#november steps

[shihlun]

Shinji Aoyama

- WiLd LIFe

1997

[shihlun]

Press conference before the premiere of November Steps, 1967.

From left to right: Seiji Ozawa, Toru Takemitsu, Kinshi Tsuruta, and Katsuya Yokoyama

[animus-inviolabilis]

Toru Takemitsu, Seiji Ozawa, Kinshi Tsuruta and Katsuya Yokoyama during the recording sessions of the recording of “Turangalîla Symphony / November Steps" LP Toronto

1967

[chilameston]

This piece, Eclipse for Shakuhachi and Biwa.  A piece I admire greatly.  Takemitsu, after being exposed to John Cage, began to appreciate traditional Japanese music, something he had grown to feel uneasy about after the war.  And in an attempt to use the instruments that delivered the timbre of the style, he composed this piece in an attempt to find a way to notate it.  I would love deeply to have my hands on a copy of this score.  It's $45~ online.  I may purchase it.  I don't know.  But the amorphous form of this piece, and the percussive nature of the biwa with cool waves of air from the shakuhachi blowing over it.  It reminds me a lot of the sea. The cliff side rocks.  The shakuhachi's flowing as the wind or the water, and biwa the stones that they crash upon.  I can't imagine that this is what Takemitsu was shooting for upon composing this piece, but it speaks to me in that way.  Such an extraordinary human, Takemitsu.