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

Music Facing Up to Silence. Writings on Tru Takemitsu
Carter calls ‘the dialectic method of Western art music’ (Carter 1961: 127) 7 –
undoubtedly represented a phase of great interest for Eastern composers looking West.
The study of the twelve tone method and, later, of the serial approach was fundamental in
the formation of many Japanese composers, including Yoshiro Irino, Makoto Moroi,
Minao Shibata and Toshiro Mayuzumi, who in 1957 founded an Institute for New Music
modelled on the one in Darmstadt. During the 1958 Ferienkurse Heinz-Klaus Metzger
read a lecture by Yoritsune Matsudaira (in German translation) in which it was stated that
Japan’s interest for Western art music had existed for at least a century (Matsudaira
1997). 8 However, in a lecture delivered to the Ferienkurse in 1962, the music critic H.
Yoshida pointed out how the relationship between Japanese and European music had
been decidedly one-way: apart from a few isolated cases, there was little question of
Japanese composers exerting any influence on the European musical tradition. 9 To a
lesser extent this disparity also held good in the contexts of painting and architecture, in
which the encounter of the Western artist with Japan proved to be of prime importance in
various phases of the 20 th century: indeed one might go so far as to say that the formation
of modern art was patently linked to the confrontation with the Other of Western culture.
Yoshida believed that over the last decade the situation had changed, also in the realm of
music, and the participation of various Japanese composers in successive Ferienkurse
was a clear indication of this change. In addition his lecture touched on a topic that had
surfaced sporadically in Tokyo: it had become possible for the Japanese to have a less
superficial contact with the Western musical aesthetic precisely when Europeans stopped
viewing other cultures as rudimental and underdeveloped with respect to their own. We
can add that this became possible – rather later in music than in the other arts – thanks to
an alliance between ethnography and avant-garde which manifested itself at various times
and in different places during the 20 th century. 10
In a lecture to the “Manila International Music Symposium” in 1966, Chou Wenchung
argued that ‘we have now reached a stage in which the beginning of a re-merger of
Eastern and Western musical concepts and practices is actually taking place’ (Wen-chung
1968-1969: 19). 11 The Chinese composer, who had emigrated to the United States in
1946 and studied, among others, with Edgard Varèse, believed that this ‘re-merger’ had
become possible from the moment when Western composers had stopped concentrating
7 Also in Carter (2008: 164).
8 On this topic cf. Galliano (2002).
9 Cf. Hidekazu Yoshida, Kontakte zwischen japanischer und abendländlicher Musik, recording conserved
in the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt (I wish to thank Jürgen Krebber for kindly allowing me
access to this source).
10 Cf. Borio (2009).
11 The proceedings of the symposium, The Musics of Asia, were edited by José Maceda of the National Music
Council of the Philippines in collaboration with UNESCO National Commission of the Philippines in 1971.
Here too one can note the presence of Xenakis, who read an early version of his fundamental essay ‘Vers une
métamusique’ (1967) under the title ‘Structures Hors-temps’ (1971).
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