great fascination over Takemitsu.
As subsequent examples will illustrate, it was a technique in which he was
to persist long after any deep interest in dodecaphonic materials had been
abandoned. On one level, it is easy to guess at a simple practical reason for
such fascination: retrogression and, to a lesser extent, inversion proved
handy additions to the arsenal of devices by means of which wholesale rep-
etitions could be varied and, indeed, ‘disguised’ in some way. At the same
time, however, there can be little doubt that the arcane, ‘esoteric’ quality of
these inaudible musical abstractions possessed for Takemitsu much of the
same ‘alchemical’ appeal that it had clearly held for Webern and Berg. This
is not only borne out by the many eye-catching ‘palindromic’ or mirror-
image passages in his scores, that recall both of these Viennese masters:
Takemitsu’s affection for these kinds of patterning per se was clearly obses-
sive enough to spill over into the purely verbal medium of his theoretical
writing as well. One of the subsections of an article of his — dealing, appro-
priately enough, with “The Unpolished Mirror’ — is given a Japanese title
whose syllables themselves are arranged in a mirror-image sequence: m1-
ga-ka-nu-ka-ga-mi.”® ,
After the second movement’s study in fragmentary textures and ‘cruel
reverberation’, the final movement of Uninterrupted Rest — subtitled ‘A
Song of Love’— projects for the most part a contrasting stillness, with a
 69 The Requiem and its reception

o=38 p =
os ie
Ex. 26 Uninterrupted Rest III, opening

_————
2 a © ae pst po nSEE
. aT :
m)

~2Dr3"
- —- &e ~
dynamic level that never rises above mezzo-forte; according to Luciana
Galliano, it was intended as a homage to Alban Berg.”? Like the first move-
ment, it begins with the now-familiar gesture of an emergence out of the
‘stream of sound’ with which the music is contiguous (Ex. 26).
The opening Ek proves to be the first term in the ‘song’ of the work’s sub-
, title ~ what Koozin has described as ‘the lyrical melody of this piece’, which
‘fundamentally consists of a chromatic descent from E° to C°, extended
over thirteen measures of music at very slow tempo’.°° Ohtake goes even
further, claiming that this whole melodic pattern outlines ‘essentially three
descending notes (E, D and C)’,”! and this apparently far-fetched reduc-
tion to an underlying ‘Schenkerian’ schema actually proves surprisingly
convincing when one examines one or two features of the musical surface
by which it is said to be projected. For instance, the “D’ in bar 7 which,
according to Ohtake, forms the middle term in this progression is a whole
semibreve long, and preceded by a characteristic falling triplet figure
which also introduces the final ‘C’ in bar 11. However, while Ohtake’s
: reduction identifies the middle term of the melodic descent with this par-
ticular “D’, there is also a strong case for granting this privilege to the “D’ in
bar 9, which is given an even longer duration, and further emphasised by
an accompaniment containing materials from bar 1 transposed down a
whole-tone (Ex. 27). In passing, it is also interesting to note here that
Takemitsu does not in any way consider the chord in brackets incongruous
, within the context of his highly chromatic and dissonant style.
The year following the premiére of the complete Uninterrupted Rest saw
the addition of the third and final instalment to Takemitsu’s string octet
triptych. Le Son Calligraphié III (1960) returns, on a technical level at least,
to many of the preoccupations of the second movement of Uninterrupted
Rest. Once again retrograde motion is used to generate varied repetition of
70 The music of Toéru Takemitsu

, f\ 5 N \ Pp - mp
Ex.27 Uninterrupted Rest Il, bar 9

Frew
oo
, EE \S) Se, bd De
1 o> NN..." > E+

ppp ‘SP? fe
| material, but here the technique is applied much more boldly: almost the
whole third part of the work’s A-B—A! form consists of a reworking of the
pitch-materials from the first part in reverse order, turning the piece as a
- whole into a loose palindromic structure. And — as in the earlier piano
movement — the work yet again begins with a strong suggestion of a serial
ordering principle, which the composer then proceeds for the most part to
ignore. Here the twelve-note series with which the work begins and (in its
retrograde form) closes is of particular interest in that there is for the first
time a suggestion of a certain care over the internal construction of the set,
with a view towards the generation of specific harmonic forms. It is
difficult to arrive at a definitive ordering of this series from the resultant
musical structure as it appears in the score, particularly since pitches 4-6
always appear in vertical superimposition. Nevertheless, the basic set,
heard at the work’s very opening, can still be established with sufficient
certainty to illustrate that it is built up from the concatenation of two sub-
sets, each of which projects a collection occupying a privileged position in
Takemitsu’s musical vocabulary: the ubiquitous “7-33’ collection furnish-
ing the first seven pitches, and its chromatic complement — a fragment of
the whole-tone scale — providing the remaining five (Ex. 28).

: Reception of the Requiem and its aftermath

While the earlier works amongst those examined above were composed
against a background of poverty and — from an international perspective,
71 The Requiem and its reception |

p° 4
Ex. 28 Series of Le Son Calligraphié III

712
eT3 ae
8 7 Ae
8 9 10
a 1 12
Lo uw!
E pp ge * fo — 4 *
ASUS Pt gh — 8 Pa ————OQQI—$—$—$— $$

7-33 collection Chromatic complement

at least — obscurity, by the end of the decade the signal event had occurred
which was to transform Takemitsu’s fortunes in both of these respects
irrevocably. Furthermore, as the composer was often to recall in subse-
quent years, the lucky break came about only as the result of an almost
- miraculous fluke. In 1959 Igor Stravinsky was invited to Japan, and asked
_the NHK to play him some recordings of new Japanese music. There had
been no plan to include anything by Takemitsu amongst the works selected
for audition, but by accident someone appears to have begun playing a
recording of the Requiem and — although the organisers were for stopping
it — Stravinsky asked to hear the work through to the end. Later, at a press
conference, asked if he thought any of the works he had heard were any
_ good, Stravinsky mentioned only Takemitsu’s name, commenting on the
‘sincerity’ and ‘strictness’ of his music, and apparently expressing his
astonishment that “music as passionate as this should be created by a man
| of such short stature’*? — to which Seiji Ozawa’ was several years later to
provide the obvious rejoinder: ‘Because he himself was short!’*4
Stravinsky then invited Takemitsu to lunch — the latter was to retain a
vivid recollection afterwards of shaking his hand, ‘so big, and very soft, like
marshmallow’ — and it was apparently through the senior Russian com-
poser’s kind offices that Takemitsu went on to obtain the Koussevitsky
commission which eventually resulted in the composition of The Dorian
Horizon.* To a certain extent, the whole Stravinsky incident reveals a gap
between domestic and Western perceptions of Takemitsu’s status that was
| to remain with the composer throughout his life, and indeed continues to
persist after his death. Nevertheless, from around this point onwards, the
critical reception of the composer’s music, at home as well as abroad,
begins to change dramatically. The prizes which the composer had
received in the previous year, two from Japan and one from Italy, were to
mark only the beginning of a long crescendo of prestigious awards,
domestic and foreign premiéres, meetings with high-profile colleagues,
72 The music of Toéru Takemitsu

‘residencies at academic institutions and so forth — in short, of all the trap-

pings of a successful international composer in the latter half of the twenti-
eth century. Surveying the composer’s biographical details from around
this point onwards, one reads no longer of the touching, rather
‘Bohemian’ struggles of a dedicated young artist, but rather of the exhaust-
ing creative schedule of a member of the international composing élite.
From this time onwards, too, the style of Takemitsu’s writing for the
concert hall begins to undergo change. So far, the stylistic imprints of the
models for his “first period’ works have been clear enough, and they are
predominantly European and American composers of an older generation
— Messiaen and Debussy, Webern and Berg, initially flavoured a little by the
‘nationalist’ school to which Takemitsu’s teacher Kiyose belonged. But
now, around the turn of the 1960s, as Takemitsu becomes more aware of —
and, in many cases, often comes into direct contact with — his peers in the
international composing community, his career begins more and more to
run in parallel with, and reflect the preoccupations of, the avant-garde and
experimental musicians of his day. For roughly the next decade and a half,
his musical language is to be enriched by an eclectic exploration of novel
resources: the high modernist complexity of the Western avant-garde,
certain aesthetics of Cage and the American experimental school, as well
as — most famously of all — a renewed interest in his own traditional and
other ‘Oriental’ musics. Takemitsu’s ‘second period’, the era of modernist
experimentation, begins here.
 | 5 Projections on to a Western mirror

Takemitsu’s theoretical writings about music abound in striking meta-

phors that have proved a fertile resource for commentators in search of an
evocative title or handy descriptive phrase. The present writer is no excep-
| tion to this general rule: the title of this chapter, for instance, is a reference
to Takemitsu’s famous essay of 1974, ‘Mirror of Tree, Mirror of Grass’,' in
| which he compares Western music, with its emphasis on the individual, to
the tree, and contrasts this with non-Western musics which have ‘grown
like grass’.? The two mirrors thus symbolise the twin musical cultures into
which Takemitsu was to ‘project himself’ as his musical language devel-
oped, and —as he makes explicit — for the first part of his life it was into the
‘Western’ mirror only that his gaze was directed: ‘Once, I believed that to
make music was to project myself on to an enormous mirror that was
called the West.’
Our examination of Takemitsu’s career to date has corroborated the
truth of this assertion. With one or two significant exceptions, most of his
musical preoccupations have derived from the Western tradition, and one
can generally agree with Poirier that the young Takemitsu devoted himself
completely to this ‘music from elsewhere’ while ‘abandoning completely
the heritage of traditional music’.* Very soon things were to change dra-
matically, but this does not mean that Takemitsu abandoned his continued
, exploration of the “Western mirror. On the contrary: it is perhaps precisely
at this period in his life, as his style is enriched by encounters with the bur-
- geoning Western avant-garde of the 1960s, that his music approximates
most closely to that of his international colleagues; in fact, many of his
modes of adapting Eastern musical practices for a Western context would
not have been possible without this exposure to the new technical
resources being developed in the West. The present chapter, then, will
examine some of these continued forays into Western musical territory,
and the manner in which the fruits of these explorations were reflected in
the mirror of Takemitsu’s composition from this period.

Further adventures in serialism

For his first and only daughter, born in December 1961, Takemitsu chose —
2B in somewhat Wagnerian fashion ~ a name intimately connected with his
74 The music of Toru Takemitsu

ee
Ex. 29 Series of Music of Tree

Mode II?
[:Pe
SSgm
.
er Ce
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 1 42
Mode II?

own recent creative work. The second syllable of Maki Takemitsu’s given
name is a reference to the ‘tree’ in the Japanese title of Music of Tree (“Kino
Kyokuw’) — an orchestral work which had received its premiére the previous
May, and which, of all Takemitsu’s scores from this period, perhaps most
vividly reflects his professed ‘enslavement’ to Webern’s music. Texturally,
| the work consists for the most part of a number of sparse, motivic aphor-
isms, as far removed as could be imagined from the opulent luxuriance of
the composer’s later work. Unusually for Takemitsu, too — and indeed
somewhat in opposition to his own aesthetic principles — the work even
emulates at one point some of the contrapuntal artifice associated with
Webern’s later scores. A passage beginning at bar 29 is constructed as a
canon by retrograde; furthermore, the material utilised here is a twelve-
note series, whose prime form (as suggested by the double-bass part) is
given in Example 29. Once again, this is a series that shows evidence of a
certain thoughtful internal construction: pitches 1~7 project a seven-note
octatonic subset, overlapping with pitches 6-12, which project another.
A later work from the same year as Music of Tree, Ring for flute, terz-
guitar? and lute also makes reference to serial technique, alongside more
radical formal innovations which will be dealt with in chapter 7. The flute
part at the beginning of the movement entitled ‘N’, for example, com-
prises a statement of the twelve-tone set shown in Example 30 (the appar-
ent duplication of one pitch, “E’, in bar 7 on this occasion almost certainly
being a misprint, since the note in question is tied over from a high “G’
three bars earlier).
As we might by now expect, however, this statement is not followed by
any kind of consistent serial argument: the flute part continues with
inexact references to I° and possibly the first three notes of RI°, but for the
remainder of Ring's four movements unambiguous reference to this
twelve-note row is conspicuously absent. However, exactly as in the second
movement of Uninterrupted Rest, technical devices generally associated
 po |
75 Projections on to a Western mirror

_ Ex. 30 Series of Ring

. 7*le
pt Eeea —po—5* eo
—_h
OSV EE4 6ee,
° 40623 6 7be
8BP__9.
9 10 11gf
12

with the serial method, and specifically with the later music of Webern,
appear elsewhere in Ring independently of any serial context: the two
movements entitled ‘R’ and ‘T are, respectively, retrograde and inverted
forms of the movement entitled ‘G’, albeit very free ones.
The brittle, ‘pointilliste’ sound-world of Ring, with its combination of
flute and plucked strings, was to be further explored and expanded in a
work of 1962, Sacrifice, which adds a vibraphone player doubling on cro-
tales to the combination of alto flute and lute, yielding a kind of scaled-
down Marteau sans maitre sonority. Here again, a twelve-note series makes
an unambiguous appearance at one point in the score: to be precise, at the
beginning of the second system of the first movement (Chant I), as shown
in Example 31 (the alto flute part on the uppermost staff is notated in
transposition). ,
Rather than being used as a recurrent ordering principle, however, this
series is treated once again after the fashion of a resource from which
materials, particularly of a harmonic nature, are freely derived. For this
reason, it is perhaps more profitable to think of it as a series of four tri-
chords, as suggested in Example 32, rather than any definitive ordering of
the pitches of which the latter are composed.
Some idea of the extreme liberty with which this twelve-note collection
is handled may be gathered from the opening of the second movement,
Chant 2 (Ex. 34). The materials for this derive from a transposition of the
original row, P*, which in Example 33 has been segmented into trichords
as suggested above. It will be observed, however, that while the first hexa-
chord of Example 34 at least respects this division into trichords (even if it
does not respect the original note order), the presentation of the second
part of the series violates the original ordering of events even at this level.
Nevertheless, despite the freedom with which it is handled, the series
of Sacrifice once again reveals a certain thoughtful artifice in the manner
of its internal construction. As can be seen from Example 32, the second
trichord set ([0,1,3]) is the inversion of the first, as the fourth ([0,1,4]) is
76 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 31 Sacrifice 1, system 2

26”

ts :
ro
2(a AA

ppt
(7 —
Seea —_—_—_—_
PPP}
42

és rapid

—— He ee
a: Sa ora .

of the third; furthermore (and in somewhat similar fashion to the series

of Music of Tree), pitches 1-7 constitute one octatonic subset (part of
Mode II’), and pitches 8-12 another (Mode II°*). This kind of care over
the internal construction of a dodecaphonic set is yet again revealed by
the series projected by the violin in the opening bars of Takemitsu’s Hika
for violin and piano (1966), of which a schematised version is shown in
Example 35.
Like that of Music of Tree, this series is once again ‘hexachordally combi-
natorial’, in that the pitch content of the second half is simply a transposi-
tion of that of the first. That this should be the case in the present instance
is hardly surprising, since both hexachords comprise the collection
[0,1,4,5,8,9] or ‘6-20’, a set possessing a number of interesting properties,
one of which is that its chromatic complement is simply a transposition of
itself. Among its other interesting features is the fact that, as suggested in
Example 35, it may also be segmented into two augmented triads a semi-
tone apart, making it a subset of Messiaen’s third ‘Mode of Limited
Transposition’, which may indeed be formed from three such semitonally
77 | Projections on to a Western mirror

Ex. 32 Series of Sacrifice

| Inv. ‘[0, 4, 3] nv. 1,

[0, 0,1,4
4]
ht1bef pe
ef a oe el Se #72ao
47§86911,
ASI i har a a bt 8 EE s-
10 12 Lo

2 7
2
3

po
fp 3
3 :| . Ex. 33 Transposition of Sacrifice series

| 4 11
SY
nn

, , ) 12
han I On
_————
(oi ( eee
ne gS DUNES
| eee... ~ 21 *,
eee,GE |
9
GO
eee
oOrCCSCSCSC‘“(“‘(‘(<(#$FCNCCOCOCOC;C;CS

6
10

, Ex. 34 Sacrifice II, opening

f
oS an
Flite enaa—_ afad7
789

| ”) J !
> . ae Sol
ff abp
f by to
7 3 8 PONCE
|p [> MM = 30 ——J (ie) L

Caea .“—
|i
. s mf en "os ccsameaaal
p’ ° 101112
=
78 The music of Toru Takemitsu

p0
Ex. 35 Series of Hika

a ene Se eee

El
=a (aA EE 4 CERN = SN - | CA | CORR; P= SN ZA ~

9|eefg
Ex. 36 Relationship of ‘Mode IIT’ to “6—20’ collection

Ed
De ° re
——SSSS=S== rt
6- 20
Mode III

6- 20

adjacent augmented chords, as shown in Example 36 (addition of a further

augmented triad to this collection, of course, completes the total-
chromatic).
Moreover, the ‘6-20’ collection may be divided in three different ways
into a major triad and a minor one, in such a way that the root of the
former is always a major third above that of the latter. While fascination
with such vertical, harmonic properties of this collection is revealed abun-
dantly elsewhere in Takemitsu’s music, however, it is ironically absent from
the score of Hika. Once again the twelve-note series is referred to only
intermittently, and for the most part the materials of the score are derived
freely from other, independent sources. Some of them, in fact, derive from
other works of Takemitsu altogether. For example, a brief ‘upbeat’ figure
heard in the piano in bar 1 (Ex. 37), and subsequently repeated on a
number of occasions, is quoted from the beginning of the third movement
of the composer’s Uninterrupted Rest, written seven years earlier and
already quoted in the previous chapter (Ex. 26).
As in the second movement of Uninterrupted Rest, there are also a
number of constant, ‘referential’ harmonic forms in this work, although in
this instance there does not appear to be any obvious relationship between
 |=
79 Projections on to a Western mirror

esy
Ex. 37 Opening of Hika

pe
Sane erent tar ea
Sem - a ao sore sae oon oe :

| any male
Prana peepee tg
RS. OLS AE 6 A OY SR

oan h * .
Ped. — R ed. satnnenemnmtanamaneaaead
una corda tre corde

them and the work’s opening serial statement. The materials for the work’s
final bars, for example, consist almost entirely of reshufflings of three of
these basic harmonic types, labelled ‘x’, ‘y and ‘z’ in Example 38, and here
one also detects — perhaps not for the only time — the presence of some-
thing like a ‘bass progression’ in Takemitsu’s music: as the music winds
down, the lowest pitches simply outline a chromatic descent from Fk to Bb.
Satisfying as this closure is from the purely musical point of view, it is of
course on a structural level in no way a fulfilment of the expectations
aroused by the opening dodecaphonic statement. In Hika, as in all other
works by Takemitsu making partial use of twelve-tone method, there is once
again absolutely no question of a consistent serial argument. Furthermore,
after Hika — with one or two exceptions — the composer was to abandon
| almost entirely even this much interest in Schoenberg’s method.
Takemitsu’s involvement with serialism was therefore neither profound nor
long-lived; and a critic — particularly one with a strong academic bias —
might attribute both of these facts toa certain failure of compositional tech-
"nique, a lack of the requisite theoretical rigour. However, as Miyamoto
points out, such passages as the canon by retrograde already referred to in
| Music of Tree clearly demonstrate that actually ‘the composer is in
command ofarigorous contrapuntal method’.® If for the most part it would
seem that he fails to make obvious use of this technical facility, therefore, the
causes must lie not in the limitations of Takemitsu’s ability, but rather in the
exercise of his own free choice. In fact, far from suggesting a technical limi-
tation, Takemitsu’s lack of interest in such artificial procedures as serialism
80 The music of Toru Takemitsu

2aeagee
—— ee
pre
ge eT
ge
ra | PP (——
ee
Ex. 38 Ending of Hika

X y X ZL xX y Xx Z

iRed.
a as i a a a
Ped. Aa Ped AAA
actually reflects profoundly held aesthetic principles — ideas relating to the
primacy of ‘sound’ over ‘syntax’ in composition — which for the present it
will be necessary to pass over, but to which we must return in the closing
chapter of this book.

New adventures in timbre

While these aesthetic principles of Takemitsu’s may have operated to
extinguish most of his interest in serial method during these years, at the
same time they had the effect of increasing the composer’s interest in the
tone-quality of individual sound-events. Takemitsu’s keen ear for timbral
subtleties had been evident from the very earliest phase of his career, but
from around the beginning of the 1960s onwards his ability to conjure a
wealth of differentiated sonorities entered on a new phase of refinement,
one which was to continue unabated through the remainder of his life.
One has only to compare the piano writing of Uninterrupted Rest with that
of Piano Distance (1961), for instance, to see how much more radical and
experimental Takemitsu’s treatment of this instrumental medium had
become in the space of a few years. While the three pieces comprising the
earlier work are simply sensitive syntheses of established pianistic method,
the new work demands of the performer a variety of carefully indicated
tone colourings (‘with feeling’, ‘hard’, ‘tenderly hard’, ‘like bell sound’), as
well as the production of harmonics, tone clusters and meticulously pre-
scribed pedal effects. Many of these refinements of instrumental technique
— as was so often the case in Takemitsu’s music — reflect the specific virtuos-
ity of the performer to whom the work is dedicated: in this case the doyen
of avant-garde Japanese pianists of the day, the composer and Xenakis
pupil Yuji Takahashi (1938-).
 81 Projections on to a Western mirror

Like the second movement of Uninterrupted Rest, Piano Distance also

utilises a proportional notation in which attacks are placed freely inside
nominal ‘bars’ of three seconds’ duration. The texture is generally even
_ sparser than in the earlier work, with much use of silence, and there is even
less in the way of recognisable ‘material’ of a motivic or thematic kind.
One or two events are however repeated: the bell-like chord of bar 20
which reappears at bar 76, for example, or the three-chord sequence which
| appears in various transpositions in bars 40, 42-3 and 66. It is perhaps to
such repetitions as these that Koozin is referring when he describes the
form of the work as one in which ‘the repetition of more memorable
events is spanned by passages of relative ambiguity and quietude’.’” The
apprehension of ‘form’ here, then, is dependent on the listener’s recogni-
tion of certain fairly invariant gestures, which serve as points of orienta-
| tion in the general flux: referential ‘chords’ or indeed referential ‘motifs’.
This use of such repeated events, which as Koozin observes may be ‘some-
times invariant in regard to pitch and register’,® as occasional landmarks
within the formal scheme was to become another feature of Takemitsu’s
formal discourse; Miyamoto has also commented on the phenomenon,
observing what he describes as a ‘symmetry’ of such ‘analytical landmarks’
, or ‘stations in three more or less contemporaneous works: Music of Tree,
Ringand Piano Distance itself.?
One vertical combination in Piano Distance is of particular interest, in
that it shows that by this time Takemitsu had make another important
addition to his armoury of available scalar types. The third chord in bar 41
(Ex. 39) verticalises all seven pitches of what is possibly, besides the
straightforward ‘diatonic’, Takemitsu’s favourite heptatonic collection: the
| so-called ‘acoustic scale’ with sharpened fourth and flattened seventh
([0,1,3,4,6,8,10]). Most probably Takemitsu had come across this scale in
the work of Debussy, for example in the opening bars of Nuages from the
Nocturnes — although at the same time there is by this stage a second pos-
sibility to be considered, namely that he had discovered it in the ‘Lydian
Chromatic Concept’ of George Russell, where the seventh mode of this
scale features under the guise of the ‘Lydian Augmented Scale’.'®
| Takemitsu’s explorations of new timbral resources during this period
were not limited solely to instrumental music. One finds a similar exploi-
tation of the possibilities afforded by the human voice in the settings of
— Kuniharu Akiyama’s poetry which comprise Wind Horse, one of
Takemitsu’s very few contributions to the a cappella vocal repertory. In
_ reality this cycle of five pieces is the conflation of two works: the first two
movements, for women’s voice alone, dating from 1962, the remaining
| three for full choir being added in 1966. But Wind Horse could also be
82 The music of T6ru Takemitsu

i .
Ex. 39 Piano Distance, bar 41

__, accel.

es tt ,
bE
7 AE Lief

ey — es
=F
considered the conflation of two works in another sense, and one which
does not correspond to the above division of labour between the sexes: an
interweaving and juxtaposition of works written in two apparently incom-
patible stylistic languages, one of them modernist and ‘atonal’, the other
decidedly ‘tonal’ and populist.
It is within the former style that the ‘experimental’ vocal techniques
referred to above occur: besides angular melodic lines and generally disso-
nant harmonies, Takemitsu here makes use of a whole repertory of
extended effects such as speech, Sprechgesang and various kinds of breath-
ing sounds, the last presumably in imitation of the ‘wind’ referred to in the
work’s title. In such a ‘modernist’ context — and especially for a listener
unfamiliar with the whole breadth of Takemitsu’s output — the sudden
excursions into shameless major tonality come as something of an abrupt
jolt, and one might wonder, with a certain amount of justification,
whether the composer had no concept of stylistic congruity. Such a reac-
tion, however, would be less likely from a listener familiar with Takemitsu’s
other major choral work, the collection of songs eventually published as
Uta (1979-92) and dating from throughout his career. All of these songs
are written in functional tonality, and scored with close, often unctuously
chromatic, harmonies that recall the glee-club or even barbershop tradi-
tions: some of them are indeed so unambiguously light and tuneful that
they have been successfully arranged and released in Japan as pop songs!!
(although this perhaps says as much about what passes for ‘pop’ in Japan as
it does about Takemitsu’s credibility as a pop musician!). Like his film
music, too — from which some of the songs in Uta derive — these songs
illustrate that from the very earliest years, outside the enclave of advanced
experimentation represented by Takemitsu’s ‘serious’ work, the ‘sea of
 ea
SF a
83 Projections on to a Western mirror | |
Ex. 40 Wind Horse Ill, bar 12

, god Se
-_y._ 2. pu@geriyS* &.Ue aL

A) eT
ey “eee
| ws
s « 7 = ny 2
| owe 4 Ui@nr I al ae.ULUDPULUUULl EN
eeeee| |ee”
4— --_- -¢-—

tonality’ that was to irrupt with such force into the mainstream of his com-
positional activity many years later was already flourishing unashamedly.
And as an artist who professed to make no distinctions between ‘high’ and
‘popular’ culture, Takemitsu clearly saw no incongruity in incorporating
passages written in this more populist style into the ‘modernist’ world of
Wind Horse — thereby unconsciously giving his audience of the 1960s a
foretaste of things to come.
Something of the ‘barbershop’ flavour referred to can be gleaned from
Example 40, from the third movement of the work, scored for men’s voices
alone. Here Takemitsu makes use of a favoured harmonic device, the
global transposition of a single harmony by a given intervallic factor: a
practice which could, in a sense, be considered a minimal version of the
kind of ‘sequential’ repetition of whole passages in transposition already
encountered in works such as Requiem. However, when, as here, the direc-
, tion of harmonic movement is downwards — and especially when the
factor of transposition is a semitone, as between the last two chords — this
kind of harmonic parallelism also strongly recalls the so-called ‘side-
slippings (steppings)’ popular during the last phase of nineteenth-century
tonality. And when such harmonic effects are in addition applied to chords
of tonal origin, such as the six-note diatonic cluster used here, and con-
veyed by the suave timbre of unaccompanied men’s voices, a comparison
with the lubricious uses to which the more decadent of late Romantic
musical genres put this device becomes irresistible.
The tonal ‘centre’ towards which those passages of Wind Horse written
in this vein gravitate is clearly Ab major, as exemplified by Example 41,
- which quotes the beginning of the fourth movement. Here one also
observes that, with the exception of the anacrusis, the pitch-materials are
derived exclusively from a further addition to Takemitsu’s modal vocabu-
lary, the implied heptatonic scale indicated on the uppermost staff. The
 |
84 The music of Toru Takemitsu ,

OE
J\
Ye
fd”
7.4
————
ET Ee DF
| fP @|&
BANS

SAS)
f,
0’
2“. fo
2Lncoo™
>WE
UE)
OF)
*
Ex. 41 Wind Horse IV, bars 1-4

V2 ©g .ee
Nee”

=
> eee
ee EE a
0 2"

A
2

<n
2
Ee
ee
—=
SAR A >> OPO I > EP ee A es |" Pe > 12
fan. WR)
Phe ioiMT. . . 24a)

SE nn > «OE SS SE D> Oe

mt (oy AE
Vl (ee
©0Se 0 Ce
eee
eee
©
~RE,.
1 >
ee
2
ee
A
© eee

ee eee
© "2"
eee
ee
0©

¢
i es ieee
. .@6@64@u36uULLh6W§
SE

<0
LE)
EE
MANSY AE © SE OL © DO DY © ee”eee
a ©
ee
) )
Se
Y Los | Yy Loos
© EE

eeelleee

eee)
Le ee
"©SeWA
>0 eee)
2.
2
es
C
ee
ee
EO
xt] y.
BN.

eeeI ee

eee.
ey
T)
ee
i!gC|ees)

ees eee

eee
ee

Cee
ET’
¢
OG OPeee
es

2 eee
eee)
ee re!2
oe ee

ee4!
Pe AS .__L tt DM £o: @ | OD @ Des @£@. #@€. #|[OPVee @: }#
Nee”
ee

pitch content of the ‘acoustic’ scale encountered briefly in Piano Distanceis

identical with that of a ‘melodic minor’ scale in its ascending form; in
similar fashion, the pitches of this present scale map on to the companion-
piece of the above scale in the harmony textbooks, the rather theoretical
‘harmonic minor’ ([0,1,3,4,6,8,9]). However, although in the present
instance the theoretical parsing of this generative scale would be ‘D} har-
monic minor’, in practice Takemitsu uses this collection here only to give a
certain ‘Spanish-’ or ‘Moorish’-sounding modal piquancy to a passage
| whose tonal centre is unambiguously Ab.
Also of importance, besides the Ab tonality, is the little three-note ana-
crustic figure with which this passage begins. This is actually a reference to
the motif occurring for the first time in bar 3 of what Takemitsu describes
as ‘a lullaby of the Bantu tribe in Africa’ (Ex. 42), a quotation of the South
African song Abiyoyo popularised in the West by the American folk singer
Pete Seeger (1919—). A simple tonal harmonisation of this appears three
times in Wind Horse, on the last occasion serving as the gesture with which
the work ‘fades out’, and this volte-face into a disarming simplicity is
certainly the most flabbergasting stylistic shock in the whole piece. Such
 = a rs
85 Projections on to a Western mirror

f\Pp mpcs |SS

,(SSS
| mSS
*—
Ex. 42 Bantu melody from Wind Horse

SLY AO) YOR A YY KS =“ ROO LS MAO OR WN

SASSY OE ES SR NUNS NN NN OY ELEN SN RON
A bi Yo Yo A bi Yo Yo A bi

| ae a 2’ Se he ee Se ee ee.) Ya
OO eee
SSeS
re
SANS) 20) 2 Ne J ee Ee es.............._____
Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo A bi
WANS 9 SS...“ AE 2 RE TR EE
Yo Yo A bi Yo Yo A bi
SY et eS ee
eS | 9 —_|- ——_ a ——
Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo

gestures as the insistence on an Ab tonic, the incorporation of the lullaby

motif into Example 41, or the rocking thirds in Ab in the previous move-
| ment (where the melody is first introduced) thus play a crucial role in
forging links between the quoted music and Takemitsu’s own, and mitigat-
ing the effect of what would otherwise be an even more abrupt stylistic
| rupture,”
In the sphere of Takemitsu’s concert music, this represented the first
occasion on which the composer was to incorporate such a wholesale bor-
rowing from an external musical source. However, in the less constrained
world of his film music he had already begun to experiment with musical
, quotation at least a couple of years previously. His score for the 1964 film
Nijii-issai no Chichi,'* for instance, makes use of a Schumann piano piece,
No.16 from Album fiir die Jugend, which he used again in his music for
Akogare'* in 1966. Later he was to incorporate a Vivaldi violin concerto
and an Elvis Presley song into a musique concréte collage for the film
Moetsukita Chizu,'° and, much later still, pieces by Josquin des Prés and
Eustache du Caurroy (1549-1609) found their way, in period arrange-
ments, into the score for the film Rikyu.'” As the years passed, his concert
music, too, was to include further examples of direct quotation, all of
86 The music of Toru Takemitsu
which will receive due attention below. But — as in the case of a number of
Takemitsu’s other musical experiments — it was once again in the stylisti-
cally more liberal climate of his work for the cinema that the composer's
first steps in this direction had been taken.

From ‘Lydian Chromatic’ to ‘Dorian Horizor

Further evidence of the degree to which Takemitsu was venturing into new
areas of timbral exploration during these years is afforded by The Dorian
Horizon (1966), whose writing for seventeen solo strings represents a con-
siderable advance in this respect on that of the Requiem or even Le Son
Calligraphié. Here, in addition to the formidable array of ‘Western’
extended techniques — harmonics, glissandi, “Barték’ pizzicati, col legno
battuto, playing behind the bridge, etc. — there are also perhaps one or two
attempts to emulate the sounds of traditional Japanese instrumental
praxis: Akiyama, at any rate, compares the sound of the sustained, senza
vibrato string chords of the opening, and the pizzicati with which their
attacks are emphasised, to those of the sho'® and kakko"’ in the gagaku
ensemble respectively. The work also incorporates a spatial dimension,
and one in which sounds not only reach the listener from a variety of direc-
tions, but also occur at various distances both from the listener and from
each other. Eight solo instruments, referred to as “harmonic pitches’, are
placed in a horseshoe formation towards the front of the stage, while
behind them a further nine soloists — ‘nine echoes’ — are arranged in two
rows of violins and basses respectively; according to the preface in the
score, these two groups ‘are placed between as far as possible [sic]’. This
physical separation has the effect not only of creating a kind of spatial per-
spective, but also of distinguishing the two groups in terms of dynamics:
those of the ‘echo’ group are distorted by distance, so that, as one commen-
tator has observed, ‘the dynamic “forte” has different meanings for each
group’.”° Takemitsu exploits this acoustic phenomenon to great effect, for
example, in the passage immediately preceding the central section, where
the same chord is repeated by the ‘echo’ group at what is technically the
same ffdynamic, but which in reality sounds quite different.
The Dorian Horizon is also the work which most explicitly manifests
Takemitsu’s debt to the harmonic theories of the American jazz composer
George Russell (b. 1923), whose Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal
Organization for Improvisation he had read five years previously. To quote
the composer’s own programme note, the work ‘is based upon the idea of
constructing the twelve notes of the octave out of the diatonic steps of the
tonal Dorian mode, its augmentation (‘Dorian Augment’) and diminu-
87 Projections on to a Western mirror

tion (“Dorian Diminish’), as well as the whole-tone scale’.”! It is the pair of

somewhat mysterious terms in brackets here (which appear in English in
the original) which betray the influence of Russell, even if the latter is
never mentioned by name. Russell’s system is designed to enable jazz
musicians to improvise on chords and their sequences, and places at their
disposal for this purpose a number of basic scales, amongst which are the
‘Lydian’ (i.e. the Lydian mode with sharpened fourth), the ‘Lydian
Augmented’ (the same with the fifth also sharpened) and the ‘Lydian
Diminished’ (a ‘Lydian mode’ with flattened third). Takemitsu, as his own
terminology reveals, has clearly devised his own analogous scales to these
using the Dorian mode as a starting point, adding to them the whole-tone
scale (which also figures in Russell’s system as the ‘Auxiliary Augmented
Scale’). And, just as the jazz improviser may choose to combine the scales
of Russell’s system freely, thereby using all twelve pitch-classes — the
‘Lydian Chromatic Scale’ — so too Takemitsu combines the pitches of his
own modes to generate the total-chromatic, producing a ‘pantonal’ music
which is offered as a ‘humble protest against inorganic serialism’.””
Furthermore, when one takes into account the fact that Russell admits of
, the possibility of both ‘absolute’ and ‘chromatically enhanced’ modal mel-
odies, it becomes clear why Takemitsu felt such a strong affinity with his
system, considering his own long-established precedent of enhancing
modally derived collections with chromatic notes, as well as freely com-
bining them to produce his own highly distinctive harmonic palette.
The bulk of Russell’s theoretical text is concerned with the generation of
_ horizontal melodies over standard, classifiable chord types, with a few
thoughts on harmony appended as an afterthought, and Takemitsu’s com-
position too, as its title indicates, is to a large extent preoccupied with the
horizontal dimension. Although he uses his Dorian materials to generate
vertical harmonies as well, in the outer portions of the work a melodic line
clearly emerges from the uppermost voice of the chord changes or the long
sustained pitches. The basis of this melodic line, despite excursions into
other tonal areas, is clearly Dorian, with a tonal centre — the tonal centre of
the work — on E) or D}, as indicated, for example, by the emphasis that
pitch receives in the passage quoted in Example 43. This type of writing,
incidentally — in which melodic motion is suspended entirely in order to
focus exclusively on timbral colourations of a single pitch — is another
typical Takemitsu gesture. It has its precedents, obviously enough, in
Webern’s passages of monotone Klangfarbenmelodie, but at the same time
it is clearly a practical demonstration of Takemitsu’s aesthetic preference,
already hinted at, for the sound-quality of individual events over the syn-
tactical relationships between them.
 nrg :
88 The music of Toru Takemitsu

|_|
llp=
bs CP
=
“2
W—p___o
ee
en
7 SS rrr
Vn. ——
°
Ex.43 The Dorian Horizon, bars 22-7

a es
ay am
7"§
~———
eePP

| SSS ee
SPPOC
er eRjoSPOP
5?
2h —b¢——— a Sa oe
———— —— ——}-—— cbs a

work that the “Dorian Chromatic’ technique is employed. Like Wind

p-———

As suggested above, however, it is only in the outermost sections of the

Horse, The Dorian Horizonis really two works interleaved into one, and the
middle section of its ABA form in particular — as well as one or two inter-
jections for the ‘echo’ group in the first part — are based to a large extent on
material Takemitsu had written for the film Woman in the Dunes’? two
| years previously. This material, at its first appearance, possesses a strik-
ingly contrasting harmonic character to that of the “Dorian foreground,
further intensifying the spatial separation between the two instrumental
groups: the first entry of the ‘echo’ group, for instance, projects materials
with a ‘stratified’ harmonic make-up in which the uppermost three voices
clearly have a whole-tone basis (Ex. 44). One notes in passing, too, that this
gesture is another version of the type of upwardly mobile ‘anacrusis’ found
in Ex. 6 (p. 34).
Much of the music of the central section of this work still retains ele-
ments pertaining to the specific dramatic purpose for which it was written.
The eerie close-ups of sliding sands which appear in Teshigahara’s film, for
instance, have their musical analogue in the high clusters of glissandi over
89 Projections on to a Western mirror

,———————
‘flag.) LT
Ex.44 The Dorian Horizon, bars 21-3

jum
, ifs con sord__ VIB.
emma (we
, con sord. VIB. LD oem

4 con sord. VIB. a eee

ree ell
, con sord. |
4,_con sord. |
7 ee
pose pe
_gconsord MIB. Mf
== —

slow-moving, chromatic ostinati for the double basses, or the strange,

‘Bartokian night music’ of Example 45, with its weirdly chromatic slidings.
The contrapuntal device used here is a rather “Bartdékian’ one as well,
and a very straightforward one at that: simple canonic imitation at the
unison. In a musical language of such sophistication as Takemitsu’s it is
| perhaps, as Dana Richard Wilson pointed out, ‘surprising when the
obvious device of canon is incorporated,’*4 but such usages were neverthe-
less a consistent feature of his technical apparatus. A further instance, in
fact, occurs immediately prior to the above example (Ex. 46). Here the
‘theme’ subjected to imitative treatment is in itself interesting insomuch as
it consists of a single pitch articulated by the same series of durational
- values at each entry. This construction of a kind of ‘mode de valeurs’ by
multiplication of a basic unit pulse (here the quaver) to build up a ‘rhyth-
mic canon’ once again recalls Messiaen’s example; at the same time,
however, the insistent and dramatic emphasis on the same monotone in
each entry also suggests that category of monorhythmic device that Alban
-_ Berg might well have designated Hauptrhythmus.
 ll sa
ull
Nal| teeny
Gal ai
dull
oa fl
Afi1)wll
Sa "bl

alllAseaai
‘all Quill et
i a NN ui ¥ it ea
all
HM | ( ilni“ Hi
a8
qty ( il |
‘mall! | Sa N “uy
|_|
tbl A; SN) i ly
hNalth|E
= SSeS
Sa |
mfr) aerate
m1 fe
mill Nei INE
UL
mil “We
a A eal
+ ‘| cuulal | tN Ni] aIN iN Faull
&
5 uu | Sa | Il
:&s ca
on ei a Na
SSH
ll)Fall;
: alllel) et
a) all i |
= aH
° “TT th Mart] ASTRA TH TD

3olibest
ile
a tll al
pal |el}oiUT
arth ||
sige "Hep “step “He ae “She
rd } N ) Pa ><j Te) << o)
91 Projections on to a Western mirror

4
yy } my
OO,
i., simile
\S) J EL
Es
S.P. FP =
|Ex. 46 The Dorian Horizon, bars 128-31 |

ee
S.P.

te- e. ee te o——~ete e-2 @

“)fehe ihe ie
0”. CE DY es 2 2 4 ee 2 2 ee ee eee
|fp mie | | #&«xSp
2’ _
4fe ~ —
. fete
aSE
S.P.
~ _ |
eete1ee|_|
_)9_.) =>
“i2 fe.
De eee
NS ES ES SE REE
Sp fe fp fp simile SP
| In the outer sections of The Dorian Horizon, a number of ‘reference’
chords are used with such frequency and consistency that it is almost pos-
sible to speak of composition using free selection from a ‘gamut’ of such
devices. A similar type of construction had also featured in Takemitsu’s
Landscape for string quartet (1960),”? which had additionally used similar
vertical forms to The Dorian Horizon, in which foreign pitches in the bass
form a dissonant relationship to modally derived collections above them.
The manner in which chord changes take place generally in rhythmic
unison in the earlier work, and at a very slow tempo, is also very much like
its later counterpart. However, the typical string writing of the outermost
sections of The Dorian Horizon may also have been influenced by a work by
another composer whose acquaintance Takemitsu had made by this time:
the String Quartet in Four Parts (1949-50) of John Cage. The following
chapter, then, will take as its initial theme the crucial impact Takemitsu
received from his encounter with this particular American master.
 6 ‘Cage shock’ and after |

The unconscious parallels that existed between the ideals and performance
practices of the Jikken Kébé and those of the New York ‘experimental
school’ have already been commented upon. It is, therefore, perhaps no
surprise to learn that as early as ‘shortly after the war’, and via the ‘intellec-
tual antennae’ of two figures intimately associated with the group’s foun-
dation — Shuzo Takiguchi and Kuniharu Akiyama — Takemitsu had already
begun to hear about John Cage’s innovations.' He was to gain more direct
knowledge of the new possibilities the composer had uncovered after
1961, when Toshi Ichiyanagi returned from his nine years of study in the
United States, which had included attendance at Cage’s composition class.
In particular, a performance which Ichiyanagi gave in August of that year,
at the fourth Osaka Contemporary Music Festival, of Cage’s Concert for
Piano and Orchestra, made such a deep impression on Takemitsu that,
thirty-one years later, writing an obituary notice for Cage, he could
comment that ‘T still feel the shock of hearing that piece’.? The works
written under the influence of what Ohtake refers to as this ‘Cage shock’?
form the matter for discussion in the first part of this chapter.

Graphic scores and indeterminacy

Although there is evidence that Takemitsu had absorbed a number of the
American composer’s ideas as early as 1956, it is after Ichiyanagi’s return
from the United States in 1961 that his period of intensest involvement
with the theories of Cage really begins. Indeed, Ichiyanagi himself was
directly involved in Takemitsu’s first experiment with one of Cage’s most
celebrated ‘inventions’, the prepared piano. Takemitsu introduced two
such instruments, played by Ichiyanagi and Yuji Takahashi, into his score
for the 1962 film Otoshiana,’ as well as a third part for harpsichord played
, by himself. Subsequently he was to exploit this newly found instrumental
resource, usually in conjunction with electronic treatment, in a number of
other film scores of the 1960s: for example those of Ansatsu’ (1964),
Kwaidan (1964) and Yotsuya Kwaidan® (1965). And while it is true that the
instrument was never incorporated into any of the composer’s ‘serious’
92 scores, this may have had more to do with the practical problem of the
 93 “Cage shock’ and after
enormous preparation time that such works require when performed in
, the concert room, than with any aesthetic preference.
More dramatic reflections of Cage’s influence than this, however, are felt
| for the first time in Ring (1961). This work has already been referred to in
passing as an exemplar of Takemitsu’s use of serial method, but such a
description gives a very distorted view of the degree to which the musical
materials are determined. For the score of Ring also incorporates two
radical innovations of Cage with which Takemitsu continued to be preoc-
~ cupied in a number of works over the course of the next few years: indeter-
minacy and graphic notation. The notated movements of Ring— of whose
four initials the work’s title forms an acronym — are called “R’ (Retrograde),
‘T (Inversion), ‘N’ (Noise) and ‘G’ (General Theme). The notation of these
movements is not fully determinate, however, in that they are devoid of
| tempo markings or dynamic and interpretative indications, and often use
forms of imprecise rhythmic notation as well. Moreover, the four move-
ments may be played in any order, giving rise to twenty-four possible per-
mutational variants of the cyclic scheme. It will be seen at once that this
indeterminacy of succession militates against any sense of an ongoing
structural logic in which, for example, the “General Theme’ may be taken
as a starting point from which its ‘Retrograde’ and ‘Inverted’ forms are
then derived. Of course, there must have been an order of composition,
and Miyamoto is probably right when he says that the other three move-
ments were composed on the basis of the last.” But in the finished work as
presented there are no real grounds for according ‘primogeniture’ to any of
, the three forms in which the basic material appears. This is a specific
instance of a general observation that can be made about Takemitsu’s
music: the order in which materials appear in the score is rarely a reliable
guideline to the sequence of their evolution from one another. If, for
example, a chord when repeated contains one extra pitch — as in the
example from Distance de Fée already quoted (Ex. 7) — it is equally possible
to consider the earlier chord a ‘filtered’ version of the later, as it is to con-
sider the second a ‘thickened’ version of the first. On such points as these,
in almost every instance, the would-be analyst of Takemitsu’s music is
forced ultimately to concede defeat to an ineluctable ambiguity.
, The indeterminate element in Ring is not confined merely to the free
ordering of the movements, however. Between the four notated move-
ments, the performers are requested to play three interludes, and it is for
| the execution of these that Takemitsu devises his first graphic performance
materials. Each player is equipped with a circular (‘ring’-like) design
which may be read in either clockwise or counter-clockwise sense, and at a
94 The music of Toru Takemitsu

choice of two speeds. The outermost circle of the ‘ring’ prescribes dynam-
ics, within which there are graph-like contours suggesting pitch — the
circumference of the circle here indicating the lowest pitch, and the centre
the highest. Further specialised notations indicate specific playing tech-
niques for each of the three instruments, and with the aid of all of these
indications, the three performers are enabled to realise the same material
in ways that differ totally in each of the three interludes, or indeed, every
time the work is performed. |
There appears also for the first time in Ringa certain theatricalisation of
the performative act, albeit a very discreet one. In yet another reference to
the work’s title — which according to the composer also alludes to Wagner’s
operatic tetralogy — Takemitsu requests that the “flute player should have a
ring which looks very gay’. This ring, however, does not serve merely deco-
rative purposes. In ‘N’, the player is instructed to “knock between the
mouth piece and a joint by ring’, the effect being only one of a whole cata-
logue of ‘extended’ techniques which appear in this ‘noise’ movement: for
example, the terz-guitar is directed to produce an ‘S.D. effect’ and some-
thing called APAGA DOS, while the recurring ‘referential’ chord assigned
to the lute is always accompanied by the performance direction “Tam”. In
Ring, then, the Cage-inspired ‘indeterminate’ elements coexist with a
number of Takemitsu’s other preoccupations from this period: serial
organisation, wholesale retrogression/inversion,. proportional notation,
expansion of timbral possibilities, dramatisation of the performance
gesture.
In the works employing graphic notation which followed this initial
enterprise, however, Takemitsu was to engage more exclusively with this
particular performance tool. A whole spate of such works was to appear
within the relatively short time-span of the years 1962-3, thanks in part to
Takemitsu’s collaboration with the graphic designer Kohei Sugiura
(1932—). Evidently he must have found the circular motif of Ring very
satisfying, too, since similar basic designs are to be found in all these subse-
quent experiments. Thus Corona for pianist(s) and Corona II for string(s)
(both 1962) provide the performer with a number of coloured circular
patterns, printed on cards which may be interlocked by means of incisions
in the first instance, and on transparent sheets which are overlaid on a
white sheet in the second. In Crossing for pianist(s) (1962), a number of
interlocked circles are presented in the form of a folding booklet, while the
score of Arc for Strings (1963) consists of a number of circles or arcs each
containing a small dot like an orbiting satellite.
All these designs are of great visual appeal, and not only have they been
much reproduced as illustrative material in books and articles on the com-
95 “Cage shock’ and after
poser, but — in the case of Corona II, at least — were exhibited in a Tokyo
gallery in March 1963 alongside other graphic scores by Ichiyanagi,
| _ Takahashi and Mayuzumi as works of art in their own right: exactly as
Cage’s own scores had been in New York (and, some might add, exactly in
accord with the Japanese penchant for imitation). Moreover, Takemitsu
was to exploit the potential of some of these scores to generate densely
‘chaotic’ materials by specifying their use as adjuncts to the performance
of two of his grander orchestral statements of the 1960s. The graphics of
Corona II thus enable the string players in the Accumulation II movement
of Coral Island to furnish a backdrop of suitably ‘anarchic’ instrumental
effects, while those of Arc for Strings perform the same function in the
movement entitled Your Love and the Crossing from Arc for piano and
orchestra, with the solo pianist here using the graphics of Crossing for
pianist(s) in order to add a further layer of indeterminate sounds to the
dense overall texture.
Shortly after these experiments, however, one has the sense that
Takemitsu’s interest in a direct, musical realisation of Cage’s ideas is begin-
ning to wane. To be sure, another set of striking visual images — those for
the composer’s ‘event musical’ Blue Aurora for Toshi Ichiyanagi — were to
appear in 1964, and Takemitsu’s catalogue also lists two other ‘happenings’
of this kind which took place in the mid-1960s: the ‘theatre pieces’ Time
Perspective (1964) and Seven Hills Event (1966). There were also to be two
more, comparatively late, ventures into graphic notation: Munari by
Munari for percussion (1969-72), in which Takemitsu was assisted (as he
had been in the production of Crossing) by the Italian designer Bruno
Munari (1907-98); and Seasons, for two or four percussionists plus mag-
netic tape (1970). Beyond this point, however, there were to be no more
such graphically notated, wholly indeterminate works modelled on Cage’s
example. Moreover, the notation of Seasons, with its ‘plus’ and ‘minus’
signs indicating, respectively, ‘accumulation’ and ‘diminution’, and its
directions to “imitate what is being played by the performer in front/on the
right/on the left’ etc., suggests the influence of such Stockhausen works as
Prozession just as much as it does that of any Cage score. In Takemitsu’s
case, then — as in the case of many of his contemporaries, Stockhausen
himself included — it seems that ultimately the “Cage shock’ was to wear off,
and the fascination with coloured shapes and musical origami prove only a
passing phase in the composer’s development. But this abandonment of
_ the practical musical consequences of Cage’s philosophy does not mean
that Takemitsu wholly abandoned his commitment to Cage’s ideas in the
abstract. On the contrary: many of these ideas were to remain essential
tenets of faith for Takemitsu for the remainder of his creative life.
96 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Of particular importance amongst such ideas were: the concept of a plu-

ralistic, many layered, spatialised music; the idea of silence as plenum
rather than vacuum; and the preference for the individual timbre of the
single sound-event over and above the syntactical relationships between
such events which have traditionally formed the discourse of Western
music. There was of course an obvious congruence between some of these
ideas and those which Takemitsu already espoused, or indeed some of the
ideas of traditional Japanese musical aesthetics. Thus Cage’s philosophy of
silence affords close parallels with both Takemitsu’s own ideas about the
‘stream of sound’ and the traditional concept of ma, and his interest in the
individualised sound-phenomenon accords well with the concept of
sawari which — as we shall see in chapter 12 — Takemitsu was to make very
much his own. That there should be this affinity between Cage’s own and
traditional ‘Eastern’ ideas is perhaps hardly surprising, for Cage — as is well
known, and as Takemitsu himself readily acknowledged — was himself
‘influenced through Zen through his encounters with the Zen master
Daisetzu Suzuki.’ Superficially, therefore, the operation of Cage’s
influence on the younger generation of Japanese composers at this time
appears to present another example of that kind of ‘feedback loop’
whereby ‘Eastern’ ideas are reimported from the West to their point of
origin, as had happened half a century earlier with Debussy’s music. Once
again, too, this export—import manoeuvre had the important consequence
of lending the seal of Western endorsement to ideas that were fundamen-
tally ‘Eastern’ in origin, and thereby freeing Japanese composers to explore
aspects of their own tradition without fear that they might be lapsing into
some kind of pre-war nationalistic “Zealotism’. This kind of legitimation
was to have particularly far-reaching consequences in the case of
Takemitsu’s involvement with traditional Japanese music, as the events of
| the subsequent chapter will show.
On the other hand, however, despite the many points of coincidence
between Cage’s and Takemitsu’s artistic philosophies, it should be pointed
out that there were certain crucial differences between them as well.
Probably the most important is that revealed by a very early commentary
of Takemitsu’s on Cage which appeared in the journal Biitsu Hihyo in
1956. Takemitsu’s article certainly suggests that he possessed a remarkable
level of sympathy with Cage’s ideas, despite his relatively isolated situation.
He notes that the use of sounds as vague ‘functions’ is now exhausted, and
that the future task of composers will consist of rehabilitating them to
their ‘pre-artistic’ condition. At the same time, however, he sees the com-
poser’s role as that of one who uses these tones, liberated from dry, forma-
listic ends, in the service of those same purposes which had been the goal
 97 | “Cage shock’ and after

, | of composers at some golden age of the past: an age when ‘composers

| explored the essence of human existence through the emotional world of
sound’, For ‘a true artist is a person who, descending to the bottom of his
inner mineshaft, reveals his own self like a piece of unrefined ore’, since —
to express it more exuberantly still — ‘music is song and song is love’.’
In other words, Takemitsu here compares composition explicitly to a
natural, spontaneous emotional self-expression. Such a conclusion should
indeed hardly occasion any surprise for us, coming as it does from a “Lento
composer’ whose tendency towards a rather melancholy ‘expressionism’
_ hasalready been remarked upon. But it is a conclusion that is diametrically
opposed to Cage’s philosophy of non-intentionality, to his belief that tones
should simply be themselves, not vehicles for personal theories or human
emotions. In this respect, Takemitsu’s musical thinking differs profoundly ,
| from Cage’s; and it may be for this reason that Takemitsu ultimately never
became the ‘experimental’ composer that his explorations of the 1960s
might have led one to expect, but rather ended his days producing music
whose highly personal emotional tone was to be far removed from the
‘Zen-like’ absence of intention in these early graphic experiments.

