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

Music Facing Up to Silence. Writings on Tru Takemitsu
On the contrary, critics writing about Takemitsu have tended to pay more attention to
the influence of the French composers active at the turn of the 20 th century, and Claude
Debussy in particular. 10 Although these names clearly pre-date the Western avant-gardes of
our enquiry, it is nonetheless interesting to note that, even in the case of the so-called
historical avant-gardes (in France, in this case), Takemitsu’s ‘absorption’ of Western music
is once again bound up in a movement which, rather than tending towards the outside (from
East to West), leads back into his own artistic world, taking a specifically circular route
(from East to West and back to the East). His love for Debussy and some other late 19 th
century French composers was filtered by that aspiration to the ‘exotic’ which characterised
their music. According to Noriko Ohtake,
Takemitsu himself admits admiring music from France, whose composers themselves
had an enthusiasm for Japanese art at the end of the previous century. Takemitsu terms
Claude Debussy’s interest in and influence by Oriental art a ‘reciprocal action’ – musical
art which was reimported to Japan. This ‘interplay’, founded in Takemitsu’s affection
towards Debussy’s music, remains through much of Takemitsu’s compositional career.
(Ohtake 1993: 6-7) 11
As we trace here some of the contacts, both direct and indirect, he had with representatives
of the Western avant-gardes, we shall see to what extent it is legitimate to speak of
‘interplay’ in Takemitsu’s receptivity vis à vis ‘others’.
Our review must undoubtedly begin with another French composer, Olivier Messiaen.
Right from one of Takemitsu’s earliest compositions, Lento in Due Movimenti (1952), the
influence of Debussy was combined with that of Messiaen (above all in the latter’s innovation
of ‘modes of limited transpositions’). Takemitsu first came across the music of Messiaen in
1950 when he was introduced to it by Toshi Ichiyanagi, and he was immediately bowled
over: ‘I am still captivated by a kind of enigmatic power in that music. [...] Truly, he was my
spiritual mentor’ (Takemitsu 1995b: 141). His love for Messiaen’s works (above all the Préludes
for piano) was matched by his efforts at furthering knowledge of French music in Japan.
In fact, through his work in the early 1950s in the Jikkenkb (Experimental Laboratory),
Takemitsu was responsible for many of the first performances of Messiaen in Japan (and indeed
of Varèse, Stockhausen, Nono, Berio, and others besides).
The influence of Messiaen can be recognised both in matters of technique and in
their common love of nature (even though in Takemitsu this love, rather than being imitative,
remains on a generally philosophical level). Of all Takemitsu’s works it is surely
Quatrain (for solo instruments and orchestra, 1975) which shows the clearest evidence of
10 See on this topic, among others, Ohtake (1993: passim) and Burt (2001: passim).
11 We should nonetheless recall that in an interview given to Fredric Lieberman in 1964 (a year before making his
first visit to Europe), Takemitsu declared that he did not like (at least at that time) Claude Debussy: ‘I like old
French pieces – Couperin, Rameau – very much. Maurice Ravel, Debussy I don’t like’ (Lieberman 2002: 228).
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