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

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Roberto Calabretto
contribution to the nouvelle vague in European film music, conceiving the sound component
in their films in terms of the modalities adopted by the French experimenters. It was
a matter of ‘reorganize the unorganized noises (what you think you hear is not what you
hear) of a street, a railroad station, an airport... Play them back one by one in silence and
adjust the blend’ (Bresson 1986: 43), as Robert Bresson put it in Notes sur le cinématographe
when he described his own approach to preparing the sound tracks of his films.
Humbert Balsam recalled that ‘Bresson was fascinated by sounds. When he came across
the sort he particularly liked he was extraordinary, he would put one sound in conjunction
with another as if it were a musical score. It always came up with something unexpected,
and that’s why Bresson was always listening out’ (Balsam 1998: 132). 27
The way in which Takemitsu created the sound component in his films shows that he
had much in common with the European directors, starting from the research which preceded
the assembling of the various sound materials and their editing.
I am very interested in sounds surrounding us, and I then go on to graft on the ones I
create artificially. The real sound, of everyday life, is the most important in making
a film. When a vehicle goes past, for example, you record the noise it makes, but
then when you cut out that noise and substitute it with the noise of a different vehicle,
the sound space changes completely. (Tessier 2008: 98)
At the same time Takemitsu seems to focus his interest on discovering new potential in
the sounds made by instruments, and these are further manipulated in the phases of recording
and post-production. 28
Inevitably, we composers wanted to experiment with the music just like the film directors.
What is most important is to first establish a sound, a sound that leaves a
strong impression. I try to minimize the music that comes from the film. When I
look at the rushes of a new film when there’s only the dialogue and no other sound,
if it’s a really good film, even with no sound at all sometimes, I feel I can already
hear the music. 29
Thus eclecticism and experimentation appear to be the chief guidelines for his film music.
If this was itself sufficient to ensure that he could work happily in the cinema, the character
of his choices in some of the films, such as Kwaidan, Susa no onna and Ran, 30 emerges
27
Philippe Arnaud noted that ‘sounds were picked out and isolated [by Bresson] as if an invisible scalpel had
disengaged them from the primary cacophony’ (Ostria, 1998: 83).
28
In a brief introduction to a catalogue of Ikko Narahara treating the differences between Japanese and
Western modes of expression, Takemitsu took pains to qualify his position as regards the two ‘philosophies’
of sound conception (Narahara, 1994: V-VI).
29
Tru Takemitsu in Zwerin (1994).
30
Nicolas Saada has suggested some analogies between the use of music in the two Kurosawa films Kwaidan
and Ran (1994: 12).