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Toru Takemitsu (武満徹,
October 8,
1930 -
February 20,
1996) was a
Japanese
composer of
music in the western
classical music tradition.
Born in
Tokyo, Takemitsu first became interested in western classical music
around the time of
World War II. He heard western music on American military radio while
he recuperated in bed from a long illness.
Takemitsu was largely self-taught in music. He was greatly influenced
by the music of
Claude Debussy. In 1951 he founded the Jikken Kobo, a group
which introduced many contemporary western composers to Japanese
audiences.
Takemitsu was at first uninterested 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
concerto for shakuhachi and
biwa (a kind of Japanese
lute) 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).
Takemitsu first came to wide attention when his Requiem for
string orchestra (1957) was heard and praised by
Igor Stravinsky in 1959. Stravinsky went on to champion Takemitsu's
work.
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). He also composed
electronic music and almost a hundred
film scores for Japanese films including those for
Hiroshi Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes (1964),
Akira Kurosawa's
Ran (1985) and
Shohei Imamura's Black Rain (1989).
Takemitsu died in
Tokyo on
February 20,
1996.
He was posthumously awarded the fourth
Glenn Gould Prize in Autumn,
1996.
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