Rain Tree Sketch - Music

Tōru Takemitsu 武満 徹 Takemitsu Tōru October 8 1930–February 20 1996 Was A Japanese Composer Of Music Who Explored The Compositional Principles Of Western Classical Music And His Native Japanese Tradition Both In Isolation And In Combination. Born In Tokyo Takemitsu First Became Interested In Western Classical Music Around The Time Of World War II. He Had Heard Western Music On American Military Radio While Recuperating From A Long Illness. He Also Listened To Jazz From His Father's Ample Collection. Takemitsu Was Largely Self-Taught In Music. He Was Greatly Influenced By The Music Of Claude Debussy And Olivier Messiaen. In 1951 He Founded The Jikken Kobo A Group Which Introduced Many Contemporary Western Composers To Japanese Audiences. Takemitsu First Came To Wide Attention When His Requiem For String Orchestra 1957 Was Accidentally Heard And Praised By Igor Stravinsky In 1959 Some Japanese People Wanted Igor Stravinsky To Hear Some Tape Recorded Music By Japanese Composers And Put In The Wrong Side Of The Tape - When They Tried To Take It Out Stravinsky Didn't Let Them . Stravinsky Went On To Champion Takemitsu's Work. Takemitsu At First Had Little Interest In Traditional Japanese Music But Later Incorporated Japanese Instruments Such As The Shakuhachi A Kind Of Bamboo Flute Into The Orchestra. November Steps 1967 A Work For Shakuhachi And Biwa A Kind Of Japanese Lute Solo And Orchestra Was The First Piece To Combine Instruments From East And West. In An Autumn Garden 1973-79 Is Written For The Kind Of Orchestra That Would Have Played Gagaku Traditional Japanese Court Music . Works Such As Eclipse 1966 For Shakuhachi And Biwa Voyage 1973 For Three Biwas Should Also Been Mentioned As Works That Are Decidedly Derived From Traditional Genres. Takemitsu's Works Include The Orchestral Piece A Flock Descends Into The Pentagonal Garden 1977 Riverrun For Piano And Orchestra 1984 The Title Is The First Word In James Joyce's Finnegans Wake And The String Quartet A Way A Lone 1981 Another Piece Inspired By Finnegans Wake . Chamber Music Such As Distance De Fee 1951 For Violin And Piano Or Between Tides For Violin Cello And Piano Are To Be Also Mentioned. And Such Jewels Of The Piano Music As Rain Tree Sketch 1982 Rain Tree Sketch II 1992 Les Yeux Clos 1979 And Les Yeux Clos II 1988 Are Considered To Be Amongst The Finest Works For The Instrument Written In The Twentieth Century. Some Of The Formal Concepts In Takemitsu's Music Depend Deeply On Visual Imagery Taken From Paintings Dreams Or His Concept About Which He Writes Much Of The Garden. He Also Composed Electronic Music And Many Film Scores IMDB Lists 94 For Films By Japanese Directors. His Music For Cinema Rests Deeply Upon The Concept That A New Film Needs A New Sound Colour And Is As Much About Taking Out Sounds As About Taking Them In. His First Score Was For Toshio Matsumoto's Ginrin And He Would Go On To Compose Scores For Akira Kurosawa Dodesukaden Ran Hiroshi Teshigahara Pitfall Woman Of The Dunes Face Of Another Masahiro Shinoda The Assassination Silence Shôhei Imamura Black Rain 1989 Nagisa Oshima In The Realm Of Passion 1978 And Misako Kobayashi Kaidan 1964 . Takemitsu Composed Scores For All Of Kobayashi's Films From Seppuku 1962 Onwards Until The Director's Last Film Family Without A Dinner Table 1985 . Takemitsu Died In Tokyo On February 20 1996. He Was Posthumously Awarded The Fourth Glenn Gould Prize In Autumn 1996. read less