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

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Luciana Galliano
‘global intellectual’. Thus clearly there has been no single aesthetic and compositional
project in more than forty years of activity, but rather he has his own history, in which I
wish to pick out some moments which I believe are particularly salient:
1. his début, in which the most important element was to rebel against any
imposition. The only input he would act on was his own creativity and sensibility,
and indeed he was even prepared to call the latter into question. His
youth, and discussions with his friends in Jikkenkb, were enriched among
other things by Catholic humanism, which stimulated his dialogue with Yuasa
and Fukushima, the latter composer in particular being close to an informed
awareness of Zen philosophy. In this early phase Takemitsu’s project was to
give a sense to his soundscape: ‘I became aware that composing is giving
meaning to that stream of sounds that penetrates the world we live in’
(Takemitsu 1995: 79). 9 This involved the highest degree of independent,
original liberty. The fascination of a profound disquiet led Hidekazu Yoshida,
the critic who in a certain sense had discovered him at the time of Lento, to
say: ‘Takemitsu’s music intoxicates us’;
2. we can identify a second period, roughly speaking, in the explosion of his
rebellious attitude, with the collective demonstrations against military engagement
and the ‘revolutionary’ activity that went on in the Sgetsu centre,
and indeed his participation, with his lifelong friend Kuniharu Akiyama, in
Fluxus. This gave rise to the expressive violence of a piece like Textures
(1964). As Takemitsu himself said in 1968: ‘The form of my music is the direct,
natural outcome imposed by the sounds themselves, which is in no way
predetermined from the outset’, or again: ‘I don’t want to aim to control the
sounds. I prefer to leave them free, if possible without controlling them. I
would be happy just to gather them around me and impart a minimum of
movement’ (Takemitsu 1971: 206). The composer is aware that his works
‘liberated music from a certain stagnation and brought to music something
distinctly new and different’. 10 Takemitsu also became aware of the peculiarities
and innovations – with respect to his formation – of some of the aesthetic
issues in Japanese art and music, without however wishing in any way to mediate
between the two; this is the idea of the ‘non transportability’ of Japanese
concepts and materials, splendidly expressed in November Steps (1967);
3. following his encounter with traditional Japanese musical aesthetics, a truly
formidable heritage, we can recognise a change of direction; Takemitsu says
that previously ‘when I structured a piece I composed as if I was assembling
9 Dating back to 1948.
10 From a lecture given on 6 July 1988 at the “First New York International Festival of the Arts”.