Welcome back to the Sunday
music feature. In September we’ll be featuring the music of Toru Takemitsu.
Takemitsu is a major composer & a few
blog posts over the course of a month can serve only as the most cursory
introduction & exploration of his music. I’d strongly encourage those who
are interested in what they hear to seek out more information at the links
given with each post & also to seek out more of Takemitsu’s music, which is
readily available.
We begin the series with
Takemitsu’s 1966 composition, “Eclipse”. This is scored for
traditional Japanese instruments, the shakuhachi
& the biwa. The former is a bamboo
flute, while the latter is a type of lute.
Although Takemitsu was strongly
influenced by Western music (Debussy, Messiaen, & Webern particularly)
& indeed at one point expressed an aversion to traditional Japanese
music—because it reminded him of World War II militarism—he began incorporating
elements of Japanese music into his compositions under the influence of John
Cage beginning in the early 1960s. Takemitsu’s 1967 composition “November Steps” for biwa, shakuhachi,
& orchestra is related to “Eclipse”.
Hope you enjoy the music
Images link to their
sources on Wiki Commons:
- “Performer playing shakuhachi in 60th Himeji oshiro festival, 2009”. Photo by Wiki user Corpse Reviver, who makes it available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
- “A selection of biwa in a Japanese museum”. Photo by Wiki user Jnn, who makes it available under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.1 Japan license.
Ahhhhh! September is going to be very interesting! I first encountered Takemitsu's music some time in the '80s, and I've been listening ever since. Good pick, John!
ReplyDeleteNovember Steps was the first piece of Takemitsu I came across. I was too young to "get it" then, I think, but sensed there was something there to be "got" (a feeling I frequently had back then!)
ReplyDelete