Musica che affronta il silenzio - Scritti su Toru Takemitsu - Pavia ...

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Gianmario Borio
2. the reciprocal interest of Western and Eastern composers has been only minimally
conditioned by economic or ideological factors; in fact the convergence
of interests and objectives seems motivated exclusively by the wish to enlarge
the respective areas of experience and renew forms of expression.
It must however be borne in mind that the starting-points for Euro-American and for
Asiatic composers are not symmetrical. The former turn to extra-European musical
traditions to find solutions or confirmation for issues (concerning the organization of
pitches, rhythm, timbre, means of instrumental performance and vocal emission) which
have emerged in the elaboration of their own techniques and theorising. Whereas the
latter, through familiarisation with new techniques and contact with the conceptual
world of their Western colleagues, acquire the means to perfect their own styles and
reach a much wider circle of listeners than is possible in their homeland. From the end
of the Second World War to the present, the musical language has undergone a continuous
and inexorable internationalisation; indeed, precisely the tendency to go beyond
the national sphere – a tendency which forms part of the avant-garde’s DNA – determined
a diversification of styles and an aesthetic freedom which came into conflict with
the unitarian attitude of the avant-garde itself.
The reciprocal convergence – which became more and more apparent as the styles
of composition and technological applications spread globally – had an irregular
development and was linked to the individual evolution of composers. I shall restrict
myself to a few examples, concentrating on the two decades that came after the Second
World War as manifesting a process in which Tru Takemitsu played a major role. I
can begin from the “East-West Music Encounter Conference” held in Tokyo from 17 to
22 April 1961. This event had many interesting features: the general secretary, and
prime mover, was Nicolas Nabokov, who held a prominent position in the Congress for
Cultural Freedom, one of the organizations through which the CIA sponsored the
dissemination of Western culture and politics worldwide. In spite of its more or less
overt propaganda intent, the Tokyo Conference was the forum for an open and fruitful
discussion which fostered exchanges between Western and Eastern musicians. The
panel of speakers were particularly well chosen, bringing together not only people from
many different countries but also the various professional figures in music (composers,
performers, critics, musicologists and ethnomusicologists); even today most of the
topics on the agenda (‘Renewing the musical language’, ‘Music education’, ‘Patronage
of music’, ‘Music and society’) play a primary function in the on-going exchange
between the two hemispheres. 2
2 Cf. Music – East and West (1961). The Western composers who addressed the Conference were Elliott Carter,
Henry Cowell, Lou Harrison, Colin McPhee, Virgil Thomson and Iannis Xenakis; among musicologists we can
recall in particular Alain Danielou, Robert Garfias, Mantle Hood, Leo Schrade and Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt.