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

Music Facing Up to Silence. Writings on Tru Takemitsu
In the second episode, The Woman in the Snow, the performer’s gesture acquires greater
importance, once again with a variety of sound typologies. While noises are less apparent
from scene to scene compared to the previous episode, the sounds of the flute are more distinct.
At the morphological level we have:
a. sounds at a determinate pitch with harmonics obtained from the acoustic
source: the exasperation of the performer’s gesture gives a highly dramatic
content;
b. electronic sounds acting as a pedal linking the various objects;
c. band of noise filtered between 500 and 2500 Hz with a lot of reverberation
creating an abstract setting;
d. metallic sounds obtained by elaboration of the material in section a, above all
in the upper frequences.
Figure 6. Seconde episode of Kwaidan.
In dramaturgical terms the various events are superimposed in a very dynamic way. The
sounds treated electronically create background and volume while those deriving from
instruments produce exasperated sound gestures.
The performing mode takes on an over-riding importance in the third episode, Hoichi
the Earless: here the sound component is represented by the biwa and the singing
voice, with just a few extra noises. Once again the sound of the instrument and voice in
the traditional performance is re-elaborated electronically, creating a dialectic between
real and re-elaborated sound which injects considerable drama into the musical score.
This creates a particular morphological situation:
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