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

Music Facing Up to Silence. Writings on Tru Takemitsu
shouts, the violence is amplified by a slow crescendo which reaches its climax just before
the aural and visual realities come to coincide once again, in the gunshot that despatches
one of the protagonists.
‘The more complete the abstraction, the stronger the impression’
This axiom of Robert Bresson, in Notes sur le cinématographe, can stand as a fine
summary of Takemitsu’s contribution to film making. Working at the shadowy interface
between reality and acoustic make-believe, his music, as we have seen, succeeds in stimulating
the spectator’s perceptions, going to the heart of events and situations and
evoking perspectives which are never conventional. Chion is right in saying that ‘when
an image has more presence than reality it tends to substitute for it, even as it denies its
status of image’ (Chion 1994: 103). Thus in films the audio component is recognised as
true to life not so much if it recreates the sound produced in the real world by the
situation or event in question, but if it transposes and expresses the sensations associated
with that cause. In this respect Takemitsu’s achievement has been seminal, fostering the
emergence of a ‘sensorial’ cinema in which all the elements are part of an aural
continuum which has been subtly elaborated in the editing and mixing, so that the
narration is no longer strictly verbal. In such a global ‘sound system’ there can be no
distinctions between sounds and noises: ambient sound, sound effects and music come
together to create strikingly beautiful examples of polyphonic architecture.
Bibliography
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Anderson, Joseph L. Richie, Donald (1982), The Japanese Film: Art and Industry
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Arnn, Barbara L. (1979), ‘Local Legends of the Genpei War: Reflections of Mediaeval
Japanese History’, Asian Folklore Studies, 38/2: 1-10.
Balsam, Humbert (1998), ‘Ho lavorato con un giovane regista: Conversazione con
Humbert Balsam’, in Il caso e la necessità: Il cinema di Robert Bresson, a c. di
Spagnoletti, Giovanni – Toffetti, Sergio, Lindau, Torino: 131-133.
Berio, Luciano (1953), ‘Musica per Tape Recorder’, Il Diapason, 4/3-4: 10-13.
Bernstein, Matthew (1997), ‘Cinematic Landscapes: Observations on the Visual Arts
and Cinema of China and Japan by Linda C. Ehrlich, David Desser’, Film Quarterly,
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