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

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Mitsuko Ono
four years of age. This was when he applied for a passport, and after that he went
abroad almost every year. The year in which he travelled most frequently was 1990,
when he left the country eleven times.
Figure 9. Tru Takemitsu’s trips abroad, from 1964 to 1994.
Many Japanese composers of the same generation as Takemitsu went to study in foreign
countries: Toshir Mayuzumi, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Akira Miyoshi, and so on. It was rare for
Japanese musicians or artists not to have travelled to foreign countries even by the time
they were in their mid-thirties. This was how old Takemitsu was when he received an
invitation from the University of Hawaii and the East-West Center (today the “Festival of
Music and Art of this Century”). As though this name were symbolic for Takemitsu, he
travelled from the ‘East’ (Japan) to the ‘West’ almost every year afterwards. The flight
from Japan to Europe or America lasts at least twelve hours. The difference in time is
such that daytime and night are almost exactly reversed. Might this not have been hard
work for him?
His main purposes in these trips overseas were, first, to attend first performances of his
works, and, second, to give lectures and participate in music festivals. It might actually
have been easier for him to live abroad, because he had such a lot of work outside Japan. In
fact some Japanese artists do live in New York, because they have a lot of work in Japan,
Europe or America. In terms of distance, it is easy for them to reach any of these places.
However, Takemitsu lived in Japan. And he composed in a small studio at his mountain
villa in Miyota, Nagano Prefecture, or in Tokyo.