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

Music Facing Up to Silence. Writings on Tru Takemitsu
the two: when we hear a sound, other sounds which are normally imperceptible are
operating, but we usually dismiss them as ‘silence’. This accounts for Cage’s interest
in perceiving the sounds that originate in ‘silence’. This sort of experience enables us
to state that far from being nothing, silence is the vital matrix, and also the final destination,
of every possible sound. 8 In this sense silence is comparable – to use once
again a favourite image of Zen Buddhism – 9 to the ocean and waves: certainly, each
wave has its own identity with respect to the mass of the ocean as a whole, but nonetheless
it emerges from and inevitably returns to this entity, just as notes and sounds
are born from silence and dissolve back into it. In Japanese thought what connects the
aural dimension of silence with its visual counterpart of space is the character of
vacuousness understood not as an inert reality, or even the result of annihilation, but
as an enormous reservoir of active potential, whether taking shape as things or events,
forms or sounds, words or facts. In a large part of his musical output Takemitsu
makes skilful use of ma. It is introduced into his compositions not so much as a
simple pause or fragment of silence between notes but as a musical space rich in tension,
10 as a moment in which the listener becomes conscious of the emergence of
sounds from silence and their return to it. The sense of this use of ma by Takemitsu
has been well identified and expressed by Koozin. In commenting on some piano
pieces, he speaks of ‘those shadings into “silence”’ which produce a condition in
which ‘one is more likely to hear the silence arising toward the end of such a figure
as a direct outgrowth of the previous sound-event. In this sense, the sound-event
draws silence into the piece as an active rather than a passive element’. 11
Far from having an exclusively technical sense or valence, this dialectic between
silence and sounds, which constitutes the art of music, can acquire a cognitive or
indeed spiritual meaning and value. This may lead us to reflect on music as art which
produces syntheses of sounds and silence, and it is surely not excessive to affirm that
such an art can not only be born from an experience of Reawakening but also produce
it. I don’t know whether Takemitsu would have gone so far as to consider his music
as a valid auxiliary on the way to Enlightenment, but there can be no doubt that many
of his pieces and some of his writings are seen to be worthy of such a vocation.
8
Cf. also Lecture on Nothing, in Cage (1961: 109-128).
9
It must be said, however, that in his elaborations Cage was merely following in the footsteps of Buddhist
thought (cf. Porzio 1995).
10
We should bear in mind that in the language of Japanese musicians ‘emptiness is indicated with active
expressions’. Cf. Satoaki 2004: 118. Cf. also Koozin (1990: 34), cit. in Burt (2001: 237) and Miyamoto (1996).
11
Koozin (1990: 34), cit. in Burt (2001: 237).
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