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Tōru Takemitsu (武満 徹, pronounced [takeꜜmitsɯ̥ toːɾɯ]; 8 October 1930 – 20 February 1996) was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu was admired for the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre .
Nov 4, 2020 · Read about the life of composer Tōru Takemitsu: how he first heard western classical music, and his interest in modernist & Japanese music.
Apr 11, 2022 · Takemitsu Tōru is famous as the composer who united traditional Japanese music and Western modernism. Today, a quarter-century after his death, his music continues to be performed in concert...
- Requiem
- Dorian Horizon
- November Steps
- Autumn
- Ran
- Nostalghia
- And Then I Knew ‘Twas Wind
This piece attracted the attention of Igor Stravinsky, which proved critical in introducing Takemitsu to Western audiences.
Commissioned by the Koussevitsky Foundation, premiered by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, and conducted by Aaron Copland.
Commissioned by the New York Philharmonic to celebrate its 125th anniversary. In this piece, Takemitsu sought to blend traditional Japanese instruments with the orchestra. He discovered the challenge of this and ultimately they are kept separate and predominantly played in alternation.
For biwa, shakuhachi, and orchestra. Takemitsu continued to experiment with the idea of composing for both Western orchestral instruments and traditional Japanese ones and achieved more of a complete integration of the two in this piece than he did in November Steps.
One of the late, epic films of Akira Kurosawa with film score by Toru Takemitsu. This is an excellent example of the concept of ma as the beginning of the film features almost exclusively natural sounds as the score. A famous battle scene occurs in which a single gunshot killing a central character shifts the score from the sound of the orchestra t...
This piece was composed as an ode to Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. It is comprised predominantly of slow-moving, muffled, and eerie chords changing underneath a solo violin with moments of textural change appearing (a moment of soft glissandi, double stops, pizzicato, muted tremolo) only to return to those slow, muted chords. Personally, I he...
Sidenote: Watching these pieces on YouTube demonstrates a sharp contrast between the noise and vacuousness of our modern society with the patience, precision, elegance, and space of Takemitsu’s music. Hope you enjoyed! — Sources: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/display/jikken-kobo http://www.onyxclassics.com/reviews.php?CatalogueNumber=...
Nov 11, 2020 · Tōru Takemitsu started as a self-taught composer specializing in the western classical tradition. Find out how he eventually embraced his Japanese roots.
Jan 14, 2020 · Takemitsu’s surface musical language is based on the idioms of European modernism. However, his music is perceived by many as “Japanese-sounding,” although he clearly avoided sounds of traditional Japanese music or Japanese instruments in the majority of his works.
May 11, 2018 · Toru Takemitsu was not only one of the greatest contemporary Japanese composers and theoreticians of experimental music, but he was also a cinema fanatic who wrote music for more than 80 films. His film career began in the mid-1950s after he studied with the master composer Fumio Hayasaka.
