Takemitsu grew up during a time where there was strong sense of Nationalism in Japan which subsequently led towards the country’s involvement against the Allied Forces during the Second World War. At the age of fourteen, the young Takemitsu was conscripted for war and he recalls his experiences as “extremely bitter”. In fact, when Takemitsu began working for the U.S. Armed Forces after the post war U.S. occupation of Japan, he described how upon hearing traditional Japanese music he would be reminded of those wartime memoriesx. This trauma meant that Takemitsu initially avoided Japanese traditional music and looked westwards towards Europe and America to seek inspiration. It was in the 1960s, when Takemitsu began corresponding with American composer John Cage, that his perspectives on Japanese traditional music began to change. Heavily inspired by Japanese traditional culture and music Cage's understanding and deep appreciation for this culture left a strong impression on Takemitsu:
Of all the works for classical guitar that have Eastern cultural influences, the works of Toru Takemitsu are, arguably, the most studied and performed. The four volume album Japanese Guitar Music by the Naxos Music Library even has the whole first volume dedicated to the guitar music, solo and chamber, of Tōru Takemitsu (for more information about this album see Part I, Chapter III). Takemitsu's works for guitar have become an important and well respected part of the guitar repertory. Recorded and performed by some of the most prominent guitarists of the late 20th Century (Julian Bream, John Williams, Manuel Barrueco), these works have become a part of the classical guitar canon and have certainly cemented Takemitsu as one of the most important composers for the guitar of the 20th Century1. I would like to begin this investigation by looking at some of the works of Takemitsu as his use of Japanese cultural elements in his guitar works are innovative, and idiomatic.
Takemitsu's resurgence of interest in Japanese traditional music meant that traditional Japanese instruments became a great source of inspiration for the composer. One instrument, in particular, fascinated Takemitsu: the biwa. A short-necked, lute-like instrument, the biwa (Japanese: 琵琶) is a wooden plucked string instrument originating from around the 7th Century. The instrument is traditionally performed as an accompaniment to Japanese sung narratives and is played with wooden implements known as bachi (Japanese: 桴, 枹)6. Takemitsu wrote a number of scores that include the biwa such as: November Steps (1961), Eclipse (1966) and Autumn (1973). The guitar and biwa are ancestors of one another as they both used to share an evolutionary history before the diverging7. In fact, the two instruments still share similar characteristics; both are plucked stringed instruments with frets. Takemitsu explores this relationship imitating the sound and technique of the biwa on guitar in the score of his single movement work for guitar, Equinox. In bar 11. of the score (figure 4 and 5) , Takemitsu instructs the performer (using a horizontal arrow) to sound the notated B♭ by bending the string on the fretted A note. This bending of the string changes the pitch by a semitone from A to B♭. The next instruction (on the offbeat of the 5th beat) is to 'loose string' which indicateds a relaxing of the pressure from the string bend, returning the pitch to A. Bending a string to change the pitch of the sounding notes is known as 'pitch bending'. Pitch bending is a common technique on the biwa and since the string tension on a biwa are lower than that of a classical guitar, the technique is more easily executed on the biwa as there is less resistance against the bend8. Aware of the increased difficulty of pitch bending on the classical guitar due to the higher tension of strings, Takemitsu writes enough time for the performer to bend the string comfortably by notating this pitch bend over roughly five quaver beats. Furthermore, Takemitsu writes "s.p.", an abbreviation of "sul ponticello", which indicates to pluck the strings nearer to the bridge. This produces a brighter colour that sounds more like a biwa. Takemitsu imitates the biwa on the classical guitar by translating the technique of pitch bending and the general timbre of the biwa using standard Western notation in such a way that even those performers less familiar with the biwa are given enough, precise musical directions to create a sound reminiscent of this traditional Japanese instrument.
One of the most important elements of Japanese philosophy that Takemitsu incorporates into his music for solo guitar is the aesthetic concept of Ma (Japanese: 間). Ma literally translates to ‘interval’ or ‘gap’ and the concept represents something that may be perceived as empty space and/or negative energy9. In music, Ma may be embodied as the space between notes. In the solo guitar works of Takemitsu, space and silence play an essential role in the way that Takemitsu has scored the piece and how the works are to be interpreted. In the third movement (III. Muir Woods) of his three-movement work In the Woods, Takemitsu notates his score with whole bars of silence (with rests) as well as a frequent use of fermatas on notes and chords where the idea of Ma should follow (Figures 6 & 7). These indications encourage the performer to take time and treat these spaces and instances of Ma as an important aspect of the work, not just an effect or a compositional device but as something deeply integral to the structure of the work10. We shall analyse this representation of Ma in this piece further (using the example shown in Figure 7) in Part II, Chapter I.
