Ran Soundtrack

- My first encounter with Toru Takemitsu's music (I only knew his name many years later) was the soundtrack to Akira Kurosawa's film Ran, in my opinion one of the best soundtracks of all time. It was made from Kurosawa's wish to have a Gustav Mahler soundtrack, but not with the music of Gustav Mahler, as it would give the wrong association. So Takemitsu wrote with a few bars from Mahlers Lied von der Erde some haunting, sublime pieces often combining the Mahler'ish romanticism with Japanese percussion and the Shakihachi flute. Incredible music.

Listen to Soundtrack from Ran on Youtube (15 minutes, but incomplete)

Requiem for Strings

Image by Marc Riboud, China, palace during winter, 1957

Later (That was when i noticed that he had a name too) I heard Takemitsu's Requiem from 1957, an elegiac piece in three movements for strings in a late romantic European style. The opening chords again makes me think of Gustav Mahlers music, especially the famous Adagietto from his 5th symphony (used as film music in Visconti's Death in Venice), but it soon moves into wider territory. There is something really saddening about the music, and the title of course points in the direction of death (as a requiem is a death-mass).

I do not doubt that Takemitsu was influenced by the horrible experience of the Second World War, and in this he can in many ways be compared to European composer like Stockhausen, Boulez or Ligeti. But as his European colleagues moved away from the western classical music in horror of the atrocities that had been committed in the name of western civilisation, Tokemitsu moved towards it and away from his own Japanese culture that had been equally tainted by fascism, in a complete mirroring of the western composers. Something I find very interesting and at least a very important key to understanding Takemitsus music.

Listen to Requiem for Strings on Youtube

From me flows what you call time

And then I will add that the reason for this entry was that I this morning listened to the beautiful piece, From me flows what you call time. It is a piece with an Europeans style orchestra and a five man rhythm-section in which most notably the steel-drum appears. It is in the style you could call avant-garde or new music and could definitely be a bit of a challenge to some, but you should check it out none the less. It is written by Takemisu in 1990.

Hope you will enjoy the music.