Consolidation of avant-garde experimentation

As Takemitsu absorbed more and more of the innovations of his Western
contemporaries, his technical vocabulary expanded rapidly, and works
began to appear that have something of the character of ‘compendia’ or
‘thesauruses’ of the avant-garde devices available to a composer of that
time. Often, too, these scores partake somewhat of the nature of the gran-
diose, epic gesture associated with the modernist ascendancy of that
epoch, betraying the date of their composition simply by virtue of their
| sheer bulk and complexity. Coral Island for soprano and orchestra (1962)
is the first example of this newly found confidence in the handling of large-
scale forces and forms.
The work consists of two vocal movements, settings of poems by
Makoto Ooka (1931—) called Poéme I and Poéme II, interleaved between
three purely orchestral pieces called Accumulation I, I and II, and — ina
similar manner to that observed in Uninterrupted Rest and Masque — these
various sections are distinguished from one another partly by means of
differences in texture. Takemitsu divides his orchestral forces into six inde-
pendent groups, and lays out the score of the Accumulation movements in
accordance with this ‘layering’, but in the two Poéme movements the
instruments appear above one another in the score according to the con-
, ventional ordering. These notational differences correspond to differences
98 The music of Toru Takemitsu

in the type of texture the orchestra is being used to project. In the vocal
movements, the various instrumental groups interact freely with one
another, creating freely ‘pointillistic’ textures, Klangfarbenmelodie or even
just conventional ‘ensemble’ accompaniment to the solo voice. In the
Accumulation movements, however, each of the six groups is independent
from one another, and has a clearly defined and consistent textural role.
The strings provide a static harmonic backdrop; the tuned percussion
washes of coruscating tintinnabulation; the brass disjointed, ‘pointillistic’
utterances; and the woodwind quasi-aleatoric, repeated ‘mobile’ passages.
While the orchestral texture in the vocal movements is more unitary,
therefore, in the instrumental sections it consists of a number of spatially
and timbrally defined, independent strata. Takemitsu, whose own pre-
ferred term for this latter type of pluralistic, many-layered treatment of the
orchestral apparatus was ‘pan-focus’,'° appears to have arrived at such tex-
tures partly through a study of Debussy’s orchestral music, which ‘com-
bines several things at the same time. . . two or three, or sometimes four
together ... and this music is also very spatial’."
If Debussy is one of the more distant precursors of Takemitsu’s stratified
orchestral texture here, some aspects of the individual, compartmental-
ised textures contributing to this overall effect derive from more recent
precedents. The use of constellations of freely repeated figures for the
wind, for example — ‘mobiles’ — suggests Berio’s influence, or even perhaps
that of Witold Lutostawski, whose Jeux venétiens had appeared in the pre-
vious year. The sustained string ‘background’, however, which mostly con-
sists of slow-moving cluster formations, may reflect the influence of a
number of other contemporary composers: Xenakis, Penderecki and,
perhaps most obviously, Gyorgy Ligeti. Comparisons with figures such as
these have certainly occurred to other writers on the subject: Heifetz, for
instance, with specific reference to Coral Island, speaks of “wind and per-
cussion sounds’ which ‘accumulate and envelop string sonorities that
softly and gradually develop into dense vertical structures, not unlike the
building-block structures that are typical of Penderecki’s and Ligeti’s
music’.!*
Alongside these references to more recent musical trends, however,
some of the techniques employed by Takemitsu indicate his continuing
‘enslavement’ to the music of Webern. One passage from the score, indeed,
contains perhaps the most directly imitative homage to the Austrian
master to be found in the whole of the composer’s music (Ex. 47).
Webernian influence is also, once again, tangible here in the shape of
Takemitsu’s continuing obsession with retrograde and loosely ‘palin-
dromic’ constructions. These may take the form of local, literal reversals of
99 “Cage shock’ and after
Ex. 47 Comparison between themes from Coral Islandand Webern, op. 6

Webern, Six Pieces op.6, VI, bars 2—5 (harp)

3

0 ES EE DE DE DE ES NT RO, WS ES SE ha

3ee ee3 sn3 es3ee3a

Takemitsu, Coral Island, p. 12, bar 4 (harp)

fd
EECRIEPe-ee3 eee eee RE...
a EE Lae eee| ee
A=e.
a a2“.«1| Lee
A NEE SRR NRT RUNS SN NE ES DS WO LA I De Dsee Lee
| eeeee
I

a ; :
Ex. 48 Local retrograde relationship in Coral Island

A —T a a's
(i) Coral Island, cl. 1, p. 5,bars 2-3

SRY
7.
[E eS
Ca Wk A”
eeRY SY a1,. ee
YY
Y A Ye
\ Ye
EY es
ee
RE WE
RN «
ANS) 2 sy = ee 0. be ee See 2 ee eb, Ge Gee Se ee,

Ab | Lg | :
— ” ==
SS
SR 8 | ES
Cn | YY
OT (ou
) ASr=s-
WRWY
| 0 Ee eS.
a
(ii) Coral Island, cl. 2, bars 1-2

ESS RY EYEa8
C7 1. tn DE
\ W ”SY
ee b,ee
EEee
ee ee Seee ||
ee ee

material of the kind shown in Example 48, where the second clarinet part
is simply the first clarinet part presented in retrograde at transposition T'.
At the same time, there are also global repetitions of whole passages in ret-
rograde throughout the three Accumulation movements, the disposition of
which — as shown in Example 49 — is in itself roughly symmetrical about a
central axis, rendering the whole work in effect loosely ‘palindromic’, or at
least ‘arch-like’.
 100 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 49 Global retrograde relationships in Coral Island

Accumulation 1 Accumulation 2 Accumulation 3

yj Ao 77]
A =p. 1, group 1/p. 38, group 1 B= p. 2, group 3/p. 38, group 3
C = p.4 (fig. 4)/p. 35 (fig. 2) D = p.5, group 1/p. 34, group 1
E = p. 5, group 3/p. 35, group 3 F = p. 16, group 3/p. 20, group 4

The two interpolated vocal settings are also linked by means of the
familiar Takemitsu device of interlocking repetitions of material, and like
, the Accumulation movements reveal a coexistence of technical features
which Takemitsu had acquired during the previous decade, alongside
others of more recent origin. To the former category, for instance, belongs
the soloist’s first utterance, which exposes all eight pitches of the octatonic
collection comprising Messiaen’s Mode II° before appending to them an
extraneous Eb (Ex. 50). Takemitsu’s practice here accords well with a phe-
nomenon that Koozin has identified as a general preference of the com-
poser in the handling of octatonic materials: for example, in bar 7 of the
piano work For Away, the composer first exposes all the pitches of an octa-
tonic collection and then, according to Koozin, ‘veils his octatonic refer-
ence by introducing a pitch foreign to the locally predominant collection,
B°’.'> As Koozin observes elsewhere, such a practice ‘would not have dis-
pleased’ the author of the Technique, who does indeed discuss there ‘the
disguising of a mode through the inclusion of foreign notes’.'* At the same
| time, however, Example 50 is also a clear demonstration on the horizontal
plane of Takemitsu’s long-established practice of enhancing modally
derived collections with ‘chromatic’ additions: a practice which, as we have
seen, on the vertical plane at least, dates right back to the time of Romance.
The author of another harmony ‘textbook’ whose acquaintance
Takemitsu had made more recently may also have had an influence on the
materials of Coral Island. Amongst the family of scales that form the basis
of Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept is the ‘Lydian Diminished’
101 | “Cage shock’ and after

SSS
">
Ex. 50 Coral Island, p. 8, soprano entry

, —thy oo eet
CEASE a a a; cee Lay I
.

ea Ex. 51 Coral Island, Poéme II, bar 30 (marimba)

| wee ye,
Se 2 1 6 De ee
———_ OO

[0,1,3,4,7,8,10], in effect a kind of melodic-minor scale with sharpened

fourth, or major scale with flattened sixth: an inversion of the traditional
‘harmonic minor’ scale, it is analogously known as the ‘harmonic major’ in
jazz theory. Whether in conscious emulation of Russell or otherwise,
| Takemitsu certainly uses the pitches of precisely this scale as a repeated
- marimba upbeat to the melodic phrases of the final lines in Poéme IT (Ex.
51).
These final lines of text, describing the speaker’s metamorphosis into a
‘transparent coral island’, also provide Takemitsu with a pretext for some
hauntingly mysterious ‘crystalline’ orchestration making much use of
celesta and tuned percussion, and referring harmonically for the most part
to the various octatonic transpositions. Furthermore, the construction of
this passage makes interesting use of another of Takemitsu’s favoured
devices, the repetition of a melodic pattern or sequence of harmonies as an
ostinato. In the present instance, a one-bar ostinato for crotales, and
another one-bar repeated pattern for strings, alto flute, celesta and
marimba are superimposed over a two-bar ostinato for the bells, and —
most interestingly of all — a two-bar “basso ostinato’-like pattern in the
lower register (Ex. 52), imparting to the whole something of a ‘chaconne’
character. This last pattern — anticipated earlier in the score at p. 28, bar 1 —
is particularly unusual given how infrequently Takemitsu’s music projects
anything resembling a “bass progression’; the composer once remarked,
indeed, that because he was Japanese, his music was “bottomless’.'> It is
102 The music of Toru Takemitsu

(29 be SE Ex.52 Coral Island, Poéme II, ‘basso ostinato’

SS RE | RS PE a RS Hl 1 CS SE

also interesting on account of its untypical projection of a regular pulse:

Wilson, in fact, has suggested that precisely on this account the appearance
of regularity here may create a sense of ‘arrival’ for the listener,'® bringing
the vocal part of Coral Island to a satisfying climactic conclusion. Beyond
this point, the rough symmetrical organisation already referred to auto-
matically generates a convincing movement towards closure: just as the
texture of Accumulation I gradually increased in density, so now that of
Accumulation ITI gradually attenuates, pointing up the loose ‘palindromic’
scheme by textural means, and finally dissolving the music into that
‘stream of sound’ whence it emerged.
Complex and ‘modern though Coral Island might be, Takemitsu was to
surpass its grandeur in the following year, when he began work on the first
of the scores which would eventually grow into the massive Arc cycle for
piano and orchestra (1963-76). As the dates indicate, this work had an
extended period of gestation. The first and third movements were pre-
miéred by the pianist to whom they were dedicated, Yuji Takahashi, as
early as 1963, and the fourth, Textures, in the following year. But it was not
until 1977, under the direction of Pierre Boulez in New York, and with
Peter Serkin as soloist, that the full cycle of weighty, oversize tomes com-
prising the finished work received their first performance. In this final,
revised form, the work now consisted of six movements: Pile (1963),
Solitude (1966) and Your Love and the Crossing (1963) forming Arc Part I,
and Textures (1964), Reflection (1966) and Coda... Shall begin from the end
(1966) forming Arc Part IT.
Once again, this ambitious avant-garde statement consists of a kind of
inventory of almost all the influences Takemitsu had absorbed to date:
tone-clusters, elements of serial technique and Messiaen’s modal system,
aleatoric writing, Cage-inspired graphic notations, and so on. In this
sense, the aesthetic preoccupations of the work would appear, superficially
at least, to be very much in sympathy with those of Takemitsu’s Western
contemporaries. But what distinguishes the piece from the work of
Takemitsu’s colleagues in the West, and identifies it as the work of a highly
independent creative spirit, is the aesthetic vision in the service of which
this vast technical apparatus is employed — one which is both highly per-
103 “Cage shock’ and after
sonal, and specifically Japanese. For — as the composer made explicit in his
commentaries on this work — various aspects of its formal patterning are
modelled on the layout of a traditional Japanese garden. This was, indeed,
a source of inspiration to which Takemitsu was to turn repeatedly in his
search for specific formal organisations; but it was also one which he was
to interpret in different senses as the years passed. In the present instance,
for example, he envisages the solo pianist as an individual ‘taking a stroll’
through a garden represented by the orchestra, and even apparently incor-
porates into his writing some of the mannerisms of gait of the particular
performer for whom the work was written. ‘In Arc for piano and orchestra,
written in 1963 for Yaji Takahashi as soloist, the stroller is Mr Takahashi.
He has a unique way of walking that resembles limping, which is impor-
tant in this piece.”!”
It would appear that this rather nebulous-sounding metaphorical com-
parison to a garden is actually realised musically with a certain degree of
precision. Unfortunately, Takemitsu’s commentaries on the subject only
go part of the way towards elucidating fully the manner in which his meta-
, phor is translated into sound. His own drawings of an imaginary Japanese
garden, with typical elements such as rocks, trees and grass all in their
place, have been much reproduced by commentators;'® yet despite such
apparent candour, as one writer has noted with respect to his ‘garden’
works in general, ‘to make out clearly what sort of role the spatial layout of
Japanese gardens plays in this series of compositions is a perplexing task’.!°
In the case of Arc, however, it is at least clear that Takemitsu was using the
elements of a Japanese garden as metaphors for various kinds of spatially
and texturally differentiated musics which, in combination, could produce
an overall ‘pan-focal’ texture similar to that found in Coral Island.
_ Moreover, he associates each of these musical elements with its appropri-
ate horticultural equivalent largely by drawing parallels between the ‘time-
cycles’ of the two. :
Some of the musical elements thus analogised are not unlike the textural
types already encountered in Coral Island. Thus densely chromatic webs of
sound for the strings, similar to the ‘clusters’ which had formed the back-
ground to the earlier work, here represent ‘sand’, the timeless, underlying
medium in which the garden exists: Takemitsu, revealingly, applies to
these the rather Xenakis-like description ‘metagalaxy’. ‘Grass’ (and
flowers), whose time-cycle is the shortest of all the elements in the garden,
is represented by ‘mobile’ patterns for two out of the four groups of wind
and percussion instruments in Takemitsu’s unorthodox orchestral
arrangement, similar once again to their counterparts in the earlier work.
Interestingly, Takemitsu’s preferred metaphor for the manner in which the
104 The music of Toru Takemitsu

dissimilar periodicities of the various melodic cycles constituting such a

texture create ever-changing relationships with one another is taken from
the rather unlikely field of molecular chemistry: ‘these varying time-cycles
contain what could be called heterocyclic relationship’.”° Takemitsu con-
ceives the time-cycle of ‘trees’ as similar to that of ‘grass’, but operating
more slowly, and the role of impersonating it is allotted to the other two
groups of wind and percussion instruments. Finally ‘rocks’, the most
immobile element of all, are represented by sustained notes in the lower
strings — although Takemitsu at the same time grants rocks a certain ‘elo-
quence’, portrayed at times by dissonant ‘mobile’ writing for the brass
instruments.
It is in such an orchestral garden as this, then, that Mr Takahashi — and,
vicariously, the listener — take their ‘stroll’: a ‘multiply focussed musical
garden’,*! a conception of the orchestra which differs radically from the
classic Western view of this medium as a single, monolithic instrument.
Takemitsu equates this latter outlook with the unitary perspective of
Western art, in contrast with which, in his own music, several points of
view coexist simultaneously. Once again, the metaphoric usage which
Takemitsu appropriates to describe this is borrowed from a traditional
| Japanese form of artistic expression: ‘by allowing the solo piano to stroll
through the garden with changing viewpoints’, the composer observes,
‘the piece is freed from a set frame and becomes a mobile reminiscent of
the Heian Period [794-1185] handscroll painting’.*? In other words, just as
there is no overall global perspective point from which the onlooker views
| the various scenes of an emaki, but rather a multitude of viewpoints which
constantly shift as the scroll is unfurled, so too as the music of Arc unfolds,
the listener experiences a constant shift of focus between the various ele-
ments contributing to Takemitsu’s stratified textures.
The role of the ‘stroller’ in this metaphorical garden is not entirely a
passive, contemplative one, however. At one or two points in the score, the
decision as to which elements of the sound-garden he wishes to ‘view’ is
left to his own spontaneous choice. Thus in Pile, the aleatoric interven-
tions of the instrumental groups depicting ‘grass’ are cued by signals from
the soloist, enabling him, as Ohtake expresses it, to “choose to see any part
of the grass he desires’.’’ A similar thing also happens at one point in Your
Love and the Crossing, where the pianist gives cues for various solo instru-
mentalists to work through their allotted materials at their own pace.
Akiyama singles out this passage as being of especial interest, inasmuch as
the conductor’s ‘metronomic tempo’ or ‘clock time’, the pianist’s own
tempo and the ‘personal tempi’ of the soloists constitute ‘three kinds of
musical time’ which are superimposed upon one another.” But, as Poirier
 (105 “Cage shock’ and after
has observed, this kind of ‘polyphony of time’”? is prevalent throughout
the score of Arc — is indeed an inevitable consequence of the manner in
which Takemitsu interprets his ‘garden’ schema in terms of differentiated
‘time-cycles’. At another point in the score, for example — Fig. 2 of Textures
—two conductor's ‘clock times’ are superimposed upon one another simul-
| taneously: a tempo of J = 56 is allocated to group 1 of the orchestra, and
| another of J = 84 to group 2. Since these two tempi are in a 2: 3 ratio to one
another, a’, bar in the upper system will be equivalent to a *, bar in the lo-
| wer, and a *, bar to two such °, bars. This allocation of differing tempi, ina
simple geometric ratio to one another, to spatially differentiated instru-
mental groups inevitably recalls the similar relationships between the :
three orchestral groups in Stockhausen’s Gruppen; but, in Takemitsu’s
case, only one conductor appears to be on hand to deal with such complex-
ities!
A further remark in Takemitsu’s commentary on this ‘stroll’ observes |
that ‘the work is in two sections and the direction walked in the first
section is reversed in the second’.”° The reader who has followed the devel-
opment of Takemitsu’s technical obsessions thus far should by now have
no difficulty decoding what this infers in concrete musical terms, and two
movements from the second part of Arc do indeed contain material from
previous movements in retrograde orderings: Textures and the final Coda
(which actually draws these materials, in turn, from the Textures move-
ment). Furthermore the beginning of Coda consists of a reworking of
materials from Solitude, further enhancing the sense of a ‘return home’.
And, in the context of Arc, this arrival back home can mean only one thing:
the return of a recurrent, languorous melodic idea that appears intermit-
tently throughout the work, aptly referred to by Funayama as ‘the
Leitmotiv of Arc, what should perhaps be called its principal theme, a
Romantic melody’.’’ In the context of the ‘high modernism’ which Arc
appears, superficially at least, to proclaim, such an incursion might strike
the listener as an incongruity, something of an anachronistic throwback;
but, as subsequent events were to demonstrate, it is actually at the same
time a prophetic pointer towards a future beyond the ‘avant-gardism’ with
which Takemitsu is presently preoccupied.
‘Mr Takahashi’ was to take a stroll through another of Takemitsu’s
gardens later in the 1960s, as soloist in the composer’s Asterism for piano
| and orchestra (1967). This work takes its title from one of the obscurer
entries in the English lexicon: the word ‘asterism’ may refer (among other
things) either to a ‘group of stars’ or ‘constellation’, or to a printer’s mark
consisting of ‘three asterisks (°," or," , ) placed before a passage to direct
_ attention to it’. The former meaning identifies the work clearly as the first
106 The music of Toru Takemitsu

member of Takemitsu’s ‘star’ series — to which he would later add several

other titles, such as Cassiopeia, Gémeaux, Star-Isle and Orion and Pleiades.
The second meaning, however, perhaps suggests a translation of the pat-
terns of stellar phenomena into visual groupings on the page — a kind of
Augenmusik. Certainly the percussion part of the later Cassiopeia is full of
, W- and M-shapes suggesting the layout of the stars in the eponymous con-
stellation. While a similar correlation between visual configurations in the
Asterism score and those of the star patterns Takemitsu describes is less
easy to identify, it is perhaps possible that the contour of the triplet theme
with which the work opens is intended to echo the 4-shape suggested by
the second of the above typographical figures. At any rate, there are pas-
sages in Asterism which are incontrovertibly visually conceived, such as
the symmetrical ‘horseshoe’-shape created by the entry of the violin parts
at letter “D’, and writing of this kind in general suggests that, although by
this stage Takemitsu has almost abandoned his interest in graphic scores,
the refined visual sense that is revealed by those scores is still operative in a
more orthodox notational context. It also suggests the lingering influence
of Cage. On the occasion of Cage’s second actual visit to Japan, which took
place in 1964, one of the works which Takemitsu heard when he travelled
with him to the Sapporo Contemporary Music Festival was Atlas
Eclipticalis (1961). This is the work which maps stellar configurations
from an atlas of the heavens directly on to notations provided as perfor-
mance materials, and it is scarcely conceivable that this audacious plan
could not have had some impact on Takemitsu’s own exploitation of astro-
nomical phenomena as visual stimuli in such works as Asterism and
Casstopeia.
Though rather shorter than Arc, and scored for an almost convention-
ally seated orchestra, Asterism is no less of a grand modernist statement.
Indeed it shares many of the same preoccupations as the earlier work:
there are, for example, sections that are repeated in retrograde, densely
chromatic passages in ‘tone cluster’ style, and passages of senza misura
‘mobile’ writing. There are even literal recyclings of materials from Arc:
the mobiles for brass representing ‘rocks’ in the dense climax of Your Love
and the Crossing reappear at Fig. F of Asterism, while the background
harmony of the former passage — together with the opening chord of Pile —
yields harmonic materials for the lower strings at Fig. E of the later work.
Perhaps the respect in which Asterism differs most markedly from Arc,
however, is in its overall structure. Takemitsu here abandons his preferred
cyclical forms for a kind of dramatic one-way propulsion towards total
orchestral self-annihilation, followed by a brief coda: the work, as Ohtake
puts it, is ‘structured to have one long crescendo’.*® What Roger Dettmer,
107 “Cage shock’ and after

.i :
Ex. 53 Asterism, letter ‘D’ (vln)

te
_phibtise
fl ~.
—F——————————

in his sleeve notes for the original RCA recording,” describes as the
‘anguishing, ultimately ecstatic climax’ of this crescendo is a kind of shat-
teringly intense band of ‘white noise’ for full orchestra, built up like the
textures of Arc from the superimposition of various strata: an accumula-
tion of ‘mobile’ patterns, sustained tremolando harmonies for the strings
and a massive percussion crescendo which finally engulfs the entire
ensemble. ,
Harmonically this passage is of course chromatically saturated, or
| rather indeed ‘super-saturated’, with several pitches doubled at the octave.
As such it is once again typical of the ‘modernist’ excursions of this period;
Y6ko Narazaki even goes so far as to speak of a “ “tone cluster” technique
employed in such works as Textures, November Steps, etc.’°° Closer exam-
ination of the various strata combining to produce this ‘panchromatic’
texture, however, reveals that they are not always themselves as ‘atonally’
conceived as the overall effect might suggest. For example, one of the first
layers to be presented as Takemitsu builds up his climactic texture incre-
mentally is the chord for violins at Fig. D, quoted in Example 53.
To be sure, this chord contains all twelve pitch-classes; yet a moment’s
consideration reveals that it does not consist of just an arbitrary jumble of
notes. As the layout of the example emphasises, it is clearly the result of the
superimposition of two hexachords — analogue, on this microcosmic level,
to the macrocosmic superimposition of strata from which the texture is
built up at this point. Furthermore, each of these hexachords is the chro-
matic complement of the other, and each the inversion of the other.
Finally, the pitch-class sets of the two hexachords, [0,2,3,5,7,9] in prime
and inverted form, are both segments of the diatonic major or ‘acoustic’
108 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 54 Asterism, bar 12 (harps)

P.O. 3 P.O. 5
Sp SS 5 SS
Se ee cn
mf S table P ——___ mf
oT
Cy)

PP fi _
|

scales. In other words, although the collection may have the global effect of
a ‘panchromatic’ cluster, its harmonic basis is obviously the superimposi-
tion of modal forms — another example of the kind of ‘pantonal’ writing
that Takemitsu presented in the previous year as his ‘humble protest
against serialism’ in The Dorian Horizon.
In fact, despite its often highly dissonant and ‘atonal’ surface, much of
the harmonic material of Asterism is modally derived in this way. Layers in
the richly chromatic texture prove, on closer inspection, to derive from the
gamut of scalar types which Takemitsu had acquired by now, and in addi-
tion to ‘absolute’ modal types such as the two constituents of the above
chord, Takemitsu also makes great play in this score with his favourite
‘chromatically enhanced’ modal collection, the “whole-tone+1’ form (‘7-
33’). By this stage, the discovery that the strings of the harp could be tuned
to project this collection as a chord or even a glissando was evidently very
much to the composer’s liking, as Example 54 shows. Here two such collec-
tions, one for each harp, are superimposed upon one another: thus, once
again, the total-chromatic is derived by means of the simultaneous projec-
tion of modally derived forms. |
In the closing pages of Asterism, this underlying modalism emerges
clearly into the foreground, and, in particular, the pitch-class G#/Ab is
revealed as the work’s ultimate tonal destination. Emphasis on this partic-
ular pitch-class can be found as early as bar 81, where it forms the upper-
most pitch of a repeated two-chord gesture for wind, and the same pitch is
 2)

2’
FSa.\
dS
2.22)
LA AL

2
/oNE
aMSS
2
|.
109 “Cage shock’ and after

ee > |
Ex.55 Asterism, ‘G’/7—-8

Le.y/
ee os
eee Ve
- | PoN
AOon0mn———.

-
LK
et aennn ee
>> |eee
| eee ESET,
Seee
F

lL“
asEE
jo
oA . 4 :
eee ss

eee
—
nnn
7.”

, sf
SEL
-_
eee
2 Ean
\ 4
—_
f
eee
—_,
O°
ee
a |
MNS 20 1) eee 1... eee, 4 Ee) ee eee eee
; " —_
4,
reeee
ere
eee
=

. | atl

repeatedly re-emphasised over the course of succeeding pages. It is after

the work’s multi-layered, chromatic climax, however, that this pitch-class ,
really begins to enjoy spotlit status in the musical drama. After the orches-
tral cataclysm, the music subsides to a sustained string harmony of which
G# forms the uppermost pitch. Then, in a gesture which is highly typical of
the composer, this same pitch is echoed by the solo piano, and thenceforth
| until the final G# attack for piano and harps is almost never absent from
the musical texture. Furthermore, when one considers the effect of the
piano passage quoted in Example 55, with its G#-minor triad and pitch-
materials confined to a six-note diatonic mode centred on that note, it is
hard to dispute that this constant emphasis is designed to bestow upon this
note the qualities of a convincing tonic. Akiyama suggests that the empha-
sis on this particular pitch might even represent an example of Takemitsu’s
direct transliteration of Roman letters into their equivalent musical note-
names: ‘G# = Ab... is this sounding of the ‘As’ [i.e. German Ab] of Asterism
the solution to the riddle?’>!
While Asterism represents another summation of the technical devices
Takemitsu had learned from the West, however, by the time it was written
he had already composed the work that represents his most famous and
direct confrontation with his own native Japanese tradition. It is to the
, steps leading to this confrontation that consideration must next be given.
 7 Projections on to an Eastern mirror

Of all the effects the encounter with Cage had upon Takemitsu’s musical
thinking, perhaps the most significant was that of reconciling him at last to
his own native musical tradition. As we have seen, Takemitsu claimed that
at the outset he had ‘struggled to avoid being “Japanese”, to avoid
“Japanese” qualities’; now, however, ‘largely through my contact with John
Cage’ he was able ‘to recognise the value of my own tradition’.! But despite
these claims it is clear that Takemitsu had already become deeply interested
in traditional Japanese music before Cage’s appearance on the scene. In
particular, a passage in Mirror of Tree, Mirror of Grass describes the
moment in which he first recognised the intrinsic qualities of his own
music in similarly epiphanic terms to those he used to describe his
encounter with the music of Lucienne Boyer some years previously: ‘It was
ten years after I began studying music that I received a strong shock from a
bunraku* performance. It was then that I became aware of Japan for the
first time. In fact I saw Japan represented as distinct from myself, and
acknowledged it as entirely different.”°
Takemitsu does not give an exact date for this revelation: Miyamoto sup-
poses it to have occurred around 1958,* which was certainly ‘ten years after’
Takemitsu “began studying music’ in the official sense of taking lessons
with Kiyose. At all events, Takemitsu’s ‘Japanese shock’ clearly predated his
‘Cage shock’ by a number of years, and as we have already seen, specifically
‘Japanese’ musical ideas are referred to in Takemitsu’s programme notes at
least as early as his references to the ‘one by one’ rhythm of Requiem (1957)
or to the no theatre in Masque (1959). Moreover, it was not long before
these borrowings on a ‘philosophical’ level were supplemented by actual
use of Japanese traditional instruments, and once again it was incidental
music that provided the laboratory for Takemitsu’s first experiments.
Indeed, given the care he exercised to match the style of his incidental
music to the content of each individual commission, it was almost inevita-
ble that Takemitsu should end up using traditional Japanese instruments
such as the chikuzenbiwa’ and koto for a documentary on Japanese kimono,
Nihon no Monyo (‘Japanese Crest Patterns’), which the NHK produced in
| 1961. This initial venture was to be followed by similar ‘anecdotal’ uses of
traditional Japanese music in the films Seppuku® and Kwaidan, and in 1966
110 Takemitsu went a stage further, blending such traditional instruments as

f
111 Projections on to an Eastern mirror

shakuhachi, shinobue’ and ryiteki® with the Western symphony orchestra

in his music for the period television drama series Minamoto Yoshitsune.
Such experiments as these were soon to find their echo in Takemitsu’s
work for the concert hall. Eclipse for biwa and shakuhachi appeared in
1966, and in the following year Takemitsu combined the same two instru-
ments with symphony orchestra in what has since become one of his most
celebrated works: November Steps, commissioned to commemorate the
125' anniversary of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. This piece
occupies perhaps an even more important position in the history of
| Takemitsu’s Western reception than does Requiem for Strings: recorded the
following year by Seiji Ozawa and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, it was
released as the fourth side of an LP recording of Messiaen’s Turangalila
Symphony, thus guaranteeing Takemitsu’s work such a worldwide distri-
bution that, even today, it remains for many Western listeners the piece by
which he is best known. Unfortunately, this has perhaps also had the dele-
terious effect of creating the impression that the composer’s career was
dominated by the attempt to create some sort of ‘bridge’ between tradi-
tional Japanese instrumental praxis and Western symphonic music. In
reality, however, there are relatively few further works in the composer’s
catalogue that employ traditional instruments. It is true that another work
—. for biwa, shakuhachi and orchestra, Autumn, and a work for three biwa,
Voyage, both appeared in 1973; and that Takemitsu was to employ another
traditional Japanese instrument, the shod,’ with solo oboe in Distance
(1972) and with orchestra in Ceremonial —An Autumn Ode (1992). He was
also commissioned to write a work for full-scale gagaku orchestra, In an
Autumn Garden, the final version of which appeared in 1979. But, these
instances apart, this form of literal and concrete incorporation of tradi-
tional Japanese music was a kind of assimilation in which, after November
Steps, Takemitsu was to show almost no further interest.!°
Miyamoto takes this abandonment of traditional Japanese instruments
to indicate that the composer had finally concluded that ‘it made no sense
to unite Japanese music with European’,!! but my own view differs slightly.
While acknowledging that the composer showed very little further interest
in the direct importation of Japanese music into a Western context, I
believe that there is nevertheless another sense in which Japanese music
continued to exert a profound influence on the composer’s thinking
throughout the remainder of his creative life. Just as Takemitsu soon aban-
doned his interest in musical graphics and prepared pianos, yet still
remained indebted to Cage’s thought on a theoretical and ideational level,
so even after abandoning his interest in writing for the shakuhachi, he was
still strongly influenced by the aesthetics of traditional Japanese music.
112 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Indeed, as was noted in the last chapter, there were a number of points of
contact between the two aesthetic ideologies, and it is perhaps in this sense
that Cage, after all, can be seen as the person who ‘reconciled’ Takemitsu to
his own native music — even if he arrived sometime after the latter had
already begun to take an active interest in it. For not only did Cage’s appro-
bation lend what Wilson describes as the ‘stamp of Western legitimacy’””
to tendencies that were already taking place; by identifying the common
preoccupations of traditional Japanese and his own, contemporary
Western aesthetics, Cage handed Takemitsu a tool for investigating his
own tradition on a profounder and, ultimately, more fruitful level than the
mere appropriation of ‘exotic’ instruments. And, as we shall see in the final
chapter of this book, it was upon this level that, ultimately, Takemitsu was
eventually to achieve the most successful integration of “Eastern” and
‘Western’ elements of any Japanese composer to date.

The road to November Steps

Problematic for Takemitsu, as a result of this decision to work with tradi-
tional instrumentalists, was the necessity of devising an adequate nota-
tion, and an insight into one of his earliest responses to this question can
be gathered from a study of his first work for the concert room using tradi-
tional resources: Eclipse for biwa and shakuhachi. Written in 1966, a few
years after the bulk of Takemitsu’s graphic experiments, the score looks
superficially like a throwback to his “Cage shock’ period, but in fact these
symbols are an eminently practical response to the problem of notating
the sounds produced by these instruments, and have fairly precise pre-
scriptive significances. The notation for the biwa is reminiscent of the ‘tab-
lature’ method of transcription associated particularly with music for the
biwa’s distant Western cousin, the lute. In other words, the physical actions
required for performance, rather than the sounding result, are the object
of graphic representation, and the score is thus able to render pitches and
articulative methods with considerable fidelity, although the rhythmic
aspect of the music is much less rigidly prescribed. The performance mate-
rials provided for the shakuhachi, on the other hand, are rather less precise.
Here an upper system with symbols indicating pitch contours on a purely
relative, ‘more than/less than’ basis, is placed above various signs asso-
ciated with idiomatic instrumental effects; again, there are no specific
rhythmic indications. Practical as both these systems of notation are,
however, obviously neither is rigidly determinate, and much of the success
or otherwise of the performance depends on the performers’ skill in
breathing life into them. In this respect, the close association of this work
 113 Projections on to an Eastern mirror

with two particular exponents of biwa and shakuhachi — respectively

| Kinshi Tsuruta and Katsuya Yokoyama — has been of particular impor-
tance in ensuring the work’s successful realisation.
The same performers have also been the regular executants of the solo
, parts in November Steps, and in many ways the notations employed in
| Eclipse can be seen as a preparatory exercise for those used in the later
score: at any rate, the same notational conventions are used for the unac-
companied cadenza for the two instruments towards its close. Elsewhere in
this score, however, Takemitsu must evidently have realised that this form
of notation might be impenetrable to anyone but the soloists themselves,
including the conductor. For those sections of the solo parts in which some
form of minimum co-ordination between soloists and ensemble is
expected, therefore, Takemitsu employs a notational system of more
| familiar aspect to Western readers: although there are no barlines, and
rhythmic values are ‘proportionately’ notated, pitches are given in staff
‘notation as equi-tempered approximations, with a few microtonal
inflections, and some special signs for idiomatic instrumental practice.
Though most dramatically manifested in its choice of instrumental
soloists, the ‘Japanese’ input into November Steps is not confined solely to
this most conspicuous feature. It is also to be found, for example, at the
level of overall formal organisation, and, in this respect, Takemitsu’s
English title is revealingly ambiguous. On the one hand, it is meant to be
understood in the purely straightforward sense that any English speaker
would attribute to it; as the composer put it, ‘It was performed in
_ November, and to me that project represented a new step: thus, I titled the
| work “November Steps”’.'? It was to this everyday, prosaic sense of the
: words that Takemitsu was referring when he used the Japanese translation
Jiichigatsu no Kaiteias the title for a 1971 essay on the work.'* On the other
hand, an alternative rendering of ‘November Steps’ into Japanese might be
Jiiichigatsu no Dan, and in this case the word chosen as equivalent to ‘step’
(dan) is one that has precise technical meanings in Japanese traditional
music. To borrow Eta Harich-Schneider’s definition, “The term dan is used
... for the scenes of nd plays; it is also a musical term and means the sec-
tions in ballads’.'°
, Works comprising several such dan are referred to as danmono (‘matters
in steps’), and one of the most celebrated of these is a work from the koto
repertory called Rokudan (‘Six Steps’). Since ‘November’ in Japanese is ‘the
eleventh month’ (juichigatsu), Takemitsu’s title can be understood as an
echo of this famous precedent, but one in which the number of formal sec-
_ tions has been increased to correspond to the ordinal number of the
month in which it was performed. It is to this sense of the title that
114 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Takemitsu is referring when he notes: ‘In Japanese music, danmono are the
equivalent of Western variations, and the word dan means “step”. My
“November Steps” are a set of eleven variations.’!®
Despite the apparent candour with which Takemitsu describes his
formal pattern, however, to determine conclusively how these eleven sec-
tions map on to the actual score is — to borrow Funayama’s phrase from the
previous chapter — ‘a perplexing task’. While Takemitsu himself sugges-
tively provides eleven rehearsal numbers, the only commentator I have
come across who has attempted a definitive eleven-fold segmentation of
the structure — Kuniharu Akiyama — deviates slightly from the obvious
interpretation implied by these markings. Although he acknowledges an
identity between ‘steps’ 3 to 11 and the corresponding rehearsal numbers,
Akiyama labels the twenty-four-bar introduction ‘dan 1’, and conse-
quently has to locate the beginning of the second dan after this introduc-
tion, at precisely the point where Takemitsu’s rehearsal number 1
appears.!” Similarly, the description of the soloists’ unaccompanied
cadenza as the work’s ‘tenth step’ when it was issued independently on a
CD recording'® again suggests a slightly different segmentation from that
implied by the rehearsal numbers, since the tenth of these actually appears
in the orchestral passage four bars before the cadenza begins. Perhaps the
most that one can assert with any certainty, then, is that the work — as
Ohtake cautiously expresses it — consists of ‘eleven ambiguously separated
sections’.!?
The orchestral apparatus Takemitsu employs to project this eleven-fold
structure is unorthodox both in its selection and its spatial distribution:
with the two soloists occupying the foreground, two similarly formed and
symmetrical groups of strings and percussion are placed to left and right of
the stage, with a small number of trumpets, trombones, oboes and clari-
nets occupying the rear. Takemitsu takes advantage of this spatial layout at
one point to furnish a new means of transforming repeated materials:
when the material of bars 2-5 reappears at bars 40-3, in addition to
making certain other changes, Takemitsu swaps over the ‘left’ and ‘right’
sides of his ‘stereo picture’. In passing, one also notes that the formal
layout of the work honours another fairly consistent ‘rule’ of Takemitsu’s
formal construction, and one that has analogues in the Western ‘Classical’
tradition: as in Distance de Fée, the placing of the instrumental cadenza isa
sign that the closing gesture is imminent. Edward Smaldone has also
drawn attention to this point, noting that in both November Steps and
Autumn ‘there are elaborate cadenza passages for both shakuhachi and
biwa which seem to serve as the dramatic goal of the entire composition,
followed by a closing orchestral statement’.”°
 (OS
(i) (ii)
115 Projections on to an Eastern mirror

Ex. 56 November Steps, brass chords at: (i) bar 32 (11) bar 61

non vib. .P Ppp

— oo SS
, Pp ppp
‘eo O00 @2o.0W st 8
non vib.

To the many Western listeners who encountered Takemitsu’s music for

the first time in the shape of this particular work, its harmonic abrasive-
ness and fragmented textures must have seemed very much in accord with
the aesthetics of the composer’s European and American avant-garde con-
temporaries. Closer reading of the score, however, reveals that this appar-
ently ‘freely chromatic’ surface is — once again — largely generated by the
juxtaposition and superimposition of harmonic structures which in
themselves have a modal basis: the work is by and large ‘pan-tonal’ rather
_ than ‘a-tonal’. Embedded in the overall chromatic texture at two points in
the score, for example, is a harmonic form which was to become some-
thing of a trademark sonority in the works of the composer’s later years —
the complete verticalisation of all five pitches of the pentatonic scale repre-
sented by the black notes of the piano, [0,2,4,7,9] (Ex. 56). Inappropriate
as these commonplace harmonic devices might seem in the context of the
work’s avant-garde abrasiveness, Takemitsu here absorbs them into the
music’s overall sound-world without the least feeling of incongruity.
But at the opposite extreme from such harmonic simplicities, there are
other passages in the score employing densely chromatic aggregates, or
even intervals smaller than the semitone. In bar 54, for instance, the violas
present a cluster built up from ten conjunct quarter-tones filling the space
between Gb? and a Bb’ raised by a quarter-tone. This particular manner of
employing microtones simply as denser infillings of chromatic space,
which recalls the preoccupations of Xenakis or the Polish school, is of
 116 The music of Toru Takemitsu

course contemporary and Western in origin, and it is entirely appropriate

that its use in November Steps should be confined to the passages written
for symphony orchestra. But by contrast, the microtonal ‘bendings’ of
| pitch in the two solo parts clearly relate rather to the idiomatic perfor-
mance practices of traditional Japanese music, and thus suggest once again
that Takemitsu is exploring a common ground between contemporary
Western and ancient Japanese instrumental praxis; the order of events in
the score, in which the microtones appear in the orchestral part only after
their use by the soloists, as if the result of an ‘influence’ by the latter, is at
least suggestiveofasmuch.
For the most part, however, in November Steps the worlds of ‘East’ and
‘West’ resolutely proclaim their separateness. Far from attempting a fusion
of the two cultures, Takemitsu has explicitly stated that in this work he
‘resolved to blend some intrinsically mismatched instruments in one
ensemble so as to reveal, to the extent I could, their underlying
differences’.*! The work in fact consists, as Poirier has observed, almost
entirely of ‘sections allocated alternately to the traditional instruments
and to the orchestra’,”* with very few passages in which the two are heard
simultaneously. The points of contact which Takemitsu does manage to
forge between what would otherwise be two independent works per-
formed simultaneously, therefore, assume crucial importance.
One such form of communication between the two cultures consists of
the relationships Takemitsu establishes in the realm of timbre. Wilson, for
instance, notes that the harp, plucked pres de la table, might sound like a
, biwa, thus creating an ‘aural bridge’ between the two traditions here repre-
sented.”* One might extend this idea further to encompass other sonorous
approximations of this kind. For example, in the key to notational conven-
tions at the beginning of the score, the harpist is instructed in one instance
to ‘make a quick and powerful glissando on the string with a coin in the
direction shown by the arrow’, while the biwa player is required by another,
visually similar, symbol to ‘rub the designated string lightly from top to
bottom with the point of the plectrum’, and both players are requested to
strike the bodies of their instruments with parts of the hand in various
ways. Other such instances of timbral resemblance are the brief pedal glis-
sando for harp in bar 22, with its suggestion of the microtonal ‘bendings’ of
pitch by the soloists which soon follow; the manner in which the first
harp’s inwardly folding arpeggio here anticipates the biwa’s sharply
attacked chords; and the way in which the various effects obtained from
gongs and tam-tams with wood and metal beaters (not to mention the
‘Bart6k’ pizzicati for cellos) suggest the typical ‘slap’ gestures of the biwa
idiom. Such concrete, individualised examples of East-West contact on the
 117 Projections on to an Eastern mirror

level of timbre neatly symbolise in nuce the broad philosophical overlap

which Takemitsu discovered between the two traditions in this area, to
which more attention will be given in the concluding chapter of this work.
A second point of contact between soloists and orchestra is effected by
means of a favourite device of Takemitsu’s: the linking of sections by
means of a pitch (or pitches) common to the end of one passage and the
beginning of the next. Emphasis on specific pitch-classes, either in the
, form of sustained pedal points, or as reiterated notes, is a common feature
_ of November Steps; Wilson has noted that such ‘emphasis and repetition of
a single pitch provide a pitch focus amidst the array of complex string tex-
tures’,*4 and draws particular attention to the sustained ‘F’ with which the
work opens, which according to him recurs ‘thematically’ elsewhere in the
piece. Edward Smaldone takes the same argument a stage further, linking
, all such highlighted pitches throughout the work to yield a kind of
Schenkerian Urlinie, ‘a precious few pitches which guide our ear along a
large arch’.*? While one cannot easily agree with this rather sweeping con-
clusion of Smaldone’s, one observation of his with regard to a specific pair
of such nuclear pitches does seem incontrovertibly accurate. In bar 21 of
November Steps, two double basses enter with a long pedal Db in harmon-
ics, joined later by two more basses sustaining the pitch Eb; and after the
ensuing silence ‘the shakuhachi enters on D and E, making a strong sonic
connection with the orchestral passage’.*° One might make the further
observation that the adjacent, semitonally dissonant pitches — the C#’s and
D#’s — with which the preceding double pedal is periodically ‘smudged’,
are perhaps intended to prefigure the wavering intonation, the microto-
nally inflected vibrato (tate-yuri), of the ensuing shakuhachi entry. If this
interpretation is correct, then the aural link forged by the use of common
, pitches also relates to the attempt to find an approximation for Japanese
intonational practices by the use of semitone dissonances within the equi-
tempered system: a preoccupation which, we have seen, goes right back to
the time of the composer’s early Romance.
November Steps has a “companion piece’ in the shape of the orchestral
work Green, originally entitled November Steps II - Takemitsu’s new name
for the work reflecting ‘the foliation of spring as he composed the two
November Steps of buds into young leaves’.”” In contrast to the austere,
| avant-garde complexities of November Steps, however, Green for the most
part presents a simplified and more luxurious harmonic and textural
surface that recalls instead the music of Messiaen or even Debussy. Indeed,
Takemitsu revealed that he took the scores of both the Prélude a ‘L’Aprés-
midi dun faune’ and Jeux to the mountain villa where both works were
composed, ‘from a wish to enter into the secrets of Debussy’s music, which
118 The music of Toéru Takemitsu

never ceases to assert a strong influence on my music’,”® and this

Debussyan influence is certainly palpable as far as the score of Green is
concerned. In particular, such details as the prominent use of antique
cymbals, the inverted pedal point in octaves for strings just before Figure 2,
the pedal Bb at Figure 11 (at the same pitch as its celebrated counterpart at
the opening of Jeux), and the ‘layered’ scoring of Figure 2, bar 2, with its
bowed tremolando harmonies and inner parts of cascading woodwind
figures — all point to Takemitsu’s exhaustive study of the ‘secrets’ of the
French composer’s orchestral palette.
In Green, too, the modalism which, as we have seen, lies behind so much
of November Steps harmonic construction emerges more clearly into the
foreground. This ‘emergence’ is in fact not merely metaphorical, but in
one instance at least literal as well. As the original title of Green suggests,
the work is related ‘thematically’ to November Steps, as can most clearly be
- seen by comparing bar 12 of the latter work with Figure 7, bar 1 of the
former (Ex. 57).
, It is immediately apparent from this juxtaposition that the passage
quoted from Green is essentially a reworking of the November Steps passage
a whole-tone lower. The relationship between the two works does not end
here, though. Specifically, the material given to the violas in the November
Steps example, and to the second violins and violas in that from Green,
abstracted from this many-layered context, acquires an important and
independent thematic significance throughout the score of the latter. It is,
however, transformed during the course of the work, and by means of
another of Takemitsu’s standard devices for departing from literal repeti-
tion: the ‘reharmonisation’ of what is essentially the same uppermost
melodic voice. These transformations can perhaps best be understood by
examining them in reverse order to that in which they actually appear in
the score of Green. Shortly before the above appearance, for example, at
Figure 6, bar 2, the material appears in the form shown in Example 58:
augmented rhythmically, and ‘harmonised’ in a manner closer to the form
in which it appeared in November Steps (each chord now consisting of a
transposition of its equivalent in the latter work, plus one added pitch).
A little while before this, there is another appearance of the same basic
| idea, albeit with slight modifications to the harmony. This time, however,
the fourth and fifth chords are transposed down one octave (rather than
two), imparting a highly distinctive melodic profile to the uppermost
voice (Ex. 59).
And it is this reshaped melodic contour, supported now by a completely
different set of accompanying harmonies, that provides the opening the-
matic statement of the entire work (Ex. 60 —the melodic line is in the third
119 Projections on to an Eastern mirror

a ~ i
—_—s ~-4 og
Bice ase SS
Ex. 57 Comparison of November Steps, bar 12 with Green, 7/1

pete bh
2 —————————— |

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 120 The music of Téru Takemitsu

TNA C.-T
Ex.58 Green, 6/2

(O95 or ooo eT a) Eo OT
fsb p
| —— <> - =
ANS 2 A 0 ks a a
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121 Projections on to an Eastern mirror

f\ eee
Ex. 60 Green, bar 1 |

nos. 1-6 AOS tra tt —_ t-te

(div.) : | : . : e s s *
| p —— |
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staff down). Thus the lyrical, suavely harmonised opening idea of Green
| derives ultimately from one layer in the densely ‘pantonal’ web of Example
57: the modalism secreted in the complex texture of the November Steps
passage is literally brought to the surface, manifesting itself clearly to the
listener on both horizontal and vertical levels.
I have described this process of transformation as if it were clear that the
composer's starting point was the material derived from November Steps
which, in the context of Green, gave rise to these new variant forms. In
reality, of course, no such unambiguous interpretation is possible, and it is
equally feasible to consider that the Green material came first, and that one
of its variant forms came to be incorporated into November Steps as the
result of the wholesale lifting of one bar. As both works were composed in
the same period, the composer’s dating gives no hint of which interpreta-
| tion of the sequence of events is correct. In the case of another borrowing
in Green, however, there are more certain grounds for preferring one
version of the material as the ‘original’ and the other as the ‘quotation’. The
passage in question is that quoted in Example 61, which is essentially a re-
scoring of Figure G, bars 7-8 of Réflexion, part of Takemitsu’s gigantic Arc
for piano and orchestra. As the latter work was composed in 1966, one can
with more certainty grant ‘primogeniture to the Arc version.
122 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 61 Green, 11/2

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But while this interpretation resolves the ambiguity regarding the quo-
tation’s origins, it creates another type of ambiguity within the context of
Green itself. Earlier in this work, the same material appears in a rhythmi-
cally varied form an octave higher, and minus the bracketed chord ‘X’ (Ex.
62). On the basis of the temporal order in which events unfold in the score,
then, one would be inclined to describe Example 61 as a version of
Example 62 with one chord interpolated. The prior origin of the latter,
however, suggests that in reality it is Example 62 which is an elliptical com-
mentary on Example 61 with one chord omitted. Depending on whether
one’s interpretation is based on the sequence of events within the score of
Green, then, or on the order of composition of that score and Arc, the rela-
tionship of these two passages to one another is — once again — capable of
ambiguous interpretation.
The modal basis of much of Green’s harmony can clearly be seen from
the above examples — whether it takes the form of simple verticalisations of
scalar forms (as in the case of the second, whole-tone-derived chord of Ex.
60), or scale verticalisations to which extraneous pitches have been added
(as in the case of the third chord from Ex. 60, [0,2,3,4,6,8], the same subset
123 Projections on to an Eastern mirror

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of the ‘7-33’ or “‘whole-tone+1’ collection used as a ‘reference’ chord in the

~ second movement of Uninterrupted Rest (Ex. 25)). Vertical forms super-
imposing all seven notes of the *7-33’ collection are of fairly regular occur-
rence in the score of Green too, providing in this work especially a good
example of the potential Takemitsu had discovered in this harmonic form
for a number of revoicings, each possessing a different harmonic charac-
ter. Wilson, remarking on the ubiquity of this same harmonic type in the
, score of Asterism, noted that the addition of a ‘non-scale note infuses a
certain density and denies the obvious aural nature of the whole-tone
scale’,”? and this increase in density also opens up a much greater range of
harmonic possibilities. The nature of the whole-tone scale itself permits
only the construction of vertical forms containing even-numbered inter-
val classes: in Fortean terminology, the ‘interval vector’ of the whole-tone
(‘6-35’) collection is a rather limiting 060603. By contrast, the addition of
only one extraneous pitch greatly increases the range of available intervals:
the ‘interval vector’ of the set now becomes a much richer 262623.
Takemitsu exploits this increased potential to the full in the score of Green,
_ where (as shown in Ex. 63) the collection is revoiced in various ways so that
its lower parts project major triads in first (iii) and second inversion (v), or
124 The music of Toru Takemitsu

it Wid Ex. 63 Green, versions of *7—33’ chord

(i) 2/2, final NS (ii) 2/5.4 (iii) 3/2 (iv) 3/2 (v) 6/5.2

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dominant sevenths in root position (ii), first inversion (i) and second
. inversion (iv).
Despite this preoccupation with modally derived forms, however, Green
does not eschew the occasional use of more richly chromatic materials, or
of even finer divisions of the octave, as in Example 64, where Takemitsu
builds up clusters of quarter-tones rather after the fashion of the passage
already referred to in November Steps. Furthermore, the passage illustrates
another instance of Takemitsu’s practice of building up such densely
woven textures by means of canonic imitation. Here a twelve-part ‘endless
canon’ is introduced in medias res; lacking as it does, however, any clear-
cut presentation of the traditional dux and comes, and consisting in any
case of featureless, microtonal ‘slitherings’, the canon is hardly likely to be
perceived as such by the listener. Rather it operates here more as a nota-
tional device, to ensure constant movement on the one hand, coupled with
complete verticalisation of the saturated microtonal harmony at any given
point on the other.
Nevertheless, in spite of passages of such complexity as the above, the
predominant impression the listener retains of Green is of its benign,
modal elements, and at the time the work must surely have seemed some-
thing of an anomaly in the context of Takemitsu’s contemporaneous
works. With hindsight, of course, such qualities seem to afford a surpris-
ingly prophetic glimpse of the direction his music was to take from the
latter half of the 1970s onwards, and, viewed in this light, the coda of the
work acquires an unintentionally ironic symbolism. The work ends with
. an early example of the ‘panpentatonic’ valedictions that were to become
such a trademark of the composer from A Flock Descends into the
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126 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Pentagonal Garden onwards, but at this stage the cadential effect is unbal-
anced by the voicing. Although the sustained harmony is indeed a vertical-
isation of the pentatonic collection A-B—C#—E-F}, the placing of the ‘B’ in
the bass, and the D# of the horn’s melodic turn, contrive to impart to it a ‘B
dominant seventh’ feel which, instead of bringing the work to a close, sud-
denly and unexpectedly reveals a magical, evanescent glimpse of a possible
E-major future. It is as if the music were offering a fleeting vision of that
‘sea of tonality’ into which the music of Takemitsu was to flow abundantly
in the following decade, but which for the present existed only in the shape
of some such dimly glimpsed potential.

Beyond November Steps

Takemitsu was to revisit the combination of biwa, shakuhachi and orches-
tra six years later in his much less well-known Autumn of 1973, but here, in
contrast to the earlier work’s ‘confrontation’ between the two cultures,
Takemitsu ‘wanted to do something which I hadn’t done in November
Steps, not to blend the instruments, but to integrate them’.*° Thus passages
in which orchestra and soloists play simultaneously are much more fre-
quent, and as Poirier notes there is an increase in the number of ‘points of
common anchorage’ between the two, an ‘insistence on encounters at the
unison or at the octave’.>!
One passage of Autumn should be singled out for especial mention: the
densely textured web of sound beginning at letter ‘A’ of the score which, as
Smaldone points out, is “organised by a complex procedure of transposi-
tion, ordering and transformation, which governs the nineteen individual
string parts’.°* The uppermost six voices constituting this texture are
involved in the working out of the typical ‘microcanonic’ processes which
Takemitsu frequently adopted for the generation of such sound-masses at
this period: here there is a four-part canon at the unison for the violins,
and another (two-part) canon for the violas. Beneath these two ‘layers’ are
four more independent strata, comprising either unison melodic lines, or
block harmonies moving in rhythmic unison within the layer. In all four
instances, the material of these strata consists of a sequence of pitches or
chords which is repeated cyclically, independently of the durational values
by which it is expressed, somewhat in the manner of the color in an iso-
rhythmic construction. However, in the case of the three uppermost
strands, these durational values in themselves demonstrate no corre-
sponding constructional organisation of their own: in other words, do not
constitute a talea. In the lowest strand of the texture, however, a repeated
cycle of eight chords is presented in rhythmic values determined by a cycle
127 Projections on to an Eastern mirror

S | 5
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of nine durational values, the dissimilar lengths of the two cycles guaran-
teeing different combinations of harmony and rhythm at each repetition
(Ex. 65). In other words, this is one of the rare instances in Takemitsu’s
output where color and talea of differing lengths mesh with one another to
generate the classic isorhythmic structure.
Of course, despite the medieval connotations of the terms used above,
there can be little doubt that this device was transmitted to Takemitsu not
via a study of early music, but rather by means of the Technique de mon
langage musical of Messiaen. But perhaps the most interesting feature of
this passage is not Takemitsu’s use of this technique per se, but rather the
lack of interest he shows in pursuing the consequences of the mechanism
he has thus constructed. The pattern quoted above clearly follows the same
constructional procedures as the famous piano part of the Liturgie de
cristal, but — in contrast to Messiaen’s almost alchemical fascination with
this type of arithmetical process — Takemitsu shows no interest in pursuing
its workings for more than a few bars. Moreover, the fact that in the other
‘isomelodic’ strands in the texture at this point the color is changed after a
couple of repetitions, and allied to a set of completely arbitrary durational
values, indicates that Takemitsu is employing the device here for much the
same reason as he employs canonic imitation in the upper voices: simply as
' a convenient means for generating a dense instrumental micropolyphony.
_ Heisas little interested in the opportunity for a display of compositional
128 The music of Toru Takemitsu

artifice afforded by the one as he is by the other, and the very rarity of this
kind of writing in Takemitsu’s music in itself points to his temperamental
disinclination for the strict application of any ‘constructivist’ rigour of this
sort. .
Reflections in other Eastern mirrors
While, as we shall see in chapter 12, Takemitsu tended to think he was
working towards a sort of cultural cosmopolitanism through his composi-
tion, there is repeated evidence in his writings that — despite such
‘advanced’ ideas — he still unconsciously thought in terms of the old binary
opposition of ‘Japan’ and ‘other’ to which his nationalist colleagues had
adhered. Rather than recognising any common ground between Japanese
and other Asiatic musics, he found the latter as alien to his own sensibility
| as Western music, and as a result, the music of other Asian traditions was

sophical level. ,
to exercise almost no influence on his ideas at either a musical or philo-

There are however one or two exceptions to this general rule. In his
music for the film Shinju Ten no Amishima,’> Takemitsu included taped
recordings of various ‘ethnic’ musics: a Balinese gamelan and, most tell-
ingly, a Turkish nay solo to accompany the cathartic final frames. This was
in 1969, and three years later Takemitsu was able to hear gamelan music in
its native habitat, as a result of a two-week expedition to Bali in the
company of, amongst others, Iannis Xenakis and Betsy Jolas. The experi-
| ence clearly affected Takemitsu deeply, not only on a philosophical level
but musically too, providing the inspiration for the only reference to an
‘Eastern’ musical tradition other than Japanese to be found in Takemitsu’s
writing for the concert hall. This occurs in For Away, written for the
Australian pianist Roger Woodward in 1973 (Ex. 66).
The distribution of the music between the performer’s hands here is
clearly intended as a personal reflection of the interlocking ‘hocket’ pat-
terns between metallophones on which Balinese gamelan music is based,
just as the limitation of pitches to the four-note collection C-Db—F—F# is
intended to evoke the sound of the typical Balinese pentatonic scale, of
which these notes form a subset. But perhaps this overt reference does not
constitute the only evidence of a ‘gamelan’ influence on the score. For in
one or two places elsewhere, one comes across passages such as Example
67, in which each pitch-class is allocated to a specific octave from the Ab
after the dotted barline onwards. As a result of this ‘registral locking’, the
whole passage from this point onwards could be considered a projection of
the ‘harmonic field’ shown in Example 68: Takemitsu’s bracketing of the
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pitch-collection, and his use of the sustaining pedal to prolong the constit-
uent pitches harmonically, supporting this view.
It will be observed that this latent pitch-field contains all twelve chro-
matic pitch-classes; moreover, that the core of this harmonic collection,
from the Bb! to Ak‘, comprises all eight pitches of the octatonic ‘Mode II”,
with the remaining four pitches of the total-chromatic consigned to the
margins of the keyboard on either side — fulfilling Timothy Koozin’s obser-
vation that ‘such foreign elements are most often found in registral
extremities’.* This kind of harmonic construction, in which pitches are
assigned to a specific octave in which they remain ‘locked’ for the duration
of a given passage, may be traced at least as far back as later Webern: the
opening of the latter’s Symphony, Op. 21 could be said to project a single,
twelve-note ‘harmonic field’ for this reason (although of course the
contrapuntal nature of the writing here produces a quite different effect).
Furthermore, in more recent times, composers such as Boulez, Berio and
Lutostawski have all made use of the device as a means of constructing
 vy.
131 Projections on to an Eastern mirror

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stable, static harmonic organisations. But it is perhaps also possible to

speculate on another putative source for Takemitsu’s adoption of this par-
ticular technique in For Away: is it wholly impossible that the manner in
which the melodies of gamelan music move between the ‘fixed pitches’ of
the metallophone bars, tuned to what to the Western ear sound like
_ ‘gapped’ scalar formations, might have suggested to Takemitsu his own
free meanderings between the widely spaced fixed points of the ‘harmonic
fields’ in this and other parts of the score?
 8 Modernist apogee: the early 1970s

By 1970, the perception of Takemitsu as member of the international

avant-garde had become sufficiently well established to receive the most
elegant of symbolic confirmations. In that year a lavish world fair, Expo
70, took place in Osaka, and Takemitsu became closely associated with
this paean to progress and modernism in several capacities. While his
music for the film The Sun’s Hunter' played in the ‘Electrical Industry
Pavilion’, an ambitious work for four soloists, female voices and two
orchestras, Crossing, was being relayed over the sound-system of the “Space
Theatre’ at the ‘Iron and Steel Pavilion’, alongside works by avant-garde
stalwarts Xenakis and his Japanese pupil YUji Takahashi. The sound-
system in this hall comprised a total of 1,000 loudspeakers, many of which
could be moved either by hand or by electrical power, and Takemitsu’s
notes at the time certainly share some of the futuristic optimism implicit
in this project — although at the same time, they also accord very much
with his own personal aesthetics of musical space as revealed through his
instrumental writing in general. ‘The conventionally arranged space of
most halls initiates no movement, brings about no human experience
(spatial or temporal) as a qualitative experience’, he noted. “Departing
from the standard placement of former instruments, a free sound-source
has become established, and the information supply has become pluralis-
tic. Spatiality and spatial timbre . .. have been added as important parame-
ters in the construction of music.”
Expo ’70 also provided Takemitsu with the opportunity to meet more of
his colleagues in the international composing community. Karlheinz
Stockhausen was in attendance, and in the sleeve-notes for his Telemusik
numbers Takemitsu amongst his friends; while in April 1970, Takemitsu
produced a four-day festival of contemporary music in the ‘Iron and Steel
Pavilion’, whose participants included Lukas Foss, Peter Sculthorpe and
Vinko Globokar. This last-named was also well known as a virtuoso trom-
bonist, and Takemitsu was to employ him as one of the soloists in his
Gémeaux, the first movement of which appeared two years later. Moreover
, over the next few years Takemitsu was to meet several more representatives
of the new generation of avant-garde virtuosi who were then coming to
prominence, and compose works with these soloists specifically in mind.
132 Thus later in 1970, as a result of a commission from Paul Sacher and the
 133 Modernist apogee: the early 1970s !
Zurich “Collegium Musicum’, he included solo parts for the flautist Auréle
Nicolet, oboist Heinz Holliger and harpist Ursula Holliger in his Eucalypts
I, and subsequently went on to write solo pieces for each of these perform-
ers. Similarly Cassiopeia of 1971, a large-scale work for percussion and
orchestra, was composed to showcase the talents of another rising star, the
young Japanese performer Stomu Yamashita. The experience of writing
for this kind of virtuoso modern performer left its mark on Takemitsu’s
- music, enormously expanding the technical vocabulary of his instrumen-
tal writing - most obviously by means of the incorporation of the kind of
‘extended’ resources with which players such as Holliger and Globokar
, were especially associated. An examination of the complex instrumental
works written as a response to the challenge of this new generation of solo-
ists is, therefore, a particularly appropriate place to begin an exploration of
those Takemitsu works from that period when his engagement with the
Western avant-garde tradition had attained its zenith — even if it was a
zenith from which, within only a few years, Takemitsu was to descend with
spectacular swiftness.

