Toward the Sea III

Toru Takemitsu was born and raised in Japan. Idioms of traditional Japanese music have never left Takemitsu’s own creations, though he has consciously sought to combine sounds of the Far East with avant-garde techniques borrowed from Western Europe. For Takemitsu the latter means a particularly close study of Debussy, Messiaen, and Webern. His music melds an interest in timbre and detail with an uncanny grasp of acoustical space, resonance, and a belief in evolving sound events. It is elegant and yet broadly compassed.
Tonight we hear a composition for two relatively understated (dynamically, that is) instruments: Toward the Sea III for flute and harp. The piece was originally written for flute and guitar, and the composer subsequently made new versions for different ensembles.
Takemitsu transcends the conventional oppositions of consonance and dissonance to embrace a continuous exploration of tones. There is much in Toward the Sea that will sound dissonant to our ears; and the analyst might point out that tritones and augmented sonorities are the backbone of Takemitsu’s language. If we still do occasionally hear tonal triads, they are set against motives primarily built around chromatic, whole-tone, and octatonic passages—in short, we hear something familiar and orienting set off against musical scales that lack a governing center. The larger effect is to create a feeling of spontaneity and a primitive (even primeval) soundscape, made yet more uncanny by the distinctive timbres of the flute and harp. You will certainly detect the influence of Debussy in this composition, while the saturation of chromatic pitches may call to mind Schoenberg and his students.
The challenge, perhaps, lies in discovering the connection Takemitsu had in mind as he named the three movements: “The Night,” “Moby Dick,” and “Cape Cod.” His direct motivation was certainly Melville’s novel: “Let the most absentminded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries … and he will infallibly lead you to water ... Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded together.”

(c) Jason Stell