Confronting Silence: Selected Writings (Fallen Leaf Monographs on Contemporary Composers)

In these writings, available here in English for the first time, the distinguished Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu reflects on his contemporaries, including John Cage, Olivier Messiaen, and Merce Cunningham; on nature, which has profoundly influenced his composition; on film and painting; on relationships between East and West; on traditional Japanese music; and on his own compositions.

Jack Langdon said Excellent!. I was very pleased by the condition of this terrific book on Japan's most prominent composer of contemporary classical music.. scarecrow said Deeply profound,almost haiku-like in brevity,gentleness. "But I think of time as circular and continuity as a constant changing state." So said Toru Takemitsu in this modest yet profoundly readable book. He has been writing on his music, all of it where his creativity has touched all genres including a sizable repertoire in film, since 1960s. This work here is haiku-like excerpts, But for Takemitsu that's all we really need for he ascends right to the center of where creativity o. A couple of possibly useful essays, a whole lot of filler Christopher Culver CONFRONTING SILENCE is a slim (143-page plus index) collection of writings by the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu published in 1995, a year before his untimely death. Translated and edited by Yoshiko Kakudo and Glenn Glasgow, the contents come from varied sources, some magazine or newspaper articles, others lectures to university crowds. The advertised foreward by Seiji Ozawa is a single paragraph saying basically "I am ha

The translation preserves the color and elegance of his prose." (American Music Teacher) . "This fine bookis an excellent introduction to the original and provacative thinking of one of today's most important composers