Further adventures in timbre

Takemitsu’s writing for string instruments in Eucalypts I is similar to that
found in works from the second half of the previous decade such as
November Steps: layers of solo instrumental lines are superimposed upon
one another to create a densely polyphonic, richly dissonant texture. As
with November Steps, however, the superficially ‘atonal’ impression created
_ by this global texture is belied by a closer inspection of the harmonic
details from which it is built up, many of which turn out to be of modal
derivation. Once again, familiar favourites such as the octatonic and
whole-tone scales, or the 7-33’ collection, form the basis of a substantial
| number of Takemitsu’s harmonic choices here. There are also one or two
examples of types of harmonic construction more rarely encountered in
| | Takemitsu’s music, such as the chords marked ‘A’ in Example 69. Here each
chord is built up from the same ‘superset’ form of the ‘7-33’ collection,
— [0,1,2,3,4,6,8,10], in other words a whole-tone scale to which two semi-
tones have been added, themselves a whole-tone apart. Chord ‘B’ here is
formed from a familiar subset of the same collection, the whole-tone scale
, itself.
, | Eucalypts exists in two versions: the original Eucalypts I, for the three
soloists and string orchestra, and Eucalypts IT (1971), which consists of the
three solo parts alone. The latter preserves the music of the former intact,
and the relationship of the two might initially suggest the influence of
eve
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134 The music of Toru Takemitsu

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Luciano Berio’s practice of expanding his solo Sequenze into works for
larger ensemble such as the Chemins series and Corale. But while there is
indeed a possibility that this kind of recycling may have been influenced in
very general terms by Berio’s example, there are also important differences
between the two composers’ ways of proceeding. Apart from the obvious
fact that, in contrast to Berio, Takemitsu worked subtractively, composing
the chamber Eucalypts II after the version with string orchestra, Berio’s
135 Modernist apogee: the early 1970s

reworkings also differ from his in that the original version and its expan-
sion are intimately linked harmonically: by amplifying the harmonic
implications inherent in the original, Berio creates pitch-fields which
unite soloists and ensemble in a harmonically homogeneous texture. In
Takemitsu’s case, by contrast, the music for the three soloists constitutes
such a wholly adventitious addition to that for the string orchestra that he
is able to remove the latter and produce a completely satisfying, self-
sufficient work without the least feeling on the listener’s part that anything
is Missing.
| This remarkable self-sufficiency of the solo parts in Eucalypts I, and the
lack of thematic connection between them and the ensemble materials,
rather recalls the similar independence of the soloists in November Steps —
even if here the two groups play mostly simultaneously, rather than alter-
nating as in the earlier work. So similar is the situation here, indeed, that
Takemitsu even has recourse to one of the same devices to effect some sort
of aural connection between the two otherwise disparate instrumental
worlds: the common emphasis, at various points in the score, on specific
pitch-classes. Examples are afforded by the C4 of the harp at letter ‘B’,
picked up by the cellos and basses and sustained in harmonics; the flute’s
sustained Fk in bar 4 of ‘C’, picked up by the first violin; and the oboist’s
low Bb in the next bar, which is taken up by the bass. It is rather as if the
_ device which, in November Steps, had assumed the function of forging
East-West contacts, were here forging similar contacts in a purely
West—West situation.
The most adventurous aspect of Eucalypts lis, of course, the writing for
its three prestigious soloists, where the ‘new virtuosity’ of the performers is
_ exploited to the full in a multitude of ‘extended’ instrumental techniques.
This can readily be seen from the opening gesture for Heinz Holliger’s
oboe, with its alternation of various fingerings of the same note, Bk (Ex.
70). The notation which Takemitsu uses here to describe the alternation of
normally fingered notes and harmonics at the same pitch, and which gives
rise to such accidentally amusing phonetic combinations as ONO or
NONO, was to become almost a cliché of his writing for this instrument.
However, Eucalypts I was written before Takemitsu came into contact
with its three soloists, and the question therefore arises: how exactly did he
manage to incorporate such a plethora of expanded instrumental possibil-
ities in the score without their assistance? The answer to this is something |
of an open secret: as Funayama notes,’ Bruno Bartolozzi’s New Sounds for
Woodwind had appeared in 1967, and in Eucalypts Takemitsu, like so many
other composers of his day, made extensive use of the ‘Bartolozzi sounds it
prescribes. In fact, anecdotal evidence supplied to the present author by
various acquaintances of the composer suggests that he relied exclusively
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| on the Bartolozzi textbook for the multiphonic techniques used in such

works as this — a view that gains support from the fact that Bartolozzi is
actually mentioned by name in the performance directions for the solo
flute work Voice of 1971.
The writing for the harp is similarly adventurous, and one cannot help
but wonder whether Takemitsu might already have had another ‘manual’
to hand while writing it, that of Carlos Salzedo — certainly, as we shall see
later, Takemitsu’s use of a playing technique described as ‘Aolian rustling’
in some of his later scores suggests an acquaintance with Salzedo’s theo-
ries.* Here in Eucalypts, one also encounters another favourite device of
Takemitsu’s when writing for this instrument: the prior tuning of selected
individual strings to pitches other than those normally employed (scorda-
tura). At one point in the score of Eucalypts Takemitsu hits upon an ingeni-
ous application of this device to enable the harp, whose seven strings per
octave normally limit it to the same number of discrete pitch-classes at any
given moment, to attack all eight notes of an octatonic scale simultane-
ously. Chord ‘A’ of Example 71 shows the pitches of this harmony as they
are notated in the score; but, owing to the fact that the harpist is instructed
to tune the D° and G? strings of the instrument a semitone lower than
usual, the actual sounding result is chord “B’ —a full statement of all pitches
of Mode II in vertical superimposition.
As noted previously, Takemitsu was to provide solo works for each of the
| three instrumentalists of Eucalypts over the course of the succeeding two
years; the first to appear was Voice, written for the flautist Auréle Nicolet in
1971. A single example (Ex. 72) will suffice to indicate the general instru-
mental idiom of the work, heavily dependent on multiphonics, microtones,
138 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex.72 Voice for solo flautist

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harmonics and other ‘Bartolozziana — an idiom which it is instructive to

compare with the flute writing in the examples quoted from Masque in
chapter 4, to illustrate how much more about flute technique Takemitsu has
learned in the intervening twelve years, and how much bolder he has
become in the application of that knowledge.
Takemitsu’s description of Voice as ‘for solo flautist’, however, empha-
sises another important aspect of the work: that it involves the whole per-
former, and not merely the flute, in a kind of instrumental theatre. In
particular, as well as utilising various kinds of breathing and attack that
demand a certain muscular physicality, as the performance progresses the
player appears to be struggling, between phrases, to bring verbal utter-
ances to birth. These sounds eventually coalesce to form verses by the sur-
, realist poet Shtizo Takiguchi, heard first in French and then in English:

Qui va la? Qui que tu sois, parle transparence!

Who goes there? Speak, transparence, whoever you are!

Elsewhere in the score, the performer is directed to ‘shout’ and ‘growl’,

and to hum and sing into the instrument. Such extensions of instrumental
performance by means of vocalisation are of course idiomatic to various
traditional Japanese instrumental genres, for example the music of the nd
and kabukidramas, and an influence from traditional sources is also hinted
at in some of the playing techniques, such as the instruction to produce a
‘strong accent without tonguing as Japanese no flute’. At the same time,
however, this theatrical dimension was also very much in accord with the
preoccupations of certain of Takemitsu’s Western colleagues: hearing the
139 Modernist apogee: the early 1970s

flautist’s whispered exclamations of ‘Qui va la?’ for example, one cannot

help but be irresistibly reminded of the trombonist’s interjection of “Why?
_ in Berio’s Sequenza V. |
The second of the Eucalypts soloists to be honoured with a solo compo-
sition was Ursula Holliger, for whom Takemitsu wrote Stanza II for harp
and tape, first performed in Paris in October 1971. The electro-acoustic
dimension to this work is interesting, and not simply because it represents
the brief revival of a genre which Takemitsu had by this time mostly aban-
doned. For the tape part of this particular piece — rarely for Takemitsu —
incorporates certain devices associated with elektronische Musik, in addi-
tion to sounds prepared by the methods of the musique concréte tradition
Takemitsu more frequently favoured. One wonders, indeed, whether the
composer’s encounter the previous year with the author of Telemusik did
not leave its mark here in the shape of Takemitsu’s decision to treat his
taped harp sounds with a ring modulator (he also suggests live perfor-
mance with this device as an alternative to performance with tape), or the
use of four oscillators emitting sine waves of very close frequencies centred
around F¢# to generate the drone-like pedal in the second part of the piece.
Even the two ‘concrete’ intrusions here, in fact, have echoes of the type of
thing found in Hymnen: brief snatches of birdsong and some sort of
untreated, ‘vox pop’ sampling of a French conversation towards the close
of the work, which strongly recalls Stockhausen’s fondness at this period
for the abrupt opening of a window on to the banal and everyday.
For the third of Eucalypts trio of soloists, Heinz Holliger, Takemitsu
composed Distance for oboe and sho in 1972. This is another work to lay
especial emphasis on the spatial aspect of performance, and, as the title
suggests, Takemitsu is here particularly concerned with the relative dis-
tances from which sounds reach the listener — a phenomenon which he
had also explored, as we have seen, in The Dorian Horizon. To gain a
| similar kind of “spatial perspective’ to that found in the earlier work, the
oboist is directed to stand in front of the shod player with a ‘long distance’
between them, creating a situation in which ‘the oboe plays a phrase, stops, |
and the sound continues in the distant shod. The movement of sound gives
a fresh experience of space.” But the title of the work is also polysemous: as
Ohtake notes, it refers not only to the physical distance between the players
but also to ‘the extreme distances of the intervals, dynamics and articula-
tion’.® It also, of course, refers metaphorically to the ‘distance’ between the
two instruments on a cultural and historical level, as Takemitsu once again
places ‘East’ and “West’ in confrontation with one another as he had done
in November Steps. At the same time however, as Poirier has observed,’
there is a certain approximation between the two cultures as well, each
 140 The music of Toru Takemitsu

instrument impersonating the qualities normally associated with the

other: the oboe, by the use of multiphonics, becoming a polyphonic
instrument like the shd, while the latter abandons its traditional harmonic
function for much of the time to produce single monophonic drones.
These multiphonics and other ‘extended’ devices once again hint at an
acquaintance with Bartolozzi’s innovations, but there is also in Distance
the strong suggestion of an influence from another of Bartolozzi’s compa-
triots. Reference back to Example 70 will show that the invariant pitch
selected for colouration by means of alternative fingerings in the oboe solo
at the beginning of Eucalypts is Bk. This particular pitch also assumes a
prominent role in Distance, as can clearly be seen from Example 73, in
which the oboist modifies the timbre of a sustained Bk by means of a
typical Takemitsu “NONO?’ pattern, while the shd (sounding an octave
higher than written) maintains the same pitch as a long pedal-point.
This same focal pitch, however, had also been chosen by Berio for
special emphasis in his Sequenza VII for solo oboe of 1969 — chosen
‘because it can be produced by a greater variety of fingerings, each with its
own timbre, than any other note on the instrument’.’ It might be argued
that both Takemitsu and Berio arrived at their common insistence on this
pitch simply by virtue of the inherent acoustic properties of the instru-
ment for which they were writing. But when one takes into account the fact
that Berio asks for the note Bk to be sustained throughout his Sequenza by
an unspecified sound-source, and then turns to such passages in the score
of Distance as that quoted below, in which the sho fulfils precisely this
function, then the evidence for Berio’s influence seems incontrovertible.
In 1976, encounters with further outstanding instrumentalists resulted
in the composition of two more works in which the exploration of instru-
mental sonority is very much in the foreground. Takemitsu’s close per-
sonal association with one of these performers is reflected in the very title
of the work in which he was to take part: Bryce, for flute, two harps,
marimba and percussion, was named after Bryce Engelman, the ten-year-
| old son of Robin Engelman, member of the Canadian percussion ensem-
ble ‘Nexus’. In fact, by means of the time-honoured device of
transliterating words in Roman script into the equivalent German note
names, Takemitsu was able to derive from the boy’s name a musical figure,
B [}]—C-E, which — according to the composer — together with its adjacent
quarter-tones provides the source of much of the musical material. Later
in the same year, Takemitsu wrote another work with a North American
virtuoso in mind: the clarinettist Richard Stolzman, who along with his
Japanese colleague Toshiaki Morita became joint dedicatee of Waves for
clarinet, two trombones, horn and bass-drum. Like Distance, this is
 |

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142 The music of Toru Takemitsu

another Takemitsu score to incorporate a spatial dimension, placing the

two trombonists at either side of the stage, with the other instrumentalists
disposed at various points in between.
These two scores look remarkably similar, a fact not wholly unrelated to
the type of performers for whom they were written, who differed some-
what from the three soloists of Eucalypts. Those three Europeans had been
highly polished executants of fully determinate music, and had functioned
in that work as an ensemble largely by means of a meticulously prescribed
rhythmic notation. By contrast, while the instrumental writing in Bryce
and Waves also demands considerable fluency in a wide range of ‘extended’
techniques, it additionally expects of its American executants certain abil-
ities of a nature not found in the earlier work, skills which imply some
experience of works not fully notated. Thus both scores employ a kind of
‘spatial’ notation, dispensing with barlines and rhythmic values — the later
score even dispensing with timings as well, relying on cues between the
players for the succession of events: a type of notation which obviously
requires of each player a constant sensitivity to the performance of the
others, of the kind demanded by improvised music. Similarly, a certain
improvisational ability is also assumed by the inclusion at many points in
these scores of general verbal suggestions for performance rather than
strictly notated music. Such directions — which have been described by one
commentator as ‘providing acoustic effects with verbal imagery” — are
often of a highly poetic and evocative nature, as in the case of the instruc-
tion to the bass-drum player in Waves to ‘rub the skin of the drum with
finger to get various overtone as sound of the ocean [sic]’. In this particular
instance too, of course, the metaphorical evocation of natural sound is
very much in accord with the aesthetics of Takemitsu’s own native tradi-

grove.
tion — for example those of shakuhachi performance, where the tone ulti-
mately aimed at is supposedly that of wind sweeping through a bamboo

As might be expected, from a superficial viewpoint neither Bryce nor

Waves demonstrates a readily apprehensible formal outline, but further
consideration reveals that in both pieces Takemitsu has actually exercised
considerable care to avoid the impression of a totally free essay in timbral
atmospherics. One means he employs to achieve this end is a clear segmen-
tation of the overall structure. In both works there are a number of readily
perceived sectional subdivisions: in Bryce, these are occasionally punctu-
ated by pauses or fermatas; and in Waves— more interestingly still — largely
by means of gestures, especially of a crescendo—diminuendo nature, for
the bass drum, which thus acquires here something of the ‘colotomic’
function ascribed by ethnomusicologists to the gongs in gamelan music
 143 Modernist apogee: the early 1970s

and — more relevantly perhaps — to the punctuating cycles of the taiko'® in

gagaku.
However, possibly the most effective means adopted by Takemitsu to
guide the listener’s ear through these loosely structured works are two
devices already discussed with reference to November Steps. As in
Eucalypts, the emphasis on common pitch-classes which had been used to
associate the disparate worlds of ‘East’ and “West’ in November Steps is here
appropriated to form connections in a more purely ‘Western’ context. But
Takemitsu also makes use of the other connection established between the
two cultures in the earlier work, the approximation of instrumental
, sounds in terms of timbre, as a further means of establishing clear aural
relationships between consecutive events. Both forms of connection can
clearly be seen from Example 74, the opening of Waves, where Takemitsu
proceeds by a kind of ‘timbral imitation’. Here the bass drum’s opening
roll, imperceptibly appearing out of the ‘stream of sound’, is imitated by
the second trombone’s similar emergence from niente on a deep pedal
note; the microtonally sharpened E} with which the clarinet enters is
echoed by the same pitch on the first trombone; the latter’s progression
from, and return to, muted tenuto tone via flutter-tonguing, variant
fingerings of the same note and glissando is paralleled by the clarinet’s
movement away from, and return to, senza vibrato tone via vibrato and
multiphonics; and the rapid alternation between different slide-positions
to produce the same pitch in the middle of the trombone phrase is echoed
by the clarinet’s typical ‘NONO?’ patterns shortly afterwards. The clear
aural perceptibility of these kinds of relationship provides a valuable point
of anchorage for the listener, lending a measure of coherence and compre-
hensibility to what might otherwise be a very informally structured and
meandering score. ,

competence ,
Large-scale works of the early 1970s — towards a new orchestral

To provide music for the ‘Space Theatre’ at Osaka of which he was director,
Takemitsu turned to a work he had recently written for an ensemble of
guitar, harp, piano/celesta, vibraphone and female voice. Stanza I (1969),
composed in part to a text from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus — with a final allusion to the title of Jasper Johns’s painting
| According to What? — is a quintessential distillation of the avant-garde
music of the decade that was about to come to a close. As Funayama has
commented, with its “combination of harmony instruments and voice’ and
its ‘delicate phrases divided into small parts by the punctuations of
 144 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 74 Waves, opening

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dedicated to Dick Stolzman & Toshiaki Morita

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 nr
145 Modernist apogee: the early 1970s

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 [4°"a
146 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 75 Series of Stanza I

123 | 89 |
po 7-33 collection
i —eeea ee
| a. a
l 45 | 67 10 11 12
Chromatic
complement

fermatas’,’' the work strongly recalls the example of Boulez’s Le Marteau

sans maitre, and it is perhaps no surprise, therefore, to find that at the root
of these angular, dissonant textures there is once again evidence of serial
thinking. Moreover, the basic twelve-note series that Takemitsu appears
intermittently to have used again shows evidence of a thoughtful internal
construction using harmonic materials particularly favoured by the com-
poser: as shown by the form in which it appears on the piano on page 2 (Ex.
75), it consists — exactly like the series of Le Son Calligraphié HI— of a ‘7-33’
collection (pitches 8-12) plus its chromatic complement (pitches 1-5).
Takemitsu took this modest chamber work as the basis of the piece which
would be projected over the elaborate sound-system of the ‘Space Theatre’,
enlarging the forces to produce a score of suitable grandeur for such a pre-
stigious project. The result was Crossing (1969), a work in which the
chamber original is more or less incorporated intact into a vast expansion
of its materials for four instrumental soloists, female voices and two orches-
tras. The forces involved are indeed so large that Takemitsu had to paste
together his own manuscript paper to fit them all in, and while the preface
to the score optimistically suggests two possible seating arrangements for
live performance, the piece had to wait over thirty years before it could be
heard in any form other than the taped version relayed over the sound-
system of the Osaka venue. A glance at the score, in fact, suggests that as he
composed the work, Takemitsu probably had an eye, or ear, on perfor-
mance over this elaborate network of loudspeakers already: most obviously
at the end of the work, where the same harmony played by various instru-
mental groups fades in and out of the overall ‘stereo picture’, somewhat
after the fashion of the famous brass chord in Stockhausen’s Gruppen.
It is also possible that Takemitsu may have turned again to Stanza I for
inspiration when he came to fulfil his next large-scale orchestral commis-
147 Modernist apogee: the early 1970s

Ex. 76 Cassiopeia, letter “B’

mice :
, say 4 She 7-33 collection

0LS(se.
hh ee chromatic complement

sion. At all events, the vertical arrangement of pitches in the twelve-note

chord quoted in Example 76 is clearly patterned after the twelve-note
series quoted in Example 75: the pitch-classes of the upper system in the
former are identical to pitch-classes 6 to 12 of the latter, forming a ‘7-33’
collection which is completed chromatically by notes 1 to 5 of the series in
the lower staff.
Cassiopeia (1971), the work from which this chord is quoted, is another
complex ‘avant-garde’ orchestral statement, as well as another exploration
of the possibilities opened up by an innovative instrumental soloist, the
Japanese percussionist Stomu Yamashita. It is also, like Asterism, a work
inspired in part by stellar phenomena: in this instance the eponymous
constellation, which among other things forms the template for a spatial
redistribution of the orchestral apparatus of the kind which was becoming
almost de rigueur in Takemitsu’s work at this period. In this seating
arrangement, ‘the five stars forming a W (or M when seen above the pole
in December) is the position in which Takemitsu places the solo percus-
sionist and the four groups of instrumental soloists. The many clusters of
nebule surrounding them are represented by one brass and two string
sections.’
Furthermore, the suggestion made that Asterism’s motif of three stars
might be reflected in some Augenmusik-like patternings in the score may
| be asserted with rather more confidence in the case of the five stars of
Cassiopeia. Example 77, for instance, a typical passage from the solo per-
| cussion part of the work, obviously makes great play with W- or M-shaped
visual patterns, indicating that the spirit of ‘graphic’ notation was still to a
certain extent alive in Takemitsu’s music as late as 1971. The type of nota-
tion employed here also, once again, suggests a familiarity with
Stockhausen’s work: in this case Zyklus for solo percussion (1959).
 \st |
148 The music of Toru Takemitsu

tt =
Ex.77 Cassiopeia, p.21

0-4 AN |
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The percussion soloist of Cassiopeia, like the flautist in Voice, is also

required to be something of an actor: at his first appearance after the
orchestral prelude, for instance, he is ‘suggested to walk (or running) to
the regular place yo [sic] perform, and play castanets intermittently as
Spanish dancer (or Kabuki actor) while his [sic] walks’. Nor is the work’s
theatrical dimension limited to these gestures by the solo performer;
according to Wilson, at least, elements of traditional Japanese theatre —
specifically the kabuki genre referred to in Takemitsu’s performance
notes — inform both the spatial layout of the forces, and the overall
formal outline of the work,'’ whose sections bear the suggestive titles
Entrance—Scene—Solo—Scene. Moreover, in addition to his theatrical
flair, the soloist in Cassiopeia must also possess some of the quasi-
improvisatory ability necessary to respond creatively both to Takemitsu’s
partly graphic notation, and to his sometimes rather enigmatic verbal sug-
gestions. The direction given to the percussionist at one point to play
‘softly as Cassiopeia’, for example, could almost have strayed here out of
the pages of Stockhausen’s Aus den sieben Tagen; but it appears to have
meant something at least to Stomu Yamashita, who in his recording of the
work devises the same steel-pan figure in response to these words at both
their appearances in the score.
It was during the 1970s that Takemitsu eventually achieved that con-
summate mastery of orchestral sonority for which he subsequently
became so renowned, and in works such as Crossing and Cassiopeia one
can see the beginnings of this expansion of orchestral vocabulary. At this
 oo
| 149 Modernist apogee: the early 1970s

, Ex. 78 Winter, F/4

f ve
ES46 8 aN
yee SSS
ee > a
mf——su. p< = fp > =
- stage of his career, however, when Takemitsu was still very much in sympa-
thy with the aesthetics of the avant-garde, the expansion is most noticeable
in the transference to large forces of the same type of instrumental experi-
mentation already encountered in works for smaller media. Thus in
Crossing the brass players are required to speak the text “Things are
_ different’ into their instruments, and in Cassiopeia they are instructed to
blow into the tubing of their instruments without mouthpieces. The latter
device also figures in the score of Winter (1971), a work originally commis-
sioned to commemorate the hosting of the Winter Olympics by the
| _ Japanese city of Sapporo. Here, however, as a reflection of the work’s title,
the device acquires a metaphorical significance: the players are advised
that the passage in question ‘should be played as wind’, and various blobs
of ink in the manuscript, reminiscent of marks on a film soundtrack, give
them suggestions as to how this effect should be achieved. One is reminded
of the manner in which, in the film Kwaidan, the breathy sounds of
slowed-down shakuhachi notes evoke the howling of the wind across the
frozen landscapes in the story Woman of the Snows.
Winter is also of interest in that it may possibly contain one of the earli-
est statements of a three-note motif that was to loom large in Takemitsu’s
later music: the three pitches Eb, Ek and A which spell ‘SEA in German
nomenclature. The version heard here is certainly at the correct transposi-
tion (Ex. 78).
This proves to be not the only forward-looking element in the score: in
the final pages there is another prophetic hint of the ‘sea of tonality’ into
| which Takemitsu’s music was later to flow. Here, in a similar fashion to that
encountered at the end of Asterism, the music gravitates unambiguously
towards a tonal centre of G#, ultimately fading out on a GR—-A# dyad.
Moreover — and again as in Asterism — this tonal final is prepared by a
passage of modal writing unmistakably centred around the same pitch.
The writing for strings at letter ‘L’ of Winter even looks rather similar to the
| piano passage from the earlier work quoted in Example 55, although the
sounding result conjures up another work from the previous decade:
150 The music of Toru Takemitsu

based as it is almost exclusively on the pitches contained in the Dorian and

Phrygian modes on Gj, it is little wonder that this divided string passage
often irresistibly recalls the sound-world of The Dorian Horizon, or that at
one point it quotes one of the harmonies from that work at the same pitch.
Like Arc for piano and orchestra, the complete version of Takemitsu’s
next work for large forces — Gémeaux (1971) — was to have a rather pro-
tracted genesis. While the first part of the score was heard in 1972, it was
not until 1986 that all four movements (Strophe, Genesis, Traces,
Antistrophe) could receive their first performance. Like Arc, too, the work
represents the large-scale modernist gesture at its most extravagant, and
_ thus embodies stylistic preoccupations which the composer had already
long abandoned by the time it received its premiére. The scale of the forces
required is actually even grander than in the earlier work: to reflect the
dualism of the work’s title, there are two soloists (oboe and trombone),
two orchestras and two conductors. As might be expected, these two solo
parts — written originally for Heinz Holliger and Vinko Globokar — make
great play with a full range of ‘extended’ techniques, and the writing for the
two orchestras is similarly adventurous. The instrumental line-up
includes amplified guitar, keyboard glockenspiel and the inevitable
prayer-bells-on-timpani combination which was becoming almost a stan-
dard feature of Takemitsu’s instrumentarium at this period, and among
the many sonorous novelties in which this apparatus is involved is another
passage in which the brass players are requested to speak through the
tubing of their instruments. As in Voice, the verses they recite derive from
Shiizo Takiguchi, and constitute another reference to the ‘twin’ metaphor
which pervades the work:

Tes yeux, tes mains, tes seins...

Tes une, et tues deux, toi méme.'4

However, by the time Takemitsu came to write Gitimalya (1974) for solo
marimba and orchestra — whose title comes from the same Tagore poem
from which the soloists are asked to recite lines in the earlier Eclipse for
biwa and shakuhachi — there were one or two hints that a stylistic change
was in the offing. To be sure, there is still a wealth of innovative instrumen-
tal writing: the tam-tam player, for instance, is required to use a cardboard
tube to coax harmonics from the instrument, and the timpanist is
equipped with the usual array of Japanese temple bells. But the forces
employed — an orchestra mostly of double winds, and without violins — are
much more modest and conventional than in any of the works so far
described. In places too, the style of orchestration contains strong hints of
151 _ Modernist apogee: the early 1970s

the direction this aspect of Takemitsu’s writing was to take in the future:
for example at the first entry of the marimba soloist, where for the first
three or four bars almost every note of the solo ‘theme’ is doubled (albeit
sometimes heterophonically) by some orchestral sonority or other.
_ Prophetic, too, are the pentatonic forms which appear here from time to
time — particularly the verticalised pentatonic harmony on B with F# in the
bass before the final fade-out, another symbolic ‘dominant preparation’
like that at the end of Green. Like the numerous and clearly audible refer-
ences to the ‘S—E—A’ motif, this gesture again hints at Takemitsu’s explora-
tion, in the following decade, of the ‘sea of tonality’; but, as in Green, it is
an exploration which the composer clearly does not feel it appropriate to
undertake yet in the present aesthetic circumstances.
The purely orchestral work Marginalia of 1976 also has something of a
transitional character. The title, taken from a 1970 work by Takiguchi, is
perhaps a reference to the manner in which, as the composer puts it, “in
this piece, two different notations were used. Proportional indeterminate
and conventional determined’.'° As the two forms of notation alternate in
the score, conventionally barred music constantly fades into a kind of
timeless suspension which might function as a kind of ‘marginal commen-
tary to the more rigorously scripted ‘text’ that precedes it. Undoubtedly
the most impressive of these unmeasured passages occurs on page 2 of the
score: over a very deep, very long sustained Dk pedal, a handful of instru-
| mentalists work through individual ad libitum materials rich in captivat-
ing sonorities. The harpist is instructed to play with the tuning key; the
timpanist is again equipped with the ubiquitous Japanese prayer bells; and
— most magically of all — one of the percussion players is instructed to float
various objects in a tub of water and improvise quietly to produce glis-
sandi and portamenti that must be ‘transparent and dreamy’. The wonder-
fully evocative performance direction Takemitsu writes above this section
sums up the effect obtained perfectly: “Spacious calm — water mirror’.
Perhaps in order to create as effective a foil as possible to this kind of
timeless floating, Takemitsu in one or two parts of the measured sections
opts for a form of material whose metrical precision lies at the opposite
| extreme: what the composer describes as a ‘German waltz’, complete with
| Wienerisch double thirds that give an effect something akin to La Valse or
Jeux. This German waltz, in fact, also has “Germam’ orchestration, of a kind
which the composer has described elsewhere as ‘very condensed, with
emphasis; it is very strongly one thing, like a tight, concrete building’.’° In
other words, the instrumental writing at this point — unusually for the
composer — consists of a thickly doubled, homogeneous and ‘aspatial’
| musical texture that could easily be reduced to a ‘piano score’ format, and
 Se
152 The music of Toru Takemitsu

po he
p
—
Ex. 79 Marginalia, A/7

a ae 2 a Aa
‘a : |
\\) 29 50 2 ee eee 2 | | 2 eee 1

43 67 11
1 ee 5 9 10
12
as such — by default — throws into relief his habitual preference for a many-
layered, spatially compartmentalised texture all the more conspicuously.
The ‘German waltz’ may also possibly make oblique reference to Teutonic
technical rigour: the two [0,1,4] collections with which it begins are
perhaps derived from pitches 2—4 and 5—7 of Example 79, another of the

music. |
relatively rare occurrences of a twelve-note statement in Takemitsu’s later

However, while these occasional references to serial technique, together

with the unconventional rhythmic notations and innovative instrumental
sonorities, indicate Takemitsu’s continuing preoccupation with the ‘mod-
ernist’ tradition, there are other aspects of the score of Marginalia which
point rather in the direction of his future adoption of a more ‘Romantic’
idiom. It is perhaps in the closing pages of the work, once again, that this
tendency becomes most manifest. As Roger Reynolds has pointed out,
‘Takemitsu’s works often close with a strikingly lyrical coda’,'’ a conclud-
ing passage on a heightened poetical level which often includes a particu-
larly evocative instrumental, melodic or harmonic effect that seems to
have been held in reserve to lend a ‘magical’ quality to the peroration. The
‘epilogue’ of Marginalia must surely rank as one of the most impressive of
Takemitsu’s achievements of this kind. Over a sustained triple pedal-point
on E, B and D, which produces a ‘dominant-seventh’ effect similar to that
found at the end of Green, an ensemble of wind, harps, vibraphone, glock-
enspiel and marimba ascends in parallel ninths through an ‘acoustic’ scale
on D, producing an indescribable sonority — something like a polyphonic
flexatone; then, over ostinato patterns repeated in canon by flute and clari-
nets, the piano and tuned percussion descend in parallel major sixteenths
through a whole-tone scale with chromatically altered notes. The effect of
the passage, like that of its counterpart in Green, is not simply unexpected
and aurally ravishing. Strongly modal as the harmonic basis of these
 153 , Modernist apogee: the early 1970s

elements is, the gesture also affords the listener yet another glimpse of the
‘sea of tonality’, although again in the form of a “dominant preparation to
a tonal future not here attained. In contrast to the ending of Green,
however, that of Marginalia hints at a tonal resolution not so far distant: A
Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden, with its unambiguously tonal
valediction, was only one year off.

| Homages to Bach and Messiaen

As Wind Horse had demonstrated, even more radically tonal elements than
those just described could enter Takemitsu’s ‘middle period’ music as a
result of quotation, a further example of which was to occur in 1974, when
, Takemitsu included a citation from Bach’s St Matthew Passion in the third
and final movement of his Folios for solo guitar. Takemitsu is known to
have revered this work, and as a form of purificatory ritual, would prepare
himself for the act of composition “by playing through the St Matthew
Passion on the piano’;'® yet, for all that, the precise reasons why he chose to
quote what he calls ‘Matthew Passion Choral No. 72 by J. S. Bach’ at this
| particular juncture — in other words the famous “Passion Chorale’ attrib-
, uted to Hans Leo Hassler, O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden, in Bach’s har-
monisation — remain somewhat inscrutable.
Yet, though difficult to account for on a philosophical level, in purely
musical terms this sudden departure does not sound quite as adventitious
as might be expected. Takemitsu has actually prepared the ground for its
, appearance carefully, and two details in particular enable the listener to
assimilate this unexpected excursion with the minimum discontinuity.
First, the descending quaver ‘passing notes’ in the lowest voice at the
opening of the Bach chorale strongly recall a similar anacrustic gesture
found elsewhere in Takemitsu’s three movements, an example of which is
quoted in a later chapter.'? Secondly, the chorale is in A minor, and this
may loosely be described as the ‘home key’ towards which the music of
Folios is directed. It is a key hinted at, for example, by means of such
devices as the ‘pedal note’ on A in the final movement (achieved, on this
non-sustaining instrument, by means of reiteration), the use of the
bottom string of the guitar as a kind of ‘dominant’, and by the penultimate
chord of the first movement, which is actually a verticalisation of the com-
plete descending form of the in scale encountered already in Takemitsu’s
| very earliest work (Ex. 80).
Elsewhere in Folios there is the suggestion of a kind of ‘homage’ to a
second Western master, and one whose influence on Takemitsu’s music is
generally much more palpable than Bach’s. The gesture in question takes
 154 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 80 Folios I, penultimate chord

(60-3 i _, :
i (1. We LO.
Wy @eee: i ae”
AN) See eee ee

Ex. 81 Takemitsu: melodic ideas with similar ‘zig-zag’ contours

— Fo
(i) Folios, p. 3, system 5 (ii) To the Edge of Dream, K/1 (guitar)

PTT) TT
>
i]
SY SE
ee)
be
7 Te A = a AY tO
aU/C.
Nh dO ty F
., (4...)
eee bh. Aa2_ee
Aa,eee
1i
BANG ee”). Ee ee’ B\°1)7 ee eee
(iii) Vers, l'arc-en-ciel, Palma, G/7 (ob.
d'amore)

LON
_SS\4eet
oo
i ./7 4 dn i ee ee

the form of a stock melodic formula found in several Takemitsu works: a

kind of ‘zig-zag’ pattern formed by the alternation of ascending and
descending intervals. Although the actual intervals in each case differ,
Example 81 shows some typical uses of this same basic melodic contour in
three works, all of which coincidentally contain a part for guitar. It is pos-
: sible that this type of melodic pattern — particularly that from Vers, Parc-
| en-ciel, Palma, with its characteristic falling tritone final — may have been
suggested to Takemitsu by Example 76 from Messiaen’s Technique, which
the French composer claims to have derived from Boris Godunov (Ex. 82).
A rather more convincing case for this kind of melodic influence can be
argued with reference to Quatrain, a work for violin, cello, clarinet, piano
and orchestra which Takemitsu wrote for the ensemble Tashi in 1975. The
instrumentation of the solo quartet here is of course identical to that of
Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps, and Takemitsu explicitly intended
this work as an hommage to the French master, who had given him a two-
hour ‘lesson’ analysing the Quatuor during their meeting in New York in
1975. The similarities to Messiaen’s example in various aspects of the score,
155 Modernist apogee: the early 1970s

Ex. 82 Messiaen: examples of melodic type derived from Mussorgsky

(i) Messiaen, Technique, Ex. 75 (after (ii) Technique, Ex. 76

Mussorgsky)

St tg as yd St

f\ eel ara
, (iii) Quatuor pour la fin du temps, Ill, Abime
des oiseaux (opening)

—*
BN) /- Se ee

then, are in this case much more likely to be a matter of conscious imitation
— including the resemblance of actual thematic patterns. The principal
‘theme’ of Quatrain—shown in Example 83 — is in fact very closely related to
the melodic pattern shown as Example 94 in Messiaen’s Technique, the only
difference being that the second interval has been reduced from a major toa
minor second. This means that it also bears a close kinship to some of the
melodic ideas in Messiaen’s Quatuor, two of which are also quoted in
Example 83. And, as also shown in this example, the same basic pitch-
collection projected by the Messiaen formula — [0,1,2,6,7] —is also found in
inversion in a passage from Valeria, a chamber work of Takemitsu’s from
1965. This last connection might seem, on paper at least, rather less con-
vincing; but when heard in context, the lugubrious cello solo from which
this extract is taken irresistibly calls to mind the Louange a l’immortalité de
Jésus from the Quatuor— not least on account of its accompaniment of sus-
tained harmonies for electric organ, which call to mind Messiaen’s own
organ music if not also the multiple ondes Martenot of the Louange’s origi-
nal transcription in Fétes des belles eaux (although one cannot be certain
whether or not Takemitsu would have been familiar with the latter).
Another melodic type associated with Messiaen, the Théme de joie
found in the Vingt regards and Visions de l’Amen, also has a close relative
amongst the thematic materials employed in Quatrain. Its triumphantly
rising pentatonic phrase is recalled by a similar emotional upsurge in the
extended melody first heard on the clarinet after letter “C’ of Takemitsu’s
work, whose initial four pitches (Ex. 84) map on to the Théme de joie
exactly, and are elsewhere heard as an independent melodic incipit.
156 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 83 Comparison of themes by Takemitsu and Messiaen with Ex. 94 of latter’s

Technique

, (i) Messiaen: Louange a Il'immortalité de Jésus

3 pT 3

2’Wh
2(ou eieeSLeee
.\\)Ge
eee eee =e
©eees..eee
Ce Jeedh.
2)eee
ee ee
Eee eee
| dl
eee
eeeee
eh eeee
ee.
y, mma.
Technique
ee eee 7
(ii) Messiaen: Ex. 94 from 7 aE Ac
w (4.24Be
NA eeeeeeee
eeeee
ee

(iii) Messiaen: Fouillis de f\ . s ,

l'arc-en-ciel, pour l’'ange qui At tr
annonce la fin du temps —_————

3 oI
(iv) Takemitsu: Quatrain ep "|Wl
| ———_
f —_ s ; f, ° 2 s
© fou ee ee ee "|ee.YH
N72 ee re ee
ee

. AhValeria
(v) Takemitsu: .Mtfffo».“Tit?
ASO —Tt he
| ee
| |
tt
Ve TO ek ee. bel ed ee
BN 2 ee ee ees SP

Ex. 84 Comparison between Takemitsu, Quatrain and Messiaen, Vingt regards

(i) Quatrain (1975), G/1 (cl.) |

) — UL
—i 3 s = s 3

EE
0) SE ~ "ee. | a
2 wees 2 Ds Ee | ee. |. a eee” eee I
_———————
Rin) BG) Ae eee eee. | eee eee —_..... See ee

—-
ce
ay .4pbah
dt
2 _0 A
OS EE—E—EEE——eeSe
_>=
eeGe
.
(ii) Messiaen, Théme de joie (Vingt regards sur l'enfant Jésus)

ee ee
eee | ee eee
=>
| 3$=
157 Modernist apogee: the early 1970s

>
Ex. 85 Comparison between Takemitsu, Quatrain and Messiaen, Abime des
oiseaux

He
| (i) Quatrain (1975), Fig. H (cl.)

po : , —
— if fe
(ii) Messiaen, Quatuor pour la fin du temps,
“Abime des oiseaux" (cl.)

ra
ppp = fff cresc. molto

The Messiaenic influence on Quatrain is not, however, confined to the

matter of thematic resemblances. When the main idea of the work is first
presented by the solo quartet at letter ‘A’, for example, the two string
instruments, in contrary motion, provide a background of slow glissandi
in harmonics between two pitches, each glissando repeated a number of
times like an ostinato. The effect is so similar to the cello glissandi in the
Liturgie de cristal of Messiaen’s Quatuor that the resemblance has also been
remarked upon by other commentators — for example Koozin, who,
quoting the relevant passages one after the other, notes that Takemitsu’s
‘glissandos on harmonics and whole-tone implications in the strings’ were
‘very likely influenced by Messiaen’s cello writing in the previous
example’.”° Takemitsu’s writing for clarinet is another aspect of Quatrain
strikingly evocative of Messiaen’s Quatuor, and of the celebrated Abime des
oiseaux for solo clarinet in particular. For example, the protracted emer-
gence of a single pitch from inaudibility at letter “H’ in Takemitsu’s score
_ (in performance actually much longer than the notation would suggest) is
clearly related to a similar gesture that appears repeatedly in the Abime (Ex.
85). Similarly, the sustained crescendo on what is actually the lowest note
of a B) clarinet in extract (i) of Example 86 closely parallels the crescendo
 0
27
om oe
158 The music of Toru Takemitsu

) Ex. 86 Comparison between Takemitsu, Quatrain and Messiaen, Abime des

oiseaux

i™
i

|
SR’ 220 A ee” dee
w/o .OE
(CEE CE——————_—
A
eeeRE
eeeEE " Ce as Weee’.0
..eeeeeeeeeeeeee
ZO Sf —— If = mf
Pccresc.

EES
. be )
(ii)

AN Ae ee eee
PPP ——————

(ili)
(oz EE ; b
Ee —
eee Pe
ue | | [| «=
ey
q / .We
4 Ae
eeeeeeee
ne eee) eeeeee
eee

on precisely the same pitch in the quotation from the Quatuor shown in
(ii); while the general character of extract (i), with its wide leaps between
registers and ultimately strident dynamic level, bears comparison with the
similar registral displacement of the melodic line, and sustained loudness,
of the Messiaen extract shown in Example 86 (iii). __
Like such closely coeval works as Gitimalya and Marginalia, Quatrain
too has about it something of a transitional quality. Partly perhaps as a
result of Takemitsu’s intention to pay homage to Messiaen, much of the
instrumental sonority has a rapturous mellifluousness which palpably
looks forward to the composer’s later orchestral manner.: At least one
reviewer of an early performance sensed that some sort of change was in
the air; writing in the New York Times, Allen Hughes noted that ‘Quatrain
, is so pretty, so lush, so sumptuous in its melodic richness, vibrant colour
159 Modernist apogee: the early 1970s

and expansive aural spectrum that it was hard to believe’. Obviously per-
plexed at how to categorise the novel stylistic direction the composer was
so evidently taking, he commented: ‘If Toru Takemitsu’s avant-garde
standing is still intact among his peers, and if his Quatrain represents his
present compositional practice fairly, we may have to revise our notions of
what constitutes avant-gardism in music in the mid-1970s’.?!
With hindsight, of course, it is easy for us to see that a simple revision of
the definition of ‘avant-gardism’ was an inadequate response to the revolu-
tion that was then going on, not just in Takemitsu’s music, but in
‘advanced’ composition the world over. Although clearly he was unaware
| of the fact at the time, what Allen Hughes was witnessing at that New York
performance was an important station on the road to Takemitsu’s aban-
donment of an ‘avant-garde’ idiom for ever. Only five years after the opti-
mistic triumphalism of the Osaka World Fair, and the grandiose
modernist statement Takemitsu had prepared for it, the composer’s inter-
_ est was beginning to focus on other priorities, as in the world of music at
large the once self-assured, monolithic edifice of the ‘international’ avant-
garde began to crumble. A new Takemitsu sound was beginning to emerge
in response to the changed historical situation: texturally simpler, har-
monically more opulent and consummate in its refinement of instrumen-
tal sonority. Takemitsu’s third and final period, the period of consolidation
and ‘Romantic’ expression, begins here.
 9 Descent into the pentagonal garden

The simplified style which characterised this new, ‘third period’ in

Takemitsu’s creative output was no adventitious development, but one
whose roots can be traced in his work from the preceding years. In particu-
lar, the ground had long been prepared for the emergence of its more overt
tonality by his engagement with a modal harmonic vocabulary which,
though usually disguised somewhat by the dense textures of his ‘pantonal’
chromaticism, occasionally — as in the score of Green — had surfaced with
surprising directness. There had also been sporadic excursions into con-
ventional tonality in these years, such as the Abiyoyo quotation in Wind
Horse and the Bach chorale in Folios; while outside the sphere of the com-
poser’s ‘serious’ work — in his film music, in the a cappella songs of Uta, or
in the arrangements of pop ‘standards’ that formed Twelve Songs for Guitar
(1977) — unapologetic tonal expression was flourishing shamelessly. The
gradual emergence of the latter into the mainstream of Takemitsu’s
‘serious’ composing activity was thus far from a sudden stylistic rupture,
but more in the nature of an inevitability for which the soil had been care-
fully nurtured over a number of years.
While elements of his new style are certainly palpable in works such as
Quatrain, in the author’s opinion it is with the orchestral work A Flock
Descends into the Pentagonal Garden (1977) that Takemitsu first gives clear
and unambiguous expression to the new stylistic preoccupations with
which he is henceforth to be concerned. Moreover, if one grants this score
a key role in Takemitsu’s stylistic transformation, then a particular line of
descent for certain aspects of the ‘late style’ which emerged as a result
begins to suggest itself. The present chapter concerns itself — albeit specu-
latively — with tracing the ancestry of these traits through three key works
of the 1970s: In an Autumn Garden (1973/79), Garden Rain (1974) and A
Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden itself.
The story of In an Autumn Garden begins in 1970, with the decision by
the National Theatre of Japan to commission a series of new works by con-
temporary composers for that most venerable of traditional Japanese
musical institutions, the gagaku ensemble of the Imperial Household. The
first beneficiary of this new policy was Toshir6 Mayuzumi, whose Showa
Tenpyo Raku was performed in October 1970, and over the years that fol-
160 lowed, a number of other distinguished composers were to contribute to
 161 Descent into the pentagonal garden

| this ongoing project: the Japanese musicians Toshio Hosokawa (Tokyo

1985), Maki Ishii (Momotard Onitaiji, 1988) and Toshi Ichinyangi
(Jitsugetsu Bydbu Issd-Kokai, 1989), as well as the Europeans Karlheinz
Stockhausen (Hikari, 1977) and Jean-Claude Elois (Kansé no Hono-o no
Kata e, 1983). Takemitsu, it would appear, also received a commission to
provide a work for the series at the same time as Mayuzumi, but his own
score was to have a rather more extended period of gestation. It was not
until 30 October 1973, in fact, that his single movement Shuteiga — ‘In an
Autumn Garden’ — received its National Theatre premiére, but even this
proved to be far from the end of the story. Over the course of the next six
years, Takemitsu would build five additional movements around the cen-
trepiece of this original score, eventually producing Shuteiga — Ichigu (‘In
an Autumn Garden — Complete Version’), first heard at the National
Theatre on 28 September 1979. With a total running time of fifty minutes,
the full version must count among Takemitsu’s most ambitious works, and
certainly represents his most thorough investigation of the possibilities of
traditional Japanese music: Poirier refers to it as ‘probably the furthest
removed from the West of any work he had written’.' The titles of the six
movements — which Takemitsu initially conceived in English before sup-
plying them with Japanese equivalents — are:
I. Strophe
| II. Echo I
III. Melisma
IV. In an Autumn Garden (the original 1973 movement)
V. Echo II
VI. Antistrophe
The loose symmetry of this scheme is immediately apparent: Takemitsu
was to recall it seven years later in the final version of Gémeaux, in which
movements bearing the same titles as the outermost pair of In an Autumn
Garden frame two inner movements (“Genesis’ and “Traces’) in somewhat
similar fashion. It is a symmetry also emphasised in the score in various
ways, both by literal repetition and less exact forms of recollection. For
, example, the whole of the passage from letter “F’ to the end of letter ‘G’ in
| : the final movement is a repeat of the material between the same rehearsal
letters in the first movement; while at the end of the previous movement
(Echo IT), ‘birdsong’-like interjections for komabue’ and five ryiiteki recall
— without literally quoting — the similar bird sounds with which the equiv-
, alent movement in the arch-like scheme (Echo I) had begun.
Takemitsu employs the titles of the outermost movements in this arch-
like scheme in their original, antique Greek senses: Strophe and
162 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Antistrophe refer, respectively, to the music sung by the Chorus as it turns

to the left to mount the stage, and when it turns to the right to depart, at
the beginning and end of the ancient drama. Interestingly, the works com-
prising the traditional kangen and bugaku repertories of gagaku music are
also subdivided into ‘left’ (saho) and ‘right’ (uh6) groups, but Takemitsu
here does not appear to be referring to this distinction. Rather he relates
these Greek terms for promenading choral performance to the ancient
conception of gagaku as ‘a kind of strolling music for playing outdoors
such as while strolling in a garden’.’ To be sure, no such actual perambula-
tion is undertaken by the musicians during a performance of In an
Autumn Garden, but, nevertheless, this is another Takemitsu score in
which the spatial distribution of the instrumentalists plays a crucial role,
contributing to an overall ‘spatial and temporal discrepancy of sound’
which the composer obviously considers close to the spirit of the original
outdoor style of performance. This spatialisation is already present in the
1973 version of the work, which is scored for a foreground ensemble of
nine players (the ‘Autumn Garden’) and, upstage of them, an ‘echo’ ensem-
ble of a further eight musicians (the “Tree Spirits’). However, for the 1979
score Takemitsu added two more groups of “Tree Spirits’ to left and right at
the rear of the auditorium, bringing the total number of players to twenty-
nine. By means of this physical separation of the performing groups, he
was able to offer a metaphorical interpretation of the work’s title in the
shape of another ‘multiply-focused sound garden’ of the type found in the
orchestra of Arc; although, at the same time, he was not above offering
more literal, anecdotal interpretations of the title too — in the form of the
birdsongs already referred to, or the chimings of the wooden boards
(mokusho) with which the work begins and ends, and which, according to
Akiyama, create ‘an echo similar to the chopping of a tree deep in a forest’.*
The arrangement of the two rows of musicians in the 1973 scoring —
nine in the foreground, eight to the rear — is remarkably close to that of The
Dorian Horizon, with its downstage group of eight “harmonic pitches’ sup-
ported in the distance by nine ‘echoes’. The similarities to that earlier work
do not end here either, for according to Akiyama — and very much in
accord with the ‘classical Greek’ overtones suggested by the titles of the
outer movements — Takemitsu composed the work ‘mainly in the Grecian
Dorian mode” rather than in traditional gagaku scales. The accuracy of
this observation would appear to be borne out by such passages as the
haunting melody with which the fourth movement opens (Ex. 87), which
uses all the pitches of the mode beginning on the supertonic of a D-major
, scale, i.e. of a “Dorian E minor.
At the same time, however, Takemitsu’s writing here may not be so
 ;|EEao
@
BNA
a a
: EE oo
163 Descent into the pentagonal garden

Ex. 87 In an Autumn Garden IV, A/3—4

a’
200
Rydteki 1

~~ ).2 en ee ee 0s 4 eee, ee eee eee

@ (oo We ee 2 en ee eee es 4 eee Lee .. eee eee eee
Mf
| —— ————
sef\oFPennant
I} Qv Rydteki 2
mA BN
| \ & eee
(on. 0WO
AEE,
- OOee
mf
of
4 -[TULL
eriai
A eeEET,
Pee eee
ENE
eee eee
Ue
0 enHR
ee enRAN
“eee eee
2 eeeee2 eee
eee
, Hichiriki = s ) ——— —)
2...
5-8 . eee
MANS) ~~ Zz>...
A:50 - ~tihh
2 Ss 7=
eS” _AosCe

remote from traditional gagaku practice as Akiyama, or indeed maybe the

composer himself, seems to think. Gagaku music uses two heptatonic
scale-types, ryd and ritsu, which correspond more or less to the
Mixolydian and Dorian modes of Western theory, and Takemitsu’s
‘E-Dorian’ mode is identical with one of the three transpositions of the
ritsu scale, hydjo. While this congruence might not have displeased
Takemitsu, who in this work was in part seeking to rediscover some of the
origins of gagaku in Byzantium and the Middle East, it does nevertheless
rather neatly illustrate in nuce one of the most striking features of In an
Autumn Garden: the degree to which — despite the composer’s best efforts
to create a new musical language for gagaku — the old traditional idioms
still managed to assert themselves in the finished composition, so inti-
mately bound up were they with the performing techniques and indeed
the very physical construction of the instrumental resources.
Much of Takemitsu’s writing here, in truth, seems incapable of avoiding
reference to orthodox gagaku models of performance. In a number of
places, for instance, the kakko drum plays conventional accelerando pat-
terns of the type known in traditional performance as katarat, while the
patterns given to the koto during the repeated ‘processional’-like passage at
letter ‘O’ of the fourth movement are rhythmically identical to the type of
thing this instrument would play in an orthodox setting. Heterophony,
which the composer himself identified as a characteristic texture of
gagaku,° is also widely used throughout the work, although admittedly the
‘use of secondary melodic lines which ornament the primary melodic line’
may, as Akiyama asserts, equally well have derived from an observation of
164 The music of Toru Takemitsu

gamelan practice. More assuredly of authentic gagaku origin is the use of a

particular kind of canonic writing, often in combination with hetero-
phonic embellishment of the constituent parts, in which there is no
attempt at a harmonious sounding result, but rather at the creation of a
raucously dissonant web of voices: a type of texture which corresponds
very closely to the kind of canonic performance in the traditional repertory
for which the Japanese scholar Shigeo Kishibe coined the delightful neolo-
gism ‘chaophony’.® Passages from In an Autumn Garden such as the
complex senza misura at letter “D’ of the second movement, or the canonic
imitation of both a melodic line and its heterophonic embellishment at
letter ‘F’ of the fourth, are good examples of the degree to which Takemitsu
had imbibed the spirit of this ‘“chaophonic’ style by the time he came to
write his own work for the gagaku medium. :
From the point of view of Takemitsu’s own stylistic development,
however, perhaps the most important of these aspects of traditional
gagaku practice which contrived to assert themselves, despite the com-
poser’s efforts to the contrary, was the matter of the available pitch-
materials. In this respect, different constituents of the instrumental
ensemble afforded the composer varying degrees of freedom. For example,
wind instruments such as the hichiriki and ryiiteki were not only fully
chromatic, but even allowed the composer the possibility of microtonal
embellishment of his basic melodic lines. The plucked string instruments
also permitted the possibility of bendings of pitch, and additionally
Takemitsu prescribed an unorthodox tuning for the koto which enabled it
to produce eleven out of the twelve pitch-classes of the total-chromatic
(although, at the same time, the strings of the biwa are tuned according to
the traditional pattern of rising fourths, F#-B-E—A, known as banshi-
kicho). The small mouth-organ known as the shd, however — whose deli-
cate, ‘metaphysical’ sounds Takemitsu had already employed in his
Distance — was totally intractable to any kind of extension of its basic
gamut of limited pitch-materials. It could produce only the pitches of an
A-major scale, plus one Ck and one Gb; furthermore, the fingering of the
pipes had been designed for optimum facility in the production of eleven
, standardised vertical types as shown in Example 88, which formed the har-
monic basis of the traditional gagaku repertory.
In Distance, Takemitsu had ignored the traditional harmonic style with
which the sho was associated, exploiting as best he could the limited gamut
of pitches to produce more dissonant, freely chromatic vertical forms —
even bringing the player’s voice into play at one point as a means of extend-
ing the instrument’s chromatic possibilities. The shd writing of In an
Autumn Garden, however, comes much closer to the traditional variety; on
 165 Descent into the pentagonal garden
Ex. 88 Standard chords of sho

| —o
E Cy —?— 2 OE ee ett:
> ——________#)
Ja(i) Ja (ii) Ge Otsu Ka
2 Oo96
18“Ee
ro Ho rr?
| , Bi Ichi Gyé Bo Kotsu Hi
one or two occasions, in fact, the vertical forms Takemitsu assigns to this |
| , instrument are identical with forms found in Example 88 — for example, in
the ‘processional’ passage of the fourth movement referred to above (letter
‘O’-‘P’), where the first and last chords of the sho’s repeated harmonic
cycle correspond to the fourth (otsu) and seventh (ichi) of the chords in
Example 88 respectively. And even when not limiting himself to the tradi-
tional harmonic vocabulary of the sho, Takemitsu here seems to accept the
inherent limitations of the instrument, and build up similar-sounding
modal clusters of his own, rather than attempt to go against its traditional
function as he had done in Distance. Furthermore, this accommodation of
the instrument’s limitations somewhat circumscribes the pitches which
Takemitsu is able to assign to the other instruments without creating a
‘polymodal’ texture. In this respect, it is revealing that in the most ‘chro-
matic’ passage of the work — the complex melismata of the third move-
ment — the composer is obliged to eschew the harmonic support of the sho
entirely.
| Admittedly, a limited possibility exists for producing more chromati-
cally dissonant forms by the simultaneous sounding of C# and Cb, or G#
| and Gk, and — as he had done in Distance — Takemitsu duly exploits this
a loophole in one or two places. For the most part, however, he not only con-
tents himself with diatonic forms, but even models some of his harmonic
| types on transpositions of those contained within the instrument’s tradi-
tional set of eleven. For example, in addition to the ‘panpentatonic’ chords
on Gand D found in the latter, the available pitches also permit the con-
struction of other pentatonic verticalisations on pitches either side of this
pair in the cycle of fifths — i.e. on C, A and E — all of which are duly
exploited by Takemitsu in the course of the work.
The significance of such practices lies in the implication that, far from
finding himself frustrated by the harmonic limitations of this instrument,
166 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Takemitsu instead found the sounds it produced so satisfying that he was

encouraged to construct his own harmonic forms on the same basic prin-
ciples. And the wider significance of this discovery lies in the fact that very
soon he would be constructing similar harmonic types in works for other,
more conventional instrumental media — modal verticalisations which, it
is true, had formed part of his basic harmonic vocabulary since the very
earliest years, but which in recent times had seldom been presented in such
undisguised clarity as they were shortly to be.
One such work for conventional Western instruments — many of whose
features owe much to the example of In an Autumn Garden — appeared in
the year following the first version of the latter. Garden Rain for brass
ensemble takes its title from that of a haiku poem by an Australian school-
girl, Susan Morrison, which appears in the preface to the score:

Hours are leaves of life.

And I am their gardener.
Each hour falls down slow.

It is amusing to reflect how this unknown eleven-year-old unwittingly

started something big by giving this evocative title to her work. Not only
did it inspire Takemitsu to produce another work in the ongoing series of
‘garden ’-inspired pieces that had begun with Arc in the previous decade;
Morrison’s title also granted to Garden Rain the privilege of being (with
the possible exception of the early tape piece Water Music) the first work in
another series of Takemitsu compositions linked by a common extra-
musical theme, and one which was to assume much greater importance in
his works of the succeeding few years (as chapter 10 will reveal): the
‘Waterscape’ series. Garden Rain proclaims its membership of the latter in
particular by the inclusion of a three-note motif that was to appear repeat-
edly in later works sharing an aquatic reference: the ‘“S-E—A’ motif, which
we have already encountered in the score of Winter. In Example 89, the
motif is heard in the transposed form Ab—A—D, preceded by, and overlap-
ping with, a statement of its own retrograde form.
Besides glancing forward to the ‘waterscape’ obsessions of the following
decade, however, Garden Rain also looks backwards to In an Autumn
Garden in certain respects, most obviously in the spatial disposition of its
instrumental forces. Like the ensemble required by In an Autumn Garden
in its first version, that of Garden Rain is divided into ‘upstage’ and ‘down-
stage’ groups, in this case each composed of five instrumentalists. This
means, of course, that the work’s on-stage layout recalls that of The Dorian
Horizon as well, and once again there is also a common ground with the
 reer Se
167 Descent into the pentagonal garden

AL eS
——E——S==
Ex. 89 Garden Rain, p.7

ANS 9 2 es | Ee 5 =
latter in the use of modality. Takemitsu is less explicit about the exact
nature of this modal construction than he was regarding his ‘Grecian
Dorian mode’ in In an Autumn Garden; but nevertheless one is able to
gather that ‘in this instance’ he ‘chose a mode with many possibilities — a
mode that, beginning as a wide stream, will divide into many branches’,
and in which ‘the perfect fifth, even if not always present in sound, is at the
core of my musical perception’.? Certainly the modal basis of much of the
| musical material here is apparent enough at the surface level, both hori-
zontally and vertically — in the latter dimension, most conspicuously
perhaps in the closing bars of the work, which tend towards (without ever
unambiguously stating) a ‘panpentatonic’ conclusion on a B final.
It is also perhaps feasible to suggest a direct sho influence on some
aspects of the distinctive brass style of Garden Rain. Such a relationship
would certainly not be without precedent: Takemitsu had, after all, expli-
citly acknowledged that the massed strings of Arc represented the ‘most »
suitable instruments to express the continuous sounds of the sho’,!° and a
similarity between the senza vibrato string chords of The Dorian Horizon
and the sounds of the shd had also been commented on by Akiyama. A
thoroughgoing attempt to analyse the pitch-material of Garden Rain in
terms of subsets formed by ‘partitioning’ of the traditional repertory of
sho chords has actually been attempted by one commentator on the
| work,'! but it may be the case that the style of instrumental writing offers a
more obvious reflection of such an influence. For much of the time, the
brass instruments of Garden Rain are preoccupied with quiet, long-held
chords, typically with very low bottom notes, notated by means of square-
headed symbols whose durations are given by figures shown in boxes
above them. These figures are to be understood only as relative to one
another, with a unit value greater than 1”; in effect, therefore, the absolute
durations of these chords in performance will be more or less a function of
| the instrumentalists’ breath capacity, relating the style of execution to that
of the sho whose power, Takemitsu believed, was ‘inherent in its relation-
ship with man’s breathing’.'* The static quality achieved here, a distinctive
_ feature of Garden Rain’s sound-world, is in fact equally apparent in those
168 The music of Toru Takemitsu

sections of the work which, on paper at least, would rather tend to suggest
a dense and complex polyrhythmic chaos formed from simultaneous
irregular subdivisions of the beat; as Wilson observed, the overall effect of
such rhythmic superimpositions is so complex ‘that the ear tends to fuse it
into a certain homogeneity creating a new sense of stagnation clearly
related to the opening, sustained chords’.'°
Garden Rain obviously recalls In an Autumn Garden also on account of
the common metaphor shared by the two works titles, but there is a sug-
gestion in the later work that Takemitsu is beginning to apply this meta-
phor to his compositional process in a manner somewhat different from
heretofore. Wilson mentions hearing the composer give a lecture at the
Eastman School of Music in 1974, in which he compared the structure of
Garden Rain to that of a Japanese rock garden." If Wilson’s memory is
accurate, then Takemitsu’s revelation is highly significant, for it represents
an acknowledgement that the ‘garden’ metaphor is here being translated
into musical equivalents other than, or at least additional to, those by
means of which the composer had interpreted the image in such earlier
works as Arc. In Arc, there had been an attempt at offering parallelisms
between the ‘time-cycles’ of various components of a Japanese garden —
rocks, grass, trees and sand — and the speeds of activity of various elements
in the instrumental texture: in other words, the garden analogy operated
largely by virtue of the vertical aspect of the music, in terms of Takemitsu’s
‘pan-focal’, stratified treatment of the orchestra. Takemitsu’s remarks
about Garden Rain, however, suggest that in this case it is the overall form
of the music that is modelled on a Japanese garden: the metaphor is now
related to the horizontal aspect of the music, the actual contents of the
piece as it unfolds in time, of which the term ‘structure’ is descriptive.
, The importance of this change of emphasis resides in the fact that the
latter application of the metaphor proved the more enduring of the two,
and eventually became the norm in Takemitsu’s third and final period.
This in a way is hardly surprising: the dense stratifications of different tex-
tures by means of which the image is interpreted in such works as Arc
belong emphatically to the ‘avant-garde’ style which Takemitsu was subse-
quently to abandon, and it was appropriate that in his simplified later
manner the composer should prefer another interpretation of this evoca-
tive theme. Thus in works of later years such as Fantasma/Cantos for clari-
net and orchestra (1991), which the composer claimed was inspired by
viewing a Japanese ‘tour’ garden, the ‘formal’ interpretation of the ‘garden’
metaphor becomes the dominant model: it is as if the soloist, and vicari-
ously the listener, were wandering through a series of fixed musical
_ ‘objects’, some of which may be viewed in a different light, and some of
 169 Descent into the pentagonal garden

which may be revisited — as, typically, at the end of the work, in which viaa
literal repetition of material the music usually arrives back where it began.
Takemitsu himself appears not to have drawn attention to this inconsis-
tency, or at least slight discrepancy, between his interpretation of ‘garden
form’ in works of his middle and late periods, but it has not gone unno-
ticed by other commentators: Akimichi Takeda, for instance, observes that
| while in the earlier works ‘landscape gardening’ was taken as equivalent to
‘pitch organisation’, in later works (like Fantasma/Cantos), the latter
concept has been completely replaced by the notion of a ‘site for
walking’.!°
The ‘garden’ metaphor is evoked again in the title of A Flock Descends
into the Pentagonal Garden for orchestra (1977), although at the same time
_ this piece also belongs to another series of works which make common ref-
erence to an extra-musical theme: the series referred to by Takemitsu as
‘Dream and Number’. The allusion to ‘dream’ refers to the circumstances
of the work’s inspiration: after seeing a photograph by Man Ray of the
artist Marcel Duchamp, in which the latter’s head had been shaved to leave
a bald patch like a five-pointed star, Takemitsu dreamt of a flock of white
birds, led by a black bird, descending into the ‘pentagonal garden’ of the
title. Using this dream as a starting point, Takemitsu sought musical equiv-
alents for its imagery via the mediation of an unusually rigorous precom-
positional process — an application of the science of ‘Number’. The work’s
apparently cumbersome title is thus an accurate reflection of both its
extra-musical inspiration and internal musical processes; yet, despite
being carefully worked on in consultation with the composer Roger
Reynolds, it has not been immune from ambiguous interpretations. In
particular, at performances in Scotland and Australia — to the composer’s
surprise — audiences assumed it referred to a flock of sheep!'®
As suggested above, Takemitsu’s translation of the contents of his initial
dream into sound is achieved with a certain precision, even if of a some-
, what idiosyncratic kind. The ‘black bird’ is represented by the central pitch
of the pentatonic scale formed by the ‘black notes’ of a keyboard, F# ~ a
note Takemitsu refers to as his “favourite pitch . . . whose sound is like a
mountain peak with surrounding vistas’'” (a similitude apparently deriv-
ing from the central position this pitch occupies in the octave C-C).
Moreover, Takemitsu also revealed that ‘in German that pitch [i.e. F#] is
Fis, which sounds like the English “fix”; and with the intentional pun in
mind, I use that F# as a fixed drone’.'® The last part of this statement is
Interesting because Takemitsu here explicitly acknowledges a practice
_. which has often been remarked upon by his commentators: the emphasis
placed on specific pitch-classes by means of pedal points or drone-like
170 The music of Téru Takemitsu

devices. This emphasis may be achieved either by repeatedly attacking the

same pitch-class throughout a section, or by means of a ‘pedal point’ in the
more traditional sense of a sustained pitch; the insistence on F# in A Flock
Descends involves both types of practice. Thus at letter ‘M’ of the score,
where Takemitsu simply sets out a series of six chords which he has derived
from the pentatonic scale by means of the ‘magic square’ referred to below,
the ‘fixity’ of ‘Fis’ in his precompositional scheme guarantees that this
pitch appears in at least two octave registers, and sometimes three, in each
subsequent chordal attack. Elsewhere in the piece, on the other hand, there
are numerous references to this same pitch-class in the form of sustained
pedal tones: as in the passage from letter ‘I’ to “K’, where F# — here stabil-
ised in the octave above middle C — is sustained throughout.
Takemitsu’s starting point for the musical realisation of the ‘pentagonal
garden’ into which his ‘black bird’ descends is — unsurprisingly — the ‘black
note’ pentatonic scale on F#. ‘In music the number five makes us think of
the Orient and Africa’, he commented; ‘to explain it simply, it is the scale of
the black keys of the piano’. It is revealing that Takemitsu here speaks of
‘the Orient’ as if, like Africa, it represented some musical ‘other’. Although
by this time he had long been reconciled to traditional Japanese music, he
still regarded it somewhat from the ‘etic’ standpoint of a composer pri-
marily in the Western tradition, and thus did not elect to mention here —as
he might well have done — that this pentatonic scale is also the yo scale of
traditional Japanese music, ‘light’ counterpart to the ‘dark’ in scale which
he had used in his very earliest compositions.*° In A Flock Descends,
Takemitsu refers to this scale primarily in a vertical sense: ‘panpentatonic’
superimpositions of the entire collection, of the kind usually heard only
intermittently in his work to date, now assume the importance of funda-
mental referential sonorities, and additionally furnish the work with that
specific signifier of final closure that was to become something of a trade-
mark over the course of the next few years. Of frequent occurrence, too,
are vertical forms based on the addition of extraneous pitches to penta-
tonic collections; Example 90 illustrates an extreme case, where the “black-
note’ collection within the bracket forms the core of a massive orchestral
sonority whose pitches contain the total-chromatic. The passage where
this event occurs, incidentally, provides a good example of a gesture
typical of Takemitsu’s musical rhetoric: a climax which — in contrast to the
gradual accumulations of energy typical of Western music — takes a form
described by one commentator as ‘a sudden, brief outburst which imme-
diately subsides’.?! The manner in which this climax is preceded by a dra-
matic sounding of the double pedal point, C—C#, in the bass prior to the
unleashing of the full orchestra, is also highly typical of the composer.
171 Descent into the pentagonal garden

Ex. 90 A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden, F/3

ae
Sh et
A 7 |, : ,
Ft tee —=
-= fe be
te be

One could speculate that the addition of all seven ‘white notes’ to the
five black ones here is some kind of reflection of the “flock of white birds’
that follow the black one in Takemitsu’s initial dream image. Whatever the
actual derivation of the pitches in Example 90, however, it is unlikely that
they were arbitrarily arrived at, for A Flock Descends —as hinted above, and
explicitly acknowledged by the composer himself — is written according to
an unusually rigorous ‘system’. “Sometimes I change my previous plan
with my intuition’, Takemitsu observed, “but A Flock Descends is written
with a very strict row. It is programmed, controlled.” Takemitsu’s account
of this precompositional process, which appears in his monograph Yume
to Kazu (“Dream and Number’), is actually the most candid explanation of
his secret technical workings that he ever made public, and as such has
been eagerly seized upon by scholars of his music: as Poirier has observed,
it is not simply a matter of chance that this work and Quatrain are among
the most commented upon of Takemitsu’s entire ceuvre.”° For this very
reason, I have decided that it would be supererogatory to add my own
description to those already available, and the reader interested in finding
out more about the ‘magic squares’ and other arcana by means of which
Takemitsu derived the basic pitch-materials of A Flock Descends should
turn to the appropriate sources.** At the same time, however, anyone who
expects to find an exhaustive analysis of the work in question should be
warned that they are likely to be disappointed by Takemitsu’s description.
While the composer certainly reveals how, retaining F# as a ‘fixed pitch’, he
subjected the remaining notes of the black-note pentatonic scale to trans-
_ position operations by means of ‘magic squares’ to derive the basic har-
monic fields of this work, many of the graphics and musical quotations
172 The music of Toru Takemitsu

with which he illustrates his argument seem to stand in a merely decorative

relationship to the text, being referred to only obliquely or sometimes not
at all. As a result, the reader’s curiosity on a number of points still remains
tantalisingly unsatisfied. For instance, one of Takemitsu’s diagrams hints
that, in addition to those used to derive the pitch-materials, there is
another “magic square’ of numbers (marked ‘rhythmic construction
series), the sum of whose rows and columns is always fifteen, which
appears to be used to generate the durational values of the work from
various pairs of figures whose sum is always five. Kuniharu Akiyama cer-
tainly takes the hint, observing of the work’s rhythmic aspect that ‘various
shapes are derived from cells whose rhythmic construction is related to the
number five: 3+2, 1+4, 2+3, 4+1...’;? but, since Takemitsu’s text almost
provocatively fails to make any explicit reference to this intriguing
diagram, such observations are doomed, in the last analysis, to remain
somewhat speculative in character.
These ‘magic squares’ of Takemitsu’s constructional system may also
constitute a secret reference to the ‘garden’ metaphor of his title. At all.
events, Poirier has suggested an intriguing analogy between the two: the
distribution of stones in a traditional Japanese rock garden, he notes, is
determined by the rhythm 7-5-3, which are also the central numerical
values in a Taoist ‘magic square’ whose columns and rows all add up to
fifteen — just like those in Takemitsu’s own square of ‘rhythmic construc-
tion series’.”° At the same time, the ‘garden’ reference of Takemitsu’s title is
almost certainly interpreted musically in both senses Takemitsu more
habitually attributes to it: referring both to the ‘pan-focal’ orchestral
texture, and to the overall patterning of the work after the form ofa
Japanese garden. Admittedly, this latter suggestion appears to be contra-
dicted to a certain degree by the composer’s own remarks on the work,
which imply a different structural model, and one whose linear, sectional
nature seems at first sight incompatible with the idea of a rambling, circu-
lar stroll. It is a model not unlike the ‘eleven steps without any special
melodic scheme’ of November Steps, but in this instance the number of
‘dar’ in Takemitsu’s scheme would appear to be thirteen: “Each section of
this piece has a special story: maybe, thirteen small sections, thirteen vari-
ations — not variations in the Western sense, rather, like a scroll painting.
So when I composed this piece I made up a story, a picture, like a scroll
painting.” |
The ‘maybe’ with which Takemitsu qualifies his description is apt,
recalling Ohtake’s remarks about the “eleven ambiguously separated sec-
tions’ of November Steps: it is indeed as difficult to arrive at any definitive
partitioning of the later work as it was of the former (although, once again,
 173 Descent into the pentagonal garden

Takemitsu’s score suggestively provides thirteen rehearsal letters, ‘A—"M’).

, Perhaps one should not be too surprised at such an outcome, if the work is
in fact patterned after the continuously unfolding sequence of “boundless’
images in a Japanese emaki, as the composer claims. However, as suggested
above, this interpretation of the work’s formal outline does not necessarily
militate against its simultaneous apprehension as an example of
Takemitsu’s ‘garden form’ — the network of interpenetrating repetitions in
the score, both literal and less accurate, implies that this might not be inap-
propriate. That these two simultaneous interpretations of the same form
may not be incompatible is certainly suggested by the composer’s remarks,
, many years later, about A Bird came down the Walk (1994), a work for viola
and piano based on the same materials as those with which A Flock
Descends opens: here ‘the bird theme goes walking through the motionless,
scroll painting like a landscape, a garden hushed and bright with
daylight’.*8
_ Takemitsu’s “pentagonal garder’ is also self-evidently in a direct line of
descent from the ‘autumn garden’ of the gagaku piece on which he was still
working, and it may be appropriate to conclude discussion of A Flock
Descends with some speculations on the degree to which the experience of —
writing for gagaku may have influenced the style of the orchestral piece
and, by implication, the whole ‘third-period’ aesthetic of which it consti-
tutes one of the earliest clear expressions. One such possible source of
influence may have been of a kind that operated on the composer’s sub-
conscious, furnishing part of the dream-content which was the initial
impetus for A Flock Descends’ composition: anyone who has attended a
performance of In an Autumn Garden, surrounded by the spatially separ-
ated instrumental groups, cannot but be reminded by this experience of
sitting in the midst of a ‘triangular garden’ of the five-sided one which
Takemitsu saw in his dream-vision. Without indulging in amateur
psychology, however, it is also possible to discover links between the two
works in the shape of more concrete, musical similarities. Most obviously,
| the starting point for Takemitsu’s ‘magic-square’ chords — the verticalisa-
tion of a pentatonic scale — is identical with the construction of five out of
the eleven standard vertical forms played by the sho in its conventional
context. Transpose the first chord of Example 88 down a semitone and you
have the ‘black-note’ pentatonic chord with which A Flock Descends opens;
orchestrate it for wind instruments, add further vertical forms of similar
construction, and you have the very passable simulacrum of shd-like
chords of the work’s first few bars. Furthermore, add to this a melodic line,
the ‘theme of the flock... based on the same pitches [as the accompanying
harmonic progression]’,’? assign it to solo oboe, and you have something
174 The music of Téru Takemitsu oe
like the orchestral equivalent of a hichiriki melody to counterpoint this
movement of ethereal harmonies. Or —as at letter ‘M’ of Takemitsu’s score
— colour the basic six ‘magic-square’ chords on which A Flock Descends is
based with silvery, ‘overtone’-like formations for muted trumpets and
| divided strings, add crescendo—diminuendo dynamic envelopes to the
latter, and the orchestration as a whole begins to shimmer with the magic,
celestial timbre of the shditself.
It thus seems highly plausible that Takemitsu’s experience with the
limited harmonic range of the shd was one factor determining the more
, obvious preference for verticalised modal forms, and for “‘panpentatonic’
chords in particular, that is such a conspicuous feature of his later work. In
this sense, his ‘descent into the pentagonal garden’ — apt metaphor,
perhaps, for those who view his abandonment of avant-gardisme as some
sort of decline in standard — may therefore have been prepared for by his
experiences in the ‘autumn garden’ of his gagaku piece. Other aspects of
his later style, too, such as the increased emphasis on melos, or the
simplified textures with their reliance on instrumental doublings rather
than complex layerings, may also owe their origins in part to the same
creative stimulus. Yet it would be going too far to suggest that the experi-
ence of writing In an Autumn Garden alone was responsible for such a
wholesale transformation of Takemitsu’s style. The sources of Takemitsu’s
late manner were manifold; this chapter has only related the story of one,
albeit important, element in the mix.
Another influence that was to become of especial importance in the suc-
ceeding years, for example, is already hinted at by the second work consid-
ered in this chapter: the extra-musical influence implied by the second half
of the title Garden Rain. In 1978 Takemitsu returned to this theme, com-
plementing the earlier work with a similar aquatic allusion in the title of
Waterways, and in the subsequent decade this motif was to become some-
thing of an obsession with him, referred to again and again in a series of
works which steered the former ‘avant-garde’ composer definitively in the
direction of what he called his “sea of tonality’. It is this route towards the
consolidation of Takemitsu’s ‘third-period’ manner that will be examined
in chapter 10.
 10 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

A Flock Descends marked a significant watershed in Takemitsu’s work.

Something of its musical language had already been glimpsed in earlier
pieces, but these had not, in the end, announced the inauguration of a new
simplicity in the composer’s discourse: Green had been followed by
Asterism, Quatrain by Waves and Bryce. After A Flock Descends, however —
with the exception of the delayed premiére of the Gémeaux project — there
was to be no turning back to the ‘modernist’ style with which Takemitsu
had been preoccupied in the earlier part of the decade. This time, the
work’s glowing sensuality was to prove no temporary aberration from the
true path, but instead embodied an aesthetic that would preoccupy
Takemitsu for more or less the remainder of his career. His ‘third period’ “
had begun.
The 1980s were the years in which this new style was to be refined and
consolidated. As Poirier has pointed out, they were years characterised by
‘an identity such as results from a long sedimentation’;' years, further-
more, in which — for Poirier at least - Takemitsu’s writing progressively
takes on the character of the ‘post-modernism’ prevalent at the time.’
Poirier does not explain precisely what he means by this problematic and
much-abused term, and significantly the composer himself — as we shall
see later — preferred to categorise his later manner as ‘Romantic’; but
nevertheless, one can certainly assert that Takemitsu’s compositions from
henceforth, at least relative to his own earlier work, would become ‘post-
| avant-garde,’ ‘post-experimental’ — in other words, would constitute his
own response to the decline of modernism as the dominant aesthetic of
new music.
Two consequences in particular flow from this decision by Takemitsu to
dissociate himself from the modernist adventure. First, radical experi-
mentation is mostly abandoned, and as a result during the 1980s
Takemitsu’s style acquires a certain stability, a consistent sound which was
to become more or less normative for the remainder of his career.
Secondly, while modernism had aspired to become the single interna-
tional, collective language of advanced composition, the styles that now
emerged from beneath its shadow were pluralist, individual and personal.
At the height of his ‘experimental’ period, Takemitsu’s career had appeared
175 to run in tandem with the leading Western avant-garde musicians of his
176 The music of Toru Takemitsu

day. Now, however, as he followed more and more his own inclinations,
Takemitsu’s stylistic trajectory was henceforth to diverge irrevocably from
that of his former Western colleagues. |
Besides his confessions to being a ‘Romantic’, Takemitsu indirectly
acknowledged the changed priorities of his later music via another
keyword, or rather key phrase, that reflected a particular technical aspect
of the new order. It was a phrase that was to occur repeatedly in the pref-
aces to the series of works whose titles refer to the imagery of rain: for
example, that found in the score of Rain Coming reads:

Rain Coming is one of a series of works by the composer inspired by the

common theme of rain. The complete collection entitled “Waterscape’
includes other works . . . It was the composer’s intention to create a series of
works, which like their subject,’ pass through various metamorphoses,
culminating in a sea of tonality [my italics].*

Takemitsu’s metaphor of the ‘sea of tonality’ here is provocatively

ambiguous. On the one hand, he could simply be referring to aspects of
individual works in this series — their tendency to move towards tonal res-
olutions, their ‘pan-tonal’ harmonic language. On the other hand,
however, he could be suggesting that the ‘Waterscape’ cycle as a whole rep-
resents a journey towards the ‘sea of tonality’ —in other words, represents a
vehicle for the wholesale transformation of his harmonic language into a
more overtly tonal idiom. If the latter interpretation is correct — and the
historical coincidence of the “Waterscape’ cycle with the consummation of
Takemitsu’s stylistic metamorphosis suggests that this may be a possibility
— then this series of works is of particular importance for understanding
the genesis of Takemitsu’s ‘third-period’ manner. It is therefore with a dis-
cussion of the works comprising this cycle that the analytical matter of this
chapter begins.
Waterscape
Takemitsu himself, as the above quotation indicates, identified the unify-
ing feature of the “Waterscape’ series as the inspiration of rain, but never-
theless it may be more fruitful to think of the cycle as comprising all the
works from this period whose titles contain some aquatic reference of
whatever kind. This is certainly the view taken by Yukiko Sawabe, who sees
the series as pointing in two directions, ‘namely to the horizontal level of
river, sea and ocean... and the vertical level of rain’.- And indeed, a more
inclusive approach is not without support in Takemitsu’s own description
—at all events, his references to the ‘various metamorphoses’ undergone by
177 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

rain on its journey to the ‘sea of tonality’ suggest that he, too, was aware of
the ‘horizontal’ dimension of his subject. Thus more broadly defined, the
area encompassed by this “Waterscape’ cycle is a large one. It begins in
1974, with a work which was described in the last chapter as belonging to
Takemitsu’s ‘garden’-inspired works, but which is also simultaneously the
first member of the ‘Waterscape’ series — a form of “dual citizenship’ that, as
we shall see below, Takemitsu was to grant to a number of subsequent
pieces. Garden Rain was followed by Waves and Waterways, and the follow-
ing decade saw the addition of no fewer than twelve works to the
Takemitsu canon with a watery reference in the title: Toward the Sea (1981)
and its two rearrangements for larger forces; Rain Tree (1981); Rain
Coming, Rain Spell and Rain Tree Sketch (1982); Wavelength (1984); the
tape piece The Sea is Still (1986); Rain Dreaming (1986); riverrun and I
, Hear the Water Dreaming (1987). With the last piece, the composer seems
to have brought the main corpus of ‘aquatic’ works to a close, but the
theme is briefly invoked again in the titles of two works from the following
decade: Rain Tree Sketch II (1992) and Between Tides (1993).
As was noted in the previous chapter, one of the ways in which Garden
Rain proclaims its membership of this series is its incorporation, albeit in
transposition, of the “S—-E—A’ motif, formed from the pitch-classes equiva-
lent to those three letters in German nomenclature (i.e. Es [Eb ]—E~A). This
‘three-note motif, consisting of a half-step and a perfect fourth’,° was to
assume special significance in the composer’s works for a period of at least
twenty years, appearing — as the representative selection of extracts quoted
in Example 91 shows — both in works from the “Waterscape’ series, and in
others whose titles contain no aquatic reference. Perhaps the latter appar-
ent anomaly can best be explained by considering Takemitsu’s own meta-
- phorical extension to his key word’s significance: the ‘sea of tonality’.
Interpreted in this sense, the appearances of the ‘sea’ motif in these works,
written during a period of the composer’s career when his interest in
tonality was coming to the fore with the greatest clarity, seem perfectly
appropriate. One might observe in passing, too, that the three letters com-
prising this musical tag, in retrograde (and Takemitsu was to submit his
motif to the full range of ‘serial’ transformations), also form the musically
viable letters of the composer’s own family name: tAkEmitSu.
As noted above, one possible interpretation of the problematic term ‘sea
of tonality’ might be to assume that it refers to the ‘tonal’ resolutions
centred on a particular pitch or key towards which so many of these works
gravitate — resolutions which may often employ fairly conventional har- ,
monic indices of closure, such as the “‘panpentatonic’ scale verticalisation.
One might also observe that the same ‘tonal centre’ serves as final in a
178 The music of Téru Takemitsu

Ex.91 Versions of S-E-A motif

——— nTbenema
BP, —_—
| — 3
— ee
7 A A A ae te Oh) HH
A) —— re - ff an / ae
scien

be we: 4
(i) Folios, tor solo guitar (1974) (ii) Quatrain (1975), D/4 (fl.)

Se es aee‘|Se1Hos}
ee ‘ eee
/y
a b a In — b ‘ a : ;, fy Ne Tha fs hss is
Fame

Be ane Se ee ee oe S02) a DT | SO SN
y

(iii) A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden (iv) Far Calls. Coming, Far! (1980), 0/8 (solo vin.)
(1977), H/2 - 3 (vin. 1)

‘_—
5aaeai —6’_2 jA
a ee7eel yt ee4 ff fFeeFg
0) A SR "9"
|
ees See ee ee eee
(v) Toward the Sea (1980), p. 11 system 1 (guitar) (vi) A Way a Lone (1981), bar 120 (vin. 1)

a
2eT... b
ee — eS r a ——
|
———~~. a 7
as
ANALY p......~ES
& TH hi —
A SE 1Ai— eS 2 20 Ae
\S.)
—_ y
(vii) Rain Tree (1981), p. 12 bar 1 (vibr.) (viii) Dreamtime (1981), B/7 (vin. 1+2)

FT
<5 gfoe”
— a Oe
5

20) ee
I PAScenes”
ee b,

:5) 3A... SS re
© (on. WBMP" aa
DD -—_-_--__ 0 s
) Rain Tree Sketch (1982, solo pno.), (x) Rain Coming (1982), D/5 (vin. 1)
3 b —~n,_ | 5
7.
tf.» GAN
00" Oi. eee...Re
2008 A ES en en__
ETES
DNeee ee WGE
A SAY NN
20h
/... Wie eee NN
ee eee)| en
S..4000 20 NEy oeRS LO TL)
ME| 6S|;
een 4...
| as
ee ee

(xi) | Hear the Water Dreaming (1987), K/4 (solo fl.) (xii) Pathssystem
(solo trumpet, 1994), p. 4,
179 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

number of different works from this period. Thus Rain Tree, Rain Coming
and the string quartet A Way a Lone (1981) all end with strong suggestions
of Db major — in the case of the Rain Tree, presented in the unambiguous
_ form of a very quiet triad in that key, tremolando, for two marimbas. A
closely related ‘modal’ Bb minor with flattened seventh is implied by the
final Bb-minor-seventh chord of Toward the Sea, as well as by the ‘panpen-
tatonic’ closure of Dreamtime (1981); Garden Rain, Rain Spell and To the
Edge of Dream (1983) all end with affirmations of Bs as their ‘tonic’; while
Ck would appear to have something like a tonic significance at the end of
Far calls. Coming, far! (1980), Orion and Pleiades (1984), Twill by Twilight
(1988) and A String Around Autumn (1989) — even if in the last instance the
effect of the final pentatonic collection is rather to suggest a modal ‘A
minor by the placing of Ab in the bass.
One notes additionally that the final ‘tonal’ arrival in these works is not
| necessarily simply an afterthought, but may be carefully prepared by the
material preceding it. One such form of preparation takes the form of the
establishment of some kind of long-term progression of significant
pitches. Koozin, for example, has suggested that this is the case in Rain Tree
Sketch: by isolating all occurrences of pitches lower than Eb’, he derives a
_ fairly convincing long-term ‘bass progression’ for the piece — particularly
for its second half, from the climactic C# doubled in three octaves in bar
337 down to the Bb with which the work ends.® Toward the Sea for alto flute
and guitar also appears to demonstrate evidence of such long-term think-
ing, here working in co-operation with harmonic devices to lead the work
towards its ultimate tonal destination of Db major/Bb minor. This tonal
area is hinted at throughout the piece by the use of the B}-minor-seventh
chord already referred to as a ‘reference sonority’, but it is also constantly
thrown into relief by repeated reference to a secondary tonal area a major
third higher — suggesting a ‘rival’ pair of tonic centres, F major/D minor,
with particular emphasis on the note A. It is partly the tension generated
between these two rival tonal areas, and its resolution at the end of the
piece, that lends such a convincing air of finality to the last movement's
closing bars (Ex. 92).
Here, against a transposition of the ubiquitous ‘S—E—A’ motif in the alto
flute with a C# final, the guitar counterpoises first a verticalisation of the
pentatonic scale on F (the ‘rival’ tonal area), and then a transposition of
the same chord down a major third (i.e., on to the ‘tonic’). In this context
the guitar’s third chord — whatever its actual theoretical derivation —
sounds like an altered IV of C# major, and the ear accepts the flautist’s lin-
gering Cf, persisting as the harmony fades away, as conclusive. The final
appearance of the ‘referential’ chord here, with its B} root, might on paper
:
|g&|
el) FH CK TD)

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2> alt
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fn y

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Fr ad
 181 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

appear to undermine this sense of finality; but in practice, the ear by this
time has become so accustomed to its sonority that it perfectly fulfils the
cadential role here demanded of it.
A secondary, and possibly more likely, meaning of Takemitsu’s ‘sea of
tonality’ is, however, suggested by his commentary on Far calls. Coming,
far! where he speaks of the ““sea of tonality” from which many pantonal
chords flow’.? The word ‘pantonal’ again suggests the theories of George
Russell (rather than Réti), where it is used to describe the manner in which
a totally chromatic music may be achieved by an accumulation of modally
derived materials. Takemitsu’s metaphor thus appears to be suggesting
something like the reverse of this process: that the ‘sea of tonality’ is a
matrix of possibilities from which the modally based harmonies of his
music derive. Such modally based forms are certainly much more obvious
at a foreground level in the composer’s later music than had generally been
the case in his middle years. The two ‘panpentatonic’ chords in the
example from Toward the Sea quoted above are a case in point, as are the
panpentatonic valedictions that, following the precedent of A Flock
| Descends, were to become almost a cliché of the composer’s later style:
Dreamtime, Vers, l’'arc-en-ciel, Palma, and A String Around Autumn all end
with this gesture. But the full range of other modal forms that Takemitsu
had added to his harmonic vocabulary over the years is also exploited to
the full in these later works, and very often in a ‘bolder’, much more
exposed state than previously. In particular, the octatonic scale is used
with such frequency that glib comparisons with Messiaen’s music have,
inevitably, sprung all too easily to the minds of Takemitsu’s critics, as we
| shall see in the concluding chapter of this book.
The recurrence of harmonic devices already familiar from earlier works
illustrates an important aspect of Takemitsu’s ‘third-period’ style: it did
| not represent the abandonment of the technical preoccupations of former
years, but rather the employment of proven techniques that Takemitsu had
| acquired over those years of ‘long sedimentation’ in the service of a rather
, different aesthetic vision. Thus, besides the harmonic language, various
other elements of his later music wear a familiar aspect. In the sphere of
‘formal’ patterning, for example, repetition of whole ‘blocks’ of material —
| whether literal, or subjected to some kind of transformation — continues to
be a trademark of the composer’s discourse. Sometimes, too, the ordering
| of materials appears to project some kind of higher-level organisation, as
in the case of Rain Tree Sketch, which temporarily resurrects the ‘ABA’ form
common to several of Takemitsu’s earliest works. Other types of formal
organisation are also found; for example, something like the linear
sequence of short sections which the composer had employed in A Flock
182 The music of Toru Takemitsu ,
Descends is also suggested by his remarks on a chamber orchestra work
written five years later: ‘Rain Comingisa variation of colours on the simple
figure played mainly on the alto flute which appears at the beginning of the
piece’.'° Indeed, one notes similarities between Takemitsu’s descriptions of
the two works in the shape of a common reference to ‘variations’, and to
the role of a solo instrument (oboe in A Flock, alto flute in Rain Coming) in
delineating the beginning of formal sections. But while Takemitsu’s less
hesitant application of the term ‘variation’ in the later instance is to a
certain extent borne out by the content of the score, in which the charac-
teristic augmented-triad-arpeggio incipit of the ‘theme’ does recur at stra-
tegic points, the sections of Rain Coming are in the last analysis no more
‘variations in the Western sense’ than those of A Flock Descends had been.
‘In fact, it is probably more profitable to think of the work as a sequence of
sections in which the solo melody plays the role of occasional formal
marker — a function that approximates more nearly to that of ritornello
than of variation subject, and which was to become another favoured
formal device of Takemitsu in later years.
However, despite the occasional presence of intentional formal sche-
mata of the types outlined above — ternary form, ‘picture-scroll’ sequence
— it would be inaccurate to give the impression that the material of most of
Takemitsu’s later scores is organised after these kinds of patternings. Much
more frequently, the sequence of events is rather that of a free perambula-
tion amongst the sound-objects of a musical ‘garden’, and the whole idea
of an intermediary conceptualisation that is implied by the imposition of
an abstract ‘form’ prior to the compositional process, into which the
musical ideas are poured as into a mould, is refreshingly absent. To
proceed in the latter manner would, indeed, be directly antithetical to the
composer's own professed aesthetic intention, for — as he himself has elo-
quently expressed it — ‘I gather sounds around me and mobilise them with
the least force possible. The worst is to move them around like driving an
automobile.”!!
Another feature of earlier practice that Takemitsu was to retain in his
final period is the self-borrowing and economical recycling of material
that we have already observed in such works as November Steps and Green.
The composer continued to ‘rearrange’ works, generally for larger forces:
thus A Way a Lone for string quartet was to generate A Way a Lone II for
string orchestra, and Toward the Sea was to give rise to subsequent rescor-
ings for alto flute and harp ( Toward the Sea IID) and the same combination
plus string orchestra (Toward the Sea II). At the same time, however,
Takemitsu continued his established habit of purloining short fragments
 $e
183 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

Ex. 93 Rain Tree Sketch, bars 61-2

Tempo I
_ _ FR ve
Fn ele || tt
»)) ee ee ee ee bees ee
me
De —
SS
a sane
eo ee
————————
wae #
R.A___y
—— poco

of pre-existent works to provide material for new ones — often lifting a bar
or two verbatim as if cut out with a scissors, replicating the kinds of inter-
nal repetition found in his scores at a higher level, one that operated
between self-contained works rather than within their confines. 1982
appears to have been a particularly busy year for the composer in this
respect: three works written in that year — Rain Coming, Rain Tree Sketch
and Grass for men’s chorus — all share such overlappings of material. For
example, the closing gesture of Rain Tree Sketch (Ex. 93) turns up in
expanded form, and with only minor variations, in Rain Coming (Ex. 94).
Inthe case of the material shared between Rain Tree Sketch and Grass, the
repetition is combined with transposition — just as frequently occurs when
passages are repeated internally. Example 96, from the latter work, isclearly
a transposition at T°? of the passage from Rain Tree Sketch quoted in
| Example 95, although revoiced and with one pitch substitution in the final
chord — precisely the kinds of alterations to which, as we have seen, repeated
materials are routinely subjected within the context of individual pieces. (It
goes without saying that the sequence of composition suggested by this
description is purely for the sake of convenience, and that there is as always
no definitive means of determining which of these two variants was com-
posed first.) Finally, yet a third passage from Rain Tree Sketch (not quoted
here) also leads a double life of this kind: bars 42-3 appear in a vertically
expanded and reworked version in Rain Coming (letter “D’, bars 2-3).
 184 The music of Téru Takemitsu

: retenu.
Ex.94 Rain Coming, ‘Q’/9

(enn ee legato at :
i... _ ar |_| bat |.
——— / I“

Pf. —_ a/.. WN
bh DS meattemeet
ARIE eee ee Ee ..40) ee
i ee!eee
ee

(Cele.) en
+) nt
had
, 7. Ce er eee eee 2. eee4 (ee
rm
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eee|
Pe yy
, (hard mallets)
Vib. ——?———————

| 1.VI ooSS
ar . PP
p 5.7. egos
retenu.
ft
o

a /.. WR eee eee" eee 0 A... 2 eee eee

a”) eee Ee ~ eee eh... ce SY A NA
- ~_——
wy, S.T. ——-
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| PPio—_
Va. a
ee__5.T. eee 9
PP

1 oO
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Ve Le UC A

bb. ES
S.T. > a ° J S >.
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185 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

te
3
”Vaf
Ex.95 Rain Tree Sketch, bars 25-6

FO eee OTT
NS V2 a Na GN * tel
JT O_O OeeW._.IOW/7/

rrr.ARS
SR” nz. SR
0.0MS000
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=
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SX i_cc“rncn””."”"”"-u”—”--W.nn... nn. —_ HUH} ww nen

Ex. 96 Grass, bar 17

0’ , be te be ~-—
'/..
| tC*dC

St...
# O—-———______-__-

Ay‘(‘NSNONO#;#;*;‘=NSY
Wh -< ) NS ee Se
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eS ty” 700—*@”@”@q-"-"-"”.——

CS. _ To
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eho
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oD TT. IH:4Oo.-.-,_nNn”..”0-on TE

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TT _rr7~-..£"".................-.-7"*=$—= 8
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P — mf =
 186 The music of Toru Takemitsu

OO
Ex.97 Rain Tree, p. 10, systems 1-2

~
[_G—bH
QO. ooo Pp YL 0Se
=Pcr—=— —
MD
infZe 2
sf —> ——____ ¥f2

As far as their rhythmic aspect is concerned, the works of Takemitsu’s

later period generally present a somewhat simplified picture by compari-
son with the works of his middle years, one that invites comparison rather
with the rhythmic devices of his ‘first period’: at all events, there are fewer
of the simultaneous subdivisions of the beat into different fractions that
had played such a significant role in creating the complex textures of his
‘modernist’ years. On the other hand, however, a full range of rhythmic
, devices of familiar aspect continue to appear. The upwardly mobile
‘iambic’ pattern which had constituted such a characteristic topos of
Takemitsu style from the very earliest works, for instance, was still part of
the composer’s habitual mode of utterance in the 1980s, as Example 97
demonstrates. This simultaneously illustrates another recurrent feature of
Takemitsu’s melodic construction, and one especially associated with the
products of his maturer years: the emergence of themes in a kind of addi-
tive, incremental fashion, or exposition in statu nascendi —a procedure he
may have arrived at from a study of Alban Berg’s music, which, as we shall
see, was to assert an increasingly apparent influence over the composer
during the later part of his career. |
One or two of the rhythmic experiments of Takemitsu’s avant-garde
years were, however, retained in the later style. The type of ‘spatial’ or “pro-
portional’ notation used in such scores as Bryce and Waves, for instance, is
revived in parts of Rain Spell (1982) for flute, clarinet, harp, piano and
vibraphone, where all players are instructed to play from the full score,
187 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

ee He
eee
a) '
Ex.98 Rain Tree Sketch, bar 40

ee a a aN Se Ar oe
oo eee to coe
ft
. PP
a 7 7 rr
yp FT i fl fe FET Gy) fee Fy
SANS SE EE SS A =P LE ORE NRE =>” EO NOOR
| PP
suggesting the necessity for a high degree of awareness by each player of
the material given to the others. ‘Mobile’ writing involving the repetition
of materials independently of tempo — of the type once characterised by
the composer as ‘heterocyclic’ — is also still found occasionally in
Takemitsu’s later work. Furthermore, it may be legitimate to extend
Takemitsu’s concept of ‘heterocyclicity’ to include a type of writing which
likewise consists of the simultaneous repetition of melodic cycles of dis-
similar lengths, but which takes place within the confines of an orthodox
metrical context. Example 98, from Rain Tree Sketch, provides an illustra-
tion. Here the right hand has an ostinato of ten even semiquavers, the left
hand one of eight semiquavers, and —as Koozin points out — “since patterns
in the upper and lower scores are of unequal length, the patterns overlap
irregularly’.
A similar, but slightly different situation obtains in the case of the osti-
nato repetitions in Example 99, from Rain Tree. The repeating patterns for
| the two marimbas are melodically and rhythmically identical, and differ
, only in the irregular placing of the sforzandi accents; the discrepancies
between the cycles of repetition of the two parts arise from discrepancies
between the number of repetitions of whole bars of each deviant accentua-
tion. Here the economy of the notation, the ambiguity as to the placing of
the downbeat created by the offbeat accents, the choice of instrumentation
and, of course, the repetition itself all suggest an acquaintance with
another contemporary music for ‘mallet instruments’ from across the
Pacific — a rather ironic choice of model, perhaps, when one considers
Takemitsu’s later disparaging comments on ‘minimalist pieces’ that ‘drift
from the cosmic to the cosmetic’.'°
 ST, STRAT
\\fy \\fy
\Oe
ha
anWe...
eee | apARy
iA \| Facey re |\ Tecan
Lip stein s
SUT SLT g
a | teres || Here
nS \\ eee ae || (Baar
He |, tt
ER
wes (es
SUT) PHT
I We,
ARS: Ai §
| A x tes |
| aa
UPS TPs
PT y SET | |
| ~; ie tta, nSHi |
WN Wh |

= SAS
eoNESS:
UPS PS|
fc sit\\ty
Ss Wl
o 2llwelfOR
Ny i= t=
ap Le
\| FASS
fn 86 ft
it &

<m7
ma =2h4 Nin =2
 189 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

As for the timbral world of these later pieces, one is not greatly surprised
to discover that the spirit of bold exploration of new instrumental pos-
sibilities that had characterised Takemitsu’s music of the early 1970s is
- mostly absent. However, the composer did not simply revert to the more
restrained and conventional instrumental idiom of his works from the
1950s. Instead, the preoccupation with sonority which he had begun to
cultivate during his years of experimentation still expressed itself in two
| ways. On the one hand, Takemitsu continued to refine his skill in the han-
dling of instrumental colour, particularly by means of imaginative and
unusual combinations and doublings of instruments, eventually acquiring
a mastery of rapturously beautiful tone shadings that was unsurpassed
amongst composers of his generation. And on the other hand, many of the
fruits of the years of experimentation with timbral possibilities became
~ assimilated into the “common practice’ of the relatively stabilised instru-
, mental language that served this new aesthetic vision. The writing for alto
flute in Toward the Sea, for example, continues to make use of multiphonic
trills and other ‘extended’ devices, such as the instruction at one point
gradually to bring in an octave harmonic by overblowing; while quarter-
, tone scordatura of five of the harpist’s strings in Rain Spellis used to give a
characteristically ‘twangy’, koto-like sonority to the writing, enabling the
| instrument to play glissandi and ‘Aolian rustlings’ on what — to a Western
listener at least — sound rather like octatonic or whole-tone scales with
wrong notes.
Finally, the exploitation of the theatrical aspect of performance —
another aspect of Takemitsu’s ‘second-period’ works that had seemed so
quintessentially of its time — is not entirely absent from these later scores
either. At least, in Rain Tree Takemitsu contrives to create a little drama,
even if this is achieved without calling on the aid of visible human per-
| formers at all. Each of the three percussion soloists is lit from above with a
spotlight, and detailed instructions are given in the score as to when these
lights are to be switched on and off. The elaborate ‘lightshow’ which
results, in combination with the scattered, ‘raindrop’ sounds of tuned per-
| cussions, is almost certainly intended as a picturesque reflection of the
image conjured by the work’s title, which is taken from a novel by
Kenzaburo Oe, and refers to a type of Hawaiian tree observed by the
| author:
a It has been named the ‘rain tree’; for its abundant foliage continues to let fall
rain drops collected from last night’s shower until well after the following
midday. Its hundreds of thousands of tiny leaves — finger-like — store up
moisture while other trees dry up at once. What an ingenious tree, isn’t it?”
190 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Other ‘themed’ series of compositions

Though by far the most extensive, the “Waterscape’ project was by no
means the only series of works from this period linked by a common extra-
musical reference. Various other contemporaneous scores may be grouped
according to their preoccupations with a number of such shared ‘themes’ —
some of these explicitly acknowledged by the composer, others referred to
only in the secondary literature. Into the first category, for instance, falls
the theme which Takemitsu refers to as ‘Dream and Number’ (the title,
also, of a 1987 collection of essays on his work), where ‘Dreamy represents
the undefined and ‘Number’ the antagonistic, conscious desire for form.
These preoccupations had already been reflected in two works from the
1970s: Quatrain, with its insistence on the number 4, emphasising
‘number’, and A Flock Descends — simultaneously dream-inspired and rig-
orously controlled by the number 5 — representing an equilibrium of the
two forces. In the five works from the 1980s representing this particular
, obsession, however, it is to ‘Dream’ alone that the title makes reference —
suggesting the existence of a ‘dreamscape’ series to parallel and comple-
ment the ‘waterscape’ cycle.
In a sense, this overt reference to ‘dream’ was only making explicit some-
thing that had been present in Takemitsu’s music since the very earliest
years: at least since the time of his acquaintance with the poet Takiguchi,
the composer had been under the spell of the methods and aesthetics of
surrealism, and much of his work — whether it explicitly relates to ‘dream’
or not — is ‘composed as if fragments were thrown together somewhat
unstructured, as in dreams’.!° It is hardly surprising, therefore, that after a
visit (with Berio) to Groot Eylandt in 1980 as part of an event sponsored by
Eurovision, Takemitsu should decide to bestow the name of the old
Aboriginal myth of the Dreamtime on his 1981 composition for the
Nederlands Dans Theater, and speak of a desire to build therein ‘an imagi-
nary music scene’;!® in reality, he was doing no more than acknowledge a
preoccupation and a method of construction which had consistently
informed his music for several years previously.
This link between his ‘dream’ preoccupation and the surrealist move-
ment is explicitly acknowledged in Takemitsu’s next work in this series, To
the Edge of Dream for guitar and orchestra (1983), which owes its inspira-
tion to the weirdly oneiric images of the Belgian artist Paul Delvaux
(1897-1994). Here Takemitsu creates an appropriately ‘nocturnal’ ambi-
ence by instructing the strings to play muted throughout, except in two
short passages — thereby lending to the typically sonorous, Requiem-like
string interludes an even more intense film noir quality than they usually
 19] Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

possess. He also, perhaps, hints at his ‘nocturnal’ subject in the enigmatic

closing bars of the work, in which a series of chiming Bis — the pitch
towards which the work is gravitating — are each harmonised with a
different chord, rather like the famous ‘chimes at midnight’ of Verdi's
Falstaff.
While the titles of these two works refer to ‘dream’ alone, those of the
other three works comprising Takemitsu’s ‘dreamscape’ cycle at this period
refer simultaneously to one of his other recurrent extra-musical preoccu-
pations — thereby granting these works membership of more than one
‘themed’ cycle. The title of Dream/Window (1985), for instance, alludes
, simultaneously to Takemitsu’s ‘garden’ metaphor, although this is not
readily apparent from the English title, whose Japanese original contains a
piece of untranslatable word-play. For the two Chinese ideograms which
spell these words in Japanese, in a different reading, also spell the name of
[Soseki] Mus6 (1275-1351), a Buddhist priest who had been a legendary
_ master of the formal art of the Japanese garden. This ‘garden’ metaphor is
perhaps realised here in the same ‘vertical’ sense of a stratified instrumen-
tal texture that had been the case in works from an earlier period such as
Arc for piano and orchestra: certainly the unconventional seating of instru-
mentalists to achieve a spatial effect suggests another of the preoccupa-
tions of Takemitsu’s experimental period that was retained in the more
conservative idiom of his later years. In fact, the arrangement of the
orchestral apparatus suggests striking parallels with the ‘symmetrical’ dis-
position of forces in November Steps, written some eighteen years previ-
ously. As in the earlier work, percussion and strings are placed to left and
right, with brass and woodwinds in between, while in front of these — in
the position occupied by the two harps of November Steps—is an ensemble
of two harps, celesta and guitar, and at the very front of the stage, a solois-
tic group of flute, clarinet and string quartet — in precisely the position
where the biwa and shakuhachi players of the 1967 work had been.
The spatial dimension is not the only aspect of this work to recall the
experimentations of a more adventurous epoch, for the means whereby
some of the basic pitch-materials of the work are generated also recall
some of Takemitsu’s earlier flirtations with serial organisation. Certainly
the first of the two sets of ‘raw materials’ from which the composer fash-
ioned the piece — and which he describes, with typical idiosyncrasy, as
‘harmonic pitch 17!” — suggests a continuing interest in dodecaphonic
method, containing as it does all twelve pitch-classes (Ex. 100). To be sure,
it does not present them as an ordered set, but rather in the form of four
trichords, and thus implies a rather different attitude to such material
from that found in ‘classical’ serialism, or indeed in Takemitsu’s own
192 The music of Téru Takemitsu ,
Ex. 100 Dream/Window, ‘harmonic pitch I’

(a) (b) (C) (d)

—— ———
—-f}-—_,* —— * ha Oi SA 9
Ne OO -..nN--... 4

earlier practice. Nevertheless, the internal construction of this “harmonic

pitch’ indicates that the care Takemitsu bestowed on the shaping of twelve-
note series at an earlier period is still active in this less rigorous context.
The collection is both symmetrical and ‘hexachordally combinatorial’: the
trichord pairs a/d and b/c are in inversion relationship to one another, so
that the whole of the second hexachord becomes a retrograde inversion of
the first, and the pitch content of this second hexachord thereby yields a

the first. -
transposed inversion of the diatonic collection, [0,2,4,5,7,9], implied by

The two other ‘dream’ pieces from this period also possess “dual citizen-
| ship’ in terms of Takemitsu’s recurrent thematic preoccupations, both
being simultaneously members of the ‘waterscape’ series. Rain Dreaming
(1986) was written in response to a commission for a work for solo harpsi-
chord for the Aliénor Awards held in Augusta. It is the composer’s sole
work for this instrument outside his film music, and one of its most strik-
ing properties is the fact that it demonstrates — by their very absence — all
the qualities which otherwise lend such a supreme expressivity to his key-
board works. The absence of a sustaining pedal in particular deprives the
writing of those resonance effects and shadings into silence which are so
characteristic a feature of his piano music, while the almost total absence
of dynamics from the Urtext-like score makes one all the more conscious
of the scrupulousness with which Takemitsu usually notates every level
and nuance of pianistic attack. As a result of these intrinsic limitations of
the instrument, Takemitsu is constrained to offer much more of a ‘note-
by-note’ discourse than is generally the case, and — perhaps in honour of
the historical associations with which this instrument is invested — it is a
discourse that is also more rigorously motivic and contrapuntal than
usual, with particular emphasis on a three-note idea comprising a falling
major second followed by rising perfect fifth.
The other work from the 1980s whose title conflates the same pair of ref-
erences is I Hear the Water Dreaming (1987) for flute and orchestra, the last
of Takemitsu’s works from this period to incorporate a ‘dreany allusion.
Like the alto flute in Rain Coming, the solo flute here punctuates the form
 0b.
(pay a
193 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

ES
2 | es Ex. 101 I Hear the Water Dreaming, ‘C’/3—4

ys Nt 2 eee Bsn.
poco

PPP EVP — poco

with a ritornello-like thematic marker, again generating a structure which

is episodic and ‘strophic’ in character. This theme — of which a version for
oboe is quoted in the upper system of Example 101 — is of considerable
interest for a number of reasons. Not only does its incipit contain two
typical Takemitsu gestures (the emergence out of ‘silence’, followed by a
rising “zig-zag’ formula); it also projects, horizontally, a pitch-collection
that is particularly favoured by the composer elsewhere as a vertical sonor-
ity, the set [0,2,3,4,6,8] (heard here in inversion), a subset of the ubiqui-
tous ‘7-33’ collection.
Although this derivation of horizontal, melodic materials from har-
monic collections (and vice versa) is a standard procedure of twentieth-
century composition, it is one not regularly favoured by Takemitsu, and it
is therefore surprising to discover that the score of Water Dreaming offers
quite a rich variety of applications of this device. But what is most striking
about Example 101, of course, is the fact that the theme is here accompa-
nied by its own inversion in rhythmic unison, thereby generating a
‘mirror-image’ structure analogous, on the vertical plane, to Takemitsu’s
palindromic constructions in the horizontal dimension — and one that is
dramatically impressive visually, at that.
That both Rain Dreaming and Water Dreaming should share a preoccu-
pation with ‘dream’ and ‘water’ is perhaps apt enough, considering that the
two ideas did not stand so far apart in Takemitsu’s mind, coalescing, for
example, in the title of an essay by the French novelist Gaston Bachelard
(1884-1962) he much admired, L’Eau et les réves. They also converge in
another work of twentieth-century literature of which Takemitsu was
194 The music of Toru Takemitsu .
especially fond, whose narrative purports to represent a dreaming state,
and is suffused by aquatic imagery: James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Far calls.
Coming, far! for violin and orchestra (1980), the first of Takemitsu’s works
to take its title from Joyce’s novel, can thus be understood, as the composer
puts it, as the ‘confluence of the two series’!® of water and dream; but it can
also be understood, although the composer did not express it thus, as the
first member of another thematic series: what Funayama has aptly
described as the ‘Finnegans Wake Triptych’,’? of which the other two
members are A Way a Lone for string quartet (1981) and riverrun for piano
and orchestra (1987).
Joyce’s notoriously difficult final novel, from which these titles are quo-
tations, might seem an unlikely source of inspiration for a composer such
as Takemitsu, and not simply on account of the formidable problems it
presents for a would-be Japanese reader. Euro- and logo-centric, Joyce’s
densely layered, multilingual complexity appears to lie at the opposite pole
from Takemitsu’s anti-academic aesthetics, and it is therefore no surprise
to learn that the composer’s reading of the work is a highly personal one.
Indeed, precisely because ‘it is so difficult for me to comprehend this
almost unreadable novel in the original language’ Takemitsu had ‘no
choice but to form my own image with the help of translation into
Japanese and other literary commentaries’.*° Although Poirier notes that
the potential for word-play that exists in Japanese might have predisposed
Takemitsu towards this aspect of Joyce’s work,”! the latter appears to figure
less significantly in this ‘image’ of Takemitsu’s than does the “beautiful
sound’ of the language itself, as well as the imagery of dream and water
already alluded to. It is also possible that Finnegans Wake may have
: appealed to Takemitsu on account of its incomplete opening and closing
sentences: like those of the composer’s own Requiem, the ‘beginning and
ending’ of Joyce’s book ‘remain unclear’. Certainly all three of Takemitsu’s
titles derive from the very beginning or the very end of Joyce’s narrative:
Far calls. Coming, far! from its closing lines, riverrun and A Way a Lone
from, respectively, its opening and closing sentences.
Far calls. Coming, far! Takemitsu noted, ‘is, according to Mr Masayoshi
Oshawa, the song Anna Rivia [sic!] (the Liffey) sings on joining Father
Sea’,’* and elsewhere the composer explained more precisely how this
watery self-annihilation was interpreted in musical terms. “Father Sea’ is of
course, on one level, represented by Takemitsu’s omnipresent ‘S—E—A’
motif, which is here further expanded by the addition of a series of rising
thirds to create a characteristic pattern and its inversion, as shown in
Example 102.
Takemitsu evidently liked this expanded version of his motif, for the
 f——. =be
195 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

Ex. 102 Six-note idea and inversion, Far calls. Coming, far!

0-5 — +"
SEA
» DE
| be | ee “ee
—_———S—— oF oo

variant forms from both Dreamtime and Paths quoted in Example 91 make
use of precisely the same device of upward extension and, transposed, map
on to Example 102 exactly. According to the composer, this interest
stemmed from the tonal implications these piled-up thirds impart to the
original three-note idea: “The A-major and Db-major triads in the ascend-
ing pattern have a very bright sound when compared to the darker inver-
| sion, which, descending from Ab, had two minor triads, G-D-—Bb and
Bb—Gb—E}. Using these patterns I set the “sea of tonality” from which many
pantonal chords flow.’?? These remarks might lead the reader to expect
that Takemitsu uses these cascading thirds to derive vertical forms of
triadic construction with strongly tonal implications; after all, the illustra-
tion from I Hear the Water Dreaming proves that he could, on occasion, use
the same pitch-materials as source for both horizontal and vertical collec-
tions. It comes as something of a surprise, therefore, to discover that he
does not choose to exploit the obvious harmonic potential of the theme in
this fashion, but rather continues to adhere to his fairly standard proce-
dure of treating ‘theme’ and ‘harmony’ as separate categories, each operat-
ing according to its own compositional rationale. Nevertheless, the
horizontal harmonic effect of these chains of thirds is palpable enough at
the aural level, and while this to a certain extent vindicates Takemitsu’s
remarks about ‘pantonal’ chords, it also means that passages occur which
bear a striking resemblance to another classic of the twentieth-century
| violin repertory, and one which uses very similar basic materials: Alban
Berg’s Concerto. The resemblance is hardly fortuitous: since Berg’s basic
196 The music of Téru Takemitsu

Ex. 103 Comparison between materials from Far calls. Coming, far! and Berg,

TES Le
_ |ITi‘ ; .
SO \S PR a | a Violin Concerto, op. 24

Berg, Violin Concerto, P° |

roa yt
YJ te fe te

=
wT a
= = : 7 |
Takemitsu, S-E-A motif, transposed

Ex. 104 Comparison between materials from Far calls. Coming, far! and Berg,
Violin Concerto, op. 24 |

a!'! FCCF,
:; rf; ;E/5
°i vtv
Berg, R9

mt (4.LSWE
NS VP Ee
LT LT
iji{Iii,*v—=
eee
LLL eee:
LRN | eee°“S9”“WSNNON
| TSANG eee | Gees eee
SEE

S00’ SEOUL EY PE, cS | EET EE ST SS VERE RRS

BANS 9 SE DE Sn | NN PS WARD SEE
&. 1Ce
i, |
er (wean ne SE
FR ed seca evereensseenenenpeeneprvttnnnenennsntenresteteiquatenesinemnernatenvrsnti-tnneneninndneusceeessnaanaeceneasatetteninatteenaaeenentasnunsantensnetasnetstneannmetineenenm inne ananstnetamentmenterentanateunneeatntnteneeneinrantnaemaneeneneriene

FCCF, B/ 3 :

series, like Takemitsu’s motif, contains chains of rising intervals of a third,

alternately major and minor, it follows that a transposition of the latter
will in part map on to the former, as Example 103 demonstrates.
One can in fact pursue the comparison further, for in certain instances
Takemitsu extends the descending form of his theme downwards by the
addition of three more intervals of a third, yielding a version which maps
exactly on to seven notes of the retrograde of Berg’s series. Furthermore,
the four-note descent through the whole-tone scale at the beginning of the
latter — inverse of the Bach Es ist genug tag — also has an exact counterpart
at one point in Takemitsu’s score, as shown in the third staff of Example
104. If this last comparison seems a little far-fetched, one has only to listen
 197 , Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

Ex. 105 Comparison between Takemitsu, A Way a Loneand Berg, Lyric Suite

ee ee eee
, (i) Berg, Lyric Suite, ll, 1-2 (vin. 1)

P— —_S er —
a
——_
aN| ao be
(ii) A Way a Lone (1981), bar 92 (vin. 1)

2S Ea
—h—- Hh ——_ —— _§_t — gg be
3:2

to the closing bars of both works, where in Takemitsu’s case a muted horn,
bassoon and harp descend through five notes of a whole-tone scale, in
Berg’s a muted horn through four. Takemitsu’s indebtedness to Berg’s
example here surfaces to a level at which immediate aural comparisons
| become unavoidable.
One could argue that these references to Berg’s model stem from the
common preoccupation of both works with the symbolic ‘self-extinction’
of the soloist in some grander whole — Eternity, Father Sea. Less easy to
explain, however, are the similarities which exist between the next member
of the ‘Joyce’ triptych, A Way a Lone, and another Berg score: similarities
nevertheless so striking that the New York Times critic could not fail to
| notice that ‘the work’s mood is constantly evocative of Berg’s Lyric Suite’.”*
At one point in the score, in fact, this approximation to Berg once again
almost takes the form of direct thematic quotation: in inversion,
Takemitsu’s ‘S-E—A’ motif is intervallically identical with the incipit of the
twelve-note theme with which the second movement of the Lyric Suite
: opens, and the tie across the beat to a flowing semiquaver rhythm is also
very similar in both cases (Ex. 105). ,
Besides such specific thematic similarities, there is a more general
kinship between the two works: a sombre intensity created in both
instances by the use of an expressive harmonic vocabulary, a variety of
| techniques of string playing, and a richly contrapuntal and thematic
198 The music of Téru Takemitsu

<==3
, P< ——
AO ST—==
oF?
Ex. 106 A Way a Lone, bars 8-9

texture. This last feature suggests at least one possible explanation for the
emulation of Berg’s example: the desire to create a musical language more
appropriate to the ‘seriousness’ with which the string quartet medium —
like the harpsichord of Rain Dreaming — has historically been invested.
Certainly, A Way a Lone contains a few of the rare instances of genuinely
contrapuntal writing in Takemitsu’s music, such as the passages at bars 130
and 161, where all four instruments are given clear independent lines.
Much of it is also more closely argued from tersely motivic ideas than is
usually the case, amongst which, unsurprisingly, the “S-E-A’ motif and its
various transformations loom large, again reflecting the origins of the title
in Anna Livia Plurabelle’s watery metamorphosis. One particular manner
of using this idea is worth singling out for especial mention: the form
_ shown in Example 106, in which an inversion of the ‘S—E—A tag is followed
by a ‘consequent’ consisting of a new three-note idea, formed from a
falling minor sixth plus rising semitone. Heard always at the same pitch
relative to its ‘antecedent’, and appearing nowhere else, the idea lends to
the five statements of this particular thematic pairing a certain stability
and consistency which has the effect of foregrounding them as points of
repose in the overall scheme: they become — on analogy with Takemitsu’s
‘referential’ harmonies — ‘referential thematic statements’.
A Way a Lone possesses at least one vertical ‘referential sonority’ as well,
conspicuously identifiable as such because three of its statements — in bars
75, 88 and 141 — appear in the same guise of a sustained harmony with a
crescendo—diminuendo envelope. The harmony here, [0,2,4,5,8], is also of
interest because of its strong aural resemblance to another chord coinci-
dentally quoted in Berg’s Lyric Suite: a chord which is also the most famous
‘reference sonority’ in the whole literature, the opening chord of Wagner’s
Tristan ((0,2,5,8]). With its one added pitch, the ‘superset’ Takemitsu uses
here sounds like a ‘chromatically enhanced’ version of the Wagnerian
sonority, but elsewhere Takemitsu proved he was not embarrassed to
quote the original harmony unembellished, and (on three occasions at
least) at its original pitch: in I Hear the Water Dreaming (fourth bar of
letter ‘G’), Tree Line (second bar of letter ‘F’) and Les yeux clos II (bar 8).
199 | Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

Ex. 107 Grass, bar 15

PP sempre simile
OE ee ee ee
oe | Sd “eee ee — oe ee
| ao ieu a ao ie u a
PP Ww , VY
sempre simile
2-2VY
RE _
oye? 8 2-9. 9—_9---_——_ 8 9 -?
ed (8 EE ee ee SE ee ee
a oOo lieu a ao ie ua
wavy
ARR -ueenns Ee _._. .—.......... HE ~ A ROE. BE...

PP sempre simile
2 ee ee eee
— 9-9 ____0-@-9_ 9-9 9____—_0-9-9—
, a 0 ie uaVU
a o ie
1,ua
While ‘garden form’ may be abundantly present in works of this decade,
the ‘garden series’ was referred to only twice in the titles chosen by
, Takemitsu in the 1980s: directly in the case of A Minneapolis Garden for
tape (1986), more cryptically - as we have seen — in that of
Dream/Window. Nevertheless, at least two of the elements from which a
formal Japanese garden is composed were to provide sources for the titles
of other works from this period. To the series which had been inaugurated
| with Music of Tree in 1961, and had continued with Green and Eucalypts,
Takemitsu added further titles containing an arboreal reference in the
shape of the ‘dual citizen’ work Rain Tree and Tree Line for chamber
orchestra (1988). And in the title of a work from 1982, Takemitsu alluded
to what, in the 1975 essay quoted at the beginning of chapter 5, had stood
as symbolic opposite to the qualities ‘trees’ were said to embody: Grass, for
male chorus.
Apart from Wind Horse, Grass constitutes Takemitsu’s only ‘serious’ a
cappella vocal work. Written for the Harvard Glee Club, it makes consider-
able technical demands on the performers, and although ostensibly a
_ setting of a Shuntard Tanikawa poem in English translation, in reality
much of it consists of various wordless vocalisations and bocca chiusa
effects, including a passage which suggests that the influence of
Takemitsu’s encounter with Stockhausen, a decade previously, might still
be lingering. At all events, as the men’s voices run through the whole
gamut of vowel sounds on monotones, colouring them with variant har-
monic spectra, the listener cannot but be reminded of the similar effects
obtained in Stockhausen’s Stimmung (Ex. 107).
200 The music of Toru Takemitsu

.¢—=—
2 +-—
_h 4.9}o)
Ex. 108 Star-Isle, bars 1-2

>}
p< >
oe = f
Tree Line was also written for a virtuoso ensemble, the London
Sinfonietta, one at least of whose soloists is put under the spotlight at one
point, when the flautist is requested to ‘counter improvisation to the
strings as bird’s calling, not periodical with many spaces [ sic]’— an instruc-
tion which demonstrates that the use of poetic verbal instructions as
stimuli for improvisation, which had figured so largely in earlier works
such as Waves, could also form part of the composer’s vocabulary in the
very different aesthetic climate of the late 1980s. The passage where this
occurs is one of three in the score of Tree Line whose remarkably similar
character serves an important function in the formal articulation of the
work: in each of these sections (rehearsal letters “B’—‘C’; ‘C’/7—“E’ and
‘H’—T’), an essentially static background harmony is projected by means of
such devices as long pedal notes, ostinati and ‘aleatorically’ repeated
mobile materials, against which materials such as the flute solo appear in
the guise of more ‘foreground’ events. It is perhaps these sections that
Takemitsu is alluding to in the preface to the score when he notes that ‘the |
music proceeds like a tapestry woven around Dk and B} in various modes,
along with its main line of tonal variation’; certainly, whatever this state-
ment may mean, those two pitches — plus F# — are conspicuously present as
multiple pedal points, or drones, in the three sections. Takemitsu’s pro-
gramme notes, like his remarks about A Flock Descends, thus provide
further explicit corroboration of his interest in drone-like pedal points,
and indeed one of the pitches used — the ‘fixed pitch’ F# — is of course
common to both works.
The last of Takemitsu’s ‘themed’ series of compositions to be considered
here is the ‘star’ series, inaugurated with Asterism in 1967 and augmented
in the following decade by the addition of Cassiopeia (1971) and the first
part of Gémeaux (1971-86). This series was to receive two additions in the
course of the 1980s. For a performance by the orchestra of Waseda
University in Tokyo to celebrate the university's centennial, Takemitsu
wrote Star-Isle (1982), fulfilling the commission by using the same device
 201 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

which had generated the Bryce and ‘S—E-A themes. By turning the viable
letters of the institution’s title into their equivalent note-names, he arrived
at the four-note cell with which the work opens, and which subsequently
provides so much of its thematic content: w—As[= Ab ]|—E—D—A (Ex. 108).
The other work of the 1980s to reflect Takemitsu’s ‘sidereal’ obsession in
reality consists of two scores, both dating from 1984: Orion for cello and
piano, and Orion and Pleiades for cello and orchestra. The former is a good
example of the new instrumentalism of Takemitsu’s later style, to which
more attention will be given at the end of this chapter; the focus of interest
lies very much with the long, rather Requiem-like extended melos of the
cello line which, according to Ohtake, ‘gradually becomes more defined, as
| in Orion’s belt’,”? and although a reminiscence of Takemitsu’s more ‘exper-
| imental’ years occasionally surfaces in passages of microtonal inflection,
| these function as expressive ornamentations to the essentially chromatic
| solo part, rather than as intrinsic features of the musical discourse. There
| are also one or two strong suggestions of a Messiaen influence, for example
in the subsidiary theme which first appears in the piano at bar 34, with its
characteristic five-note figure followed by a descending tritone final.
Interestingly, as this idea is repeated in the course of the movement, the
intervallic relationship between the second part of the theme and the first
fluctuates, varying from a minor tenth above (Ex. 109a) to a perfect
eleventh above (Ex. 109b) or a semitone lower (Ex. 109c). It is as though
the tritone final were treated as an independent unit and transposed glo-
bally relative to the rest of the theme — a process analogous, on the hori-
zontal level, to the wholesale transposition of segments of harmony by a
different intervallic factor from the remainder which we have already
observed in a vertical context.
Another of the idiosyncratic devices of Takemitsu’s quirky composi-
tional method is illustrated by the passage from Orion quoted in Example
110. His own remarks about ‘throwing together’ fragments ‘as if in a
dream’ are peculiarly apposite here, for the material on the upper staff
simply ‘pastes together’ two chord pairs heard already in completely separ-
ate contexts (both of which take the form of the composer’s characteristic
“rising anacrusis’ gesture). Moreover, the passage again illustrates
Takemitsu’s indifference to the logic of ordered succession: the order in
which the chord pairings appear here is the reverse of that in which they
have previously been heard —“B’ comes from bar 7, and ‘A’ from bar 3.
Takemitsu orchestrated the chamber original of Orion to form the first
movement of Orion and Pleiades, adding two new movements to represent
‘the aggregate nature of the constellation of the same name’ and contrast it
‘to the straighter line of Orion’.*° While the first movement of the new
202 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 109(a) Orion, bar 34

<>
cf 1 2 3 sp| =
—_—
: |A) fe aEn“S.iVNN
3 espr.
p :h—_
2iii,
G0LRE
‘ Pr 7
ee —_
[~~~ eee ee Gee eee
eee eee
fan 1 Oe" Oe) en ee EP... | eee | 2 eee

45

(Lo
yy(ou,
Ot @A
| s)
Ex. 109(b) Orion, bar 54 ,

OOOO
GR
WO Ee EI?
=

| Le .e1eee
eeeeee' eee

poco

Ex. 109(c) Orion, bars 68-9

+@
eee_. (Qe aJOO
—————
heleee:
oI)? ne eee
eee |
2Aeee
(.. 4 1d
ee.
=>
eee
eee
.
|. *eee.
PC...eee
eee Ve
cae
3:2 sub. _—
=
EN).<
erf) EE E.On2 eee ee
fh Lay ’ bd Bnet ge Sennen —_ ~
eae-.--..ex-’'’’’-’-’-’-—-—-—-[]_{[—Jo--WW-]
2. ee ee eee eee
Be fae es nl DD valli cael alll ence tlle mee
p——— uf |
work consists of a fairly straightforward rescoring of Orion, however, the
‘intermezzo second movement ‘and’ — in reality not the brief interlude its
title might suggest — already contains in its second bar a chord that cannot
be played by a pianist’s two hands, pointing to a direct conception for
orchestra. Clearly orchestral rather than pianistic in conception, too, is the
passage beginning at letter ‘D’, in which a constant harmonic backdrop is
203 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

, Ex. 110 Orion, bar 36

ye
| P| ee
2epSen
rr
See
—— — a a
B_f|{ A
pe

provided by the harp glissandi running through the pitches of a “6-20”

({0,1,4,5,7,9]) collection —a usage which suggests that the latter hexachord
might on occasion be sufficiently ‘scalar’ in its effect to be nominated as an
‘eighth mode of limited transposition’ to complement Messiaen’s other
seven (Ex. 111).
The third and final movement, Pleiades, is another of Takemitsu’s
‘ritornello-like’ conceptions, in which the opening material recurs at stra-
tegic points. Material from the original Orion movement also recurs for
the first time here in the newly composed movements: bar 2 derives from
bar 45 of Orion, the theme quoted in Example 109 turns up several times in
the course of the movement (although only once with its characteristic
tritone final), and the cello’s cadenza is a reprise of its equivalent in the first
movement. Alongside these reworkings, however, there are passages of
new material, such as the oboe theme heard at letter “G’ (Ex. 112), which is
representative of a thematic type found in a number of Takemitsu’s scores
from this period: similar examples may be located at letter ‘C’ of Vers, l’arc-
, en-ciel, Palma and letter ‘L’ of To the Edge of Dream. Recalling, ironically
enough, the kind of “Oriental’ or ‘Arabesque’ melos to be found in certain
Debussy scores, this theme constitutes another good example of the new
instrumental style of Takemitsu’s later work, to which attention must
shortly be turned; although the continuing incorporation of certain
‘extended’ techniques — the characteristic ‘N—O’ patterns — indicates that
lessons learned from the encounters with Bartolozzi’s textbook and with
musicians such as Heinz Holliger in the previous decade have not been
entirely forgotten.
204 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 111 Orion and Pleiades 11 D

7 8 ca A A
oat, eee es ay as =
pp sempre

A new instrumental language

As suggested by Example 112, a new type of solo instrumental writing was
beginning to emerge in Takemitsu’s work over the course of these years —
expansive and lyrical, with a greatly reduced role for the ‘extended’ tech-
niques that had characterised his instrumental style of the previous
decade. There was a convenient synchronism between this development
and the fruits of Takemitsu’s burgeoning international status — for now,
commissioned to provide works for such glossy mainstream ‘classical’
soloists as John Williams, Julian Bream and Nobuko Imai in addition to his
own circle of stalwart interpreters, Takemitsu was in a position to write for
them without the least trace of stylistic disparity. Moreover, as other com-
mentators have observed, the types of instruments in which Takemitsu
was interested themselves underwent change as a result of this new interest
in melos and the sustained line. Poirier, for instance, notes that — with one
exception — there were to be no more works for traditional instruments
after 1979, a phenomenon he directly attributes to the composer's increas-
_ ing number of international commissions, and the difficulties involved in
exporting specialist traditional musicians to fulfil them.?’ Narazaki,
however, who also remarks upon Takemitsu’s changed instrumental pref-
erences, relates the phenomenon rather more to exclusively musical
imperatives: ‘the change in the selection of instrumental soloists’, she
believes, ‘is related to the change in Takemitsu’s style’.”® In particular, she
notes, the abandonment of such ‘non-sustaining’ instruments as piano,
percussion and marimba in favour of instruments ‘whose strong point is
the production of sustained rather than short sounds’ is, for her, ‘an indi-
cator of the degree to which the composer’s textures have become domi-
nated by song-like writing’ .”’
Some of the works reflecting this new lyricism have already been
referred to in discussing the composer’s ‘themed’ series; it remains to
describe a few other works involving solo instrumental parts which do
not appear to fall within any of the categories outlined. Two such pieces
 205 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

Ex. 112 Orion and Pleiades, I1l/G

$M
No
Ob.NR
3 ;solo
0WO
A *2
([.ceienari
ee
2 i3°——+
a Eure _ re
tl fan__$4 bg
7N
OO?
2. ee
tire eesoaee
cers sdee
| ee
repo eeeee: hea.
=ee tleee
np-a te
2

. I s
SANS : hd Sd Gl GE

tt
sfz p poco mf _—> P__—>— fz po <= Of af —
<f>

ae ale eee
7EF,
GRCE EEEP1 EE | es RE
pp ———_ mf — mf
ee ee
DSeeI es
— Pp s_ Sf
|I

, appeared in 1983, both owing their titles to a four-part series of linked

verses which the Japanese poet Makoto Ooka (already encountered as the
source of the text for Coral Island) produced in collaboration with his
English colleague Thomas Fitzsimmons. The title of their collective
| sequence — Rocking Mirror Daybreak — was bestowed by Takemitsu on a
work for the two violinists Ani and Ida Kavafian; while a line from one of
Ooka’s own contributions to the cycle, In the Shadow, served Takemitsu
as the extravagant title of a test piece for violin and piano which he sup-
plied for the Committee of the Second International Competition of
Japan, Violin Division: From far beyond Chrysanthemums and November
Fog.
Takemitsu would appear to have taken the ‘shadowy’ imagery of Ooka’s
verses as a source of inspiration for the basic materia musica of From Far
beyond. Like Dream/Window, this is one of the few Takemitsu scores
regarding whose construction the composer gave specific hints, and —
again like that earlier work — the compositional means described hint at a |
lingering application of techniques that might be described as quasi-serial.
Admittedly, the composer’s disclosure of a six-note set and its ‘shadow’ in
the preface to the score mystifies as much as it reveals when one examines
the actual surface details of the music, but nevertheless, it is once again
possible to make a number of observations about the internal construc-
tion of this material per se. For instance, the ‘shadow hexachord is clearly
so called because it functions as the chromatic complement of the initial
206 The music of Toru Takemitsu

(a) (b)
—= SS
Ex. 113 From far beyond Chrysanthemums and November Fog, basic idea and its
‘shadow

=
six-note set (presumably rather as the black notes on the piano function as
‘shadow’ to the white ones). It is also the inversion of the first hexachord,
and since both pitch-collections project a set much favoured by Takemitsu
elsewhere — [0,2,3,4,6,8], a subset of the ubiquitous ‘7-33’ collection — the
net result of combining the two hexachords would be to produce a twelve-
note series which once again is internally symmetrical on the one hand,
and on the other projects materials favoured by Takemitsu in non-serial
contexts (Ex. 113).
Nevertheless, despite Takemitsu’s claim that ‘the structure of the work is
concise’, with one or two exceptions few of the actual pitch-materials
prove tractable to analysis in terms of the materials he presents as their
underlying basis. Occasionally in this work, however — as in others by
Takemitsu — one comes across passages which bear striking resemblances
to one another, even though there would appear to be little or no obvious
relationship between them in terms of pitch-content. To describe this
more diffuse variety of kinship, it is perhaps appropriate to invoke some-
thing like the ‘paradigmatic’ analysis favoured by a certain type of musical
scholar, and list the common features of those passages which are con-
nected in spirit rather than according to the letter of the score. For
example, any form of analysis which took absolute identity of pitch-
content as its point of departure would be hard pressed to describe the
relationship between the three passages illustrated in Example 114; yet the
eye (and ear) immediately perceive in them convergences of a number of
recurrent preoccupations:

ished fourth. ,
(1) Each contains a ‘rocking’ ostinato figure on the interval of a dimin-

(2) Each combines the figure with a drone-like, sustained pitch.

(3) These elements, combined together, always project a [0,1,4] pitch-
collection, either in original or inverted form.
(4) One of the pitches is always an open string of the violin. In the case of
the example from bar 6, it is one of the notes of the ostinato figure
(Ab); in the other examples, it is the sustained pitch against which the
ostinato is counterpointed (Db or Ak).
 , =;
207 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

Bar 6
SANS)

A
|
Ex. 114 Relationships in terms of common features, From far beyond
Chrysanthemums and November Fog

(Se ee
‘’.@2;)
w/e eeBee
Ee4.ee
2 YE
PP IIoo
Of
eee.
L3nf
Ae1 Ee
EE
ILop
Bar 16, bar 49
*
eee ee
Mieee
ee Ee eee
1a!
ee |eee
eeeee et

2’
4
Ma
2
[Gea
eee eae
ete
Jee = Pe
eee
es ee es ed
fiat. GRRE “Gee! 2 eee eee | eee

QO
0’
Oo Sl
Ld
Bar 66

Dy .@
/-- eee
MT” NU 8”
nt eee :

The next exemplar of Takemitsu’s new instrumental manner to be con-

sidered, Vers, l'arc-en-ciel, Palma for guitar, oboe d’amore and orchestra
(1984), was written to showcase the artistry of no less glamorous a figure
than John Williams. His partner on the concert platform is entrusted the
task of introducing the successive sections of the work with a recurrent
theme, a function akin to that of the oboe in A Flock Descends; and, as with
the latter work, the result is another form comprising a set of linked seg-
ments whose ‘strophic’ character may perhaps be alluded to in the ‘verse’
of Takemitsu’s somewhat enigmatic title. Perhaps the ‘rainbow’ is also
figured symbolically towards the close of the piece in the interjections for
piccolo (Ex. 115), which, it will be observed —- and somewhat unusually for
Takemitsu at this period — are all cheekily ‘palindromic’ in construction.
a
208 The music of Toru Takemitsu

aS/o.

pr
|t/a.
-M
~
33: a3
AS2)ee
>2Ee
ee”

OOM
?—_ mf
ANSE

3 3
EE

3
—— ~ 7
Peteertelte
se
ee,

[bey
(Go |eoarer
oo
Ex. 115 Vers, Parc-en-ciel, Palma, letter ‘P’

Eeee
ee
Pp mf ———
—
os.._.._4
te Pt
A)SE

P= < mf
=
aen,
=ee

AO a“
2 ee0eee
ee eeAs
eeSee

a
eee

eieemi
iA
i©

tot
ee%

edtlttne
BT Fa OE Ye A ee ee ee
ee
eee)
NE
i)eeea 21ey
eeeBee ee=eee
eee

eeee| eee
6 ee
ee

a
ee eee ee eee eee
ee7eee
2
ee

wf @F Ye @ i | Tt et UU me PL ea hw YY YY °&#272323 3 F?
3

In honour of its dedicatee, the Catalonian artist Joan Mir6 (1893-1983),

the score also contains another of Takemitsu’s ‘quotations’ from an exter-
nal source: a Catalan folksong, La filadora, here granted the appropriate
two sharps of its D-major key signature when it appears towards the close
of the work. The piece as a whole, indeed, has a decidedly tonal, or (to echo
Takemitsu’s preferred description) ‘pantonal’, flavour, in which a promi-
nent role is assumed by what was becoming one of the composer’s favour-
ite harmonic devices: the ‘panpentatonic’ verticalisation [0,2,4,7,9]. Here
it not only functions, as in so much ‘late’ Takemitsu, as signifier of final
closure, but is also raised to the status of ‘referential sonority throughout
the work, typically voiced in such a manner as to emphasise its relationship
both with the cycle of fourths/fifths, and the quartally tuned open strings
|
of the guitar, which in themselves of course also project a pentatonic col-
lection. The latter relationship can clearly be seen from Example 116:
Takemitsu’s reference chord ‘A is a transposition up a perfect fourth of the
first six pitches of “B’, which comprise those of the lowest five strings of the
guitar, plus a doubling at the octave below of the uppermost Bb.
The anacrustic gesture with which Vers, P'arc-en-ciel, Palma opens itself
. contains a horizontal statement of four out of five pitch-classes of this ‘ref-
erence sonority’, with the remaining Ah appearing at the top of the fourth
chord in the bar (Ex. 117). Moreover, the stacked-up fourths interpolated
 209 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

[P=
jh...
LT DE
sg | °
Ex. 116 Vers, Parc-en-ciel, Palma: reference chord (A) and its derivation from
open strings of guitar (B)

eee_n
oP"eee
Pe...
|_..._ f°... gn

eo

| Ex. 117 Vers, P’arc-en-ciel, Palma, bars1—2

|DgPp
Fl., str., celesta, hrp.

w/e
BANSee
W268 ©ee
2(~~ eee
esee | aeeee
Dennen eee
An
Ci., hrn., via., hrp.

Wow
nd ae FF
nn2AC"
4 *Oe ey _.
ee Jeeeee eee
|e *eee
ee (eee
ee eee
ee
p< ___—poco
P Oe GS
——_—
mf

between these two segments of the harmony also constitute a statement of

_ the same ‘panpentatonic’ collection at transposition T° — the phrase as
, a whole thereby projecting Messiaen’s ‘seventh mode of limited
transposition’.
The rising-fourth incipit here may furthermore be intended to offer a
distant foretaste of the work’s major ‘structural downbeat’, the Filadora
quotation shown in Example 118. As this example also suggests, there is
evidence that in this case Takemitsu’s very act of quotation may in itself be
a ‘quotation’, and that the idea of using a folksong at this point might have
been borrowed from the same model that is suggested by the work’s penta-
tonic conclusion, as well as by a number of features of Far calls discussed
above: Berg’s Violin Concerto. Certainly, if one transposes Berg’s theme
- into the same key as Takemitsu’s, as in Example 118(ii), a number of the-
matic similarities emerge: the second phrase of Berg’s theme contains both
210 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 118 Comparison between themes from Vers, l’arc-en-ciel, Palma and Berg,
Violin Concerto

(i) Takemitsu, Vers, l'arc-en-ciel, Palma, O/2-5

SSS
A

2i (o>
MAN . Tn
Vl ee....
Aeee
eee bE
eee Eeeeee
eee esLeeEe
ee EE
= ee eee .eeA
ee aeeAeeeWe!
eee = Pa
eee

FT eeWeeK
@ (ou eee,eae eeeeeaaa
BN RE ee es eee ae i erg
— ee eeeeeeee
ee ee

|B
eeeesee.eee eee
=e ee

(ii) Berg, Violin Concerto, ll, bars 207-11 (transposed)

awt
. Gh
Al

(4...| EE
ANA. CeEE
PE =eh.=e
eee eeA=2ee0eee
ee
eneeee
eeeee
eeeeeeee
2eee
ee

complete (‘Al’) and partial (‘A2’) statements of the segment labelled ‘A’ in
Takemitsu’s melody, and the falling-third figures at “B’ are also strikingly
similar.
Vers, l’arc-en-ciel, Palma also contains fleeting reference to a rising octa-
, tonic arpeggio idea which is — although not explicitly acknowledged by the
composer as such — like the "S-E—A’ theme a recurrent motif in a number of
works from this period, as Example 119 shows.
Entre-temps (1986) for oboe and string quartet also owes its inspiration
to an extra-musical source, in this case verse by that colourful figure from
the French ‘Dada’ movement, Tristan Tzara (1896-1963). The work’s
origins thus have an affinity of sorts with those ‘surrealist’ influences that
had operated on the composer since his very earliest years, and the piece
211 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

Ex. 119 Motivic type recurring in various late period works

(i) Vers, l'arc-en-ciel, Palma (1984),

bar 9, vin. + cl.

-}
Dy—._
CR eeerse
ae
a (4. 2 Oe ee ee" 2.4 eee

wre Hear the Water Dreaming (1987),

| ——_
“ye oo
a=
6

2” eee Eee".
2 (VCR «62ee|eee
LSeee,
eee
RNS ee es ee eee
| (iii) Tree Line (1988), A/2

—-—_—___—_—_
4. pgm _p @ iiifft
——_
0 (a. OCR |) 6 4 ee i ee ee eee
BRAS ¥ 20 OEE | AEE RA OER AE

[____
3

could perhaps be counted as an unacknowledged member of Takemitsu’s

‘dream’ series; certainly his remarks that ‘the piece is structured like a
_ dream’*? would suggest as much. However, while this remark might
suggest a rather haphazard method of construction, Takemitsu elsewhere
notes that its “different episodes make their own way in the dark towards
| the morning twilight in the external form’, and this suggestion that the
work gravitates towards some kind of ‘awakening’ is perhaps borne out by
a passage near the end (bars 126-9), where the strings repeat a one-bar
ostinato four times against the oboe’s independent materials. The sense of
stasis projected by this ostinato — like that produced by the “chaconne’ at
the end of Poem ITin Coral Island— creates a sense of arrival for the listener,
functioning as signifier for the work’s imminent closure, which follows
only a few bars later.
Extra-musical reference — to the eponymous painting by Paul Klee —also
informs the title of All in Twilight, a set of four guitar pieces which
Takemitsu wrote for another prestigious soloist, Julian Bream, in 1988. It is
interesting to compare this work with Takemitsu’s previous essay for solo
guitar from thirteen years earlier, Folios; while, as described in the last
212 The music of Téru Takemitsu

Ex. 120 Motivic type recurring in various late period works

(i) A Flock Descends (ii) Jo the Edge of Dream

into the Pentagonal Garden (1977), E/9 (cl.) (1983), Z/2 (solo guitar)

fg
7 . _.__|
<a Ee de
- ” sd
- e
BANS 2s ee v NGS 7' 2 ee 2...ee"
(0 << | "| Pe | | be @ font. Os RY
ee
eee. L.tt
eee

(iii) Rocking Mirror Daybreak

(1983), LV, bar 19, vin. 1

Lf a Sl
At
tt Sg
A’(onSe
E.'s Oe
=)ee ee
ee es
eee
fj
(iv) All in Twilight , |

|2yates | | | ,
(1988, solo guitar), IT, bar 26

_._~._._£_Oje—_
t/ha eee...
_.@.,. 4 eS eee
Oe eee4| eee
|a
ogSO
fut SC
eZee 2| |ee *|
CTU
(v) A String Around Autumn
| (1989), 1/4 (solo vila.)

te i p— ee SE
NW Ae |). ee. |. Ta Sik) 20 eee eee ees ee ee
6.
chapter, a certain ‘A-minor’ presence does indeed permeate Folios (most
obviously in the shape of its Bach quotation), the tonal references of Allin
Twilight are much more overt. The last movement in particular, unequiv-
ocably centred around Ab major, with its chromatically descending bass
lines at times even conveys a certain ‘pop-like’ unctuousness, suggestive of
a crossover from Takemitsu’s own arrangements of pop standards for this
instrument.
All in Twilight also makes brief reference to another of the unacknowl-
edged recurrent themes in Takemitsu’s work of this period. Like Example
119, this is another octatonic idea, contrived from a three-note cell and its
transposition at T° in such a manner as to suggest two dominant sevenths,
a tritone apart (Ex. 120).
As Example 120 also shows, the motif figures additionally in the last of
the works to be considered here, A String Around Autumn for viola and
orchestra, written for Nobuko Imai and premiéred by her at the ‘Festival
 213 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

,get
(a, __be
OT
_eee
ni
9 7 LM» be
Ex. 121 A String Around Autumn: basic scale

SF07oeAge YO
7D
(Eight-note scale) (Fourths) (Sixths)

a
Ex. 122 Loosely related thematic types, A String Around Autumn

C/ 1 F/ 4———7
we| Ce
pis ee | =.Teh
Ye
°
| | dan
OFaCOS
en“ EEEE«2Ee|
"ees
Sed CAsY 2’) hd ee a! eee ee ee | © fie! (EER GR Es! 22, ) 42 ae
SAE AREA cee (48 1 EY ae +! D ). a ee

Q/1ed
AesCn
F/4
Bl ae
ee 2...’
ee /..2Ve
tedoo(ewe:
. ert _ 7 Vee RS «7 ae, | RR
— rn — re 7. (eres ee |
ae eeMe’)
“ees |4S.C
ae

Q/ 4 W/ 2
d’Automne a Paris’ in 1989. Chosen because it conflates the twin ideas of
this ‘autumnal’ festival and the ‘string’ soloist, the evocative title — again
taken from the poetry of Makoto Ooka — also, explained Takemitsu, refers
to a musical analogue for the ‘string’ in the shape of an ‘irregular eight-
note scale which generates the work’s melodic material’.*' According to the
composer, this ‘nonce scale’ derives from the conflation of two pitch-
collections: a pentatonic scale on D, and a major—minor chord on F, ele-
ments derived respectively from overlapping perfect fourths and minor
, sixths, as illustrated in Example 121.
The presence of the first of these collections, at least, is readily detectable
in the shape of the pentatonic and quartal basis of much of the thematic
material, as can be seen from the selection of types shown in Example 122;
despite their surface diversity, all these forms contain elements built up
| from various transpositions of this collection, or from a variant version
, built from overlapping perfect fifths.
214 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 123 A String Around Autumn, J/1-2

,7 <>
°

WT
THe oo
veeeTy
| h e e eee ee ~~ eet
, ap
LO dtY
e ~_.eeeee
, c (@)

pp cresc. == f >mf
7.2
w/o.
NOD
8S72)
CW
<< tS
| 22)aE

@ ihe Ln
ee

ee AS
2a=e
eee
eee
eee,

ee. eee
Pe es)
eeEee
QL
PPP —<— P——-
eee.
0U--”
eee
eeeeehee
PP...

eeeeeeee
ee es)
eee
eee_L_
Ne i ee re mnncccmcccemmnenneemmnenees ee We, TO NOTE Ot, SUN

<=>
eee
ee eee
Pe ..... eee
=e
/ aT nel : eel
SC) a 214 eee. ee ee ee Pe =e
|_&re fo
fe nse 5: ss
ngenee em
enone
A A EE 9 a, 2 .. |aeeYa
Ce ee ne .. GE a |) OO
— 5)
Ee cette |Oe
ee
bd KZ

a. Se SSS a ee ee eee .
ws
thd ClCee
OF
4. 2A.
4S; (eee eee.
|See...
ee eee
ee" eeeee eee
ees) eee
eee =e
a. Aan » eee
eee i eee SE
cec-7-7-22*.°7=—=—=>

At the opposite extreme from such loosely related thematic types,

however, the score also contains a more stable pentatonic theme — a ‘refe-
rential idea’, in a sense, rather like the one already quoted from A Way a
Lone. At each of its five appearances, this theme not only takes on the
melodic shape shown in Example 123, but is also always accompanied by
the same basic harmonic progression: a ‘panpentatonic’ ([0,2,4,7,9])
chord verticalising all the pitches contained in the first part of the thematic
material in a ‘minor’ voicing, followed by a superset of the same harmony,
[0,2,3,5,7,9] — this pair related in such a fashion that the pitch representing
the ‘0’ of the latter is a minor third higher than its counterpart in the
former. Closer examination of the chord pair reveals the hidden presence
of the whole of Takemitsu’s eight-note scale as well, at transposition T'!: a
‘Db pentatonic’ scale in the first chord, followed by the pitches of an
‘E-minor triad in the violas and cellos in the second.
The particular unfolding of the essential pentatonic materials of A
String Around Autumn shown in the viola part of Example 123 — whose
characteristic three-note incipit interestingly recalls that of the gagaku
215 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

classic Etenraku — in fact constitutes the basic ‘theme’ of the work. It also
turns up again in Visions for orchestra, a work from the 1990s. But to
describe this, and other works from the same period, it will be necessary to
begin a new chapter: the last in this part of the book describing Takemitsu’s
music from a technical perspective, devoted to the final five years of the
composer's life.
 11 Beyond the far calls: the final years

By the year of his sixtieth birthday, 1990, Takemitsu’s reputation as the

senior Japanese composer of his generation had become an established
feature of the international music scene. The prestigious circumstances of
the Visions premiére — by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under Daniel
Barenboim -— typify the level at which his music was now accepted in the
West. So too does the stream of high-profile engagements, awards and
| commissions that continued to fill his diary over the next few years. From
the perspective of Western reception, in fact, it now rather seemed as if
contemporary Japanese music were Toru Takemitsu.
All this hectic activity, however, came to a sudden halt in the summer of
1995 with Takemitsu’s collapse and admission into hospital. Even here,
_ deprived of the opportunity for any other kind of work, he methodically
kept a diary and devised a fantasy cookbook of outlandish recipes, charm-
ingly illustrated with meticulous pencil sketches, both of which have
recently been published in Japan.' Released from this spell of incarcera-
tion, his enthusiasm for all aspects of his creative life re-emerged
unabated, but the reprieve proved short-lived. Takemitsu was readmitted
to hospital, and there, on the afternoon of 20 February 1996, died of
cancer, aged sixty-five — listening in his final hours, by some uncanny syn-
chronistic coincidence, to a radio broadcast of the Bach work he loved
above all others: the St Matthew Passion.
As the generous tributes that appeared in the world’s obituary columns
soon demonstrated, his premature death shocked the international artistic
community. It also left one or two tasks on which he was working at the
time of his death tragically incomplete. Most sadly of all, perhaps, it
deprived the world of the opportunity to hear Takemitsu’s first venture
into the operatic medium; the premiére had been scheduled to take place
in Lyon in the autumn of 1998, with the Swiss film director Daniel Schmidt
in charge of production. Takemitsu had written a book on “Making an
Opera’ a few years earlier in collaboration with his Nobel laureate friend,
the novelist Kenzaburo Oe,” but in the event the task of providing a text for
Takemitsu’s Lyon project fell to a rather more unlikely choice: Barry
Gifford (1946—), the American “beat generation’ writer best known as the
creator of Wild at Heart: the Story of Sailor and Lula, on which the screen-
216 play of David Lynch’s 1990 film is based.’ His collaboration with
217 Beyond the far calls: the final years

Takemitsu had advanced at least as far as the completion of a libretto, La

Madrugada (‘Dawn’ or “Daybreak’), which has apparently appeared in
print (although it was unobtainable at the time of writing). It would seem,
however, that Gifford’s scenario is a story about whales — a subject dear to
Takemitsu’s heart too, as the next chapter will reveal more fully.
Takemitsu’s composing activity in the previous decade had begun with
, Far calls, Coming, far! whose Joycean title had been rendered into Japanese
by the composer as Tdi Yobigoe no Kanata e! In 1992, Takemitsu used this
name again as the title for another of the collections of essays which he
periodically published, but when literally retranslated back into English —
as, for example, in Schott’s catalogue of the composer’s work — this title
comes out somewhat differently from what Joyce originally wrote: Beyond
the Far Calls. Inaccurate retranslation though it may be, the phrase might
nevertheless conveniently stand as a symbol of Takemitsu’s considerable
| composing output in these last few years: beyond Takemitsu’s own ‘Far
Calls’ of a decade earlier, post-‘sea of tonality’, post-transitional, maybe
even (in the context of Takemitsu’s own music, at least) ‘post-post-
modern’, It will be the task of this, the final chapter in this book to deal
with specifically musical matters, to describe a few points of this ‘late-
period style’ — of the works written when the composer had progressed a
long way beyond the beginnings of a new language which pieces such as
Far callshad embodied.

The works of the final years

In essence, Takemitsu’s compositions of the 1990s are characterised by a
continuation of the same basic ‘third-period’ style which had informed his
music since the later part of the 1970s. As suggested above, however, there
are certain senses in which they may also be thought of as constituting a
special category within that basic overall definition. On the one hand,
specific new preoccupations emerge in some of these works, which will be
examined below. On the other, many of the typical features of the com-
poser’s ‘third period’ are exaggerated in these pieces, to a degree where it
might be legitimate to speak of a specific ‘late style’ in which Takemitsu
gives full rein to the ‘Romanticism’ towards which his music had been
tending for over a decade. One has the suspicion at times, indeed, that the
composer no longer cared what his critics thought, but as his life drew toa
close, was allowing the latent tendency of his music towards a certain
‘expressionism’ (and even sentimentality) to flourish unashamedly.
In specifically musical terms, this ‘exaggeration’ of third-period style
, results, for example, in even more overt tonal references: for the most part,
218 The music of Toru Takemitsu

this is music that dwells unapologetically in the ‘sea of tonality’. Thus

Takemitsu no longer feels it necessary to end with anything as exotic as a
panpentatonic verticalisation: a plain major triad will serve his purpose
equally well, as at the Db-major close of And then I knew ’twas Wind (1992);
or a common chord with some added pitches floating above like
Messiaen’s ‘added resonances’, as in How slow the Wind (1991), which ends
in the same key. One also comes across passages written unequivocally
within the parameters of classical tonality for extended periods: one such
occurrence is the G-minor opening of the section marked ‘Slightly Slower’
(bar 42ff) in Equinox for solo guitar (1993). Despite such minor-key incur-
sions, however, the overall impression gained from the freer use of tonal-
ity, and especially of major keys, in Takemitsu’s late period is that the
music wears a more genial, sunnier aspect than heretofore. It is almost as
if, paradoxically, the ‘Lento composer’ were discarding that trademark
melancholy, the “Takemitsu tone’, that had characterised his music from
his earliest years, precisely at the moment when his physical health was
deteriorating and one might have expected his thoughts to take on an even
darker hue than usual. Referring to its mysterious ‘epilogue’ with cascad-
ing woodwind sounds and a kind of ‘clock-chime’ effect for two
Almglocken, Oliver Knussen once remarked to the audience before a per-
formance of How slow the Wind that many of the composer’s works seemed
to “end with a smile’. One could almost extend this metaphor to apply to
the composer's career as a whole: just when it seemed he ought to be
writing his own Requiem, Takemitsu was appending to the body of his
creative work an ‘epilogue’ of decidedly positive outlook.
In addition to this more abundant use of tonal reference, a second char-
| acteristically ‘counter-modernistic’ tendency of Takemitsu’s later music
was its increased emphasis on melos. Admittedly, this was an aspect of
music in which he had been interested since his very earliest work: accord-
ing to Sukeyasu Shiba, it was his habit to sing musical ideas in the process
of creating them,* while as early as 1975 the composer himself had
observed that ‘I probably belong to a type of composer of songs who keeps
thinking about melody; I am old fashioned’.° Nevertheless, this ‘thinking
about melody’ — often of a pronouncedly tonal flavour — came to occupy
the foreground of his music much more palpably in the final years. The
title of what was to be, in effect, the composer’s ‘swansong’ — Air for solo
flute (1995), his last completed score — contains an appropriate allusion to
this preoccupation, referring not to the performer’s breath but to the
antique English equivalent of ‘aria’ (as in Londonderry Air, which the com-
poser had arranged for guitar eighteen years previously). A similarly
revealing allusion is also found in the second halves of the titles of
219 Beyond the far calls: the final years

Fantasma/Cantos (1991), Fantasma/Cantos II (1994) and Spectral Canticle

(1995), works for orchestra with, respectively, clarinet, trombone and
violin plus guitar. It is illuminating, indeed, to compare the writing for the
trombone in the second-named work with that of Gémeaux, written in the
early 1970s: the model is no longer the tradition of avant-garde virtuosity
embodied in the soloist for whom the earlier work was written, Vinko
| Globokar, but rather the suavely vocal trombone style of Jack Teagarden, a
Dixieland musician whose records Takemitsu recalled his father playing in
his childhood years.° Takemitsu was to admit to even more unlikely
models than this, however, for the outpouring of song that characterised
the close of his life. In the last interview he gave (with the pianist Noriko
Ogawa for the BBC), the former ‘avant-garde’ musician was heard to assert
that ‘since the music of today is for some reason over-forgetful of song,
learning from things of the past like Brahms — not turning back to the past,
| but creating new things — is, I think, very important for composers.’
Both tonality and melody had, of course, long been employed with
unambiguous directness in Takemitsu’s ‘lighter’ works, such as his film or
theatre scores or pop-song arrangements. There is thus often a sense, in
these later works, that the barrier between the composer’s ‘serious’ work
, and such peripheral activities has become at least permeable, if not on
occasion abolished altogether. Such an impression is, in one instance at
least, an accurate reflection of the truth: music written for the cinema 1s
being admitted into the concert room without any attempt at makeover. In
1992 Takemitsu, whose November Steps had been written to commemorate
the 125" anniversary of the New York Philharmonic Society, was asked to
provide a new work to mark the 150" anniversary of that institution. The
result was Family Tree — Musical Verses for Young People (1992), for narrator
and orchestra to a text by Shuntar6 Tanikawa: music which in its sumptu-
ous luxuriousness stands as a revealing index of the degree to which
Takemitsu’s aesthetics had changed in the twenty-five years since the
November Steps premiére. Much of the work — which has subsequently
been presented by the NHK as a television drama — sounds, with its
soaring string lines and functional harmonic accompaniments, like film
music, and in fact this superficial impression on the listener’s part turns
out, in the final bars, to be literally true: the accordion melody which
appears near the close is taken from a score which Takemitsu provided for
Jim Jarmusch’s Night on the Planet, but which was subsequently rejected by
the director. The very use of the accordion here, of course, suggests a blur-
ring of the boundaries between Takemitsu’s film and concert work —
although the composer had already used it once before in a ‘serious’
context, in a work entitled Cross Talk for two bandoneons and tape (1968).
 220 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 124 Dream/Window, ‘harmonic pitch 2 |

be rhe

: A further characteristic of Takemitsu’s music of the 1990s is the degree

to which the process of stabilisation, or normalisation, of musical lan-
guage observed in the works of the 1980s has been pursued to a point at
which there appears to be a certain interchangeability between one work
and the next: they tend to sound, to quote Oliver Knussen, as if ‘all cut
from the same gently hedonistic roll’. Although, as Knussen himself
observes, Takemitsu himself thought otherwise and regarded each new
piece as ‘something very different’, one can understand the listener’s per-
plexity — especially when so many works from this period, as we shall soon
see, audibly share thematic materials. Perhaps the wisest course for the
confused listener might be to suspend entirely Western expectations of a
self-contained musical discourse, proper to each individual work, and
instead regard each piece as a tour around another musical ‘garden’, many
of whose contents are drawn from the same basic repertory of musical
‘paradigms as those of coeval Takemitsu works. Certainly, the composer’s
own remarks about gardens suggest that he regarded their permeability to
the outside world as one of their most appealing features; the garden, he
claimed in a film interview towards the end of his life,? does not reject
things from outside itself, and Takemitsu’s musical ‘gardens’ are able to
accommodate ‘things outside themselves’ too: fragments of other pieces by
Takemitsu, even fragments of pieces by other composers.
Thus — to speak of self-quotation first - Quotation of Dream — Say sea,
take me! for two pianos and orchestra (1991) refers back to material
already employed in Dream/Window: in addition to the ‘harmonic pitch
1’, quoted in the previous chapter, also using ‘harmonic pitch 2’, a charac-
, teristic “zig-zagging’ figure (Ex. 124).
More confusingly, How slow the Wind, And then I knew ’twas Wind and
Archipelago S. for twenty-one players (1993) are all interrelated by means
of shared thematic materials. The first half of the principal melodic idea of
How slow the Wind (Ex. 125a) appears again in And then I knew twas Wind
(Ex. 125b), and its second phrase in Archipelago S. (Ex. 125c); while the
first phrase of Example 125c, though not identical with its counterpart in
the other works, shares with them its basic circular shape and final falling
221 Beyond the far calls: the final years

Ex. 125 Comparison between themes from Takemitsu works of the 1990s

te
| ——————
eel a ae ES
A.) How Slow the Wind, C/11-12, -—-3-—_

a.) 27 ~Ene o,, es... “ey me ~ Aa, wees

B.) And then I knew ‘twas Wind, Q/4 ]

NS EEE 0, RE,
f

cl.
(2 SS
f) a 37
ee SS ms
— ‘
C.) Archipelago S., A/3

AS) 2 2 ee i, 2 ee ~~... en re hs..." es a |

third. Perhaps too, in the case of How slow the Wind and And then I knew
‘twas Wind, whose titles are taken from the poetry of Emily Dickinson, the
shared motivic material was intended to reflect the reference to ‘wind’ in
both quotations — although at the same time, Takemitsu clearly did not fail
to take into account the fact that the verse from which the first title is taken
| continues “how slow the sea’. The relevant ‘S—E-A’ motif thus also appears
| in this work, at one point in minims as an accompaniment to a statement
of the theme of Example 125a.
| | There is also a second, less obvious, motivic idea which recurs repeat-
edly in a number of scores from the 1990s, and which is particularly prom-
inent in Between Tides (1993): Example 126 gives a number of instances of
its occurrence.
| In addition to such self-reference, however, there are also in these late
works of Takemitsu one or two quotations from external sources, of the
kind that had occasionally been found in works from early years. Without
a doubt the most spectacular of these borrowings — more shocking for the
listener even than the Abiyoyo interpolations in Wind Horse — are those to
be found in Quotation of Dream, a work which appropriates substantial
passages of Debussy’s La Mer wholesale, as well as reworking materials
, from the latter work in the context of Takemitsu’s own original composi-
tion. At the opposite extreme of subtlety from this ‘schizo-eclectic’!® con-
fection, however, the viola part of And then I knew ’twas Wind incorporates
222 The music of Téru Takemitsu

Ex. 126 Comparison between themes from Takemitsu works of the 1990s

A. How slow the Wind, C/21

, p——ji—

: lar Pa —
B. And then I knew ‘twas Wind, Q/9-10 C. Between Ties be
——
—

HS
——Te th |
| ne
D. A Bird came down the Walk, bb. 56-57 E. Fantasma/Cantos II, B/2

a brief allusion to Debussy’s Sonata for flute, viola and harp — a quote so
well concealed that Takemitsu was obliged to draw attention to its prove-
nance through a note in the printed score. On the other hand, of course,
the entire instrumentation of this work is itself a ‘quotation’ from
Debussy’s Sonata — and an unmistakable one at that.
As these occasional uses of quotation illustrate, Takemitsu’s final scores
continue to embody many of the preoccupations familiar from his earlier
work. Thus, to take another example, Takemitsu continues to explore the
‘garden’ metaphor as a pattern for overall formal organisation, explicitly
drawing attention to this in his remarks on Fantasma/Cantos and in the
title of Spirit Garden, an orchestral work dating from 1994. Spirit Garden
also demonstrates that Takemitsu’s interest in dodecaphonic construction
was by no means dead, even at this late stage in his career: not only is it in
part based upon a twelve-note series, but Takemitsu for the first time in his
programme notes explicitly acknowledged this fact: “The work is based on
a twelve-note row from which three chords each of four notes are gener-
ated. These chords, accompanied by changes in tone colour... are an ever-
present undercurrent, vibrating at the fundamental, from which a musical
garden is composed.”!!
As our examinations of the manner in which Takemitsu uses twelve-
note materials in Sacrifice and Dream/Window have already shown, this
treatment of the series as a resource from which harmonic materials may
be fashioned, rather than as a definitive linear ordering principle, is highly
typical of the composer. In the case of Spirit Garden, as Miyuki Shiraishi
explains in her liner notes for the recording,'* the harmonic materials are
 ee
SSS
HH
223 Beyond the far calls: the final years

Ex. 127 Basic chords of Spirit Garden _

obtained by extrapolating pitches from the basic series by means of skips

of regular size, in a manner that suggests a new interest in late Takemitsu
for the kind of numerological ‘constructivism’ that also fascinated the
composer of Lulu in his final years. Here, by selecting in turn pitches 1-4-
7-10, 2-5-8-11 and 3-6-9-12 from the ordered twelve-note set
A-~-Bb—E—Eb—D—A)b—G—F#—C-—B—C#-F, Takemitsu arrives at the three four-
note forms shown in Example 127.
One notes that this whole process has somehow been engineered to
result in a derivative series whose internal construction once again reveals
certain symmetries, and which also contains harmonic materials favoured
by the composer in other contexts. In this instance, the second and third
chords stand in inversion relationship to one another, while each chord
_ consists of an augmented triad plus one extraneous pitch — these three
extraneous pitches in turn forming the augmented triad needed to com-
plete the chromatic collection. There is thus a strong affinity between these
materials and the type of series already encountered in Hika, based on the
division of the total-chromatic into four augmented triads, or in other
words into two statements of Takemitsu’s favoured ‘6-20’ collection. A
, similar type of construction is used to generate the basic pitch-materials of
And then I knew ’twas Wind, which are again based upon two ‘6-20’ hexa-
chords: F~-G#-A—C-—C#—E and D#—-F#~G—Bb—Bt—D. In this case, however,
the manner in which this division of the total-chromatic is handled is far
from serial. First, Takemitsu does not use his hexachords as a definitive
ordering principle, but instead appears to take delight in deriving as many
permutations as possible of the pitches of the first of the two six-note sets
quoted above, as for example in the opening bars. Secondly, while there is
continued reference to the pitches of this primary hexachord throughout
the work, its chromatic complement is never heard in full at any point, but
rather used simply as a resource from which pitches are selected to add
varied harmonic colour to the pitches of the first hexachord — in a manner
which recalls Takemitsu’s remarks about the six pitches and their ‘shadow
in From far beyond Chrysanthemums and November Fog. Takemitsu thus
successfully avoids the harmonic ‘sameness’ that might otherwise result
from the consistent use of the ‘6-20’ collection (and which is such a
224 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 128 And then I knew ’twas Wind, O/9-10

Op ee ee
; " —— PP ——__ af —————————— _ P

conspicuous feature of certain dodecaphonic works by other composers

constructed on the basis of that form); moreover, his chosen method
allows him such freedom that he is able to quote the Leitmotiv of How slow
the Wind in parallel major thirds, and still remain faithful to his basic con-
_ structional premises. The pitches of the resultant phrase all lie within the
primary hexachord, with the exception of the additional ‘colouring’ of two
pitches drawn from its chromatic complement, shown in brackets in
Example 128.
In addition to such quasi-‘serial’ practices, one or two other preoccupa-
tions of Takemitsu’s more adventurous years continued to resurface from
time to time in his later works. For example, spatialisation of the instru-
mental ensemble — and indeed a theatricalisation of the performative act
that was probably the most dramatic Takemitsu ever attempted — both
reappear to spectacular effect in From me flows what you call Time (1990),
a work for orchestra and five percussionists, who operate distant bells dis-
tributed throughout the auditorium by means of lengths of coloured
tape. A spatial dimension is also present in Ceremonial — An Autumn Ode
for shé and orchestra (1992) — the sole work of Takemitsu’s later years to
use a traditional Japanese instrument — where three duos of flutes and
oboes are placed to the left and right of the stage, and behind the audi-
ence. Such an arrangement recalls the distribution of forces of In an
Autumn Garden, a work from which Takemitsu actually quotes here,
using the beautiful Dorian theme already cited in Example 87 as a princi-
pal thematic source.!° The stage layout of Archipelago S., written in the
following year for performance by the London Sinfonietta at Snape
Maltings, also recalls that of In an Autumn Garden; though in this
instance, the twenty-one players required for performance — grouped into
five ‘islands’ of which two (the twin clarinet soloists) are placed to the rear
of the auditorium — really do place the work’s listeners in the midst of a
‘pentagonal garden’ of sound.
It is easy to see — especially from such examples as the exquisite off-stage
 225 Beyond the far calls: the final years

chiming effects of From me flows what you call Time — how these spatial
interests could survive Takemitsu’s conversion to his later, more ‘audience-
friendly’ manner after so many of the more abrasive experiments of his
middle years had been abandoned. For similar reasons, the composer’s
emphasis on the importance of instrumental colour was another quality
that remained a consistent feature of his music. For the most part, it is true,
his last works had rather less use than heretofore for the kind of extended
instrumental techniques that had characterised the work of his more
experimental years — though they were far from dispensed with entirely, as
such effects as the harpist’s tuning-key glissandi in And then I knew, or the
scordatura of the guitar in Equinox (1993) indicate. On the other hand,
however, the composer’s skill in a more conventional form of timbral
expertise — the achievement of rapturous orchestral sonorities by means of
the skilful blending of instrumental colours — reaches in these last works its
apogee. In an interview given as late as 1988, the composer had expressed a
wish ‘to study ... orchestration with someone else’;'* faced with the stag-
gering orchestral competence of these late works, fruit of a lifetime’s prac-
tical experience in the film studio and concert hall, one can only assume
Takemitsu was here being either ironic, or fanatically modest.
| In addition to this ultimate refinement of ensemble scoring, the late
works continue to demonstrate the composer’s skill in writing for solo
instruments, and, as in the past, often reflect Takemitsu’s personal associa-
tion with particular instrumental artists. For example, the solo percussion
| parts of From me flows what you call Time were conceived for the Canadian
ensemble Nexus, and Ceremonial was written for the young Japanese sho
soloist Mayumi Miyata. For Nobuko Imai, the violist who had premiéred
A String Around Autumn, Takemitsu went on to write A Bird came down
the Walk for viola and piano, basing it on the oboe theme and opening
_ chord progression of A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden — the
theme explicitly identified by the composer as representing the ‘flock’ in
, the earlier work thus symbolising the ‘bird’ of the latter.!° The soloist who
had commissioned Takemitsu’s first work for guitar — Kiyoshi Shomura —
also received a further gift in the 1990s in the shape of Equinox, a work
which, like Vers, l’arc-en-ciel, Palma, draws its inspiration from the work
_of Joan Miré. (The Catalan artist was also to suggest the title for a com-
mission from the BBC which remained incomplete at the time of
Takemitsu’s death: Comme la sculpture de Miré). And Shomura was to be
further honoured two years later as the dedicatee of Rosedale, the second
| movement of the solo guitar piece In the Woods (1995), whose remaining
two movements likewise bear dedications to performers who had become
, intimately associated with Takemitsu’s guitar music: John Williams (the
 LSa
ee
226 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Eee :
Ex. 129 Les yeux clos, p. 2, system 1, bar 2

re : — : Sf dim. molto ppp

BS 28 7 ee eee eee

first movement, Wainscot Pond) and Julian Bream (the final movement,
Muir Woods).
But alongside such expressions of gratitude for living contemporaries,
with the passing of the years and the death of many of his most revered col-
| leagues, Takemitsu’s scores were increasingly to be prefaced by dedicatory
remarks of an altogether more sombre hue. Reverence for the dead is of
course a prominent feature of Japanese culture, and it is therefore hardly
surprising that a Japanese composer — especially one of such a melancholy
cast of mind as the “Lento composer’ — should reflect this general preoccu-
pation by producing several works of memorial or funerary character. It
might be appropriate, therefore, to end the discussion of Takemitsu’s
music by considering another ‘series’ of works linked by a common
‘theme’: a theme to which the composer never drew explicit attention, but
which nevertheless was to prove more insistent than any other, occupying
him — it could be argued — for nearly forty years of his creative life.

Epitaphs
The more recent part of this creative history begins in 1979, with the death
of Takemitsu’s long-serving mentor, Shtizo Takiguchi. In memory of
Takiguchi, Takemitsu wrote a short piano piece which took its title from a
monochrome lithograph by Odilon Redon (1840-1916) he had seen in a
Chicago Art Gallery eleven years earlier: Les yeux clos. The mysterious
‘Closed eyes’ of the female figure depicted by the French symbolist artist
thus also become those of the Japanese surrealist poet, sealed now forever
in the dream of death. There are perhaps hidden references to Takiguchi,
too, on a more purely musical level. At least, as Noriko Ohtake has pointed
out, one of the principal thematic ideas of Les yeux clos —a striking three-
note motif, powerfully stated in parallel major sevenths (Ex. 129) —is iden-
 ee |)
227 Beyond the far calls: the final years

74 , ,
Ex. 130 Les yeux clos II, bar 1

St nt 7 a Ce? encom
PP —__— ,

“—enteeemcneaepeeeansensenmnrene —~"""teimnamemeesememmmpnmenanensennennenn

tical with the uppermost voice of the sequence of block chords from
Uninterrupted Rest quoted in chapter 4, Example 25, when they reappear
in retrograde later in the movement. Since Uninterrupted Rest takes its title
directly from a verse by Takiguchi, Takemitsu is possibly encoding here a
cryptic signature of Les yeux clos dedicatee.
Redon produced three versions of his lithographic image, two in mono-
chrome and one in colour, and Takemitsu was to emulate this three-part
scheme by the addition of two subsequent works to his 1979 original. The
first, another ‘monochromatic’ essay for piano solo, was Les yeux clos I,
written in response to a commission from Peter Serkin in 1988. While it
does not quote directly from its eponym, this later work nevertheless pro-
claims its kinship to the original Les yeux clos by the inclusion of a three-
note motif closely related to Example 129: first heard in the form A—B-F, it
- consists in effect of a reordered inversion of the same basic [0,2,6] collec-
tion as the above. For whatever reason, Les yeux clos II also makes repeated
use of a short octatonic idea that was subsequently to reappear as a con-
_ stant feature of a work written in the following year, A String Around
Autumn (Ex. 130).
The third instalment of Takemitsu’s Redon triptych — analogue to the
artist’s ‘colour’ version of the lithograph — was the second movement of
Visions (1990): entitled simply Les yeux clos, it isan orchestral version of the
1979 piano work. Unlike the translation of Orion to the orchestral medium
that forms the first movement of Orion and Pleiades, however, it is much
- more than simply an ‘orchestration’ of the original. Takemitsu here effects
substantive alterations to the musical text in the process of reworking: in
particular, he adds barlines and makes considerable rhythmic changes,
subjects materials to transposition and reordering, adds new material in
| some places and in others omits material from the original. Of particular
interest is the manner in which certain elements of this orchestral rewriting
 228 The music of Toru Takemitsu

attempt to imitate some of the effects of the piano version: sustaining

pitches beyond their original notated durations to replicate resonance
effects and create new melodies, differing voice-leadings or sustained har-
monies. This is especially telling at the end of the work, where the perfor-
mance direction of the piano original — ‘let ring throughout the piece’ — is
simulated by the use of an off-stage bass trumpet doubled on stage by bass
flute, harps and celesta, eloquently revealing the degree to which the decay
of sound in time, and the illusion of space created by such resonance, were
intimately linked in the composer’s mind.
Nostalghia for violin and string orchestra (1987), the next of
Takemitsu’s musical memorials to appear, derives its title — and its
Italianate spelling — from a 1983 Italian—Soviet co-production by the
Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-86), to whose memory it is
dedicated. Written for yet another high-profile soloist, Yehudi Menuhin, it
possesses a distinctly more overt funerary character than either of the
pieces described above — a quality that in part derives from a number of
characteristics it shares with the much earlier Requiem for Strings. Most
obvious is the very use of the string orchestra in itself; the work’s extremely
slow opening tempo, and instruction “Calm and mournful, entirely
rubato’ also suggest an affinity with the Requiem, as does the manner in
which the work begins with a single pitch, C#, emerging out of the ‘stream
of sound’. But Takemitsu additionally appropriates more specific musical
: symbols of mourning from his earlier déploration: most obviously, he
again favours harmonic forms built up from superimpositions of triads,
and specifically of augmented triads, which yield verticalisations of the ‘6-
20° form and its subsets, strongly recalling the type of sonority quoted
above in Example 13 (chapter 4). For all that, this is a work from
Takemitsu’s ‘third period’, and in consequence the harmonic language is at
times much more straightforwardly ‘tonal’ than that of the Requiem. For
example, the first two chords accompanying the main theme when it is
introduced by the solo violin at bar 5 — a C-minor triad and F-minor
, seventh in second inversion — constitute harmonic types which it is
unlikely that the composer would have permitted himself to use in so
direct a manner in 1957.
Augmented-triad superimpositions also appear at one point in
Takemitsu’s next musical elegy, Twill by Twilight for orchestra (1988),
written to mourn the loss of the American composer Morton Feldman
(1926-87). The passage in question, Example 131, actually provides an
exemplary illustration of the relationship between the augmented triad,
the ‘6-20’ collection, and Messiaen’s third mode of limited transposition —
eloquently revealing the degree to which Takemitsu was consciously aware
229 Beyond the far calls: the final years

b FP
Ex. 131 Twill by Twilight, ‘G’/9

Fl., celesta L OR
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of their connection. Here, Takemitsu places two augmented triads above

one another in the first bar to generate a ‘6-20’ hexachord, and then adds
the pitches of a third augmented triad — E, Ab, C—to produce a full vertical
statement of the pitches of ‘Mode III, with two notes — Bb and C —
doubled at the octave. Attention should also be drawn to the characteristic
: ‘rocking’ figure played by the horns and woodwind in the second bar of
this example. Repeated as an ostinato in the opening bars of the work, it
| subsequently reappears on no fewer than eight occasions, thus acquiring
something of the role assumed by the oboe and alto flute themes in deli-
neating sections in, respectively, A Flock Descends and Rain Coming — in
other words, again functioning after the fashion of a ritornello.
Like Asterism, Twill by Twilight derives its enigmatic title - perhaps
Takemitsu’s own attempt at a kind of Joycean word-play — from one of the
more obscure entries in the English dictionary. “Twill is a type of woven
material, and besides referring to the manner in which Takemitsu’s own
‘ritornello’ theme weaves its way through the piece, the choice of this word
is also perhaps an affectionate allusion to Feldman’s fascination with
230 The music of Toru Takemitsu

carpets. Interestingly enough, the same metaphor that Takemitsu indi-

rectly suggests here had already been applied to his later music six years
before Twill was composed: writing in 1982, Dana Richard Wilson
observed that the composer’s more recent works could be likened ‘to a
Persian tapestry, while the earlier [i.e. ‘pointillist’] works are like the paint-
ings of Seurat or Pissarro’.'° However, while Takemitsu’s title might hint at
a shared interest with Feldman, his own ‘textures’ are very different from
the sparse, ascetic lines of the American composer’s work. Much of the
harmonic and instrumental language of Twill, indeed, might best be —
described as lushly impressionistic — nowhere more so, perhaps, than in
the passages at E/4-5 and L/5-6, where, over a pedal Ck (the ‘tonal centre’
with which the work will conclude) pairs of massively scored chords swell
and recede, interwoven with cascades of figuration for flutes and celesta
and harp glissandi, and underpinned by crescendo—diminuendo patterns
for percussion. The effect as a whole is rather as if these two climactic bars
had strayed here from the orgiastic finale of Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé—a
rare instance of a palpable influence of that other great ‘French impres-
sionist’ master on Takemitsu. The latter, it is true, had certainly known
Ravel’s music since his earliest days, since he recalled performing it on his
rented Pleyel piano;'” but in general — apart from isolated instances such as
the above — there is little evidence of its influence in the composer’s mature
music.
The deaths of the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi
(1904—88) and the artistic director of the London Sinfonietta Michael
Vyner (d. 1989) were the next to be commemorated by Takemitsu. For
Noguchi, the composer wrote Itinerant for solo flute, first performed by
Paula Robison in 1989; while alongside numerous tributes by other com-
posers, Michael Vyner was to be honoured with two works by Takemitsu.
One of these, Litany for piano (1990), has already been remarked upon in
the discussion of the composer’s ‘début’ composition Lento in Due
Movimenti, of which it is a ‘recomposition from memory’. The other, My
Way of Life (1990), which Vyner had commissioned for the Leeds Festival
before his death, is for the unique combination of baritone solo, chorus
and orchestra, sung to a text by Rydichi Tamura in English translation. It is
a vastly different work from the only remotely comparable previous
offering of Takemitsu, Coral Island for soprano and orchestra, which dates
from the period of the composer’s intensest engagement with modernist
gesture. In contrast to the angular, dissonant vocal line of Coral Island, the
solo part of My Way of Life is suave, slow moving and melodic; generally
undemonstrative and syllabic, it forms an effective foil to the more pas-
231 Beyond the far calls: the final years

aaa — —
Ex. 132 Rain Tree Sketch II, opening

BN.” ee
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AL a is og is Ay : hd its a7 Hs bhe

SS
fast —po— 4 * pe 8 pe 9 * po
. so ee en Pe LE a Pt of J]
sionate outbursts of the chorus, which clearly reflect the skill Takemitsu
had acquired in handling this medium in the a cappella songs of Uta.
Takemitsu’s plans for a first opera were curtailed by his untimely death, but
it may be that in My Way of Life we have a reasonably approximate image of
what parts of that projected opera might have sounded like.
The following few years — those immediately preceding Takemitsu’s own
death — were to take their toll on some of his most esteemed colleagues in
the international composing community. John Cage and Olivier Messiaen
both died in 1992, to be followed two years later by Witold Lutostawski,
and while Takemitsu did not leave a musical tribute for Cage, he was to
commemorate the deaths of both of these other leading musicians. For
_ Messiaen he wrote Rain Tree Sketch II for piano (1992), another compara-
tively late addition to the “Waterscape’ series. Given the circumstances of
its dedication, it is highly appropriate that in this work Takemitsu should
make his usual frequent references to Messiaen’s modal system — although
at the same time it is rather ironic that the opening bars of the piece (Ex.
132), which certainly sound as if they ought to derive from one of the
Messiaen scales, are in fact not based on any of the ‘modes of limited trans-
position’ at all, but rather on one of the scales of George Russell’s system,
the harmonic major or ‘Lydian Diminished’ (here used at the same trans-
, position as in the ‘upbeat’ figure from Coral Island quoted earlier,
D—E-F#—G—A-—Bb—C#).
Marked ‘Celestially Light’, this opening material recalls at least the
general atmosphere of the earlier Rain Tree Sketch, even if the two works
bear no obvious thematic relationship to one another: like its namesake,
232 The music of Toru Takemitsu ,

en
a Ne
pe
FSR ee
Se ;ot
Ex. 133 Paths, p. 6 system 4

5:6 3
sie
A| A|
By,| AT
| B,Braretro. | |
the second Rain Tree Sketch is a study in brittle sonorities and high tessi-
tura, to such a degree that pitches in the bottom register, when they do
appear, acquire the status of major events. The music thus has no real “bass
line’ for the most part, only isolated pedal notes; and significantly, all of
these isolated bass events in Rain Tree Sketch II consist of the pitch Dk —
clearly the ‘tonal centre’ of the work, as the material quoted in Example
132 implies.
Lutostawski’s memorial was to take a form unique in Takemitsu’s
output: Paths for solo trumpet, written for performance by Hakan
Hardenberger at the Warsaw Autumn Festival in 1994. The work displays
an unusually tight motivic organisation, weaving its extended melodic
lines out of anumber of short generative cells — amongst which the S-E-A
motif, extended upwards by means of piled-up thirds as in Far calls, is here
making what is possibly its farewell appearance in Takemitsu’s music.
Though unusual, such a technique had by no means been without prece-
dent in Takemitsu’s work, and at one point at least, the melodic construc-
tion of Paths closely echoes one of the processes used to generate the
melodic line of Distance de Fée forty-three years earlier. In a similar
fashion to that illustrated by Example 8, the passage quoted in Example
133 uses statements of two motivic forms, overlapping one another via the
use of common pivotal pitches, to generate a series of ‘sequential’ state-
ments, each one a minor third higher than that previous to it.
Paths was to be the last in Takemitsu’s series of musical epitaphs: less
than eighteen months after its premiére the composer himself had passed
away. Yet at the same time, the list of Takemitsu’s musical tombeaux does
not in a sense end here; nor, indeed, as suggested at the very beginning of
this section, did it begin with Les yeux clos either. For, over twenty years
before composing Les yeux clos, Takemitsu had written the first of his
musical memorials, Requiem for Strings, in memory of Fumio Hayasaka.
And by later hinting that he himself might be a second dedicatee for this
piece, Takemitsu effectively bequeathed his own Requiem to the musical
233 Beyond the far calls: the final years

world when he died in 1996. Certainly it would appear to be in this sense

that the Requiem has been received since the composer’s death, to judge by
the numerous commemorative performances of it — as Requiem for both
Hayasaka and Takemitsu, simultaneously first and last in the sequence of
Takemitsu’s musical memorials.
 12 Swimming in the ocean that has no West or East

By choosing a scenario about whales for his abortive opera project,

Takemitsu was reflecting a preoccupation that had long been dear to his
heart. More than once in his final years — for example in a letter sent to
Peter Serkin a few days before his death — he expressed a wish to ‘get a more
healthy body as a whale’ and ‘swim in the ocean that has no west and no
east’.'! Takemitsu’s choice of words here evokes more than simply his
whimsical intention to be reincarnated as a whale; it is also poetically sug-
gestive of his lifelong quest as an artist for a kind of cultural transcendence,
an internationalism of outlook. In this final chapter, I propose to discuss
the degree to which Takemitsu may have been successful in the realisation
of more general, aesthetic goals of this sort, and thus try to arrive at some
kind of critical assessment of his status as a composer.
It is important at the outset of any such discussion to draw attention to
the precise wording of Takemitsu’s wish: he wishes to swim in an ocean
that has neither West nor East, not in one that somehow links the two. One
still comes across the misunderstanding that Takemitsu saw himself in
some way as a bridge between these two cultures, perhaps because the early
success of November Steps left some listeners with the indelible impression
that his life’s work was devoted to reconciling the differences between the
symphony orchestra and the shakuhachi. Takemitsu himself, however,
explicitly denied any such intention; as he once expressed it: ‘It would not
be so difficult to adopt traditional Japanese music into Western music or to
blend both. I am not, however, interested in either of these possibilities’.
Rather, as his ‘whale’ metaphor illustrates, Takemitsu regarded his role as
assisting at the birth of a culture that transcended such polarities, that was
truly global and internationalist. Such a role, and indeed such an image of
birth, are explicitly suggested by another of the composer’s favourite meta-
phors, borrowed from the American architect and sociologist Richard
Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983). “There is no doubt, as Buckminster
Fuller pointed out’, explained Takemitsu, ‘that from the early twentieth
century ... the various countries and cultures of the world have begun a
journey toward the geographic and historic unity of peoples. And now all
of us, individually and collectively, share in incubating that vast universal
cultural egg.” ,
234 Yet, despite such utopian visions of a cultural future that was global and
235 Swimming in the ocean that has no West or East

- pluralist, Takemitsu was at the same time keenly aware of the cultural
contradictions of the present, and in particular of his own ambivalent
identity as a Japanese composer working within a Western musical tradi-
tion. This was an inescapable fact of his geographical and historical posi-
tion: as one commentator aptly puts it, ‘it is unavoidable that any Japanese
professional musician, who composes or performs in the realm of Western
art music, has to confront the problem of how to identify himself as a
Japanese’.* The history of Takemitsu’s artistic development is therefore in
part the history of precisely such a confrontation: beginning, in its earliest
phase, with almost total rejection of all things Japanese, passing through a
period of experimental confrontation of the two traditions, and finally
arriving at a more thoughtful integration of Japanese elements within a
fundamentally Western composing style, in mature works ‘where the two
_ cultures are no longer separately identifiable’. In this sense, therefore, it is
legitimate to consider Takemitsu as one of the many heirs of Shuji Izawa in
his quest for what was to prove the ‘holy grail’ of subsequent generations of
Japanese musicians: the resolution of the ‘double structure’ in the Japanese
psyche, the assimilation of native Japanese and Western traditions into
some sort of unity. And, in turn, it is also legitimate to consider to what
extent he may have succeeded or failed in that problematic task.
The general consensus of opinion would appear to be that Takemitsu
scored a singular success in this matter — discovering a personal symbiosis
of the two cultures which deserves to be ranked as one of his most
significant artistic achievements, and whose elegance certainly far sur-
passes that of the solutions adopted by previous generations of Japanese
composers. Thus Koozin, for example, observes that ‘strongly identifying
himself both as a Japanese and as a composer in the Western sense,
Takemitsu projects in his music a maturity of personal expression which
transcends the hybrid styles of previous Japanese composers’,° achieving
such transcendence of ‘earlier efforts to blend Eastern and Western idioms
| through a subtle balance of opposing features’.’ The invidious compari-
sons with earlier Japanese composers here, which might at first sight seem
merely gratuitously uncharitable, are in fact of crucial significance: it is by
placing Takemitsu’s own methods in opposition to those adopted by his
forebears that we are able to gain a fuller insight into the distinct character
of his own preferred solutions, and the possible reasons for their superior
degree of success. The salient observation that emerges from any such
comparison, of course, is that Takemitsu avoids the temptation of opting
, for the most obvious and superficial form of East—West ‘hybridisation’, the
appropriation of actual Japanese scales and melodies, of the kind practised
in particular by the ‘nationalist’ musicians of the minzokushugi school.
236 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Apart from the early experiments with modalism under Kiyose’s tutelage —
of which some vestigial traces perhaps remain in the mode-based har-
monic idiom of his work in general — Takemitsu’s music for the most part
almost pointedly eschews this kind of anecdotal ‘Japanese’ reference. ‘I
don’t like to use Japanese tunes as material’, the composer once expressly
indicated; “No power... no development. Japanese tunes are like Fuji —
beautiful but perfectly eternal.*® Their absence in his music, indeed, is
made almost ironically apparent by the fact that Takemitsu has no qualms
about using popular music from other cultures, such as the African and
Catalan songs in Wind Horse and Vers, l’arc-en-ciel, Palma, although there
is at least one major exception to this self-imposed veto: one of the songs of
Uta is an arrangement of Sakura (Cherry Blossom) — not merely a
Japanese folksong, but in effect the unofficial second national anthem!
This exception apart, however, the ‘Japanese’ input in Takemitsu’s case —
by contrast with the more ‘concrete’ style of Japanese allusion favoured by
his predecessors — tends to take the form of a set of ‘abstract’, ideological
preoccupations, which inform certain aesthetic or philosophical aspects of
a sound-world that is fundamentally twentieth century and Western in
substance. But if Takemitsu thus used ‘an international musical vocabu-
lary to express an indigenous Japanese aesthetic goal’’, there was at the
same time something in the nature of that ‘international musical vocabu-
lary’ itself, at that particular moment in its historical development, which
facilitated the process by meeting him somewhere along the way. For
another important aspect of Takemitsu’s achievement was his discovery of
_ several points of congruence between certain aspects of his own native
culture — at least, as he interpreted them — and the contemporary preoccu-
pations of a number of ‘advanced’ musicians in the West. These areas of
overlap included: the common ground between Takemitsu’s ‘garden’ form
— in both its horizontal sense of a non-directed, rambling process, and its
vertical one of a ‘panfocal’ instrumentation — and the interest of Western
musicians in ‘mobile’ or indeterminate forms and stratified instrumenta-
tion; the spatialisation and theatricalisation of instrumental performance
in both traditional Japanese and Western contemporary music; the con-
cepts of the ‘stream and sound’ and ma, which relate to John Cage’s philos-
ophy of silence; a secondary meaning of ma which Takemitsu applies to the
simultaneity of tempi in nd music, and which relates to similar polymetri-
cal organisations in the West; the common interest of both traditions in
? microtones; and the preference of both traditions for the complexity of the
individual sound-event over the syntactical relationships between sound-
events, for that heightened awareness of the possibilities of timbre which,
for Takemitsu, is expressed by the Japanese term sawari.
 237 Swimming in the ocean that has no West or East

| Of these, the points relating to ma and sawari would appear to merit

deeper discussion — not least because they introduce specific technical
terms from Japanese aesthetics which demand further elucidation. The
first of these terms, ma, is notoriously difficult to pin down, particularly in
the senses in which Takemitsu uses it. Its literal meaning, that of an ‘inter-
val’, or ‘space’, in both the spatial and temporal senses of these words, is
clear enough, but when questioned as to its deeper significance,
Takemitsu’s own response seemed to be to withdraw into a kind of inscru-
table silence which was an example of ma in itself. “Ma is not only a
concept in time; it is at the same time very spatial, a spatial thing, I believe.
| Ma is perhaps... oh, mais a very philosophical term’.'° In the absence of
any clearer definition, then, one is forced to turn to the secondary litera-
ture for elucidation of this problematic term. Koozin, for example, glosses
| ma as ‘an expressive force which fills the void between objects separated in
time and space’,'! relating it specifically to those shadings into ‘silence’ that
characterise Takemitsu’s piano music. Since these lack a clear point of ter-
mination, ‘one is more likely to hear the silence arising toward the end of
such a figure as a direct outgrowth of the previous sound-event. In this
sense, the sound-event draws silence into the piece as an active rather than
a passive element ... The moment of waiting for sound to become silence
is imbued with ma.’'?
However, Kenjiro Miyamoto offers a slightly different and, to my view,
certainly more fruitful definition of this term. First, he clears up the confu-
sion created by Takemitsu’s use of the word in two differing senses, distin-
, guishing as ‘the ma of no’ the specific meaning attached to the word when
Takemitsu applies it to nd music, where it refers to simultaneity of tempi.’°
| (It will be observed that the present author follows Miyamoto’s precedent
in the last but one paragraph.) Secondly, he suggests that when Takemitsu
| uses the term ma with reference to traditional Japanese music in general,
the concept implies for him ‘the temporally unquantifiable, metaphysical
continuum of silence that, in Japanese music, is consciously integrated
between the notes played’.'* This so-called ‘silence’ is, in reality, ‘in no wise
, something void, but rather is filled with the numberless tones or noises of
space’,!° and it is the function of the ‘notes played’ to contrast with and
render perceptible this underlying continuum: to ‘enliven the countless
sounds of silence through music’,!® or in Takemitsu’s words, ‘ma o ikasw
(‘enliven the ma’).
Thus defined, Takemitsu’s understanding of ma obviously approxi-
mates not only to his own conception of the ‘stream of sound’, but also to
John Cage's aesthetics of ‘silence’ as a space teeming with sonic events
rather than a mere void —a less than surprising congruence, perhaps, when
238 The music of Toru Takemitsu

one considers Cage’s own ‘Eastern’ philosophical orientation. But it is

rather less easy to explain some of the other correspondences between
‘East’ and ‘West’ referred to above simply as the result of the hankering of
certain disillusioned post-war Westerners after the ‘mysterious East’. In
many cases there really does appear to be a quite fortuitous and, for
Takemitsu, highly fortunate coincidence between traditional Eastern and
contemporary Western aesthetics, as in the matter of the common interest
which both share in the complexities of timbre. In the West, an increasing
interest in tone-colour on the part of musicians is observable from the
latter half of the nineteenth century onwards, developing in tandem with
improvements in instrument manufacture and performance techniques,
and a better understanding of the physical complexities of sound-
production — tendencies which ultimately converge in the post-war period
with the development of electro-acoustic media and the possibility of
, offering listeners self-sufficient discourses conducted in terms of the
timbral quality of sound-events alone. In the East — and specifically in the
case of indigenous Japanese music, according to Takemitsu — an acute sen-
sitivity to the timbral quality of individual sound-events has long been a
distinctive feature of traditional aesthetics. “The Japanese’, Takemitsu
claimed, ‘are a people who have been endowed with a keen receptivity
towards timbre from ages past’!” — a gift which, the composer believed,
expressed itself in a traditional music whose ‘sensitivity to tone quality is
unparalleled’.'®
One aspect of traditional Japanese music which, in Takemitsu’s view,
particularly vindicates such claims is ‘the aesthetic concept of sawari’.!°
Like ma, this is another key word in Takemitsu’s aesthetic vocabulary.
Deriving from the verb sawaru, ‘to touch’, it traditionally refers to a
playing technique associated in particular with such instruments as the
biwa or shamisen, whereby as a result of the instrument’s construction and
the mode of attack a complex sound is produced, with a pronounced
‘noise’ component. In Takemitsu’s view, this method of production sug-
gests a sound-ideal radically different from that of European music, with
its emphasis on purity of ‘the note’: the sawari effect, by contrast, ‘aims at
the production of noises from our everyday lives, rather than musical
sounds’. Moreover, by so doing, it produces sounds which approximate
ever more closely to the ambient ‘noise’ of the ‘stream of sound’, or indeed
of ma, linking Takemitsu’s two most important aesthetic ideas in a
complex reciprocal relationship. ‘As each note is refined and emphasised in
isolation, the significance of the scale to which it belongs becomes of less
importance, and thus the sound approximates to a condition that resem-
239 Swimming in the ocean that has no West or East

bles silence, since it is no longer distinguishable from natural noises,

which, though full of concrete tones, as a whole represent “silence”’.*!
Furthermore, as these remarks about the decreasing significance of
notes as members of ‘scales’ indicate, Takemitsu was well aware that a shift
of focus towards the tone-quality of individual, isolated sounds tends to be
made at the expense of a focus on the relationships between sounds consid-
ered only in terms of their conventionalised abstractions as discrete
‘pitches’ — the area with which Western music is traditionally concerned.
‘We speak of the essential elements in Western music — rhythm, melody
and harmony. Japanese music considers the quality of sound rather than
melody.’* This shift of attention away from syntactical relationships
towards individuated sound-events is another aspect of traditional
Japanese practice that has certain parallels with modern Western composi-
tion: from the atomised fragmentation of syntax in Webernian and post-
Webernian pointillisme, through the deliberate avoidance of any imposed
structures in Cage’s chance procedures, to the wholly timbre-based argu-
ments found in certain electro-acoustic compositions. Moreover, this
aspect of Takemitsu’s aesthetics can also assume crucial importance as a
means of understanding exactly why the level on which ‘East’ and “West’
meet in his work produces more artistically satisfying results than those
granted to Japanese musicians of the preceding generation. For, while the
general consensus of critical opinion does indeed seem to suggest that
Takemitsu’s predecessors ‘attempted to graft Oriental elements on to
Western forms with little success in creating a true synthesis’,*° it might at
first sight appear that such unsupported assessments reflect nothing more
profound than the dictates of changing fashion. Takemitsu’s aesthetics of
timbre, however, can provide the starting point for an enquiry into the
basis of such assessments on a deeper level, one which suggests that there
may indeed be an important qualitative difference between his own means
of incorporating traditional Japanese elements, and those attempted by
his forebears.
Such an enquiry might best be initiated by considering Takemitsu’s own
distinction between ‘portable’ and ‘non-portable’ musics. ‘Music with two
different faces probably has appeared in the world’, the composer believed;
, ‘one is transportable in form, the other is a music which it is impossible to
move from the particular land and time in which it dwells’.*4 Western
music exemplifies the former type, in which ‘the art of music is systemised
_ symbolically so that it becomes transportable, something anyone can
play’; by contrast, non-Western music ‘cannot be transported to another
land’, for if this were attempted ‘its contours would be changed’.
240 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Takemitsu himself was granted a very literal and graphic illustration of the
‘non-portability’ of traditional Japanese music when he travelled to New
York for the premiére of November Steps: the biwa and shakuhachi soloists,
afraid that their delicate instruments would crack up in the cold, dry
climate, were obliged to resort to such expedients as wrapping them in
lettuce leaves and wet cloths to protect them from the atmosphere. This
experience in turn seems to have suggested to Takemitsu a conception of
| the uniqueness of timbral phenomena far more sophisticated than the
standard Western one. The latter takes into account only the quantifiable
physical characteristics of the acoustic phenomena, whereas Takemitsu
realised that timbre was also the product of all the circumambient local
factors by means of which the listener’s perception of these ‘objective’
physical events was mediated. ‘Sound and its aspects vary according to a
range of conditions’, he was later to write; ‘those of the atmosphere, its
breadth, dryness, moisture, the weather and so on... In itself the concept
[of timbre] can of course be described in physical terms, but the case of
timbre is an individual one, in that the abstraction of the touch or feel of
timbre as it permeates a particular climate and is refined as it passes
through time is not possible.’”°
In contrast with locally circumscribed traditional genres, Western
music, in its quest for ‘universality’, has developed instruments which —
unlike the vulnerable biwa and shakuhachi — are ‘functional and easier to
use’, but at the same time ‘a great deal that is valuable has been cut away in
the process’.”” Specifically, Takemitsu believed, this ‘process of modernisa-
_ tion and functionalisation in Western music’ resulted in the loss of pre-
cisely ‘those miscellaneous sounds — noises, if you will’?® that make the
sounds of traditional music so rich and distinctive in comparison — in
other words, robbed such music of the power of sawari. Moreover, in addi-
tion to this reliance on technically more consistent instrumental mecha-
: nisms, Western music’s quest for ‘portability’ also manifests itself, as the
quotation from Takemitsu in the previous paragraph indicates, in the fact
that it is “systemised symbolically’: in other words, represented in conven-
tionalised notation, enabling it ‘to be interpreted by others who do not
belong to the same culture’.*? And — although he does not appear to make
the connection explicit at any point — this convergence of its content with
what can be represented by the symbols of its notational system is also
responsible for another property of Western music remarked upon by
Takemitsu: its ability to withstand ‘arrangement’, of transference to other
musical media. Since the essential content of Western music consists of the
syntactical relationships between abstracted idealisations of sound-
phenomena, represented as notes in a score, it follows that its essence is
 241 Swimming in the ocean that has no West or East

able to survive even when those same abstracted idealisations are mediated
by the timbrally quite different sound-phenomena of another instrument
or ensemble. Or as Takemitsu expresses it (admittedly selecting some
rather extreme examples to make his point): “In the fugal technique of
Johann Sebastian Bach, structure is very important. When played by any
instrument, that musical structure remains essential and will not be
destroyed. In my case it is quite different.’*°
“Quite different’ because, in Takemitsu’s case, the essence of music is not
to be found in the artificial conceptualisations of relationships between
‘notes’, but rather in the unfathomable complexity of sound itself which,
: being ‘the real music in my compositions, cannot be arranged’.*!
Admittedly there is a divergence here between Takemitsu’s theoretical
stance and his own practice, for of course he did on a number of occasions
| — “arrange’ his own music for alternative media, for example by orchestrat-
| ing Orion to produce the first movement of Orion and Pleiades. But in fair-
ness, it should be pointed out that such ‘arrangements’ are almost always
‘additive’ rather than ‘subtractive’, and that it would be difficult to imagine

| result. |
anyone undertaking the reverse process, for example by attempting a
‘piano reduction of November Steps. Even in the case of the texturally
3 simpler later scores, such a transcription would assuredly involve the loss
of most of Takemitsu’s ‘real music’ from the timbrally impoverished final

What Takemitsu holds true for his own music must of necessity also
hold true for any music whose essence is defined by the timbral quality of
individual sounds rather than their syntactic connection. And since
_ Takemitsu emphatically believes this to be the case with traditional
Japanese music, it follows logically enough that the latter music, like his
own, admits of no ‘arrangement’. This, of course, is because not only its
timbral sophistication, but almost all the features that are the lifeblood of
traditional musics, are lost when the attempt is made to accommodate
such sounds within the inadequate symbols of Western staff notation. The
problem is a familiar one for ethnomusicologists, and seems also to have
been faced by Japanese musicians as early as 1888, when the first attempts
were made by the teachers at the Tokyo Music School to record traditional
music in Western notation: as Akira Tamba notes, the attempt proved a
setback “because traditional Japanese music is based on different tech-
niques from those found in Western notated music, such as attacks sliding
from the note above, fluctuations of pitch, temporal fluctuations, very
| large vibrato and irregular, diverse instrumental noises which classical
Western notation is powerless to transcribe’.*? Takemitsu too was aware of
the loss sustained by traditional music when ‘transcribed’ in this fashion,
242 The music of Toru Takemitsu

though he expressed the point rather more flamboyantly: “The subtlety of

traditional music’, he observed, ‘is not something describable through
notation. On the contrary, many things would be lost if we tried to desig-
nate it systematically with symbols. If one slides down the narrow trough
of description, a unique fragrance has been lost by the time one reaches the
bottom.’
And this brings us to the crucial point towards which this whole argu-
ment has been tending: that those predecessors of Takemitsu who
attempted to import traditional Japanese music directly into their own
works via the intermediary of Western musical notation were inevitably
doomed to create only bland, impoverished reflections of their models,
deprived of virtually all those features which had given vitality to the orig-
inal. In their efforts to assimilate such manifestly ‘non-portable’ musics via
these inadequate means, they were erroneously confounding the actual
sound-substance of this music with the types of relationship that could be
represented by Western notation, and were doomed therefore to enjoy
only limited success as a result.
By contrast, Takemitsu’s relative success stemmed from the fact that,
eschewing such a naively ‘mimetic’ approach, he rather ‘adopted the con-
cepts of Japanese traditional music and succeeded in applying them in
Western musical contexts’.*4 In particular, by reinventing its timbral liveli-
ness on his own terms within the context of a modern Western instrumen-
tal technique, he discovered an especially fortunate coincidence with the
Western tradition at that stage in its development. As suggested by his own
observations about the relationship between sounds and their functions,
too, this focus on the timbral quality of individual sound-events was made
at the expense of their roles as signifiers within a larger structural system:
he believed that ‘the task of the composer should begin with the recogni-
tion of the more basic sounds themselves rather than with concern about
their function’,* since ‘when sounds are possessed by ideas instead of
having their own identity, music suffers’.*° As a result, the perceptual pri-
orities of his music are in harmony not only with those of traditional
Japanese music, but also with those of certain prominent schools of
modern compositional thought in the West. In particular, since the com-
plexity of timbral phenomena defies the kind of rigid determination
which the composer is able to exercise over the relationships between
pitches in a more ‘note-based’ compositional method, the decision to
focus on them of necessity involves a certain abdication of compositional
control which accords well with the thinking of certain Western compos-
ers of the recent past. John Cage, for example, would heartily have ascribed
243 Swimming in the ocean that has no West or East

to Takemitsu’s famous dictum that the worst thing a composer can do is to

- move sounds around ‘like driving an automobile’.

Criticisms
However, precisely those qualities of Takemitsu’s music that endeared him
to composers like Cage were at the same time responsible for some of the
most damning criticism of his music from other quarters. In particular,
the composer’s emphasis on the ‘basic sounds themselves’ rather than the
relationships between them rendered him vulnerable to the frequent
charge, especially from commentators of more traditionally “Western’
orientation, that his music lacked ‘structural rigour’. For instance, after
the opening concert of the Spirit Garden event — a major retrospective of
the composer’s work held at London’s South Bank Centre in 1998 — the
Times critic John Allison commented: “Takemitsu’s fundamental fascina-
tion was with tone colour, and too often in his work sonority seems to take
precedence over substance’ — contrasting his work unfavourably with
another item in the same concert by Ravel, whose ‘sonorities are infinitely
more varied and carry narrative weight’.°” Anyone who has read thus far
will recognise that the qualities Allison here dismisses pejoratively — pref-
erence for ‘sound’ over ‘substance’ (i.e. presumably “discourse’) or lack of
‘narrative weight’ — are precisely those qualities that Takemitsu con-
sciously cultivated as the expression of complex and passionately held aes-
thetic convictions. Of course, this does not mean that they must of
necessity be to everyone’s taste; but at the same time, it is misguided to
suggest that they are simply the result of technical shortcomings on the
composer’s part, that a composer of more rigorous training such as Ravel
had somehow overcome. ,
Indeed, the fact that Takemitsu’s relative lack of interest in structural
organisation was no unconscious failing on his part, but rather a con-
sciously pursued policy, is a point repeatedly borne out by his own writ-
ings. Rather than considering his own ‘dream-like’, rhapsodic method of
construction as in any way shameful, Takemitsu instead singled out the
__ kinds of highly deterministic construction favoured in contemporary
Western music for his scorn: “The technique of constructing sounds
through mathematical formulas is trivial . .. The work of inventing and
constructing music really holds no interest for me.’** In particular, the
twelve-note method, he believed, ‘may be the result of necessity, but it rep-
resents some very dangerous aspects. The mathematical and geometrical
pursuit of sound apparent in this technique is purely an intellectual art.’*’
 TS ss,
244 The music of Toru Takemitsu

Ex. 134 Les yeux clos, p. 4, system 2, bar 4

—_ b | | CD 7
AT.
a55, be
Lf ) |
| ———_____—

Moreover, in addition to these express comments from the composer’s

writings, Takemitsu’s music itself provides evidence of the degree to which
he held constructional processes to be merely ‘trivial’. On the one hand,
the occasional presence of such passages as the twelve-note canon by retro-
grade in bars 29-31 of Music of Tree, to which attention has been drawn in
chapter 5, p. 74, indicates that he possessed formidable reserves of compo-
sitional artifice, upon which he could draw when necessary. But on the
other hand, the fact that he never chooses to pursue the consequences of
any such artful construction for more than a few bars proves that such
matters were in themselves of little interest to him. A further example will
perhaps illustrate this point even more dramatically. In the piano version
of Les yeux clos, there occurs a short passage of quasi-‘isorhythmic’ writing
in which two patterns with differing rhythmic cycles are played against
each other (Ex. 134). In the left hand, a pattern of five quintuplets is
repeated twice, each time a minor third lower (and with slight variations);
in the right hand, a pattern lasting four quintuplet beats is repeated three
times, each a whole-tone lower.
One can imagine the craftsman-like pride many Western composers
might have taken in such a construction: some, like Messiaen, might even
be moved to draw attention to what was going on by means of a note in the
score. It comes as something of a surprise, therefore, to discover that when
Takemitsu came to orchestrate this passage in the first movement of
Visions, he so altered it as to destroy this little conceit entirely. Far from
taking pride in his erudition, he considered it disposable: the work done
 245 | Swimming in the ocean that has no West or East

really was ‘trivial’ for him in comparison with the necessity of producing a
strong orchestral sonority at this point.
While the habit of pillorying Takemitsu for his music’s lack of formal
, organisation seems to be very much a Western one, there is another criti-
, cism that one encounters in both Japan and the West: that the sensuous-
ness of Takemitsu’s harmonic and instrumental language can too often
overstep the bounds of good taste and become cloying. “Can one have too
much beauty?’ rhetorically demanded another harsh commentator on the
London Spirit Garden event, Paul Driver, complaining of Takemitsu’s
‘swooningly beautiful voicing of chords and textures’.“° The music which
falls foul of critical opinion in this respect is mostly that of the last two
decades or so of the composer’s career, and the question might therefore
legitimately be posed as to whether this ‘third period’ represents a decline
in standard by comparison with the more ascetically abrasive manner of
the composer’s middle years. Again, the answer to this question is to a
certain extent a matter of the listener’s own criteria of taste, but it may nev-
ertheless be worthwhile putting forward a few points in Takemitsu’s
defence. For example, it is important to note that the stylistic conversion
which Takemitsu underwent in the mid- to late 1970s was not an isolated,
solitary aberration from the true faith, but rather reflected a general trend
which was shared by a number of the composer’s colleagues in the interna-
tional ‘avant-garde’ composing community. From Penderecki’s spectacu-
lar ‘change of direction’ to the more thoughtful reintegration of tonality in
, the music of the later Ligeti, there were few modernist composers not in a
some way affected by the change of the prevailing Zeitgeist over the course
of the last quarter of the twentieth century. If therefore Takemitsu stands -
a indicted of deserting the field of battle on which the ongoing march of
musical modernism was being played out, it has to be admitted that most |
of his former ‘avant-garde’ colleagues have by now also fled from the barri-

- Takemitsu himself. ,
_ cades — and that not a few of them did so at around the same time as

The change in Takemitsu’s musical language can thus be viewed as the

composer’s own personal response to this change in the aesthetic climate,
and as such, it may represent another significant artistic achievement —
especially when one considers how much less successfully most of .
Takemitsu’s former colleagues in the Japanese avant-garde have fared in
negotiating this particular historical problem. Moreover, it is the author’s
belief that despite the radically different sound-world these later pieces
inhabit, in them Takemitsu still remained faithful to some of the most
basic tenets of his aesthetic philosophy. The preoccupation with actual
246 The music of Toru Takemitsu

sound-materials rather than abstract discourse, for example, is still the

guiding principle of these works, even if dressed in more glamorous garb
than heretofore. Furthermore, there is a sense in which these final works
grant free rein to a kind of political philosophy of self-expression that had
been constant since the earliest days of the composer’s career. Takemitsu’s
own preferred term for this later music was ‘Romantic’ — as he once
remarked to Boulez, ‘my music is very Romantic’! — or perhaps ‘neo-
Romantic’ (‘looking at recent trends, people are categorising these things,
calling them neoromanticism and so on’).** And, as he saw it, the general
artistic movement which his later works reflected closely paralleled certain
roughly contemporary developments in the political sphere: the ‘resur-
gence of the Romantic feeling’ typified by the political and social move-
ments in Eastern Europe.*
What associates these two unlikely tendencies in Takemitsu’s mind — the
rise of ‘Romanticism’ in art, and the collapse of state Communism — is the
fact that he views both as motivated by the same groundswell of popular
desire for self-expression. “Worldwide, there is a trend for everyone — the
general lay public, the non-artistic public — to want to express themselves,
and perhaps artists are at the forefront... they are triggering this... So this
is what I was trying to express by the term “Romanticism”, although it may
not be the appropriate one.’** Given that Takemitsu’s interlocutor in the
dialogues from which these quotes are taken is a die-hard modernist,
Takemitsu is perhaps understandably a little coy about spelling out pre-
cisely what the artistic equivalent to the denial of self-expression in the
Communist world might have been. But it is not too difficult for any
observer of ‘serious’ composition in the West to fill in the blanks, and
supply suitable musical analogues, at least, for the totalitarian régimes that
sparked the kinds of political reaction to which Takemitsu refers.
Takemitsu’s adoption of a ‘Romantic’ idiom in opposition to these con-
straints, then, reflects a profoundly held belief in personal expressive
freedom; and, as such, far from representing a decline in artistic standards
in later life, actually constitutes the reaffirmation of a faith that he had
espoused since his very earliest years — the belief that ‘music is song and
song is love’, for example, as he had expressed it as early as 1956.
A further frequent criticism of Takemitsu’s music, once again levelled at
his later scores in particular, is that their materia musica is too often, and
too obviously, derivative. To quote Paul Driver once again, ‘Takemitsu ...
seems to have produced his scores by strolling in the great garden of 20°-
century orchestral composition, picking and choosing a flower of
Messiaen harmony here, a Debussyan melodic tendril there’.*° The com-
parison with the former composer in particular is one which springs
247 Swimming in the ocean that has no West or East

readily enough to many listeners’ minds — especially of course on account

of Takemitsu’s frequent reference to that most ‘Messiaenic’-sounding of all
harmonic materials, the octatonic scale or ‘second mode of limited trans-
position’. Admittedly the French composer did not have some sort of
exclusive patent on this scale, and composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov,
Scriabin, Stravinsky and Bartdék had all made extensive use of it before
him; but while they contrived to do so without in the least sounding like
Messiaenic precursors, Takemitsu somehow seems unable to avoid very
often sounding like one of his closest disciples. Furthermore, since
Takemitsu does not use the octatonic scale with anything like the rigorous
consistency of Messiaen — preferring instead to move freely between
different transpositions of the mode and other harmonic materials — there
must be still further points of contact to create this impression of similar-
ity between the two composers: the typical homophonic writing with an
often modal upper line ‘coloured’ by underlying chords, for example, or
the general surface sensuousness of both composers’ music.
In fairness to Takemitsu, however, it should be pointed out that, despite
the superficial resemblance his music often bears to Messiaen’s, there are
profound differences of approach between the two composers. Messiaen,
despite his obvious spirituality, interest in Oriental musics, reverence for
| nature and outstanding sensitivity to harmonic and instrumental colour,
was at the same time essentially a ‘constructivist’, whose music involves the
rigorous application of melodic, rhythmic and harmonic schemata to gen-
erate materials. There is a kind of geometric quality to such musical
abstractions, as the title of Liturgie de cristal suggests: the rhythms, though
fluid, are conceived in terms of arithmetical multiples of a unit pulse, and
this implicit, grid-like metrical background is paralleled, vertically, by the
regularly spaced co-ordinates of the ‘modes of limited transposition’.
Furthermore, having set in motion a musical process of the kind found in
Liturgie, Messiaen is content to allow the musical mechanism to run its
course without further compositional intervention. In sum, while
Messiaen has often been laxly described as a ‘mystic’, it would be more
correct to amend this definition, as Robert Sherlaw Johnson has done, to
Messiaen’s own preferred title of ‘theologian’:*° his encyclopaedic works,
with their catalogues of bird- and plain-song and the artful ‘constructions’
of their isorhythmic and isomelodic cycles, are like the great summe of the
medieval Church Fathers, replete with convoluted theological arguments.
Takemitsu, by contrast, although sharing certain aspects of Messiaen’s
spiritual vision, could not by any stretch of the imagination be described
as a ‘constructivist’. The manner in which he treats the most obvious of his
borrowings from Messiaen’s ‘technique musicale’ bears witness to this: the
248 The music of Toru Takemitsu

modes are used for the most part simply as a resource from which to draw
richly aromatic harmonic progressions, without any consistent underlying
rationale; while on the few occasions where Takemitsu employs some kind
of ‘isorhythmic’ construction, he seems to have no interest in pursuing the
workings of the process for more than a few bars, and may even — as in the
case of Example 134 from Les yeux clos— subsequently destroy it altogether.
Furthermore, Messiaen’s rhythmic system based on multiplications of a
constant unit-pulse is mostly in complete contrast to Takemitsu’s fluidity
of tactus, ‘endlessly oscillating’ like the music of the no drama, and
obscured by the frequent subdivisions of the beat into various uneven
factors, often simultaneously. In brief, while Messiaen’s rich sonorities are
used as fundamental units to present syntactical constructions of a precise,
implacable rigour, Takemitsu — less interested, as we have seen, in the syn-
tactical dimension of music than in the stuff of sound itself — uses certain
of the precision mechanisms of Messiaen’s technique only as another
means of generating sonorities which he considers interesting per se. If
Messiaen is the ‘theologian’, offering a commentary on his spiritual beliefs
in terms of rigidly pursued and often descriptive ‘arguments’ of an archi-
tectural solidity, Takemitsu is simply giving meaning to the ‘stream of
sound’ around him, and in consequence reflecting something of the
chaotic and ineluctable fluidity of that medium. One is reminded here of a
similar distinction which Roland Barthes once drew between the Western
theologian and the writer of Japanese haiku. ‘Description, a Western
genre’, Barthes observed, ‘has its spiritual equivalent in contemplation,
: the methodical inventory of the attributive forms of the divinity or of the
episodes of evangelical narrative.’ The haiku, however, ‘articulated around
a metaphysics without subject and without god, corresponds to the
Buddhist mu, to the Zen satori, which is not at all an illuminative descent
of God, but “awakening to the fact”, apprehension of the thing as event
and not as substance’.*”
However, when one turns one’s attention to some of the other references
which Takemitsu makes to Western predecessors — such as those to Alban
Berg’s Violin Concerto in Far calls — it becomes less easy to exonerate the
composer from the charge of direct imitation. In such instances, it is prob-
ably wiser to allow the composer himself to appear in the capacity of his
own advocate — especially since the defence he advances seems to be so
intimately bound up with traditional ‘Eastern’ attitudes to matters of orig-
inality and invention that it would be difficult to imagine a Westerner
offering it without embarrassment. ‘As a composer — not an inventor — I
don’t need patents. Things I think of must have been thought of by others

own.”%8 ,
already . . . Therefore, I think I don’t mind if things are not always my
249 Swimming in the ocean that has no West or East

Conclusions
Ever and again over the course of this chapter, the discussion has returned
to the same central point: that the focus of Takemitsu’s interest as listener
and composer was the sound-quality of the individual event, not the rela-
tionships between such events that constitute the traditional ‘discourse’ of
Western music. Whether attempting to explain his philosophy of tradi-
tional Japanese music, or the relative absence of intentionally imposed
syntax in the composer’s own work, it has repeatedly been necessary to
draw attention to this system of priorities to clarify the underlying basis of
his aesthetic thinking. It has also been necessary to emphasise this same
basic philosophical orientation when dealing with some of the most fre-
quent criticisms levelled at the composer’s work — that it lacks formal
direction, that it is too obviously derivative of Messiaen.
Precisely this same aspect of Takemitsu’s aesthetic philosophy, whose
| results can be so irritating to certain Western critics, is also problematic for
the commentator who would attempt an explication of the composer’s
music with the tools of Western analytic theory. As a natural consequence
of the priority which Takemitsu assigns to the crafting of sounds as audible
phenomena, rather than to their subordination within some preconceived
constructional scheme, the composer’s own ‘modes of musical thoughts
follow the natural inclination of sounds’,”? and the final results therefore
tend to become impermeable to anything resembling exhaustive analysis
by traditional methods. To be sure — and despite Takemitsu’s claim to have
‘no pre-compositional assumptions? — analysis can uncover some of
Takemitsu’s basic generative strategies, and even on occasion tentatively
-- suggest certain higher-level ordering principles: the bulk of this book,
indeed, has been preoccupied with doing precisely that. But, as Bernard
Rands has pointed out, sooner or later there always comes a point in this
work of analysis at which ‘certain assumptions, initially prompted by the
_ surface characteristics of the music, seem less certain’.°! The trail seems to
be lost, ambiguity and arbitrary manipulations of the material conceal all
trace of whatever ‘pre-compositional assumptions’ the composer may
have started from — and one finds oneself at ‘the ends of the fertile land’.
Takemitsu himself, referring to the limitations of analytic method when
applied to the works of other composers, might equally well have been
talking about the kinds of obstacles faced by the analyst bent on discover-
ing the secrets of his own music. “When we analyse a piece of music’, he
observed, ‘we often find some mysterious element that cannot be
explained. If this element is the most attractive or moving aspect of the
piece, the mystery deepens.’**
The approach to Takemitsu’s music adopted in the preceding chapters
 250 The music of Toru Takemitsu

has intentionally avoided trying to explain this ‘mysterious element’, this

residuum consisting of the composer's free, perhaps unconscious, imagi-
native decisions and arbitrary manipulations of material. One cannot quit
the subject of the composer’s music, however, without at least making the
reader aware of both the size and importance of this area, and suggesting
what alternative methodologies might be appropriate for mapping this
vast territory. One possible strategy for future Takemitsu scholars, for
example — assuming they are fluent Japanese readers — might be to
examine the composer’s sketchbooks: the few samples that have so far
appeared in print suggest that this exercise might yield some fascinating
insights into Takemitsu’s thought processes. Alternatively, there already
exist examples of analytic approaches which would appear to have more
success than conventional methods in explaining some of the more enig-
matic aspects of the composer’s work. I am thinking here of such studies as
those by Ting-Lien Wu of Bryce°’ and by Jeong Woo Jin of Rain Tree.** The
former score in particular is, as Wu observes, ‘to a musician thinking only
| in terms of Western pitch, form and texture ... quite bewildering’.°»> Wu
therefore advises that “we take another approach’; arguing that in Bryce
‘the hierarchical pitch structure, which is the predominant character of
Western traditional music, is less active than Eastern articulative
aspects’,°° he suggests that each successive section may be considered a
magnification of a single, microscopic germinal gesture: a single sound-
event, acoustically divisible into beginning, middle and end. Jin’s
approach to Rain Tree likewise focuses on ‘macroscopic’ features rather
than pitch-relationships, in this case not the articulative ‘envelope’ of sec-
tions but rather the manner in which they are distinguished by ‘textural
forces and timbral metamorphosis’.°” Whether one agrees with their
findings or not, both of these scholars are certainly to be credited for
attempting to find a way beyond the impasse that conventional, pitch-
based analysis finds itself confronted with when applied to music of this
kind.
Ultimately, however, to pore over the composer’s scores desperately
seeking some constructional rationale may be to miss the point entirely.
Takemitsu’s music is clearly not written for the gratification of future ana-
lysts. Prioritising ‘sound’ over ‘note-by-note’ discourse, it departs capri-
ciously at every step of the way from whatever pre-compositional ideas
may have formed the composer’s starting point. It is important to remem-
ber here the emphatically non-academic stance adopted by Takemitsu
throughout his career: he never attended music college, nor did he accept
any academic appointment. Asa result, he did not consider the production
of scores that would serve as textual documentations of a discursive
251 _ Swimming in the ocean that has no West or East

process to be an important aspect of his vocation, in the manner which —

one suspects — many more academically trained composers may have
done. His music is designed primarily to be listened to rather than ‘read’:
‘In the case of my music, there is no meaning in it if it does not have con-
crete figures as sounds actually created by instruments. With only the logic
of written scores, sounds do not have any real existence as sounds.’
Takemitsu appears to have cared even less for the logic of written explana-
tions to his scores, which he considered not merely irrelevant but actually
| harmful. ‘If I put explanations in a concert pamphlet’, he argued, ‘the act
of understanding the music through the eyes would be emphasised, and
this might ruin the act of understanding the music with the ears’.*? As a
, life-long outsider to academia, Takemitsu did not identify his audience
exclusively with the ‘new music’ community of musically literate special-
ists to whom, one suspects, the music of many of his contemporaries was
at least half-addressed, particularly in the West. The ideal ‘target audience’
| for Takemitsu’s work, by contrast, was always one of attentive, sensitive
listeners.
And the signs are that this audience is responding. While Takemitsu’s
music may frustrate the academic analyst, and offend the taste of the pro-
fessional critic, it nevertheless appears to be charming an audience that
embraces a much broader constituency of listeners than the usual élite of
new music admirers. The 1998 Spirit Garden Festival, for example, which
so disappointed critics such as Allison and Driver, attracted an average
audience attendance of 58 per cent — an exceptionally high figure for a
‘contemporary music’ series. Inviting its listeners to approach its sound-
world directly without the mediation of pages of complex theoretical
explication, Takemitsu’s music affords them an accessibility that, perhaps,
they feel is denied them by the music of the more rigorously ‘intellectual’
of his contemporaries. Possibly, too, by speaking of ‘trees’, ‘gardens’,
‘wind’ and ‘water’, it satisfies a deep thirst for reference to ‘natural’ subject-
matter which for years Western modernism had rigidly proscribed — and
which even now, indeed, was only being readmitted to the West because
stamped with the legitimising seal of ‘Eastern’ cultural difference.
And perhaps Takemitsu offers his audience something more profound
still. By electing to concentrate on sound itself, and in particular timbre,
rather than syntax, Takemitsu was emphasising a quality of music so
complex that, by comparison, the simple arithmetical procedures of most
~ consciously applied systems of compositional control really do seem
trivial. In the course of its complex evolution, as Takemitsu well knew, a
single sound could supply vast amounts of information ata rate no ration-
alising mind could ever hope to follow. As he put it, ‘In the process of their
 252 The music of Toru Takemitsu

creation [i.e. the sounds of traditional music], theoretical thinking is

, destroyed. A single strum of the strings, or even one pluck is too complex,
too complete in itself to admit any theory.’® In the face of such music, a
Western theoretical training thus becomes a positive impediment to
understanding: the listener must begin a process of re-education, learn

of order. |
anew to hear sounds in themselves rather than as components in a system

The consequences of such a process of learning may be profound. In the

classic Western conception of music as ‘discourse’, sounds only serve to
bear significance as ‘pitches’ (or ‘durations’) in relationship to one
another. This relativistic, self-contained system rather resembles the
modern Western conception of language as a system of signs defined by
their opposition to other signs, not by their reference to ‘things’ in them-
selves. By contrast, music which focuses on the ineluctable riches of timbre
requires that the listener attempt to suspend the organising faculty in
favour of a direct perception of the actual reality of sound-phenomena, an
awareness of the boundless complexity of real events unhindered by the
| distracting simplifications of conceptualisation and analysis. A reference
to a specific instance of the removal of such intermediary conceptualisa-
tion in Takemitsu’s music, at the macrostructural level, may perhaps serve
to clarify this point. Especially during his early years, Takemitsu appears
occasionally to have organised his works according to some large-scale
structural scheme such as ABA or ‘arch’ form. More often than not,
however — particularly in his later music — there is no such overall formal
patterning. A whole layer of intermediary conceptualisation is thus abol-
ished: the totality of sound-events within the piece itself becomes the
‘form’, and the listener is invited to contemplate them directly without ref-
erence to any higher-level ordering. This absence of imposed “fornY repli-
cates, at a higher structural level, the avoidance of imposed syntax at the
microstructural level: in both cases the effect is the same, to remove the
obstacles placed between events and their perception by the act of organis-
ing the former into some distracting conceptual ‘system’.
By inviting us to cultivate a clear, direct apprehension of sound-
phenomena as events in themselves, rather than fascinating the rational
mind with complex organisations of quantities for which those sounds
function as ‘signifiers’, Takemitsu is perhaps also granting us a certain
intuitive experience of that kind of direct perception of phenomena,
unmediated by the categorisations of language, which is the goal of his
native religious traditions — the Buddhist mu, the Zen satori, the ‘appre-
hension of the thing as event and not as substance’. In his more effusive
moments, indeed, Takemitsu seemed to suggest precisely something of
253 Swimming in the ocean that has no West or East

this sort. “Of shakuhachi music it has been said, “Ichion J6butsu” — “With
one sound one becomes the Buddha” . . . suggesting that the universe is
, explored in a single sound . .. So, with some exaggeration, I might say God
dwells in a single sound.’®' Of course, these aesthetic aspects of
Takemitsu’s music are not his exclusive property, but are shared by many
other musics as well — traditional Japanese, for example, as the above quo-
tation indicates. And it must also be admitted that Takemitsu’s practice
can depart remarkably from his theory in this respect — as in the case of his
later works’ insistence on one of the most time-honoured formulae of
‘note-by-note’ discourse of all, the melodic line. Nevertheless, as Western
music enters a new millennium, and seeks some kind of ‘philosophy of
postmodern music’ to supplant the old, it may be that Takemitsu’s insis-
tence on the primacy of sound over structural organisation may prove to
have been prophetic. Alongside the part he played in hatching the ‘univer-
sal egg’; alongside the relative finesse with which he negotiated the general
loss of faith in modernism; alongside his lifelong efforts to abolish barriers
between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture — this specific achievement may yet,
perhaps, prove to have been his most significant contribution to musical
history.
 Notes

Introduction
1 Yoko Narazaki, Takemitsu Toru to Miyoshi Akira no Sakkyoku- Yoshiki:
Muchései to Ongun-Sakaho o Megutte |The Compositional Styles of Toru
Takemitsu and Akira Miyoshi: Their Use of Atonality and Tone-Cluster
Methods], Téky6: Ongaku no Tomo Sha, 1993, p. 86.
2 Jun-ichi Konuma, Takemitsu Toru — Oto, Kotoba, Iméji [Toru Takemitsu —
Sound, Word, Image], Téky6: Seido Sha, 1999, p. 31.
3 Yukiko Sawabe, ‘Alptraume und Traume: Der japanische Komponist Toru
Takemitsu’, MusikTexte 59 (June 1995), 50.
4 Kenjiro Miyamoto, Klang im Osten, Klang im Westen: Der Komponist Téru
Takemitsu und die Rezeption europdischer Musik in Japan, Saarbriicken: Pfau,
1996, p. 53.
5 Takashi Funayama, Takemitsu Toru — Hibiki no Umi e |Toru Takemitsu —
Towards the Sea of Sound], Téky6: Ongaku no Tomo Sha, 1998, p. 45.
6 Miyuki Shiraishi, ‘Umi kara, Futatabi Ame tonari: Takemitsu Sakuhin —
Shuh6 no Hensen o Todorw’ [From the Sea comes Rain Once Again: Tracking
the Changes of Technique in Takemitsu’s Work], Ongaku Geijutsu 54/5 (May
1996), 49.
7 See my ‘Up the Garden Path: Takemitsu, Serialism and the Limits of
Analysis’, in A Way a Lone, Toky6: Academia Musica, 2001 (in preparation)

1 Pre-history: how Western music came to Japan

1 G.B. Sansom, The Western World and Japan, London: Cresset, 1950, p. 264.
2 G.B. Sansom, Japan: a Short Cultural History, Rutland, Vermont: Tuttle,

87. :
1979, p. 468.
3 Arnold J. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, Oxford University Press, 1948, p. 194.
4 Apparently in honour of ‘Herod the Great, the Edomite King of Judaea’. Cf.
Arnold J. Toynbee, The World and the West, Oxford University Press, 1952, p.