In the next chapter we shall explore some arrangements of music from different Eastern cultures on the classical guitar. Having seen some of the ways in which Takemitsu utilised cultural elements in his original works we shall now look at how arrangers work with cultural sources to promote certain cultures through classical guitar literature and performance
What followed was an immersion into his own culture and Japanese traditional music: writing for traditional Japanese instruments in his chamber works and incorporating Japanese philosophies and aesthetics in his compositions. In his works for solo classical guitar, Takemitsu explores these philosophies and aesthetics through his detailed musical indications that explore colour, timbre and breath on the instrument. Takemitsu wrote five pieces for solo classical guitar; Folios (1974), All in Twilight (1988), A Piece for Guitar (1991), Equinox (1993) and In the Woods (1995). I shall examine the Japanese cultural influences in three of these works: Folios, Equinox and In the Woods.
The unique harmonic language of Takemitsu's music contains elements of traditional Japanese harmonic structures. These elements are integrated into his works in a subtle and, at times, cryptic way. In the first movement of Folios, the penultimate chord of the piece contains all the notes of the Japanese in scale4 (figure 1 and 2). The in scale, in Western harmonic terms, is a minor hemitonic pentatonic scale - a five note scale characterised by the semitones between 2nd & 3rd and 4th & 5th degrees of the scale (figure 3). This type of scale is present in one of the most recognisable themes in traditional Japanese music, the Sakura theme (for more information about this theme see Part I, Chapter II) . Within the context of the rest of the movement, this influence of traditional Japanese harmony is difficult to notice upon first listening. This is because, Takemitsu creates a different type of harmonic effect by combining all of the notes to sound together as one singular chord. Despite using the original form of the scale (the same notes), the resulting sound is something that sounds almost "modernist"5 and this subtle use of this traditional Japanese scale presents a sophisticated approach to the use Japanese harmony rather than simply presenting the scale in its recognisable format.
Takemitsu seeks the root of Japanese cultural elements as a means of moving forward artistically. He creates new sounds (chords as in Figure 1 or timbres as in Figure 4) and expressions (Ma on the guitar) by using traditional Japanese ideas and techniques. Takemitsu's music is a fresh and original part of the classical guitar repertory and the use of these traditional Japanese cultural elements promotes Japanese culture to both listeners and performers of these works. An understanding of some aspects of Japanese culture certainly informs the performance and experience of Takemitsu's works making this culture an important part of the classical guitar's cultural identity.
Takemitsu grew up during a time when Japan was being influenced by a strong sense of Nationalism which subsequently led towards the country’s involvement against the Allied Forces during the Second World War. Conscripted at the age of fourteen, he recalls his experiences in the Japanese army as “extremely bitter” 2. In fact, when Takemitsu began working for the U.S. Armed Forces after the post war U.S. occupation of Japan, he described how upon hearing traditional Japanese music he would be reminded of those “bitter' memories of war. This trauma meant Takemitsu initially rejected traditional music and culture but it was later when he began a correspondence with the American composer, John Cage, that his perspectives on his culture changed. Cage was greatly inspired by Japanese culture and music and convinced Takemitsu to reconsider his thoughts:
These three examples provide an insight as to how Takemitsu realised Japanese cultural influences in his works for guitar. In his own words, Takemitsu briefly describes how he uses these cultural influences in his compositional process:
Figure 6f
“I must express my deep and sincere gratitude to John Cage. The reason for this is that in my own life, in my own development, for a long period I struggled to avoid being "Japanese," to avoid "Japanese" qualities. It was largely through my contact with John Cage that I came to recognize the value of my own tradition."3
“… what I and my fellow composers are not doing is simply, in a facile way, adapting Japanese tradition to Western form. What we're trying to do is to study very deeply, and very carefully, the essence of traditional music, to explore unknown worlds, and to recreate, or reelucidate, in new, modern forms, what we've learned from our traditions.”11
Figure 1a
Figure 4d
Figure 7g
Figure 2b
Figure 8h
Figure 5e
Figure 3c
Figure 9i
