The compositional Style of Toru Takemitsu : The Sound Gesture and its Musical Context

Research Project

Project/Area Number	09610053
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	美学(含芸術諸学)
Research Institution	Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music
Principal Investigator	NARAZAKI Yoko Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music, Department of Music, Associate Professor, 音楽学部, 助教授 (50254264)
Project Period (FY)	1997 – 1998
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 1998)
Budget Amount *help	¥1,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,200,000) Fiscal Year 1998: ¥500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000) Fiscal Year 1997: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
Keywords	sound gesture / musical context
Research Abstract	In this study intending the compositional style of Toru Takemitsu (1930 - 1996) I considered the way that his sound gesture should lead the context of the whole work. I, first, extracted the melodic movements as the constructive unit from his instrumental-orchestral works as well as pop song and film music. Then I pointed out the meandering or wavelike melodic movements at the interval of major or minor second as the sound gesture common to them, while pointing dut that disjunct motion would be in the continuity of it. It is recognized that the succession of notes not fixing the focus would be strengthened by repeating the melodic movement with the changed timbre or by grafting other tonal melodic movement rather than translating it, getting to the context. It seemed that the sound gesture above mentioned, which is compatible with Takemitsu's pop song, is derived from his consciousness of the way he speaks language. In this study it could be indicated definitely what is the characteristic of Takemitsu's music language as well as where is its source through his instrumental-orchestral and the other genre works by analysing them.