5 Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, p. 193.

6 Ibid., p. 188.
7 Ibid., p. 195.
8 Eta Harich-Schneider, A History of Japanese Music, Oxford University Press,
1973, p. 545.
9 Alain Poirier, Toru Takemitsu, Paris: Editions TUM/Michel de Maule, 1996,
p. 15.
254 10 Hidekazu Yoshida, ‘Uber die Musikentwicklung Japans in den letzen hundert
 255 Notes to pages 8-21
Jahren’ in Aspekte der neuen Musik (Professor Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt zum
65. Geburtstag), Kassel: Barenreiter, 1968, p. 98.
11 Ibid.
12 Miyamoto, Klang im Osten, p. 11.
13 Koichi Nomura, “Occidental Music’, in Japanese Music and Drama in the
Meiji Era, compiled and edited by Toyotaka Komiya, translated and adapted
by Edward G. Seidensticker, Toky6: Obun Sha, 1956, p. 456.
14 Ibid., p. 460.
15 Ibid., p. 466. Nomura’s work contains a translation of the complete text of
Izawa’s Study Plan (pp. 464ff), from which the quotations in the preceding
lines have been taken.
16 Ikuma Dan, Nihonjin to Seiyd-Ongaku: Ibunka to no Shukkai [The Japanese
and Western Music: Encounters with an Alien Culture], Toky6: Nippon
H6s6 Shuppan Kyokai, 1997, p. 83. Gagaku is the traditional court music of
Japan, a highly sophisticated ensemble music; while the word here translated
as ‘popular song’ (zokugaku) has the literal meaning ‘worldly music’ and is
perhaps the nearest Japanese equivalent to ‘U-Musik’.
17 Cf. Judith Ann Herd, ‘The Neonationalist Movement: Origins of Japanese
Contemporary Music’, Perspectives of New Music 27/2 (1989), p. 118.
18 Nomura, ‘Occidental Music’, p. 493.
19 Nippon Hés6 Kyokai, the Japanese state broadcasting corporation.
20 Harich-Schneider, A History of Japanese Music, p. 544.
21 Téru Takemitsu, Ongaku no Yohaku kara [From the Space Left in Music],
T6ky6: Shinch6 Sha, 1980, p. 148. Quoted in Noriko Ohtake, Creative Sources
for the Music of Toru Takemitsu, Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1993, p. 6.
22 Akira Ueno, ‘Zwischen den Ufern: die Beziehung zwischen Tradition und
zeitgendssischer Musik in Japan’, MusikTexte 59 (June 1995), p. 45.
23 Herd, ‘The Neonationalist Movement’, p. 119.
24 Carl Dahlhaus (trans. Mary Whittall), Between Romanticism and Modernism:
Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century, Berkeley,
California: University of California Press, 1980, p. 87.
25 William P. Malm, Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture, ed.
Donald H. Shively, Princeton University Press, 1971, p. 300.
26 Robin J. Heifetz, ‘East-West Synthesis in Japanese Composition 1950-1970’,
Journal of Musicology 3 (1984), p. 445.
, 27 Herd, “The Neonationalist Movement’, p. 119.

2 Musicand ‘pre-music’: Takemitsu’s early years

1 End-blown, vertical Japanese flute.
2 Kuniharu Akiyama, biographical sketch of the composer, in Toru Takemitsu,
Oto, Chinmoku to Hakariareru Hodoni |Sound, Measuring with Silence],
Téky6: Shinché Sha, 1971, p. 211.
3 Toru Takemitsu and Seiji Ozawa, Ongaku [Music], T6ky6: Shinch6 Sha,
1981, p. 21.
256 Notes to pages 21-28
4 ‘The Inheritance’, dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1962.
5 ‘The Man Who Left his Will on Film’, dir. Nagisa Oshima, 1970.
6 ‘Summer Sister’, dir. Nagisa Oshima, 1972.
7 Azither-like instrument with thirteen strings, plucked with ivory picks
attached to the player’s fingers.
8 Toru Takemitsu, “Contemporary Music in Japan’, Perspectives of New Music
27/2 (1989), p. 200.
9 Ibid., p. 199.
10 Ibid. Years later, in a moving re-encounter, a shy, elderly man who had keenly
followed the composer’s career over the years finally plucked up the courage
, to introduce himself to Takemitsu in a Toky6 restaurant — as that same young
officer cadet who, with his wind-up gramophone, had unwittingly been so
instrumental in setting that career in motion.
11 Takemitsu, quoted in Hitaru Kataoka, Nipponjin to Kansei |The Japanese and
Sensitivity], Toky6: Ongaku no Tomo Sha, 1979, pp. 58-9. Translation from
Sawako Taniyama, ‘The Development of Téru Takemitsu’s Musical
Philosophy’, Kobe Joshi Tanki Daigaku Ronko 37 (Oct. 1991), p. 73.
12 Toru Takemitsu (with Tania Cronin and Hilary Tann), ‘Afterword’,
Perspectives of New Music 27/2 (1989), p. 207.
13 Takemitsu, ‘Contemporary Music in Japan’, p. 200.
14 Takemitsu, ‘Afterword’, p. 207.
15 See Eiko Kasaba, ‘Notes sur la réception de la musique de Messiaen au

: 1521, Japon’, Revue internationale de musique fran¢aise 30 (November 1989), p. 94.

16 Conversation with Louis Dandrel in Takemitsu, Ongaku no Yohaku kara, p.
151. The original version appeared in Le monde de la musique (Nov. 1978), p.

17 Takemitsu, ‘Afterword’, p. 207.

18 Suzuki was to remain a close associate of Takemitsu until 1958, after which
he gave up composition.
19 Cf. Takemitsu, Oto, Chinmoku, p. 212.
20 Téru Takemitsu, Ongaku o Yobimasu Mono [Awakening of Music], Tokyo:
Shinch6 Sha, 1985, p. 96.
21 Olivier Messiaen, trans. Kishio Hirao, Waga Ongaku Goho, Toky6: Kyoiku
Shuppan Kabushiki Gaisha, 1954.
22 Takemitsu and Ozawa, Ongaku, p. 139.
23 ‘Ongaku izen de arw — ‘It’s pre- (or “before”) music.’ The reviewer respon-
sible was the leading Japanese music critic of the day, Ginji Yamane
(1906-82); the newspaper the Toto Shinbun.
24 Takemitsu and Ozawa, Ongaku, pp. 144-5.
25 The score has now been published by Schott Japan (SJ 1123).
26 The honorific Japanese term for ‘teacher’.
27 Toru Takemitsu (trans. and ed. Yoshiko Kakudo and Glenn Glasow),
Confronting Silence: Selected Writings, Berkeley, California: Fallen Leaf Press,
1995, p. 117. |
257 , Notes to pages 28-45
28 Kuniharu Akiyama, Nihon no Sakkyokukatachi [Japanese Composers],
T6ky6: Ongaku no Tomo Sha, 1978-9, p. 258.
29 Timothy Koozin, ‘The Solo Piano Works of Téru Takemitsu: a Linear/Set-
Theoretical Analysis’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cincinnati (1988), p.
20.
30 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 119.
31 Inthe BBC film “Thirteen Steps around Toru Takemitsu’, dir. Barrie Gavin
(1986).
, 32 Cf. Hiroyuki Iwaki, Sakkyokuka Takemitsu Toru to Ningen Mayuzumi Toshiro
[The Composer Téru Takemitsu and the Human Being Toshir6 Mayuzumi],
Okayama: Sakuy6 Gakuen, 1999, p. 21.
33 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 45.
34 Funayama, Takemitsu Toru, p. 167.
, 35 Fontec FOCD3202.
36 Akiyama, Nihon no Sakkyokukatachi, p. 255.
37 Ohtake, Creative Sources, p. 7.
38 Akiyama, Nihon no Sakkyokukatachi, p. 255.
39 Timothy Koozin, ‘Octatonicism in Recent Solo Piano Works of Toru
Takemitsu’, Perspectives of New Music 29/1 (1991), p. 125.
~ 40 See Miyamoto, Klang im Osten, pp. 62-6.
41 Though disowned by Takemitsu for reasons described above, the work was
, finally readmitted to the canon of the composer’s acknowledged works in a
revised form in 1989, It is upon this revised score that the following observa-
: tions have been based.
42 By Takashi Harada (Victor VICC-124).
43 Ryttaro Iwata, Kafe Takemitsu: Watashi no Takemitsu Ongaku [Café }
Takemitsu: My Takemitsu Music], Téky6: Kaimei Sha, 1992, pp. 53-4.
44 See Allen Forte, The Structure of Atonal Music, Yale University Press, 1973, p.
180.
, 45 Koozin, “The Solo Piano Works’, p. 294.

3 Experimental workshop: the years of Jikken K6b6

1 Shiizo Takiguchi, in the Geijutsu Shinchd, August 1955 number; quoted by
Akiyama in Takemitsu, Oto, Chinmoku, p. 215.
2 The composers J6ji Yuasa, Kazuo Fukushima (1930— ) and Keijiro Sat6
(1929— ) did not join the group until later.
, 3 Kasaba, ‘Notes sur la réception’, p. 95.
4 An English translation can be found in Ohtake, Creative Sources, p. 78.
: 5 Pierre Schaeffer, A la recherche d’une musique concréte, Paris: Seuil, 1952, p.
32.
6 Kuniharu Akiyama, sleeve notes for LP recording of work, VX-21.
7 Heuwell Tircuit (trans. Atsushi Miura), “Toru Takemitsu ... The Inspired
Tenderness’, Ongaku Geijutsu 21/1 (1963), p. 16.
 258 Notes to pages 45-53
8 Hourglass-shaped drum in two sizes, the smaller (ko-tsuzumi) rested on the
shoulder, the larger (6-tsuzumi) on the knee.
9 Traditional Japanese theatrical genre, performed by male actors in masks,
and accompanied by a small vocal and instrumental ensemble.
10 Lute-like instrument, used (as here) to accompany narrations from the epic
Heike Monogatari, the story of the Heike clan.
11 However, in conversation with the author, the composer’s widow insisted
that she had abandoned her acting career by this time, and that Takemitsu’s
engagement in this kind of work was unconnected with her influence.
12 ‘Face of Another’, dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966.
13 Cf. Peter Grilli, ‘Takemitsu and the Movies’, Takemitsu Society Newsletter 1/3
(Summer 1998), p. 8. Takemitsu’s usage here is not entirely metaphorical;
like several of his friends, he possessed an actual ‘liberty passport’, made and
given to him by Shiizo Takiguchi.
14 Grilli, “Takemitsu and the Movies’, p. 6.
15 “Bad Boys’, dir. Susumu Hani.
16 ‘The Ceremony’, dir. Nagisa Oshima, 1971.

4 The Requiem and its reception

| 1 The composer’s programme note, in Shinfoni (Bulletin of the T6ky6
Symphony Orchestra), 2/28 (June 1957), p. 13.
2 Takashi Tachibana, “Takemitsu T6ru: Ongaku S6z6 e no Tabi’ [Toru
Takemitsu: the Journey Towards Musical Creation], Bungakukai (November
1993), p. 231. |
3 Cf. for example Ozawa and Takemitsu, Ongaku, p. 146.
4 Tachibana, “Takemitsu Toru’, p. 232.
5 Kuniharu Akiyama, in Saishin Meikyoku Kaisetsu Zenshui, Toky6: Ongaku no
Tomo Sha, 1980, vol. 7, p. 459.
6 Narazaki, Takemitsu Toru, p. 88.
7 “Tdky6 Trials’, dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1983.
8 “Black Rain’, dir. Shohei Imamura, 1989.
| 9 Akiyama, biographical notes in Takemitsu, Oto, Chinmoku, p. 216. Akiyama,
however, incorrectly gives the date of this incidental music as 1954, which
was the year in which Anouilh’s play was produced under its original title
(Arudéru, mata wa Seijo), with music by another composer.
10 Poirier, Toru Takemitsu, p. 38.
11 Kenjiro Miyamoto is of another opinion, however, and argues fora
thoroughgoing motivic relationship between the opening idea and all subse-
quent themes in the work. See Klang im Osten, pp. 96-116.
12 Interestingly, the work’s dedicatee Hayasaka was also interested in the
absence of clear beginnings and endings, although in his case he related this
concept to the traditional Japanese picture-scroll or emaki.
13 Takemitsu, Oto, Chinmoku, p. 25.
259 Notes to pages 57-73
14 Composer’s programme note in Shinfoni, 2/28 (June 1957), p. 13.
15 Ozawa and Takemitsu, Ongaku, p. 146.
16 Ibid.
17 Toru Takemitsu, Ki no Kagami, Sogen no Kagami | Mirror of Tree, Mirror of

p. 81.
Grass], Toky6: Shinch6 Sha, 1975, p. 29; quoted in Ohtake, Creative Sources,

18 Poirier, Toru Takemitsu, p. 38.

19 Chung-Haing Lee, ‘Japanese Elements in the Piano Works of Toru
Takemitsu’, DMA Thesis, University of North Texas (1991), p. 36.
20 Sleeve notes for Victor SJX-1002; quoted in Narazaki, Takemitsu Toru, p. 94.
21 The original version of Masque comprised two movements only, Continu and
Incidental. A third movement, Incidental IT, was added in 1960.
22 The reference here is apparently to Messiaen’s Technique de mon langage
musical, cf. English edition, Paris: Leduc, 1944, p. 51.
23 Narazaki, Takemitsu Toru, p. 88.
24 Koozin, ‘The Solo Piano Works’, p. 86.
25 Funayama, Takemitsu Toru, p. 90.
26 The pitches of twelve-note sets in all examples have been numbered 1-12,
: not 0-11.
27 Koozin, “The Solo Piano Works’, p. 80.
28 Cf. Téru Takemitsu (trans. Sumi Adachi with Roger Reynolds), ‘Mirrors’,
Perspectives of New Music 30/1 (1992), pp. 59, 77 n.43.
29 Luciana Galliano, “Takemitsu Toru: il primo periodo creativo (1950—70)’,
Nuova rivista musicale italiana 33/4 (1999), p. 515.
30 Koozin, ‘The Solo Piano Works’, p. 93.
31 Ohtake, Creative Sources, p. 80.
32 Donald Richie, ‘Toky6 no Stravinsky’, Ongaku Geijutsu, Sept. 1959; quoted
by Akiyama in Takemitsu, Oto, Chinmoku, p. 218.
33 Ozawa and Takemitsu, Ongaku, p. 146.
34 ‘I.S. in enjoying himself more than V. [era], partly, I think, because of his
Japanese height. Standard-size installations fit him exactly. Whereas my head
is a foot above the mirror when I shave, and my knees press against the wall
of the W.C., these utilities are comfortably tailored to I.S.’ Robert Craft, in
Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Dialogues and a Diary, London: Faber,
| 1968, p. 192.
35 Takemitsu, ‘Afterword’, p. 207.
36 First performed in 1966 at the San Francisco ‘Musica Viva’, with Aaron
Copland conducting.

5 Projections on to a Western mirror

1 Takemitsu, Ki no Kagami, Sogen no Kagami.
2 Ohtake, Creative Sources, p. 25.
3 Takemitsu, ‘Mirrors’, p. 47.
260 Notes to pages 73-92
4 Poirier, Toru Takemitsu, p. 26.
5 To quote Takemitsu’s own words from the preface, this refers to ‘the instru-
ment tuned a minor third higher than the ordinary guitar: to make it a terz-
guitar. It is already transposed’.
6 Miyamoto, Klang im Osten, p. 129.
7 Koozin, ‘The Solo Piano Works’, p. 64.
8 Ibid., p. 67.
9 Miyamoto, Klang im Osten, p. 167.
10 George Russell, The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organisation for
Improvisation, New York: Concept Publishing, 1959, p. 4.
11 “Téru Takemitsu Pop Songs’, recorded by Seri Ishikawa (female vocalist),
Denon COCY-78624.
12 Masafumi Ogawa asserts the presence of a second, unacknowledged quota-
tion in Wind Horse, observing that ‘the opening melody is apparently
adopted from Tibetan folksongs’. See “Toru Takemitsu’s Compositional
Techniques and his Identity as Japanese in Western Art Music: an Analysis of
Kaze no Uma (“Wind Horse”)’, Research Bulletin of the Faculty of Education,
Oita University 13/1 (1991), p. 115.
13 ‘21-year-old Father/Our Happiness Alone’, dir. Noboru Nakamura.
14 ‘Longing/Once a Rainy Day’, dir. Hideo Onchi.
15 ‘The Ruined Map/The Man Without a Map’, dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1968.
16 This, at least, is my best guess as to the identity of the “Furansowa E. Koroa
mentioned in Kunihara Akiyama’s liner notes for the CD recording of the
music (JVC VICG5128).
17 Dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1989.
18 ‘Mouth-organ’ consisting of seventeen bamboo pipes, used to sound five- or
six-note chords. |
19 Barrel-shaped drum with two heads, placed horizontally in front of the per-
former on a stand and played with two sticks.
20 Ogawa, ‘Toru Takemitsu’s Compositional Techniques’, p. 114.
21 Quoted in Akiyama, Saishin Meikyoku, vol. 13, p. 455.
22 Ibid.
, 23 “Suna no Onna’, dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964.
24 Dana Richard Wilson, ‘The Role of Texture in Selected Works of Toru
Takemitsu’, Ph.D. Dissertation, Eastman School of Music (1982), p. 152.
25 As Miyamoto notes (Klang im Osten, p. 185), the date ‘March 1961’ in the
published score is erroneous.

6 “Cage shock’ and after

1 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 137.
2 Ibid.
3 Ohtake, Creative Sources, p. 75.
4 ‘The Pitfall/Cheap, Sweet and a Kid’, dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara.
5 “The Assassin’, dir. Masahiro Shinoda.
 261 Notes to pages 92-110
6 ‘Yotsuya Ghost Story’, dir. Shiro Toyoda.
7 Miyamoto, Klang im Osten, p. 167.
8 Takemitsu, ‘Mirrors’, p. 55.
9 Toru Takemitsu, ‘Watashi no Hoh6 — Mytjikku Konkuréto ni tsuite’ [My
- Method — Concerning musique concrete], Bijutsu Hihyo | (1956), p. 70.
10 Ohtake, Creative Sources, p.7.
: 11 Takemitsu, ‘Afterword’, p. 208. This kind of ‘layering’ is also, of course, a stan-
dard procedure in the building up of textures in the electronic music studio.
12 Robin Julian Heifetz, ‘Post-World War II Japanese Composition’, DMA
Thesis, University of Illinois (1978), p. 60.
13 Koozin, “Octatonicism’, p. 126.
14 Koozin, ‘The Solo Piano Works’, p. 294.
15 In the film ‘Toru Takemitsu: Music for the Movies’, dir. Charlotte Zwerin,
1994.
16 Wilson, ‘The Role of Texture’, p. 90. ,
17 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 120.
18 Cf. for example Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 66; Taniyama, ‘The
Development of Toru Takemitsu’s Musical Philosophy’, p. 80; Funayama,
Takemitsu Toru, p. 175; Shinji Sait6 and Maki Takemitsu, Takemitsu Toru no
Sekai [The World of T6ru Takemitsu], Toky6: Shtiei Sha, 1997, p. 176;
Ohtake, Creative Sources, p. 90; Miyamato, Klang im Osten, p. 195.
19 Funayama, Takemitsu Toru, p. 173.
} 20 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 95.
— - 21 Ibid., p. 114.
22 Ibid.
23 Ohtake, Creative Sources, p. 91.
24 Akiyama, Nihon no Sakkyokukatachi, p. 262.
25 Poirier, Toru Takemitsu, p. 80.
26 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 120.
| 27 Funayama, Takemitsu Toru, p. 103.
28 Ohtake, Creative Sources, p. 94.
| 29 RCA SB 6814.
30 Narazaki, Takemitsu Toru, p. 86.
31 Akiyama, Saishin Meikyoku, vol. 7, p. 470.

7 Projections on to an Eastern mirror

1 Takemitsu, “Contemporary Music in Japan’, p. 199.
2 Traditional Japanese puppet theatre.
_ 3 Takemitsu, ‘Mirrors’, p. 55.
4 Miyamoto, Klang im Osten, p. 128.
5 Aspecific variety of biwa (lute-like traditional instrument), which appeared
in the Meiji era in the northern province of Kyashi formerly known as
Chikuzen (present-day Fukuoka).
| 6 ‘“Hara-kiri’, dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1962.
 262 Notes to pages 111-137
7 Transverse bamboo flute used in the kabuki drama.
8 Transverse bamboo flute used in gagaku music.
9 ‘Mouth-organ’ comprising a windchest and seventeen bamboo pipes; used in
gagaku music.
10 Once again, however, the situation was to prove different in his incidental
music, where traditional Japanese instruments continued to be used for
anecdotal purposes right up to his music for Sharaku (dir. Masahiro Shinoda,
1995).
11 Miyamoto, Klang im Osten, p. 55.
12 Wilson, ‘The Role of Texture’, p. 35.
13 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 63.
14 Takemitsu, Oto, Chinmoku, pp. 185-95.
15 Harich-Schneider, A History of Japanese Music, p. 419.
16 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 63.
17 Akiyama, Saishin Meikyoku, vol. 10, pp. 407-11.
18 Polydor POCG-3357.
19 Ohtake, Creative Sources, p. 58.
20 Edward Smaldone, ‘Japanese and Western Confluences in Large-Scale Pitch
Organization of Toru Takemitsu’s November Steps and Autumn’, Perspectives
of New Music 27/2 (1989), p. 223.
, 21 Toru Takemitsu (trans. Mimi Yiengpruksawan), ‘Sound in the East, Sound in
the West: the Way to November Steps’, Ear 5/8 (1990), p. 21.
22 Poirier, Toru Takemitsu, p. 24.
23 Wilson, “The Role of Texture’, p. 139.
24 Ibid., p. 365.
25 Smaldone, ‘Japanese and Western Confluences’, p. 218.
26 Ibid., p.221.
27 Roger Dettmer, sleeve notes for original recording of work (RCA SB 6814).
28 Ibid.
29 Wilson, ‘The Role of Texture’, p. 183.
30 Takemitsu, ‘Contemporary Music in Japan’, p. 210.
31 Poirier, Toru Takemitsu, p. 65.
32 Ibid., p. 224.
33 “Double Suicide’, dir. Masahiro Shinoda, 1969.
34 Koozin, “Octatonicism’, p. 126.

8 Modernist apogee: the early 1970s

1 “Taiy6 no Karyudo’, dir. Hideo Onchi, 1970.
2 Quoted in Wilson, ‘The Role of Texture’, pp. 44—5.
3 Funayama, Takemitsu Toru, p. 117.
4 Cf. Carlos Salzedo, Modern Study of the Harp, New York: Schirmer, 1921,
1948, p. 11: ‘4éolian rustling: The hands, pressing the strings, are drawn
slowly across them, fingers close together in the horizontal position. =
 263 Notes to pages 139-167 |
5 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 117.
6 Ohtake, Creative Sources, p. 59.
7 Poirier, Toru Takemitsu, p. 70.
8 David Osmond-Smith, Berio, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 120.
9 Ting-Lien Wu, ‘An Analysis of Toru Takemitsu’s Bryce (1976), with an
Emphasis on the Role of Articulation’, Ph.D. diss., University of California at
Los Angeles (1987), p. 14.
10 Large, flat drum with two heads, suspended in a circular frame and mounted
on a stand.
11 Funayama, Takemitsu Toru, p. 110.
12 Sleeve notes for original recording, Q4 EMD 5508.
| 13 Wilson, ‘The Role of Texture’, p. 142.
14 Your eyes, your hands, your breasts...
_ - You are twins in yourself.
From Tezukuri Kotozawa (“Handmade Proverbs’) by Shiizo Takiguchi.
Takemitsu was to set the same text for six male voices in his 1987 work of the
same title.
15 Preface to score.
16 Takemitsu, ‘Afterword’, p. 208.
17 Takemitsu, ‘Mirrors’, p. 79 n.54.
18 Oliver Knussen, obituary for Takemitsu in The Independent, 22 February
1996.
19 See chapter 10, Ex. 91 (p. 178).
20 Timothy Koozin, ‘Spiritual-temporal Imagery in the Music of Olivier
Messiaen and Toru Takemitsu’, Contemporary Music Review7 (1993), p. 193.
21 Allen Hughes, “Concert: Takemitsu, Tashi and Ozawa’, New York Times, 25
March 1977. I am grateful for Ms Rie Suzuki of the Peabody Institute for
drawing my attention to this review, which she quotes in her paper ‘Sound in
the East’, read at the Takemitsu Society Symposium in London, July 1999.

9 Descent into the pentagonal garden

1 Poirier, Toru Takemitsu, pp. 67-8. :
2 Smaller transverse bamboo flute, used in gagaku.
3 Kuniharu Akiyama, liner notes for CD recording of work (VICC-23015), p.
12,
4 Ibid., p. 13.
5 Ibid., p. 11.
6 Cf. Takemitsu, ‘Afterword’, p. 210.
7 Akiyama, liner notes to the CD VICC-23015, p. 11.
8 Shigeo Kishibe, The Traditional Music of Japan, Téky6: Ongaku no Tomo
Sha, 1984, p. 27.
9 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 117.
10 Ibid., p. 121.
264 Notes to pages 167-179 ,
11 See Steven Nuss, “Looking Forward, Looking Back: Influences of the Togaku
Tradition on the Music of Téru Takemitsu’. To my knowledge, Nuss’s paper
has not appeared in print, but it can be accessed online at:
http://www.hamilton.edu/academic/Music/erichards/nuss.htm.
12 Toru Takemitsu, CD notes for In an Autumn Garden (VICC-23015), p. 2.
13 Wilson, ‘The Role of Texture’, p. 207.
14 Ibid., p.6. ,
15 Akimichi Takeda, ‘Manazashi no Ongaku: Saikin no Takemitsu-Sakuhin o
Meguru Shéyo’ [Music of Observation: A Look at Some Recent Takemitsu
, Scores], Ongaku Geijutsu 52/12 (Dec. 1994), p. 19.
16 Takemitsu, ‘Afterword’, p. 209.
17 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 103.
18 Ibid., p. 119.
19 Toru Takemitsu, Yume to Kazu, Tokyé6: Libroport, 1987, p. 14. Translation by
Taniyama, ‘The Development of Toru Takemitsu’s Musical Philosophy’, p.
87.
20 These two terms are probably more familiar to Western readers in the form of
their original Chinese equivalents, yangand yin.
21 Jeong Woo Jin, ‘Comparative Analysis of Takemitsu’s Recent Works Rain Tree
and Rain Spell’, Ph.D. diss., University of California at Los Angeles (1987), p.
36.
22 Takemitsu, ‘Afterword’, p. 208.
23 Poirier, Toru Takemitsu, p. 86.
24 Takemitsu’s own explanations can be found in the original Japanese in his
Yume to Kazu, pp. 14-16. An English translation appears in Takemitsu,
Confronting Silence, pp. 97-126; there is also a summary in English in
Ohtake, Creative Sources, pp. 29-33.
25 Akiyama, Saishin Meikyoku, vol. 7, p. 471.
| 26 Poirier, Toru Takemitsu, pp. 84-5.
27 Takemitsu, ‘Afterword’, p. 208.
28 Takemitsu, liner notes for CD recording of work, BIS CD-829.
29 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 105.

10 Towards the sea of tonality: the works of the 1980s

1 Poirier, Toru Takemitsu, pp. 90-1.
2 Ibid.
3 Composer’s own punctuation.
4 Takemitsu, preface to score of Rain Coming.
5 Sawabe, ‘Alptraume und Traume’, p. 52.
6 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 112.
7 Dotted barlines have not been included in the numbering of the bars in this
and other examples.
8 Koozin, “Octatonicism’, p. 136.
 265 Notes to pages 181-219
_ 9 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 112.
10 Takemitsu, preface to score of Rain Coming.
11 Takemitsu, Oto, Chinmoku, p. 206. Quoted in Ohtake, Creative Sources, p. 27.
12 Koozin, “The Solo Piano Works’, p. 269.
13 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 140.
14 From Oe’s novel Atama no ii, Ame no Ki, quoted in preface to score.
15 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 106.

38-9. ,
16 Takemitsu, sleeve notes for DC 282 3; quoted in Ohtake, Creative Sources, pp.

, 17 See: Téru Takemitsu, Toi Yobigoe no Kanata e [Beyond the Far Calls], Toky6:
Shinché Sha, 1992, pp. 77-8.
18 Takemitsu, programme note for Far calls. Coming, far! quoted from pro-
gramme booklet for performance by the Toky6 Metropolitan Symphony
| Orchestra at the Barbican Centre, London, 12 April 1988.
19 Funayama, Takemitsu Toru, p. 41.
20 Takemitsu, programme note for Far calls. Coming, far!
, 21 Poirier, Toru Takemitsu, p. 93.
22 Takemitsu, programme note for Far calls. Coming, far!
23 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 112.
24 Quoted by Akiyama in Takemitsu, Ongaku o Yobimasu Mono, p. 175.

| 26 Ibid.
25 Ohtake, Creative Sources, p. 26.

27 Poirier, Toru Takemitsu, p. 71.

28 Narazaki, Takemitsu Toru, p. 134.
29 Ibid., p. 94.
| 30 Sleeve notes for FOCD3255; quoted by Ohtake in Creative Sources, p. 49.
31 Programme notes for CD recording of the work, Philips 426 667-2PSL.

11 Beyond the far calls: the final years

| 1 Toru Takemitsu, Sairento Gdden — Tai-in Hokoku [Silent Garden — Report on
Discharge from Hospital] and Kyarotin no Saiten [Carotin Festival]; Toky6:
Shinch6 Sha, 1999. A selection of Takemitsu’s illustrations can also be found
in Sait6 and Takemitsu (eds.), Takemitsu Toru no Sekai, pp. 22-5.
2 Toru Takemitsu and Kenzaburo Oe, Opera o Tsukuru [Making an Opera],
, T6ky6: Iwanami Shoten, 1990.
| 3 For further speculation on Takemitsu’s incomplete operatic project, see
Funayama, Takemitsu Toru, pp. 253-7.
4 Sukeyasu Shiba, interview with Susumu Sh6no in “The Role of Listening in
Gagaku’, Contemporary Music Review 1 (1987), p. 23.
5 Takemitsu, Ki no Kagami, p. 30. English version quoted from Takemitsu,
‘Mirrors’, p. 63.
6 See Toru Takemitsu, Toki no Entei |Time’s Gardener], Toky6: Shinché Sha,
1996, p. 124.
266 Notes to pages 219-239
7 Quoted in Sait6 and Takemitsu (eds.), Takemitsu Toru no Sekai, p. 28.
8 Oliver Knussen, CD liner notes for DGG 453 495-2, p. 4.
9 In Dream/Window (John Junkerman, 1992).
(10 Ibid., p.5.
11 T6ru Takemitsu, CD liner notes for Denon COCO-78944.,
12 Ibid.
13 This same theme had also been used in 1986 by Toshio Hosokawa, in his
Seeds of Contemplation for shomyo chanting and gagaku ensemble.
14 Takemitsu, ‘Afterword’, p. 207.
15 The two words are identical in the original Japanese titles.
16 Wilson, “The Role of Texture’, p. 256.
17 Cf. Takemitsu, Oto, Chinmoku, p. 22.

12 Swimming in the ocean that has no West or East

1 Sait6 and Takemitsu, Takemitsu Toru no Sekai, p. 148.
2 Toru Takemitsu, ‘A Mirror and an Ege’, Soundings 12 (1984-5), p. 4.
3 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p.91. _
4 Ogawa, ‘Toru Takemitsu’s Compositional Techniques’, p. 109.
5 Poirier, Toru Takemitsu, p.91.
6 Koozin, “The Solo Piano Works’, p. 295.
7 Koozin, ‘Toru Takemitsu and the Unity of Opposites’, College Music
Symposium 30/1 (1990), p. 34.
8 Quoted in Frederic Lieberman, ‘Contemporary Japanese Composition: its
Relationship to Concepts of Traditional Oriental Musics’, M.A. thesis,
University of Hawaii (1965), p. 143.
9 Koozin, ‘The Solo Piano Works’, p. 549.
10 Takemitsu, ‘Afterword,’ p. 212.
11 Koozin, “Téru Takemitsu and the Unity of Opposites’, p. 34.
12 Ibid.
13 Miyamoto, Klang im Osten, pp. 154-5.
14 Ibid., p. 150.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Takemitsu, ‘My Perception of Time in Traditional Japanese Music’,
Contemporary Music Review 1 (1987), p. 9.
18 Takemitsu, ‘Mirrors’, p, 46.
19 Takemitsu, ‘My Perception of Time’, p. 9.
20 Takemitsu, Ki no Kagami, p. 148; quoted in Miyamoto, Klang im Osten, p.
131.
21 Takemitsu, Kino Kagami, p. 20; quoted in Miyamato, Klang im Osten, p. 132.
22 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 65.
23 Koozin, ‘The Solo Piano Works’, p. 282.
24 Takemitsu, ‘Mirrors’, p. 42.
267 Notes to pages 239-251
25 Ibid.
26 Takemitsu, ‘My Perception of Time’, p. 9.
27 Takemitsu, ‘Sound in the East, Sound in the West’, p. 21.
28 Ibid., p. 23.
29 Ohtake, Creative Sources, p. 25. ,
30 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 110.
31 Ibid., p. 144.
32 Akira Tamba, Musiques traditionelles du Japon, accompagné d’un compact-
disque, Cité de la Musique-Actes Sud, 1995, p. 39; quoted in Poirier, Toru
Takemitsu, p. 57.
33 Takemitsu, ‘Mirrors’, p. 41.
34 Ogawa, “T6ru Takemitsu’s Compositional Techniques’, p. 112.
35 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 80.
36 Ibid., p. 4.
37 John Allison, ‘Craft Going Nowhere’, The Times, 6 October 1998, p. 34.
38 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 14.
39 Ibid., p. 80.
40 Paul Driver, ‘Empty Spirits’, The Sunday Times, 25 October 1998, p. 22.
41 Roger Reynolds and Toru Takemitsu, ‘Roger Reynolds and Toru Takemitsu: a
Conversation’, Musical Quarterly 80/1 (Spring 1996), p. 70.
42 Ibid.,, p. 69.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid., p.70.
45 Driver, “Empty Spirits’, p. 22.
, 46 Robert Sherlaw-Johnson, Messiaen, London: Dent, 1975, p. 40. Messiaen
himself, indeed, described his own aims as the fashioning of a ‘theological
rainbow’ (Technique de mon langage musical, Paris: Leduc, 1944, p. 21).
47 Roland Barthes (trans. Richard Howard), Empire of Signs, London: Jonathan
Cape, 1983, p. 78.
48 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 13.
49 Ibid., p. 86.
50 Ibid.
51 Bernard Rands, ‘I sing only for myself ...’, Musical Times 128/1735 (Sept.
1987), p.477.
52 Takemitsu, ‘A Mirror and an Egg’, p. 3.
53 Wu, ‘An Analysis of Toru Takemitsu’s Bryce’.
54 Jin, ‘Comparative Analysis’.
55 Wu, ‘An Analysis of Téru Takemitsu’s Bryce’, p. 45.
56 Ibid, p. 44.
57 Jin, ‘Comparative Analysis’, p. 5.
58 Takemitsu, Yume to Kazu, p. 21; translation from Taniyama, “The
Development of T6ru Takemitsu’s Musical Philosophy’, p. 90.
59 Takemitsu, Yume to Kazu, p. 6; translation from Taniyama, ‘The
Development of Téru Takemitsu’s Musical Philosophy’, p. 78.
268 _ Notes to pages 252-3
60 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, p. 51. Miyamoto interprets this statement
rather differently, as meaning that such a sound is ‘already too complex and
complete in itself to represent a dialectic totality by being understood ina
functional sense with reference to other tones’ (Klang im Osten, p. 151).
61 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence, pp. 65-6.
 Takemitsu’s works .

, The following summary of Takemitsu’s vast compositional output makes no

, claims to be exhaustive, especially since it represents the conflation of several,
often conflicting, sources. Of these the most important have been: Schott’s
catalogue of the composer’s works (T6ky6: Schott Japan, 1998); Kuniharu
Akiyama’s list of works in Takemitsu Toru no Sekai, pp. 252-66; YOko Narazaki’s
worklist in the Ongaku Geijutsu (May 1996), pp. 60-73; Akiyama’s biographical
| notes in the endpages of various volumes of Takemitsu’s writings; plus odd hints
, found by chance in assorted literature on the composer. Above all, however, I have
leaned most heavily on Mitsuko Ono’s scrupulously thorough listing in Choki
, and Higuchi (eds.), Takemitsu Toru: Oto no Kawa no Yukue, pp. 398-444, which
appeared as this work was nearing completion. Ms Ono’s researches into
Takemitsu’s compositional activity are by far the most thorough of any
undertaken to date, and Iam supremely indebted both to her example and for the
personal help she has given me in the following compilation.

(* = unpublished work)

1 Orchestral works
*Joie de Vivre, ballet score in collaboration with Hiroyoshi Suzuki (1951)
*A Trip on the Galactic Railway, ballet score (1953)
, Requiem for String Orchestra (1957)
*Solitude Sonore (1958) ,
Music of Tree (1961)
The Dorian Horizon for seventeen strings (1966)
Green (1967)
Winter (1971)
Marginalia (1976)
A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden (1977)
Dreamtime (1981)
A Way a Lone II for string orchestra (version of A Way a Lone for string quartet)
(1981)
Star-Isle (1982)
Rain Coming for chamber orchestra (1982)
_ *Lacrima for String Orchestra, arrangement of music from film Yogen (1983)
Dream/Window (1985)
* At Evening (arrangement of Hitoshi Komuro) (1987)
269 Twill by Twilight —-In Memory of Morton Feldman (1988)
270 List of Takemitsu’s works

Tree Line for chamber orchestra (1988)

. Visions (1990)
I Mystére
II Les yeux clos
How slow the Wind (1991)
Archipelago S. for twenty-one players (1993)
Spirit Garden (1994)
Three Film Scores — transcriptions for string orchestra of music from films (1994)
I Music of Training and Rest from Jose Torres
II Funeral Music from Black Rain
III Waltz from Face of Another
Nami no Bon (arrangement of music originally written for TV, 1996)
Alone on the Pacific, suite for orchestra (arrangement of music originally written
for film Taiheiyé Hitoribocchi in collaboration with Yasushi Akutagawa, 1996)
Two Cine Pastrali: concert suite for orchestra on music from films (1996)
1. Orin (from Orin/Banished)
2. Kaoru (from Izu Dancer)
Dodes’ka-Den (arrangement of music originally written for film Dodes’ka-Den,
1996)
Death and Resurrection — from Black Rain — for string orchestra (arrangement of
music originally written for film Kuroi Ame, 1996)

2. Works for soloists and orchestra

Scene for cello and string orchestra (1959)
Arc Part I for piano and orchestra (1963—66/76) |
I Pile (1963)
II Solitude (1966)
III Your love and the crossing (1963)
Arc Part II for piano and orchestra (1964-66/76)
I Textures (1964)
II Reflection (1966)
III Coda... Shall begin from the end (1966)
November Steps for biwa, shakuhachiand orchestra (1967)
Asterism for piano and orchestra (1967)
Crossing for guitar, harp, piano/celesta, vibraphone, female voices and two
orchestras (1969)
Eucalypts I for flute, oboe, harp and string orchestra (1970)
Cassiopeia for percussion solo and orchestra (1971)
Autumn for biwa, shakuhachi and orchestra (1973)
Gitimalya, ‘bouquet of songs’ for marimba solo and orchestra (1974)
Quatrain for clarinet, violin, cello, piano and orchestra (1975)
Far calls. Coming, far! for violin and orchestra (1980)
271 List of Takemitsu’s works

Toward the Sea II for alto flute, harp and string orchestra (version of Toward the
Sea for alto flute and guitar) (1981)
To the Edge of Dream for guitar and orchestra (1983)
Orion and Pleiades for cello and orchestra (1984)
Vers, l’arc-en-ciel, Palma for guitar, oboe d’amore and orchestra (1984)
riverrun for piano and orchestra (1984)
, Gémeaux for oboe, trombone, two orchestras and two conductors (1971-86)

II Genesis :
I Strophe

III Traces
IV Antistrophe
I Hear the Water Dreaming for flute and orchestra (1987)
Nostalghia — In Memory of Andrei Tarkovsky — for violin and string orchestra
(1987)
A String Around Autumn for viola and orchestra (1989)
From me flows what you call Time for five percussionists and orchestra (1990)
Fantasma/Cantos for clarinet and orchestra (1991)
Quotation of Dream — Say sea, take me! — for two pianos and orchestra (1991)
Ceremonial — An Autumn Ode — for orchestra with shd (1992)
Fantasma/Cantos II for trombone and orchestra (1994)
Spectral Canticle for violin, guitar and orchestra (1995)
*Comme |la sculpture de Mir6 for flute, harp and orchestra (commissioned by
BBC; unfinished at composer’s death)

3. Works for chamber ensemble

*Chamber Concerto for thirteen winds (1955)
_ Le Son Calligraphié I-III for four violins, two violas and two cellos (1958-60)
Landscape for string quartet (1960)
Ring for flute, terz guitar and lute (1961)
Sacrifice for alto flute, lute and vibraphone (1962)
Corona II for string(s), graphic work in collaboration with Kohei Sugiura (1962)
Arc for Strings, graphic work (1963)
Valeria for violin, cello, guitar, electric organ and two piccolos (1965)
Stanza I for guitar, piano/celesta, harp, vibraphone and female voice (Text:
Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1969)
Eucalypts II for flute, oboe and harp (1971)
In an Autumn Garden for gagaku orchestra (fourth part of complete version In an
Autumn Garden, 1973)
Garden Rain for brass ensemble (1974)
Bryce for flute, two harps and two percussionists (1976)
Waves for clarinet, horn, two trombones and bass drum (1976)
Quatrain II for clarinet, violin, cello and piano (1977)
272 List of Takemitsu’s works

Waterways for clarinet, violin, cello, piano, two harps and two vibraphones
(1978)
In an Autumn Garden, complete version for gagaku orchestra (1979)

II Echol ,
I Strophe

III Melisma
IV In an Autumn Garden
V Echoll ,
VI Antistrophe
A Way a Lone for string quartet (1981)
Rain Spell for flute, clarinet, harp, piano and vibraphone (1982)
Entre-temps for oboe and string quartet (1986)
Signals from Heaven — two antiphonal fanfares for two brass groups
Day Signal — Signals from Heaven I (1987)
Night Signal — Signals from Heaven II (1987)
And then I knew ’twas Wind for flute, viola and harp (1992)
Between Tides for violin, cello and piano (1993)
Herbstlied for clarinet and string quartet, transcription of a solo piano work by
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1993)

4, Piano works
*Kakehi (Conduit) (1948)
Romance (1949)
*2 Pieces (1949)
*Lento in Due Movimenti (1950) (see also Litany, 1989)

*At the Circus (1952) 7

Uninterrupted Rest (1952-59)

*Awaremitamae (Miserere) (1960)

Piano Distance (1961) |

*Ai shite (Love Me) (1960)

Corona for pianist(s), graphic score (in collaboration with Kohei Sugiura, 1962)
Crossing, graphic work for piano(s) (in collaboration with Kohei Sugiura, 1962)
For Away (1973)
Les yeux clos (1979)
Little Piano Pieces for Children (1979)

II Cloud ,
I Breeze

Rain Tree Sketch (1982)

Les yeux clos II (1988) |
Litany — In Memory of Michael Vyner (recomposition of Lento in Due
Movimenti, 1950/89)
*Golden Slumbers (arrangement of Lennon and McCartney) (1992)
Rain Tree Sketch II — In Memoriam Olivier Messiaen (1992)
 273 List of Takemitsu’s works

5, Other instrumental works

Distance de Fée for violin and piano (1951, rev. 1989)
*Solitude Sonore for solo flute (1957)
, , Masque I & II for two flutes (1959)
1. Continu
2. Incidental I
Masque III (= Incidental II) for two flutes (1960)
Bad Boy for two guitars (based on film music for Furyd Shdnen, 1961/93)
Eclipse for biwa and shakuhachi (1966)
Hika for violin and piano (1966)
Munari by Munari for percussion solo (1969-72)
Cross Talk for two bandoneons and tape (1968)
_ Seasons, graphic work for four percussionists, or one percussionist and tape
(1970)
Voice for solo flautist (1971)
Stanza II for harp and tape (1971)
Distance for oboe with or without sho (1972)
Voyage for three biwa (1973)
Folios for solo guitar (1974)
Le Fils des Etoiles — Prélude du 1* Acte‘La Vocation — for flute and harp
(transcription of a solo piano work by Erik Satie, 1975)
, Twelve Songs for Guitar, transcriptions of:
Londonderry Air (Irish trad.); Over the Rainbow (Harold Arlen); Summertime
(George Gershwin); A Song of Early Spring (Akira Nakada); Amours Perdues
(Joseph Kosma); What a Friend (Charles C. Converse); Secret Love (Sammy
_ Fain); Here, There and Everywhere, Michelle, Hey Jude and Yesterday (John
Lennon and Paul McCartney); The International (Paul Degeyter) (1977)
Toward the Sea for alto flute and guitar (1981)
I The Night
II Moby Dick
III Cape Cod
, Rain Tree for three percussion players (or three keyboard players) (1981)

(1983) :
*Cross Hatch for marimba and vibraphone (or two keyboard players) (1982)
The Last Waltz (arrangement of Les Reed/Barry Mason) for guitar (1983) |
Rocking Mirror Daybreak for violin duo (1983)
From far beyond Chrysanthemums and November Fog for violin and piano

, Orion for cello and piano (1984)

, Rain Dreaming for harpsichord (1986)
Allin Twilight, four pieces for guitar (1987)
Itinerant —In Memory of Isamu Noguchi — for solo flute (1989)
Toward the Sea III for alto flute and harp (version of Toward the Sea for alto flute
and guitar) (1989)
 274 List of Takemitsu’s works

Equinox for guitar (1993)

* Autumn Leaves, arr. of Joseph Kosma for guitar (1993)
Paths — In Memoriam Witold Lutostawski for trumpet (1994)
A Bird came down the Walk for viola accompanied by piano (1994)
. Inthe Woods, three pieces for guitar (1995)
1. Wainscot Pond — after a painting by Cornelia Foss
2. Rosedale
3. Muir Woods
Air for flute (1995)

6. Vocal works
Tableau Noir for reciter and chamber orchestra (text: Kuniharu Akiyama, 1958)
**Town Song’ for Bihoroch6é, Hokkaid6 (1953)
*Be Sleep Baby!, song to celebrate birth of Shuntar6 Tanikawa’s son (1960)
Wind Horse for mixed chorus (text: Kuniharu Akiyama, 1961-66)
I Vocalise I
II Spell of Fingers
III Vocalise II
IV Vocalise III
V Legend of the Dining Table
Coral Island for soprano and orchestra (text: Makoto Ooka, 1962)
*School Song for Yokkaichi High School (text: Shuntar6 Tanikawa, 1963)
Uta (Songs) for mixed chorus (1979-92)
Will Tomorrow, I Wonder, be Cloudy or Clear (text: Toru Takemitsu); In a Small
Room (text: Akira Kawaji); Small Sky (text: Téru Takemitsu); The Game of Love
(text: Shuntar6 Tanikawa); A Song of O’s [Circles] and A’s [Triangles] (text:
Toru Takemitsu); Unseen Child (text: Shuntar6 Tanikawa); Sakura (Cherry
Blossom), Japanese trad.; Sayonara (text: Kuniharu Akiyama); To the Island
| (text: Mann Izawa); All That the Man Left Behind When He Died (text: Shuntar6
Tanikawa); Wings (text: Toru Takemitsu); I Just Sing (text: Shuntar6 Tanikawa)
Grass for male chorus (text: Shuntar6 Tanikawa, trans. into English by W. S.
Merwin, 1982)
*Kumegawa-Higashi Primary School Song (text: Shuntar6 Tanikawa, 1983)
Handmade Proverbs — Four Pop Songs for six male voices (text: Shiizo Takiguchi,
trans. into English by Kenneth Lyons, 1987)
My Way of Life -In Memory of Michael Vyner for baritone, mixed chorus and
orchestra (text: Rydichi Tamura, trans. into English by Yasunari Takahashi, 1990)
* Akiba-~Gakuen School Song (text: Makoto Ooka, 1991)
Family Tree — Musical Verses for Young People for narrator and orchestra (text:
Shuntar6 Tanikawa, 1992) .
Songs — piano/vocal arrangements by Takemitsu (**) and Henning Brauel (2000):
Sayonara; In a Small Room; I Just Sing (**); The Game of Love; A Song of Os
[Circles] and A’s [Triangles]; Small Sky; La Neige (text: Shin-ichi Segi); Take Off
for the Clouds (text: Shuntar6 Tanikawa); Unseen Child; A Marvellous Kid (text:
275 List of Takemitsu’s works

Fumio Nagata); In the Month of March (text: Shuntar6 Tanikawa); All That the
Man Left Behind When He Died; Waltz (from Face of Another, text: Tatsuji
Iwabuchi); The Encounter (text: Ichird Araki); Glowing Autumn (**) (text:
Hiroyuki Itsuki); Wings; To the Island; Will Tomorrow, I Wonder, Be Cloudy or
Clear?; Potsunen (All Alone) (text: Shuntar6 Tanikawa); Yesterday’s Spot (text:
Shuntar6 Tanikawa)

7. Works for electronic tape, theatre pieces, etc.

(a) Tape pieces

*Kine Karigurafi (accompaniment to animated images, 1955)
Relief Statique (1955)
*Eurydice (1956)
*Vocalism A. I (1956) .
*Trees, Sky and Birds (1956)
*Clap Vocalism (1956)
Sky, Horse and Death (1958)
*Dialogue (1958)

Water Music (1960) |

*Quiet Design (1960)

*Requiem for the Unknown Soldier (1960)

*] Left My Heart in San Francisco (1964)
Kwaidan (based on composer’s music for film of that name, 1964)
*YEARS OF EAR ‘What is Music?’ collaboration between: T6ru Takemitsu,
Shuntar6 Tanikawa, Makoto Ooka, Akimichi Takeda and Takashi Funayama
(1970)
Toward (1970)
A Minneapolis Garden, environmental music (1986)
The Sea is Still, environmental music (1986)
(b) Other
Blue Aurora for Toshi Ichiyanagi, “event musical’ (1964)
*Time Perspective, theatre piece (in collaboration with Toshi Ichiyanagi and
Yoshiaki Higashino, 1964)
*Seven Hills Event, theatre piece (1966)
Wavelength for two percussionists, two dancers and video installation (1984 — )

8. Music for stage productions (all *)

(a) For Bungakuza theatre |

Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams (1954); The Death of K by Shuntaré
Tanikawa (1956); L’Avare by Moliére (1957); Kokuseiya by Yashir6 Seiichi (1958);
Look Back in Anger by John Osborne (1959); Orpheus Descending by Tennessee
276 List of Takemitsu’s works

Williams (1961); Black Tragedy by Yashir6 Seiichi (1962); White Night by Shuji
Terayama (1962)

(b) For Shiki theatre

La Sauvage by Jean Anouilh (1955); Amphitorion 38 by Jean Giraudoux (1955); Az
no Joken (‘Love's Stipulation’, version of Eurydice) by Jean Anouilh (1956);
Semushi no Seijo (version of Ardeéle, ou la Marguérite) by Jean Anouilh (1956); La
Guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu by Jean Giraudoux (1957); Le Corsaire by Marcel
Achard (1959); La Reine morte by Henri de Montherlant (1959); The Wolf must
Live, the Pig must Die by Shintaro Ishihara (1960); The Play is Finished by
Shuntar6 Tanikawa (1960); The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
(1966); Poseidon Mask Festival by Kuninari Tsuji (1974); Cyrano de Bergerac by
Edmond Rostand (1975) |

(c) Other :
Romantic Suite — Nutcracker for Children, children’s ballet, arrangement of
Tchaikovsky in collaboration with Jun Date (1954); Eve of the Future, ballet music
for magnetic tape, collaboration with Toshir6 Mayuzumi (1955); Ichinoya Story
by Shintar6 Ishihara (1964); Love Wears Tinted Glasses by Abe K6b6 (1973);
Festival of the Meridian, Yasue Yamamoto Company (1979); Wings, by Arthur L.
Kopit (1982)
9. Music for radio and television (all *)

(a) Radio :
Four Seasons of Sound (NHK, 1955); Illusions of the Sea, radio drama by Kuniharu
Akiyama (NHK, 1955); Hono (Flame), radio drama by Yasushi Inoue (Shin
Nihon H6s6, 1955); Death of a Man, radio drama by Shuntar6 Tanikawa (NHK,
1957); Blind Panic (Asahi H6s6, 1960); Records of a Long, Black Shadow (TBS,
1962); Gan Kingu (TBS, 1962); Beyond Love and Hate (Mainichi H6s6, 1967);
Chronicles of Toku Market (Asahi H6s6, 1968); Alice in the Subway, stereo drama
(NHK, 1976); Heartlessness (NHK, 1978); Ganjin (Asahi H6s6, 1980); Why did the
S.S. Téya sink? (Téky6 H6s6, 1980); To You, Far Away (NHK, 1980); Natives of the
Port (TBS, 1980); Sadness without Form (NHK, 1983); Shanghai — Road of Illusions
(TBS, 1983)

