Toru Takemitsu
Toru Takemitsu
Toru Takemitsupronounced was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu possessed consummate skill in the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre. He is famed for combining elements of oriental and occident philosophy to create a sound uniquely his own, and for fusing opposites together such as sound with silence and tradition with innovation...
NationalityJapanese
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth8 October 1930
CountryJapan
My music has no significant rhythmic construction, but when I write music, I am always very concerned about the concept of time.
The art music of the West has developed through out its history by means of individual geniuses, and out of the soil supporting them; non-Western musicians were born, and grew like the grasses of the field.
I probably belong to a type of composer of songs who keeps thinking about melody... I am old fashioned.
Composition gives proper meaning to the natural streams of sound that penetrate the world.
Music should be able to invoke the natural emotions in all human beings. Music is not notes fixed on apiece of paper.
I always want to write erotic music... Not only about the love between men and women, but in a much more universal sense - about the sensuality of the mechanism of the universe... about life.
Although I am basically self taught, I consider Debussy my teacher - the most important elements are colour, light and shadow.
I am a gardener of infinite time.
My teachers are Duke Ellington and nature.
Music is a form of prayer.