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

Music Facing Up to Silence. Writings on Tru Takemitsu
Following a film right from the first takes
Takemitsu would always take an interest in the progress of the film right from the earliest
stages of its preparation, enabling him to grasp the inner motivations behind its
development, which at times could even bring him into conflict with the director. 17 This too
is by no means standard in the film world, as Truffaut demonstrated in La Nuit américaine,
1973, where he describes the development of the music in the pre-production phase of a
film, with the director intent on listening to the theme imagined by the composer for his
film over the telephone.
Hiroshi Teshigahara recalls:
In all the films I’ve done with Takemitsu I’ve never asked him to write a certain kind
of music for a film. Routinely, directors make such demands: ‘In this scene I want music
to make them cry’. Most composers will comply. But with Takemitsu that’s simply
out of the question. He watches my film and bounces his musical ideas off it. This way
the music can fully enhance the scene but, also, his placement of the music gives life
to things that weren’t expressed in images alone. Through this collision of picture and
music the film evolves to a higher realm: that is my expectation. 18
Such an approach is important because it shows that the music has a definite character and
functions: it is not simply ‘tacked on’ to the reel once the film has been completed and is
going into the post-production phase. Thus the sound track is not mere accompaniment, nor
does it provide a commentary to the story of the protagonists and the places where the action
takes place; instead it aims to integrate the images, in keeping with the theory of
audiovision. Takemitsu was responsible for practices which were totally new with respect
to the traditional modus operandi, at a time when the production of film music, above all in
Europe and America, was firmly anchored in the trite stereotypes which Theodor W.
Adorno denounced in his celebrated critique (cf. Poirier 1996: 94-95).
17 Talking about his collaboration with Kurosawa, Takemitsu said that the director had a clear idea of the
sound he wanted, although this did not necessarily correspond to what was decided on as the film went into
production (Raison 1985: 54).
18 Hiroshi Teshigahara in Zwerin (1994). ‘Of the many kinds of film composers, most look at a movie only
when it is nearly finished, and then they think about where to add music. But Takemitsu immerses himself in the
film right from the start. He watches it being shot, he turns up on location, and often visits the studio. His
involvement with the film parallels that of the director’. ‘In his music he must find something unique for each
film he works on. He’s not one of those composers who can simply pull music from a set of drawers in his head.
As he watches the rushes for my films, he bounces his ideas off of them. This way his music can more fully
enhance a scene: his placement of the music gives life to things that weren’t expressed in the images alone’
(Hiroshi Teshigahara in Richie 1997: 7).
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