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

Music Facing Up to Silence. Writings on Tru Takemitsu
way of showing that this active continuity between background and figures derives
from the character of the representations. They are neither regimented within the limits
of hard and fast drawing nor filled in with homogeneous layers of ink on an inert background.
Instead they were effected with rapid brush strokes, leaving large areas of
empty space between and even within them. The brush willingly leaves extensive traces
of white in the ink line. Subsequently the outlines are blurred so as not to define a
closed figure: something precise would be too much like a concept, complete in itself.
The indefiniteness of highly diluted ink seems to make the background rise to the surface
through the representations.
Japanese painting features various forms of perspective in, which rather than a single
viewpoint, multiple perspectives are adopted from above, from below and so on,
and may even co-exist. Thus the spectator is obliged, or rather is free, to choose any
one of the various possibilities in the interplay of objects and space, fullness and emptiness.
I believe that something analogous occurs in some of Takemitsu’s compositions,
where silence performs the same function vis à vis the sounds as in sumie painting the
two-dimensional empty space performs in relation to the figures.
This same type of relationship of reciprocal implication between emptiness and fullness
can be seen tridimensionally in the villa of Katsura, a masterpiece of traditional
Japanese architecture. The large open space of nature all round the building is not a system
of objects which lies outside, but rather an infinite aggregate of energies. Rather than
being regimented by continuous masonry walls, this energy is left free to circulate in the
interior thanks to sliding partitions (shji) made of sheets of rice paper mounted in light
wooden frames. This also enables the garden to be seen from the innermost rooms. Even
when windows are necessary, they never close hermetically but are made of lattice work
that always allows a greater or lesser degree of light and air to enter. 6 In this way the
irrefutable presence of the wide open space of nature is perceived at first hand, as a
necessary condition for the determination of any artificial space, just as silence is the necessary
underlay from which all the sounds in the world, and the notes in music, emerge.
In this case too the artist is aiming not to separate off the wide open space of nature from
the small volumes architecture conceives and creates, but on the contrary to communicate
in a tangible way how such specific, complete spaces emerge continuously from the ‘universal’,
infinite space. The ability of the artist lies in using forms that reveal themselves
as deriving from something beyond these forms. Katsura, in itself an exceptional hymn to
form, is composed of a series of elements which identify it as a product of nature. Take
for example the ground plan, which is not a square but represents a skein of geese. Rather
than resembling a foursquare Roman house with everything being contained within the
defined space, it is centrifugal like a flock of geese in flight, with a central element from
6 On the importance of windows in the traditional Japanese house cf. Kiyoshi (2004).
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