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

Music Facing Up to Silence. Writings on Tru Takemitsu
It is not incomprehensible that there might be people who, because of this, think of
Takemitsu as an isolated hermit like Dickinson. Sometimes there seem to be people who
believe that Takemitsu hid himself away in the midst of nature to compose music, both
because of the music itself, and because of the titles which refer to natural phenomena such as
‘wind’, ‘bird’, ‘stars’, ‘rain’ and ‘autumn’, or contain words from the realm of the
imagination, such as ‘dream’, ‘vision’, etc.
The question therefore arises: ‘Was Takemitsu a recluse, isolated from the world?’ The
answer is ‘no’. However, if the question is rather: ‘Was he a meditative person?’, the answer
is ‘yes’. He was an active person who enjoyed contact with people. His life was not
surrounded by the silence associated with the image of a meditative life. Some people
might even think that he was a vegetarian, but in fact he ate a well-balanced diet including
meat and fish.
If he was interested in meeting someone, he went to see them directly even it was a person
with whom he was totally unacquainted. Or he boldly telephoned someone, even if he
had not previously been introduced to them. For instance, Shin’ichir Ikebe says, ‘One day
the telephone rang suddenly and when I picked it up it was Takemitsu-san, with whom I had
had no previous acquaintance’. Similarly, cultural anthropologist Masao Yamaguchi related
how one day ‘the door bell rang, and when I went to the door, Takemitsu-san was standing
there’. Recalling his surprise, he added: ‘What would he have done if I had not been there?
Because I had no appointment with him’ (Takemitsu 2003: 246).
Thus he was not a reclusive person, but a person who actively sought to communicate
with others. In other words, he was not reluctant to communicate with others, but on the
contrary eager to do so. It can be said, therefore, that his character was far from that of the
recluse or hermit.
At this point I want to introduce some photographs of Takemitsu. His height was
about 167 cm, and he weighed about 45 kg He was a thin person, not only at the time
these photographs were taken, but also from the time he was a boy until he passed away
at the age of 65 years.
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