Toru Takemitsu

Takemitsu’s “I Hear the Water Dreaming”: An Impressionistic Concertante for Flute and Orchestra

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Dreamtime lies at the center of Australian aboriginal culture. A mythology dating back 60,000 years, it is a collection of stories involving the creation of the universe, the origin of life, and humanity’s role in the world. The stories are passed from one generation to another through music, art, and ceremony. It was a work of art—an aboriginal painting titled Water Dreaming from the desert region of Papunya in Western Australia—that formed …

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Remembering Seiji Ozawa

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Seiji Ozawa, the internationally renowned Japanese conductor, passed away in Tokyo last week (February 6, 2024) as a result of heart failure. He was 88. Ozawa’s 29-year tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra began in 1973. Prior to the appointment, he served as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (1965-1969) and the San Francisco Symphony (1970-1977). In 1984, he founded the Saito Kinen Orchestra in Matsumoto, Japan. In …

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Takemitsu’s “A Flock Descends Into the Pentagonal Garden”: A Shifting Panorama of Scenes

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Tōru Takemitsu’s ephemeral 1977 orchestral piece, A Flock Descends Into the Pentagonal Garden, grew out of a dream. The Japanese composer attributed his vision of a flock of birds descending into a five-sided garden to an iconic photograph he viewed earlier in the day, which showed the artist, Marcel Duchamp, posing with the back of his head shaved in the “form of a star-shaped garden.” Takemitsu described the resulting piece as a “shifting panorama of …

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Takemitsu’s “Toward the Sea”: Entering the Spiritual Domain

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Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries – stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water…Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever. -Herman Melville, “Moby-Dick” The ocean took on metaphysical significance not only for Herman Melville but also for the twentieth century Japanese composer, Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996). Takemitsu, whose music is filled with evocations …

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Takemitsu’s “A String Around Autumn”: Entering an Imaginary Landscape

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Alex Ross once used the phrase “intense repose” to describe the music of the twentieth century Japanese composer, Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996). At the heart of Takemitsu’s music is the traditional Japanese concept of Ma, literally “negative space,” or “powerful silence” as the composer defined it. As with water droplets at the crest of an ocean wave, this music often seems to emerge out of silence and then dissolve back into it. What we hear in between seems …

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Takemitsu’s “Quotation of Dream”: Aftertones of Debussy

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Fragments of Debussy’s La Mer emerge and evaporate throughout Quotation of Dream (1991) by the Japanese composer, Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996). The piece, which the composer described as “schizo-eclectic,” is a virtual concerto for two pianos and orchestra. The subtitle, Say sea, take me!, is a reference to a poem by Emily Dickinson. La Mer‘s motifs run through the DNA of this shimmering, post-impressionist work. The haunting and mysterious piano chords in the beginning return in the last bars, …

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Remembering Peter Serkin: Five Essential Recordings

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The American pianist Peter Serkin passed away on Saturday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 72. Serkin was part of a distinguished musical lineage. His father was Rudolf Serkin, the legendary Bohemian-born American pianist and director of the Curtis Institute of Music. His maternal grandfather was the German violinist and conductor, Adolf Busch. As if to throw off the burden of this heritage, Serkin was something of a musical maverick. Following …

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