Nobuko Amemiya

Music of Japan Today III: Tradition and Innovation


Abstract:
Analysis of Takemitsu's Compositions for Piano and Violin or Cello
Toru Takemitsu (1930-96) was one of the first Japanese composers who became widely known in the Western musical world. Influenced by both Western and Eastern traditional music, literature, and aesthetics, Takemitsu produced almost 200 compositions for various performing media and utilized most twentieth-century compositional techniques. His music gives an appearance of being free from or beyond any pre-existing form or structure. This paper is an attempt to reveal the intellectual sound structure in Takemitsu's music through detailed analyses of four chamber music works for piano and violin/cello, which have not been previously analyzed: *Distance de fee* (1951), *Hika* (1966), *From Far beyond Chrysanthemums and November Fog* (1983), and *Orion* (1984). Inspired by traditional Japanese aesthetics, Takemitsu considered the nature of music sound as an integration of parameters: harmonic field, duration, space, and tone-color.1 In this study, each composition is analyzed from these four points of view.

The four analyzed works were written over a period of thirty-four years, covering most of Takemitsu's career as a composer. During this period, his compositional style changed in many ways. His music started under strong influence of the Western tonal tradition, and progressed to an atonal style along with avant-garde streams in mid-twentieth-century Western music. Around 1980, he developed a unique style based on the new-tonal sound and music-garden form. In terms of tonality, he used it early, departed from it, and returned to it. On the other hand, some aspects of his compositional style did not change over time. These aspects constitute the core of Takemitsu's creativity. The most conspicuous achievement of his music is in the effective amalgamation of Western and Japanese musical traditions. His music is truly universal, reflecting the complexity of Eastern and Western music.

1 Toru Takemitsu, *Dream and Number* (Tokyo: Ribroport, 1987), 26-42, 74.

Nobuko Amemiya
completed her undergraduate and postgraduate study at the Toho School of Music, Tokyo, and is finishing her doctoral degree in piano performance at the University of Kansas under Sequeira Costa. She has also studied in France, Switzerland, and London with distinguished pianists such as France Clidat, Vlado Perlemuter, Amadeus Webersinke, Claude Frank, Abbey Simon, and Benjamin Kaplan. In 1987 Ms. Amemiya won the fifth prize at the international competition "Vittorio Gui," Florence, Italy, and performed at the exhibition concert. In 1990, she was a semi-finalist at the 39th International Music Compeition in Munich, Germany, and in 1993 took part in the Festival de Musica da Figueira da Foz Portugal, where she presented a recital. Since moving to the US in 1993, Ms. Amemiya has participated at the Aspen Music Festival and School as a scholarship student and studied with John Perry and Rita Sloan, where she won the second prize at the E. Nakamichi Piano Concerto Competition. Besides being very active as a performer in solo recitals and chamber music concerts, Ms. Amemiya engages in theoretical research on twentieth-century music, such as - "Olivier Messiaen: *Catalogue d'oiseaux*" - "Edgard Varese: His Prophecy between the Wars" - "Sound Structure in Takemitsu's *Rain Tree Sketch*." She has taught at the Toho School of Music, the Kirishima International Music Festival, and the University of Kansas.

Lecture: