Paths
Toru Takemitsu ( 1930 - 1996)

Arguably the foremost Japanese composer of the twentieth century, Takemitsu’s first encounter with western music came during his military service in the Second World War. From 1948 he received intermittent instruction in Tokyo with Yasuji Kiyose, but was otherwise essentially self-taught, developing a highly individual musical language. Through this he assimilated influences ranging from the opulent colours and sensuality of Debussy and Messiaen to the Western Avant Garde music of Webern, Cage and Stockhausen, as well as Duke Ellington and the traditional music of his native country.

Takemitsu’s compositions first attracted international attention in 1957, when Stravinsky praised ‘the unbroken intensity’ of his Requiem for Strings. This led to numerous awards and prizes (including the Prix Italia in 1958), as well as featured residencies at the international music festivals of Aldeburgh, Tanglewood and Wien Modern. A regular guest lecturer in the USA, Takemitsu was also a prolific film composer, writing over ninety scores for Japanese classics such as Black Rain (1989) and Kurosawa’s Ran (1987), which won the Los Angeles Film Critics Award.

Paths (or Michi in Japanese) was written in 1994 in memory of the composer Witold Lutoslawski, and premiered later that year in the Warsaw Autumn Festival by the Swedish virtuoso trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger. The idea of a melodic conversation between Lutoslawski (the muted trumpet) and God (the open trumpet) forms the basis of this composition, emphasising Takemitsu’s fundamental notion of cantos (song), where a simple lyric line is intertwined with many threads, forming an inherent dialogue or narrative.

Other characteristics of the composer’s musical idiom appear throughout the work, using haunting modal and chromatic melodies in conjunction with an acute sensitivity for register and timbre to create elements of ‘colour, light and shadow.’ The complex irregular rhythmic structure is also written without barlines, enabling the protagonists’ monologues within the music to change successively without a break.

Further programmatic elements are also incorporated in the piece; not least the evocative atmosphere of a pathway or ‘journey’ through a formal Japanese garden, reminiscent of many of Takemitsu’s earlier works, which expressed his ‘deep reverence for the precise workings and order in nature.’ Thus each sophisticated detail is audible - depicting ‘dreamlike’ images of expressive scenery which do not exert individuality, preferring to converge in forming a harmonious whole.

© Huw Morgan