(b) Television

Dream Star (Asahi TV, 1958); Word Place, theme music (NHK, 1960); Japanese
Crest Patterns (NHK, 1961); Who are you? (NHK, 1961); Woman Blowing a
, Mukkuri (NHK, 1961); Annals of the Present — ‘Ruins’ (NHK, 1962); Festival
277 List of Takemitsu’s works ;
(Hokkaid6 H6s6, 1962); Eyewitness (TBS, 1964); The Tale of Genji (Mainichi
H6s6, 1965); Yoshitsune Minamoto (NHK, 1966); You (Téky6 H6s6, 1966);
Various background pieces for NHK, 1967/8; Sword, theme music (CAL/Nippon
TV, 1967); A Woman of the Genroku Period (Mainichi H6s6, 1968); A Villain
(Asahi H6s6, 1969); The Emperor's Era (Asahi H6s6, 1971); One More Injury
| (NHK, 1971); In Motion, musical work for sounds and images (in collaboration
with Kohei Sugiura, NHK, 1972); Illusion of Woman (NHK, 1972); My Love (TBS,
1973); Bequest to the Future (NHK, 1974); Winter Rainbow (NET, 1976); Tales of a
Distant Field (NHK, 1977); The Legend of Takimori Saigo (TBS, 1977); Ohan (TV
Asahi, 1977); The Louvre Art Gallery (Fuji Television, 1979); The Roshi from Ako
(TV Asahi, 1979); Blood Relative (NHK, 1979); Diary of Yumechiyo (NHK, 1981;
second series 1983); The Silk Road, video production (Victor Video, 1981; music
composed in collaboration with Masaru Tanaka); Shimin Daigaku (‘Citizens’
University’) theme music (NHK, 1982); Giovanni's Milky Way (NHK, 1983);
Unable to Speak (NHK, 1983); Maa, eewaina! (Well, that will do!) (NHK, 1983);
Nami no Bon (Wave Festival) (NTV, 1983); New Diary of Yumechiyo (NHK, 1984);
Warning of the 21" Century (NHK, 1984); I came to Meet Myself, video production
(Tdh6, 1985); Music for the Matsushita Pavilion at the Tsukuba Exposition (TohG,
1985); The Love of Osan (NHK, 1985); Tanizaki (NHK, 1985); The World of Zen
(NHK, 1986); This Morning’s Autumn (NHK, 1987); Santdbi (NHK, 1989);
Apparitions — Picture Scroll of the Tale of Genji (NHK, 1993)

(c) TV commercials
Xerox 9200 (1976); Hitachi TV (1977); IBM (1979); Téshiba Colour TV; Ozeki, The
Network — Seibu Special (1979); Suntory Reserve (1982); US Cotton (1989)

10. Film scores (all *)

Hokusai (scenario by Shtizo Takiguchi, 1952) (Unused)
Sarariman Mejiro Sanpei (Salaryman Sanpei Mejiro) (Hiroshigi Chiba, 1955) in
collaboration with Yasushi Akutagawa
Ginrin (Silver Ring), promotional film for bicycle industry (Toshio Matsuki,
1955) in collaboration with Hideyoshi Suzuki
Kurutta Kajitsu (Crazed Fruit/Juvenile Passions) (K6 Nakahira, 1956) in
collaboration with Masaru Sato
Shu to Midori (Red and Green/Midnight Visitor) (Noboru Nakamura, 1956)
Tsuyu no Atosaki (The Rainy Season) (Noboru Nakamura, 1956)
Doshaburi (Cloudburst) (Noboru Nakamura, 1957)
Kaoyaku (The Country Boss) (Noboru Nakamura, 1958)
Kamitsukareta Kaoyaku (Bitten Leader) (Noboru Nakamura, 1958)
, Haru o Matsu Hitobito (Waiting for Spring) (Noboru Nakamura, 1959)
Itazura (Joking/Love Letters) (Noboru Nakamura, 1959)
_ Kiken Ryoko (Dangerous Trip/Vagabond Lovers) (Noboru Nakamura, 1959)
278 List of Takemitsu’s works

Jose Torres (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1959)

Ashita e no Seis6 (Fully Dressed for Tomorrow) (Noboru Nakamura, 1959)
Nami no T6 (Tower of Waves) (Noboru Nakamura, 1960)
Kawaita Mizuumi (Dry Lake/Youth in Fury) (Masahiro Shinoda, 1960)
Yoru ga Kuru (Evening is coming) (Shintaro Ishikawa, 1960)
X (Toru Takemitsu, Shuntar6 Tanikawa, 1960)
Too Blue (Ishio Shirasaka and Yoshie Imai, 1960)
Mozu (The Shrikes) (Minoru Shibuya, 1961)
Hannyo (Hannyo/Woman of Téky6é) (Noboru Nakamura, 1961)
Furyé Shénen (Bad Boys) (Susumu Hani, 1961)
Ningen Dobutsuen (Human Zoo), animated cartoon (Y6ji Kuri, 1961)
Mitasareta Seikatsu (A Full Life) (Susumu Hani, 1962)
Karami-Ai (The Inheritance) (Masaki Kobayashi, 1962)
Otoshiana (The Pitfall/Cheap, Sweet and a Kid) (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1962)
Namida o Shishi no Tategami ni (Tears in the Lion’s Mane) (Masahiro Shinoda,
1962)
Seppuku (Harakiri) (Masaki Kobayashi, 1962)
Ratai (The Naked Body) (Masashige Narisawa, 1962) in collaboration with J6ji
Yuasa
Koto (Twin Sisters of Kyoto) (Noboru Nakamura, 1963)
Kanojo to Kare (She and He) (Susumu Hani, 1963)
Taiheiy6 Hitoribocchi (Alone on the Pacific) (Kon Ichikawa, 1963) in
collaboration with Yasushi Akutagawa
Subarashii Akujo (A Marvellous Kid) (Hideo Onchi, 1963)
Shiro to Kuro (White and Black) (Hiromichi Horikawa, 1963)
Love, animated cartoon (Y6ji Kuri, 1963)
Suna no Onna (Woman in the Dunes) (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964)
Kawaita Hana (Pale Flower) (Masahiro Shinoda, 1964)
Te o Tsunagu Kora (Children Hand in Hand) (Susumu Hani, 1964)
Nijti-issai no Chichi (21-year-old Father/Our Happiness Alone) (Noboru
Nakamura, 1964)
Ansatsu (The Assassin) (Masahiro Shinoda, 1964)
Nihon Dasshutsu (Nippon Escape) (Yoshishige Yoshida, 1964) in collaboration
with Masao Yagi
Nyotai (The Female Body) (Hideo Onchi, 1964)
Jid6sha Dorobo (The Car Thief) (Yoshinori Wada, 1964)
Shiroi Asa (The White Dawn) (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964)
Kaidan (Kwaidan) (Masaki Kobayashi, 1964)
Utsukushisa to Kanashimi to (With Beauty and Sorrow) (Masahiro Shinoda,
1965)
Saigo no Shinpan (Last Judgement) (Hiromichi Horikawa, 1965)
Buwana Toshi no Uta (Bwana Toshi) (Susumu Hani, 1965)
Ibun Sarutobi Sasuke (Extraordinary Sasuke Sarutobi/Samurai Spy) (Masahiro
Shinoda, 1965)
279 List of Takemitsu’s works

Kemono-michi (Beast Alley) (Eizo Sugawa, 1965)

Yotsuya Kaidan (Yotsuya Ghost Story/Illusion Island) (Shiro Toyoda, 1965)
Ki no Kawa (The Kii River) (Noboru Nakamura, 1966)
Shokei no Shima (Punishment Island) (Masahiro Shinoda, 1966)
Tanin no Kao (Face of Another) (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966)
Akogare (Longing/Once a Rainy Day) (Hideo Onchi, 1966)
~ _Denshi Gijutsu de Mirai o Hiraku (Opening up the Future with Electronic Art)
(Tsumura Hideya, 1966)
| ~ Monokurému no Gaka — Ibu Kurain (Yves Klein — Painter in Monochrome)
(Shinkichi Noda, 1966)
Izu no Odoriko (Izu Dancer) (Hideo Onchi, 1967)
Akanegumo (Clouds at Sunset) (Masahiro Shinoda, 1967)
J6i-uchi (Rebellion) (Masaki Kobayashi, 1967)
Midaregumo (Billowing Clouds/Two in the Shadow) (Mikio Naruse, 1967)
Meguriai (The Encounter) (Hideo Onchi, 1968)
Moetsukita Chizu (The Ruined Map/The Man without a Map) (Hiroshi
Teshigahara, 1968)
Nihon no Seishun (Hymn to a Tired Man) (Masaki Kobayashi, 1968)
__ Ky6 (Kon Ichikawa, 1968)
Hokkaid6 Monogatari (Tales of Hokkaido) (Fuminao Sugihara, 1968)
Shinji Ten no Amishima (Double Suicide) (Masahiro Shinoda, 1969)
Dankon (The Bullet Wounded) (Shiro Moritani, 1969)
, Taiy6 no Karytido (The Sun’s Hunter) (Hideo Onchi, 1970)
T6ky6 Sensé Sengo Hiwa (The Man who left his Will on Film/He Died after the
War) (Nagisa Oshima, 1970)
Dodes’ka-Den (Akira Kurosawa, 1970)
Yomigaeru Daichi (The Earth is Born Again) (Noboru Nakamura, 1971)
_ Gishiki (The Ceremony) (Nagisa Oshima, 1971)
Inochi B6 ni Fur6 (Inn of Evil) (Masaki Kobayashi, 1971)
Chinmoku (Silence) (Masahiro Shinoda, 1971)
Summer Soldiers (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1972)
Natsu no Im6to (Dear Summer Sister) (Nagisa Oshima, 1972)
Kaseki no Mori (The Forest of Fossils) (Masahiro Shinoda, 1973)
Seigen-Ki (Time within Memory) (Toichir6 Narushima, 1973)
Himiko (Masahiro Shinoda, 1974)
Shiawase (Happiness) (Hideo Onchi, 1974)
Kaseki (Kaseki/The Fossil) (Masaki Kobayashi, 1974)
Sakura no Mori no Mankai no Shita (Under the Blossoming Cherry Tree)
(Masahiro Shinoda, 1975)
Nihonto — Miyairi Yukihira no Waza (Japanese Swords — Craftsmanship of
Miyairi) (Tokio Yamauchi, 1975) |
Sabita Hono (Incandescent Flame) (Masahisa Sadanaga, 1977)
Hanare Goze Orin (Orin/Banished) (Masahiro Shinoda, 1977)
Aino Borei (Empire of Passion) (Nagisa Oshima, 1978)
 280 List of Takemitsu’s works

Moeru Aki (Glowing Autumn) (Masaki Kobayashi, 1978)

Kataku (House of Blaze) (Kihachir6 Kawamoto, 1979)
Meido no Hiyaku (Messenger from Hades) (Marty Gross, 1979)
Tenpy6 no Iraka ( Roof Tile of Tenpyd) (Kei Kumai, 1980)
Ki = Breathing (Toshio Matsumoto, 1980)
Minamata no Zu (Map of Minamata) (Noriaki Tsuchimoto, 1981)
Rennyo to sono Haha (Rennyo, the Priest, and his Mother) (Kihachird Kawamoto,
1981)
Yogen (Prophecy) (Susumu Hani, 1982)
Toky6 Saiban (Tokyo Trial/Toky6 Verdict) (Masaki Kobayashi, 1983)
Antonio Gaudi (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1984)
Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
Shokutaku no Nai Ie (The Empty House/House without a Table) (Masaki
Kobayashi, 1985)
Himatsuri (Fire Festival) (Mitsuo Yanagimachi, 1985)
A. K. (documentary film about Akira Kurosawa) (Chris Marker, 1985)
| Yari no Gonza (Gonza a Spear Man) (Masahiro Shinoda, 1986)
Hiroshima to iu Na no Shénen (A Boy Named Hiroshima) (Yoshiya Sugata, 1987)
Arashi ga Oka (Onimaru) (Yoshishige Yoshida, 1988)
Kuroi Ame (Black Rain) (Shohei Imamura, 1989)
Rikyt (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1989)
Go-hime (Basara, the Princess Goh) (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1991)
Inland Sea (Lucille Carras/Donald Richie, 1991)
Dream Window (John Junkerman, 1992)
Rising Sun (Philip Kaufman, 1993) _
Sharaku (Masahiro Shinoda, 1995)
 Select bibliography

1 Japan: culture and history (general)

Barthes, Roland, Empire of Signs, trans. Richard Howard, London: Jonathan
Cape, 1983
Sansom, G. B., Japan: a Short Cultural History, Rutland, Vermont: Tuttle, 1979
The Western World and Japan, London: Cresset, 1950
Smith, Bradley, Japan: a History in Art, Toky6: Gemini Smith, 1979
Toynbee, Arnold J., Civilization on Trial, Oxford University Press, 1948
The World and the West, Oxford University Press, 1953

2 Japan: traditional music

Harich-Schneider, Eta, A History of Japanese Music, Oxford University Press, 1973
, Shigeo, Kishibe, The Traditional Music of Japan, Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomo Sha, :
1984
— Sh6no, Susumu, “The Role of Listening in Gagaku’, Contemporary Music Review 1
] (1987), 19-43

3 Japan: reception of Western music

Dahlhaus, Carl (trans. Mary Whittall), Between Romanticism and Modernism:
Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century, Berkeley,
California: University of California Press, 1980
Dan, Ikuma, Nihonjin to Seiy6-Ongaku: Ibunka to no Shukkai [The Japanese and
: Western Music: Encounters with an Alien Culture], Toky6: Nippon Hds6
| Shuppan Kyokai, 1997
Eberl, Monika, ‘Durst nach Mozart: iiber Geschichte und Gegenwart der
europdischen Musik in Japan’, Musica 37/4 (1983), 317-21
Galliano, Luciana, ‘I compositori giapponesi del primo Novecento e
apprendimento della musica Europea’, Rivista italiana di musicologia 29/1
(1994), 183-208
Yogaku: Percorsi della musica giapponese nel Novecento, Venice: Cafoscarina,
1998
Kasaba, Eiko, “Notes sur la réception de la musique de Messiaen en Japon’, Revue
internationale de musique francaise 30 (Nov. 1989), 93-9
‘Reflections on the Reception of Claude Debussy’s Music in Japan’, in Tradition
and its Future in Music (Report of SIMS 1990 Osaka), Osaka: Mita Press,
281 1991, 503-8
 282 Select bibliography
Komiya, Toyotaka (ed.), trans. & adapted by Edward D. Seidensticker and
Donald Keene, Japanese Music and Drama in the Meiji Era, Tokyo: Obun Sha,
1956
Yoshida, Hidekazu, “Uber die Musikentwicklung Japans in den letzen 100 Jahren’,
in Aspekte der neuen Musik (Professor Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt zum 65.
Geburtstag), Kassel: Barenreiter, 1968, 97-111
: Yoshida, Takatoshi, ‘How Western Music came to Japan’, Tempo 40 (Summer
1956), 16-17 ’

4 Twentieth-century music (Western)

Forte, Allen, The Structure of Atonal Music, Yale University Press, 1973
Messiaen, Olivier, The Technique of my Musical Language, Paris: Leduc, 1944
Osmond-Smith, David, Berio, Oxford University Press, 1991
Sherlaw Johnson, Robert, Messiaen, London: Dent, 1975
Stravinsky, Igor and Craft, Robert, Dialogues and a Diary, London: Faber,
1968

| 5 Twentieth-century music (Japanese)

Akiyama, Kuniharu, Nihon no Sakkyokukatachi [Japanese Composers], Tokyo:
Ongaku no Tomo Sha, 1978-79
Aoki, Y6ko, A Catalogue of Printed Music by Japanese Composers, Kunitachi
College of Music Library, 1991 (Bibliography and Index Series, no. 12)
Fukui, Masa Kitagawa, ‘Japanese Piano Music, 1940-1973: a Meeting of Eastern
and Western Traditions’, DMA thesis, University of Maryland (1981)
Heifetz, Robin Julian, ‘Post-World War II Japanese Composition’, DMA thesis,
| University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1978)
Herd, Judith Ann, ‘The Neonationalist Movement: Origins of Japanese
Contemporary Music’, Perspectives of New Music 27/2 (Summer 1989),
118-59
Hori, Tadashi (ed.), Nihon no Sakkyoku Niji Seiki [Japanese Composition in the
Twentieth Century], Téky6: Ongaku no Tomo Sha, 1999
Japanese Composers and their Works since 1868, Toky6: Japan UNESCO NGO
Council, 1972
Malm, William P., ‘Layers of Modern Music and Japan’, Asian Music 4/2 (1973),
3-6
Matsushita, Hitoshi, A Checklist of Published Instrumental Music by Japanese
Composers, Toky6: Academia Music, 1989
Narazaki, Yoko, Nihon no Kangengaku Sakuhin-hyo 1912-1992 [Orchestral Works

, 1994 by Japanese Composers, 1912-1992], Toky6: Japan Symphony Foundation,

Nihon no Sakkyoku 1959/Masterpieces of Contemporary Japanese Mustc 1959,

Tokyé: Ongaku no Tomo Sha, 1959
283 Select bibliography
| Nobutoki, Yiko, A Checklist of Published Instrumental Music by Japanese
Composers, Kunitachi College of Music Library, 1990 (Bibliography and
Index Series, no. 9)
Ogawa, Takashi, Nihon no Kékydgakudan |Japanese Symphony Orchestras],
Toky6: Kawai-Gakufu, 1972
Reynolds, Roger, ‘A Jostled Silence: Contemporary Japanese Musical Thought
(Part One)’ (introduction), Perspectives of New Music 30/1(1992), 22-35
| Shibata, Minao, ‘Music and Technology in Japan’, in Music and Technology,
| Stockholm: UNESCO, 1971, 173-80
Takeda, Akimichi, ‘Contemporary Music and Traditional Japanese Musical
Instruments’, in International Conference on Japanese Studies: Report, Tokyo:
Japan P.E.N. Club, 1974, 177-83
Tann, Hilary, ‘Tradition and Renewal in the Music of Japan’ (introduction),
Perspectives of New Music 27/2 (Summer 1989), 45-7
Ueno, Akira, ‘Zwischen den Ufern: Die Beziehung zwischen Tradition und
zeitgendssischer Musik in Japan’, MusikTexte 59 (June 1995), 44-8

6 Writings by Takemitsu (Japanese)

Takemitsu Toru Chosakusha |Toru Takemitsu: Collected Writings], Tokyo:
Shinch6 Sha, 2000 (5 vols.)
Genganku no tame no Rekuiemu [Requiem for Strings — Programme Note],
Shinfoni 2/28 (June 1957), 13
Hitotsu no Oto ni Sekai o Kiku [Hearing the World in One Sound], Toky6: Shobun
Sha, 1975 ,
(with Mario Ambrosius) Kamera no mae no Monorogu — Haniya Yutaka,
Inokuma Gen-ichiré, Takemitsu Toru [Monologues before the Camera —
Yutaka Haniya, Gen-ichir6 Inokuma, Toru Takemitsu], Toky6: Shtiei Sha,
2000
a Kino Kagami, Sdgen no Kagami [Mirror of Tree, Mirror of Field], Toky6: Shinch6
Sha, 1975
Kojiki Kagyo, Kara Juro Taidansha |Collection of Conversations with Kagy6
Kojiki and Juré Kara], Toky6: Fuyuki Sha, 1979
Kotsugetsu — aruiwa ‘a honey moon [Bone Moon, or a Honeymoon], private
publication, 1973

Shinché Sha, 1981

(with Seiji Ozawa) Ongaku (“Music’: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa), Tokyo:

Ongaku no Niwa: Takemitsu Toru Taidanshii [Music Garden: Collection of

Conversations with Toru Takemitsu], T6ky6: Shinch6 Sha, 1981
Ongaku no Techo [Music Notebook], Toky6: Seido Sha, 1981
Ongaku no Yohaku kara [From the Space Left in Music], Toky6: Shinch6 Sha, 1980
Ongaku o Yobimasu Mono [Awakening of Music], Toky6: Shincho Sha, 1985
, (with Kenzaburé Oe) Opera o Tsukuru [Making an Opera], Toky6: Iwanami
_ Shoten, 1984
284 Select bibliography
Oto, Chinmoku to Hakariaeru hodo ni [Sound: Confronting the Silence], Tokyé:
Shinch6 Sha, 1971
(with Junz6 Kawada) Oto, Kotoba, Ningen [Sound, Word, Humanity], Tokyo:
, Iwanami Shoten, 1990 |
Sairento Gaden — Tai-in Hokoku [Silent Garden — Report on Discharge from
Hospital] and Kyarotin no Saiten [Carotin Festival], Téky6: Shinché Sha,
1999
(with Shigehiko Hasumi) Shinema no Kairaku [Pleasure of Cinema], Tokyo:
Libro Port, 1986
Subete no Inshu kara Nogareru tame ni [For Escaping from all Conventionalism:
Conversations with John Cage, Keith Jarrett, R. Murray Schafer, Iannis
Xenakis, Isang Yun, et al.], Toky6: Ongaku no Tomo Sha, 1987
Takemitsu Toru < 1930... ©, private publication, 1964
Takemitsu Toru Taidanshu — S6z6 no Shithen [Collection of Conversations with
T6ru Takemitsu — Circle of Creativity], Toky6: Geijutsugendai Sha, 1976
Toi Yobigoe no Kanata e [Beyond the Far Calls], Toky6: Shinch6 Sha, 1992
Toki no Entei [Time’s Gardener], T6ky6: Shinch6 Sha, 1996
Yume no Inyo [Quotation of Dream], T6ky6: Iwanami Shoten, 1984
Yume to Kazu [Dream and Number], Téky6: Libroport, 1987
‘Watashi no Hoh6 — Mytjikku Konkuréto ni tsuite’ [My Method — Concerning
musique concreéte|, Bijutsu Hihyo 1 (1956) 70-3

7 Writings by Takemitsu (translations)

(with Tania Cronin and Hilary Tann) ‘Afterword’, Perspectives of New Music 27/2
(Summer 1989), 206—14
Confronting Silence: Selected Writings, trans. and ed. Yoshiko Kakudo and Glenn
Glasow, Berkeley, California: Fallen Leaf Press, 1995
‘Contemporary Music in Japan’, Perspectives of New Music 27/2 (Summer 1989),
198-204
‘Kein dunkler Schatten’, in Heister, Hanns- Werner, and Sparrer, Walter- Wolfgang
(eds.), Der Komponist Isang Yun, Munich: Text und Kritik, 1987, 28
‘Klang im Osten, Klang im Westen: Der Weg zu November Steps, Musik Texte 59
(June 1995), 53-9
‘A Mirror and an Egg’, Soundings 12 (1984-85), 3-6
‘La Musique de John Cage’, trans. Annie Meygret, Revue d’esthétique 13-15
(1987-88), 461-4 ,
‘Mirrors’ (trans. Sumi Adachi with Roger Reynolds), Perspectives of New Music
30/1 (1992), 36-83
‘My Perception of Time in Traditional Japanese Music’, Contemporary Music
Review 1 (1987) 9-13
‘One Sound’, Contemporary Music Review 8/2 (1994), 3—4
‘Sound in the East, Sound in the West: the Way to November Steps’, trans. Mimi
Yiengpruksawan, Ear 5/8 (1990), 19-25
285 Select bibliography

8 Writings about Takemitsu (Japanese)

(In the interests of brevity, only periodical articles directly cited in the text have
been listed)
Akiyama, Kuniharu, articles on works by Takemitsu in Saishin Meikyoku Kaisetsu
Zenshu, Toky6: Ongaku no Tomo Sha, 1980: vol. 7, pp. 458-72 (Requiem for
Strings, Arc for piano and orchestra, Asterism, A Flock Descends into the
Pentagonal Garden); vol. 10, pp. 404—10 (November Steps); vol. 3, pp. 454—6
(The Dorian Horizon)
Choki, Seiji and Higuchi, Rytichi (eds.), Takemitsu Toru: Oto no Kawa no Yukue
, [Toru Takemitsu — Traces of the Stream of Sound], Téky6: Heibonsha, 2000
, Funayama, Takashi, Takemitsu Toru: Hibikino Umie [Toru Takemitsu: Towards
| the Sea of Sound], T6ky6: Ongaku no Tomo Sha, 1998
, Iwaki, Hiroyuki, Sakkyokuka Takemitsu Toru to Ningen Mayuzumi Toshiro |The
Composer Téru Takemitsu and the Human Being Toshir6 Mayuzumi],
Okayama: Sakuy6é Gakuen, 1999
Iwata, Rytitaro: Kafe Takemitsu: Watashi no Takemitsu Ongaku [Café Takemitsu:
My Takemitsu Music], Toky6: Kaimei Sha, 1992
Konuma, Jun-ichi, Takemitsu Téru — Oto, Kotoba, Iméji [Toru Takemitsu — Sound,
Word, Image], Toky6: Seido Sha, 1999
Narazaki, Yoko, Takemitsu Toru to Miyoshi Akira no Sakkyoku- Yoshiki: Muchései
to Ongun-Sakaho o Megutte [The Compositional Styles of Toru Takemitsu
and Akira Miyoshi: their Use of Atonality and Tone-cluster Methods],
Tokyd: Ongaku no Tomo Sha, 1994
Takemitsu Toru Sakuhin-hyo [Table of Works by Toru Takemitsu], Ongaku
Geijutsu 54/5 (May 1996), 60-73
Ono, Mitsuko, Takemitsu Toru no Ongaku to Mizu no An-yu [Toru Takemitsu’s
Music and the Metaphor of Water], M.A. Thesis, Kunitachi College of Music
(1995)
‘Takemitsu Toru no $6z6 no Minamoto o Saguru: “Oto no Kawa” to Marginalia
o Megutte’ [The Source of Creation of Téru Takemitsu: the ‘Stream of
Sound’ and Marginalia|, Kunitachi College of Music Journal 31 (1996),
, 57-67
, ‘Takemitsu Toru no Gagaku Shiteiga Ichigu e no Ikk6satsu: Geijutsu ni okeru
, Fueki to Ryik6’[Takemitsu’s In an Autumn Garden, Complete Version for
Gagaku: Constancy and Fashion in the Arts], in Ongaku Kenkyu: Daigakuin
Kenkyti Nenpo Dai 9-shti [Music Research: Annual Report of Postgraduate
School Research no. 9], Kunitachi College of Music, 1997, 80-98
Saitd, Shinji and Takemitsu, Maki (eds.), Takemitsu Toru no Sekai [The World of
Toru Takemitsu], Téky6: Shiiei Sha, 1997
Shiraishi, Miyuki, ‘Umi kara, Futatabi Ame tonari: Takemitsu Sakuhin — Shuh6
no Hensen o Todorw [From the Sea comes Rain Once Again: Tracking the
, Changes of Technique in Takemitsu’s Work], Ongaku Geijutsu 54/5 (May
1996), 48-52
286 Select bibliography
Tachibana, Takashi, “Takemitsu Toru: Ongaku S6z6 e no Tabi’ [T6ru Takemitsu:
the Journey towards Musical Creation], transcripts of thirty hours of
interviews with the composer, appearing in the magazine Bungakukai
between 1992 and 1997
Takeda, Akimichi, ‘Manazashi no Ongaku: Saikin no Takemitsu-Sakuhin o
Meguru ShoéydG’ [Music of Observation: a Look at Recent Works of
Takemitsu], Ongaku Geijutsu 52/2 (Dec. 1994), 18-23
Tircuit, Heuwell, “Takemitsu Toru’, Ongaku Geijutsu 21/1 (1963), 11-17
Téyama, Kazuyuki, Henkyd no Oto: Sutoravinsuki to Takemitsu Toru [Sounds
from the Frontier: Stravinsky and T6ru Takemitsu], Téky6: Ongaku no
Tomo Sha, 1996

9 Writings about Takemitsu (other than in Japanese)

Akiyama, Kuniharu, “Cosmic Eye of Toru Takemitsv’, in Takemitsu Téru-ten: Me
to Mimi tame ni | Toru Takemitsu: For Eyes and Ears], catalogue of exhibition
held at Bunpodo Gallery, 19 November 1993-20 December 1993, Tokyé:
Bunpodo Gallery, 1993, 6-7
Burt, Peter, “The Music of Toru Takemitsu: Influences, Confluences and Status’,
Ph.D. diss., University of Durham (1998)
Feliciano, Francisco F., Four Asian Contemporary Composers: the Influence of
Tradition in their Works, Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1983
Galliano, Luciana, “Takemitsu Toru: I] primo periodo creativo (1950-1970)’,
Nuova rivista musicale italiana 33/4 (1999), 506—33
Gibson, James Robert, ‘Toru Takemitsu: a Survey of his Music with an Analysis of
Three Works’, DMA thesis, Cornell University (1979)
Jin, Jeong Woo, ‘Comparative Analysis of Takemitsu’s Recent Works Rain Tree and
Rain Spell, Ph.D. diss., University of California at Los Angeles (1987)
Koozin, Timothy, “Octatonicism in Recent Solo Piano Works of Toru Takemitsu’,
Perspectives of New Music 29/1 (1991), 124—40
‘The Solo Piano Works of Téru Takemitsu: a Linear/Set-theoretical Analysis’,
Ph.D. diss., University of Cincinnati (1988)
‘Spiritual-temporal Imagery in the Music of Olivier Messiaen and Toru.
Takemitsu’, Contemporary Music Review7 (1993) 185-202
‘Toru Takemitsu and the Unity of Opposites’, College Music Symposium 30/1
(Spring 1990), 34—44
Laade, Wolfgang, “Toru Takemitsus November Steps, Shakuhachi-Musik und Zen’,
Indo-Asta 12/1 (Feb. 1970), 84-6
Lee, Chung-Haing, ‘Japanese Elements in the Piano Works of Toru Takemitsv’,
DMA Thesis, University of North Texas (1991)
Miyamoto, Kenjiro, Klang im Osten, Klang im Westen: Der Komponist Toru
Takemitsu und die Rezeption europdischer Musik in Japan, Saarbriicken: Pfau,
1996
287 Select bibliography _ a
| Ogawa, Masafumi, “Toru Takemitsu’s Compositional Techniques and his Identity
as Japanese in Western Art Music: an Analysis of Kaze no Uma (“Wind
Horse”)’, Research Bulletin of the Faculty of Education, Oita University, 13/1
(1991), 109-27
Ooka, Makoto, ‘Not as a Composer Who “Make People Listen” [sic]’, in Kuniharu
Akiyama, Takemitsu Toru-ten: Me to Mimi tame ni, 11
Ohtake, Noriko, Creative Sources for the Music of Téru Takemitsu, Aldershot:
Scolar Press, 1993
Palmer, Anthony J., “To Fuse or Not to Fuse: Directions of Two Japanese
Composers, Miki and Takemitsu’, in Tradition and its Future in Music (Report
of SIMS 1990, Osaka), Osaka: Mita Press, 1991, 421-5
Poirier, Alain, Toru Takemitsu, Paris: TUM/Michel de Maule, 1996
Rands, Bernard, ‘I sing only for myself .. .’, Musical Times 128/1735 (Sept. 1987),
477-8
Reynolds, Roger, ‘Japan’, Musical Quarterly 53/4 (1967), 563-71
‘Rarely Sudden, Never Abrupt’, Musical Times 128/1735 (Sept. 1987), 480-3
‘Roger Reynolds and Toru Takemitsu: a Conversation’, Musical Quarterly 80/1
, (Spring 1996), 61-76
Sawabe, Yukiko, ‘Alptraume und Traéume: Der japanische Komponist Toru
Takemitsu’, MustkTexte 59 (June 1995), 49-52
Smaldone, Edward, ‘Japanese and Western Confluences in Large-Scale Pitch
Organization of T6ru Takemitsu’s November Steps and Autumn’, Perspectives
of New Music 27/2 (1989), 216-31
Tanikawa, Shuntar6, “The White Wall of Everyday Life’, in Kuniharu Akiyama,
Takemitsu Toru-ten: Me to Mimi tame ni, 13
Taniyama, Sawako, ‘The Development of Téru Takemitsu’s Musical Philosophy’,
_ Kébe Joshi Tanki Daigaku Ronko 37 (Oct. 1991), 71-95
Toop, David, ‘half japanese’, Wire 176 (Oct. 1998), 26-30
Usami, Keiji, ‘Adjacent to Sound’, in Kuniharu Akiyama, Takemitsu Toru-ten: Me
to Mimi tame ni, 9
Wilson, Dana Richard, “The Role of Texture in Selected Works of Toru
Takemitsu’, Ph.D. diss., Eastman School of Music (1982)
Wa, Ting-Lien, ‘An Analysis of Toru Takemitsu’s Bryce (1976), with an Emphasis
on the Role of Articulation’, Ph.D. diss., University of California at Los
Angeles (1987)
 Index

‘6-20 collection 76, 78, 203, 223-4, 228-9; Boulez, Pierre 18, 102, 130, 246
Exx. 35-6 (p. 78), Ex. 111 (p. 204), Ex. Marteau sans maitre, Le 75, 146
131 (p. 229) | Boyer, Lucienne 22, 23, 110
‘7-33’ collection 34, 43, 67, 70, 108, 123-4, Brahms, Johannes 219
133, 146, 147, 206; Ex. 28 (p. 71), Ex. 63 Bream, Julian 204, 211, 226
(p. 124), Exx. 75-6 (pp. 146-7) Bruch, Max 12
bunraku 110
Abiyoyo 84, 160, 221; Ex. 42 (p. 85) Biisser, Paul Henri 13
acoustic scale 81, 107, 152; Ex. 39 (p. 82)
Akiyama, Kuniharu 39, 40, 58, 81, 86,92,104, | Cage, John 2, 19, 72, 92-3, 94-7, 102, 110,
114, 162, 163, 167, 172 , 111-12, 231, 236, 237-8, 239, 242-3
Akutagawa, Yasushi 18 : Atlas Eclipticalis 106
Anouilh, Jean Concert for Piano and Orchestra 92
Ardeéle, ou la Marguérite 51 String Quartet in Four Parts 91
Eurydice 44 canon 89, 124, 126, 152, 164
Aubin, Tony 18 Caurroy, Eustache du 85
Auld Lang Syne 11 chaophony 164
| autoslide 40 , Christianity 9
Copland, Aaron 259 n.36
Bach, Johann Sebastian 153, 160, 196, 212, .
241 Dagron, Gustave Charles 9
St Matthew Passion 153, 216 dan (‘steps’) 113~4, 172
Bachelard, Gaston 193 — Dan, Ikuma 18
bands, military 9 Debussy, Claude-Achille 13, 14, 23, 29, 31, 72,
Barber, Samuel 51 96, 98, 203, 246
Barenboim, Daniel 216 Jeux 117,151
Barthes, Roland 248 Mer, La 13, 221
Bartok, Béla 13, 15, 16, 18, 86, 89, 116, , Nuages 81
247 Prélude a ‘L’Apreés-midi d'un faune’ 117
Bartolozzi, Bruno 135, 137, 138, 140, 203 Sonata for flute, viola and harp 222
Bauhaus 40 Delvaux, Paul 190
Berg, Alban 68, 69, 72, 89, 186 diatonic scale 81, 107
Lulu 223 Dickinson, Emily 221
Lyric Suite 197-8; Exx. 105 (p. 197) Duchamp, Marcel 169
Violin Concerto 195-7, 209-10, 248; Exx. “Dutch Scholars’ (rangakusha) 5
103—4 (p. 196), Ex. 118 (p. 210)
Berio, Luciano 98, 130, 190 Eckert, Franz 9
Chemins 134 electronic music 18, 41, 43, 139
Corale 134 see also musique concréte
Sequenze 134, 139, 140 Elois, Jean-Claude
Bible, The (film), see Huston, John Kanso no Hono-o no Kata e 161
Blaue Reiter, Der 40 emaki 104, 172, 173, 182,258 n.12
Boulanger, Nadia 17 Engelman, Bryce 140
289 Index
Engelman, Robin 140 Hosokawa, Toshio
Etenraku 215 Seeds of Contemplation 266 n.13
Experimental Workshop, see Jikken K6b6 Tokyo 1985 161

, The Bible 18
Expo ’70 (Osaka) 132, 143, 146, 159 Huston, John

Fauré, Gabriel 24, 31

Feldman, Morton 39, 228, 229-30 Ichiyanagi, Toshi 31, 92, 95
Fenton, John William 9 Jitsugetsu Byobu Iss6-Kokai 161
Fitzsimmons, Thomas 205 Ifukube, Akira 14, 15
Forte, Allen 34, 123 Gojira (‘Godzilla’) 16
Foss, Lukas 132 Ikenouchi, Tomojir6 13, 17, 18
Franck, César 23, 24 Ima, Naoji 40
Fukai, Shir6é 14 Imai, Nobuko 204, 225
Fukushima, Hideko 40 in scale 24, 27, 30, 153, 170; Ex. 1 (p. 27), Ex. 3
Fukushima, Kazuo 257 n.2 (p. 31), Ex. 80 (p. 154)
Fuller, Richard Buckminster 234 Inoue, Yasuji 44
Irino, Yoshiro 13, 17,58
gagaku 11, 15, 18, 86, 111, 143, 160-6, 173-4, Ishii, Maki
214, 255 n.16 Momotaro Onitaii 161
Gallois-Montbrun, Raymond 17 Ishikawa, Seri 260 n.11
gamelan music 128, 131, 142, 164 isorhythm 126-7, 244, 247, 248; Ex. 65 (p.
garden (as formal model) 103-4, 105, 168-9, 127), Ex. 134 (p. 244)
172, 173, 220, 222, 236 Iwaki, Hiroyuki 29
Gershwin, George 23 Izawa, Shuji 10-11, 235
, Gifford, Barry 216
: Globokar, Vinko 132, 150, 219 Jarmusch, Jim 219
“Goat Group’, see Yagi no Kai jazz 21-2, 24, 87
graphic scores 93-5 Jikken Kobo (‘Experimental Workshop’) 19,
Grisey, Gérard 18 39-42, 44, 58, 60, 92
| Jolas, Betsy 128
“Group of Three’, see Sannin no Kai Johns, Jasper 143

Hamada, Tokuaki 24 Josquin des Prés 85

handscroll painting, see emaki Joyce, James 194, 197, 217, 229
Hardenberger, Hakan 232
harmonic major scale 101, 231 kabuki 138, 148
harmonic minor scale 84, 101 Kaufman, Philip 47
Hashimoto, Kunihiko 14 Kimi ga yo (National Anthem) 9
Hassler, Hans Leo 153 Kitajiro, Sh6z6 40
Hayasaka, Fumio 14, 25, 48-9, 50, 232-3, 258 Kiyose, Yasuji 15, 25, 26, 72, 110, 236
n.12 Klangfarbenmelodie 87, 98; Ex. 43 (p. 88)
Hayashi, Hikaru 18, 58 Klee, Paul 211
Herodianism 7, 10, 23 Knussen, Oliver 218, 220
heterocyclic relationship 104, 187 Kobayashi, Masaki 45
heterophony 163-4 Koda, Nobu[ko] 11-12
Hirao, Kishio 14, 25 Kodaly, Zoltan 15, 16
Hiroshige 13 Kuri, YOji 45
Hirota, Ryutaro 13 Kurosawa, Akira
Hokusai 13, 46 Ran 47
Holliger, Heinz 133, 135, 139, 150, 203 Rashémon 48
Holliger, Ursula 133, 139 Seven Samurai 48
290 Index
Leroux, Charles Edouard Gabriel 9 Moroi, Makoto 13, 17, 43
Ligeti, Gyorgy 98, 245 Moroi, Saburo 13, 17
Lutostawski, Witold 130, 231, 232 Moto’ori, Nagayo 13
; Jeux venétiens 98 Munari, Bruno 95
Lynch, David 216 Murail, Tristan 18
‘Music Study Committee’ (Izawa) 10, 12
ma 30, 53, 96, 236~-7, 238 musique concréte 18, 40, 41, 43-6, 85, 139
Mahler, Gustav 23 Mus6, Soseki 191
Mamiya, Michio 18 Mussorgsky, Modest
Mason, Luther Whiting 10 Boris Godunov 154; Ex. 82 (p. 155)
Matsudaira, Yoritsune 15, 18
Mayuzumi, Toshiré 14, 18-19, 41, 43, 59, Nakahama, Shinpei 13
95 | Nakahira, K6 47
Shdwa Tenpyo Raku 160 national anthem (Japanese), see Kimi ga yo
Meiji Restoration 6 : nationalism (musical), see minzokushugi
Menuhin, Yehudi 228 } ‘New Composition Group’, see
Messiaen, Olivier 18, 29, 31-2, 33-4, 38, 42, Shinsakkyokuha
55, 58, 64—5, 67, 68, 72, 76, 89, 100, 102, Nexus (Percussion Ensemble) 140, 225
117, 158, 201, 203, 218, 228, 231, 244, NHK 12, 58, 59, 71, 110,219
246-8, 249 Nicolet, Auréle 133, 137
Fétes des belles eaux 155 Nishi, Kenz6 9
Huit Préludes 31, 41 no 45, 62, 110, 113, 138, 236, 237, 248
L’Ascension 23 Nobutoki, Kiyoshi 13
Quatuor pour la fin du temps 41, 127,154-5, | Noguchi, Isamu 230
157-8, 247; Exx. 82-3 (pp. 155-6), Exx.
85-6 (pp. 157-8) occupation, American 8, 19, 23
Technique de mon langage musical 25, 35, octatonic scale 28, 31-2, 33-4, 42, 58, 59, 74,
127, 154, 155, 247; Exx. 82-3 (pp. 155-6) 76, 100, 130, 133, 137, 189, 227, 247; Ex.
Turangalila Symphony 111 | 29 (p. 74), Ex. 50 (p. 101), Ex. 71 (p. 137)
Vingt regards sur l'enfant Jésus 155; Ex. 84 Oc, Kenzaburo 189, 216
(p. 156) Ogawa, Noriko 219
Visions de l’Amen 41, 155 Ooka, Makoto 97, 205, 213
microtones 28, 62, 115-16, 117, 124, 137,143, Otsuki, Kunio 25
164, 189 Ozawa, Seiji 21, 26,57, 71, 111
minzokushugi (‘nationalism’) 14-16, 24—5,
26-8, 30, 72, 235 pantonality 87, 108, 115, 121, 160, 181, 195,
Mir6, Joan 208, 225 208 :
Mishima, Yukio 19 pedal points 169-70, 200
Mitsukuri, Shtikichi 15 Penderecki, Krisztof 98, 245
Miyata, Mayumi 225 pentatonic scale 115, 124—6, 151, 155, 165,
Miyoshi, Akira 14, 17 167, 169, 170, 173, 177, 179, 181, 213-4,
modalism 27-8, 32-3, 108-9, 115, 118,121, 218; Ex. 56 (p. 115), Ex. 92 (p. 180)
122, 124, 133, 160, 162-3, 166, 167, 174, Péri, Noél 13
181 , Perry, Commodore Matthew Calbraith 4, 6,
Mode II (Messiaen), see octatonic scale 7
Mode III (Messiaen) 34, 55, 76—8, 228~9; Ex. ‘Plan for the Study of Music’ (Izawa) 10-11
36 (p. 78) portable/non-portable musics 239-40
Mode VI (Messiaen) 58, 61, 67 prepared piano 92-3
Mode VII (Messiaen) 209 Presley, Elvis 85
Morita, Toshiaki 140 Pythagoras 10
291 Index
Rands, Bernard 249 Shogaku Shoka-Shii 11
Ravel, Maurice 243 Shémura, Kiyoshi 225
Daphnis and Chloé 230 Shthan, Takashima 5, 7
Valse, La151 Sonoda, Takahiro 40
Ray, Man 169 Spirit Garden festival (London) 243, 245, 251
Redon, Odilon 226, 227 Stockhausen, Karlheinz
Réti, Rudolph 181 Aus den sieben Tagen 148
Reynolds, Roger 152, 169 Gruppen 105
Rimsky-Korsakov, Nicolai 24, 247 Hikari 161
ritsu scale 24, 163 Hymnen 139
Robison, Paula 230 Prozession 95
Rokudan 113 Stimmung 199
Roussel, Albert 24 Telemusik 132, 139
Russell, George Zyklus 147
Lydian Chromatic Concept 21, 81, 86-7, 100, | Stokowski, Leopold 23
181,231 Stolzman, Richard 140
ryo scale 24, 163 Stravinsky, Igor 71, 247
stream of sound 53, 55, 69, 96, 102, 143, 228, |
Sacher, Paul 132 237, 248
Salzedo, Carlos 137 Sugawara, Meiro 14
Sannin no Kai (‘Group of Three’) 18, 19 Sugiura, Kohei 94
Satd, Keijiro 257 n,2 Sukegawa, Toshiya 18
Sat6, Masaru 47 Suzuki, Daisetzu 96
sawari 96, 236, 237, 238-9, 240 7 Suzuki, Hiroyoshi 24, 25, 39, 40
Schaeffer, Pierre 18, 43-4
Schenker, Heinrich 69, 117 Tagore, Rabindranath 150
Schmidt, Daniel 216 Takahashi, Yuji 80, 92, 95, 102, 103, 104, 105,
Schoenberg, Arnold 23, 62, 79 132
Pierrot lunaire 41 Takata, Saburo 13
String Quartet No. 233 Takemitsu, Asaka (wife) 46
Schrattenholz, Leo 13 Takemitsu, Maki (daughter) 73-4
Schumann, Georg 15 Takemitsu, Raiko (mother) 22
| Schumann, Robert Takemitsu, Takeo (father) 21, 22
Album fiir die Jugend 85 Takemitsu, Toru
Scriabin, Alexander 247 | concert works
Sculthorpe, Peter 132 A Way a Lone 179, 182, 194, 197-8, 214; Ex.
S-E-A motif 149, 151, 166, 177, 194, 197, 198, 91 (p. 178), Exx. 105-6 (pp. 197-8)
201, 210, 221, 232; Ex. 78 (p. 149), Ex. 89 A Way a Lone II 182
(p. 167), Ex. 91 (p. 178), Exx. 102-3, Air218
105-6, (pp. 195-8) Allin Twilight 211-2; Ex. 120 (p. 212)
sea of tonality 82-3, 126, 149, 174, 176, 177, And then I knew ’twas Wind 218, 220-2,
181, 217,218 223-4, 225; Exx. 125-6 (pp. 221-2), Ex.
Second World War 8, 14, 17, 22-3 128 (p. 224)
Seeger, Pete 84 Arc for piano and orchestra 95, 102-5, 106,
| serialism 60-70, 73-80, 146, 152, 191-2, 121, 122, 150, 162, 166, 167, 168, 191
222-3, 243 Arc for Strings 94, 95
Serkin, Peter 102, 227, 234 Archipelago S. 220, 224; Ex. 125 (p. 221)
Shibata, Minao 13, 17, 41 Asterism 105-9, 123, 147, 149, 175, 200;
Shinsakkyokuha (“New Composition Group’) Exx. 53-5 (pp. 107-9)
25—6, 33, 37, 39, 48 Autumn 29, 111, 114, 126-8; Ex. 65 (p. 127)
292 Index
Takemitsu, T6ru (cont.) For Away 100, 128-31; Exx. 66—8 (pp.
concert works (cont.) 129-31)
Bad Boy 48 From far beyond Chrysanthemums and
Between Tides 177, 221; Ex. 126 (p. 222) November Fog 205-6, 223; Exx. 113-14
Bird came down the Walk, A 173, 225; Ex. (pp. 206-7)
126 (p. 222) From me flows what you call Time 224, 225
Blue Aurora for Toshi Ichiyanagi 95 Garden Rain 160, 166-8, 174, 177, 179; Ex.
Bryce 140, 142, 175, 186, 250 89 (p. 167)
(pp. 147-8) | 219
Cassiopeia 106, 133, 147-9, 200; Exx. 76-7 Gémeaux 106, 132, 150, 161, 175, 200,

Ceremonial 111, 224,225 | -Gitimalya 150-1, 158

Chamber Concerto 41, 59 Grass 183, 199; Ex. 96 (p. 185), Ex. 107 (p.
Clap Vocalism 44 199)
Comme la sculpture de Mir6 225 Green 117-26, 151, 152-3, 160, 175, 182,
Coral Island 95, 97-102, 103, 205, 211, 230, 199; Exx. 57-64 (pp. 119-125)
231; Exx. 47-52 (pp. 99-102) Hika 48, 76-9, 223; Exx. 35, 37-8 (pp. 78-80)
Corona for pianist(s) 94 How slow the Wind 218, 220—1, 224; Exx.
Corona II for string(s) 94, 95 , 125-6 (pp. 221-2)
Cross Talk 219 I Hear the Water Dreaming 177, 192-3, 195,
Crossing 132, 146 198; Ex. 91 (p. 178), Ex. 101 (p. 193), Ex.
Crossing for pianist(s) 94, 95 119 (p. 211)
Distance 111, 139-40, 164, 165; Ex. 73 (p. Tkiru Yorokobi (‘Joie de Vivre’) 40
141) In an Autumn Garden 111, 160-6, 167, 168,
Distance de Fée 26, 33~8, 42, 51, 57, 93, 114, 173, 174, 224; Ex. 87 (p. 163)
232; Exx. 6-8 (pp. 34-8) In the Woods 225-6
Dorian Horizon, The 48, 71, 86-91, 108, 139, Itinerant 230
150, 162, 166, 167; Exx. 43-6 (pp. 88-91) Joie de Vivre, see Ikiru Yorokobi
Dream/Window 191-2, 199, 220, 222; Ex. Kakehi (‘Conduit’) 24, 26
100 (p. 192), Ex. 124 (p. 220) Landscape 91
178) 58, 230
Dreamtime 179, 181, 190, 195; Ex. 91 (p. Lento in Due Movimenti 26, 29-33, 42,51,

Eclipse 111, 112-13, 150 Litany 26, 29-33, 35, 42, 58, 230; Exx. 2-5
Entre-temps 210-11 (pp. 30-3)
Equinox 218, 225 see also Lento in Due Movimenti
Eucalypts 1133-7, 139, 140, 142, 143, 199; Madrugada, La217
Exx. 69-71 (pp. 134-7) Marginalia 151-3, 158; Ex. 79 (p. 152)
Eucalypts IT 133-5 Masque 62-4, 67, 97, 110, 138; Exx. 19-22
| Eurydice 44 (pp. 63-5)
Family Tree 21,219 Minneapolis Garden, A 46, 199
Fantasma/Cantos 168, 219, 222 Munari by Munari95
Fantasma/Cantos 11219; Ex. 126 (p. 222) Music of Tree 73~4, 76, 79, 81, 199, 244; Ex.
, Far calls, Coming, far! 179, 181, 194-7, 209, 29 (p. 74)
217, 232; Ex. 91 (p. 178), Exx. 102—4 (pp. My Way of Life 230-1
195-6) Nostalghia 228
Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden, A November Steps 107, 111, 113-17, 118, 121,
60, 124—6, 153, 160, 169-74, 175, 181-2, 124, 126, 133, 135, 139, 143, 172, 182,
190, 200, 207, 225, 229; Ex. 90 (p. 171), 191, 219, 234, 240, 241; Ex. 56 (p. 115),
Ex. 91 (p. 178), Ex. 120 (p. 212) : Ex. 57 (p. 119)
Folios 153—4, 160, 211-12; Exx. 80—1 (p. Orion 201, 202, 203, 227, 241; Exx. 109-10,
154), Ex. 91 (p. 178) (pp. 202-3)
293 Index
Orion and Pleiades 106, 179, 201-3, 227, Tableau Noir 26, 58, 60; Ex. 16 (p. 59)
241; Exx. 111-12 (pp. 204-5) Time Perspective 95
Paths 195, 232; Ex. 91 (p. 178), Ex. 133 (p. To the Edge of Dream 179, 190-1, 203; Ex. 81
232) (p. 154), Ex. 120 (p. 212)
Piano Distance 80-1, 84; Ex. 39 (p. 82) Toward 46
Quatrain 1, 154—9, 160, 171, 175, 190; Exx. Toward the Sea 177, 179-81, 182, 189; Ex. 91
83-6 (pp. 156-8), Ex. 91 (p. 178) (p. 178), Ex. 92 (p. 180)
Quotation of Dream 220, 221 Toward the Sea IT 182
Rain Coming 176, 177, 179, 182, 183, 229; Toward the Sea III 182
: Ex. 91 (p. 178), Ex. 94 (p. 184) Tree Line 199, 200; Ex. 119 (p. 211)
Rain Dreaming 177, 192, 198 Tree, Sky and Birds 44
Rain Spell 177, 179, 186, 189 Twelve Songs for Guitar 160, 218
Rain Tree 177, 179, 186, 187, 189, 199, 250; Twill by Twilight 179, 228-30; Ex. 131 (p.
Ex. 91 (p. 178), Ex. 97 (p. 186), Ex. 99 (p. 229) .
188) Uninterrupted Rest 26, 29, 41, 42~—3, 51,55,
Rain Tree Sketch 177, 179, 181, 183, 187, 59, 64-9, 74, 78, 80, 81, 97, 123, 227; Exx.
231; Ex. 91 (p. 178), Ex. 93 (p. 183), Ex. 9-10 (pp. 43-4), Exx. 23-7 (pp. 66-70)
95 (p. 185), Ex. 98 (p. 187) Uta (‘Songs’) 48, 82, 160, 231, 236
Rain Tree Sketch 11177, 231-2; Ex. 132 (p. Valeria 155; Ex. 83 (p. 156)
231) Vers, Parc-en-ciel, Palma 154, 181, 203,
| Relief Statique 41, 44, 49 207-10, 225, 236; Ex. 81 (p. 154), Exx.
Requiem for Strings 48, 50-8, 59, 62, 70-1, 115-19 (pp. 208-11)
83, 86, 110, 111, 194, 201, 218, 228, Visions 215, 216, 227-8, 244
232-3; Exx. 11-15 (pp. 52-6) Vocalism A.I. 44-5

, riverrun 177, 194 Voyage 111

Ring 74-5, 81, 93-4; Ex. 30 (p. 75) Voice 137-9, 148, 150; Ex. 72 (p. 138)

Rocking Mirror Daybreak 205; Ex. 120 (p. Water Music 45, 166
212) Waterways 174, 177
Romance 26-9, 30, 35, 100, 117; Ex. 1 Wavelength 177
(p. 27) Waves 140-3, 175, 177, 186, 200; Ex. 74 (pp.
Sacrifice 75-6, 222; Exx. 31—4 (pp. 76-7) 144-5)
Scene 58 Wind Horse 81—5, 88, 153, 160, 199, 221,
Sea is Still, The 46, 177 236; Exx. 40-2 (pp. 83-5)
Seasons 95 Winter 149-50; Ex. 78 (p. 149)
Seven Hills Event 95 Wonder World 46
Sky, Horse and Death 45 Yeux clos, Les 226-8, 232, 244, 248; Ex. 129
Solitude Sonore 59-60; Ex. 17 (p. 60) (p. 226), Ex. 134 (p. 244)
Son Calligraphié I, Le 60-62, 86; Ex. 18 (p. 61) Yeux clos I, Les 198, 227; Ex. 130 (p. 227)
Son Calligraphié II, Le 69-70, 146; Ex. 28 film scores 46-9
(p. 71) Akogare (‘Longing’) 85
Song of O's [Circles] and A’s [Triangles], A Ansatsu (“The Assassin’ ) 92
48 | Furyo Shonen (‘Bad Boys’) 48
Songs, see Uta Gishiki (‘The Ceremony’) 48
Spectral Canticle 219 Hokusai 46
Spirit Garden 222-3; Ex. 127 (p. 223) Jose Torres 47
Stanza I 143-6; Ex. 75 (p. 146) Karami-ai (‘The Inheritance’) 21
Stanza IT 43, 139 Kuratta Kajutsu (“Crazed Fruit’) 47
Star-Isle 106, 200-1; Ex. 108 (p. 200) Kuroi Ame (‘Black Rain’) 51
String Around Autumn, A 179, 181,212-15, Kwaidan 45-6, 92, 110, 149
225, 227; Exx. 120-3 (pp. 212-14) Moetsukita Chizu (‘The Ruined Map’) 85
294 Index
Takemitsu, Toru (cont.) Van Gogh, Vincent 13
film scores (cont.) Varése, Edgard 18
Natsu no Iméto (“Summer Sister’) 21 Verdi, Giuseppe
Night on the Planet 219 Falstaff 191
Nijii-issai no Chichi (21-year-old Father’) Vivaldi, Antonio 85
85 Vyner, Michael 29, 230
Otoshiana (‘The Pitfall’) 92
Ran47 Wagner, Richard 73
Rikyu85 Ring des Nibelungen, Der 94
Rising Sun 47 Tristan und Isolde 198

128 239
Seppuku (“Harakiri’) 110 Wakayama, Asaka, see Takemitsu, Asaka
Shinju Ten no Amishima (“Double Suicide’) Webern, Anton 19, 23, 60, 62, 68, 72, 74, 87,

Suna no Onna (“Woman in the Dunes’) 88 Six Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6 98; Ex. 47 (p.
Taiy6 no Karytido (‘The Sun’s Hunter’) 132 99)
Tanin no Kao (‘Face of Another’) 47 Symphony, Op. 21 130
Tokyo Saiban (‘Toky6 Trial’) 51 Weill, Kurt 47
Tokyo Sensé Sengo Hiwa (“The Man Who whole-tone scale 28, 34, 42, 58, 61, 70, 122,
Left His Will on Film’) 21 123, 133, 152, 189

110 ,
Yotsuya Kwaidan (‘Yotsuya Ghost Story’) 92 Williams, John 204, 207, 225
‘incidental music 46-9 Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Hono (‘Flames’) 44 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 143
Minamoto Yoshitsune 111 Wolf, Karl Leopold 12
Nihon no Monyo (‘Japanese Crest Patterns’) | Woodward, Roger 128

Semushi no Setjo 51 | Xenakis, Iannis 80, 98, 103, 115, 128, 132
Taki, Rentar6 12, 13
Takiguchi, Shtizo 37-8, 39, 40, 42, 46, 92, 138, Yagi no Kai (“Goat Group’) 18, 19
150, 151, 190, 226, 258 n.13 Yamada, Kosaku 12-13, 17
Tamura, Rytiichi 230 Yamaguchi, Katsuhiro 40
Tanikawa, Shuntar6 44—5, 199, 219 Yamane, Ginji 26, 256 n.23
Tarkovsky, Andrei 228 Yamashita, Stomu 133, 147, 148
Tashi (ensemble) 154 Yamazaki, Hideo 40
Teagarden, Jack 219 Yashiro, Akio 13, 17
Tokugawa shogunate 4—6 y6 scale 170
Tokugawa, Ieyasu 4 Yokoyama, Katsuya 113
Toyama, Yuz6 18 Yoshimune 5
Toynbee, Arnold 6-7 Yuasa, J6ji 39, 257 n.2
Tsukatani, Akihiro 25
Tsuruta, Kinshi 113 zealotism 7, 10, 11, 96
, Tzara, Tristan 210 zen 25, 96, 97, 248, 252