CDOTD 3/04/2023

 Toru Takemitsu: In an Autumn Garden (Victor)

Purchased at Jerry's Records Future Zone

Gagaku is a particular branch of traditional Japanese music. I've read that it's the oldest form of extant orchestral music in the world. I was introduced to gagaku when a series of traditional Japanese CDs came to WRCT one summer. I can't name the label or series, but I'd know it if I saw it.

When I listened to the discs, I found myself entranced by the gagaku disc in particular. There's a dreaminess to these western ears, in spite of the sometimes strident quality of some of the instruments. Everything is played slowly, deliberately. There is the sound of the shō, the Japanese mouth organ, playing decidedly non-western cluster chord voicings that shift from time to time. That sound underpins everything. While I can't remember the names of all of the instruments, there are biwas (plectrum instruments, the Japanese equivalent of China's pipa), transverse flutes, double reeds, and various percussion. In listening to various gagaku recordings, I've found there are small variations in the sizes of these groups, but they are otherwise identical. Gagaku is influential enough that both Oliver Messiaen and Karlheinz Stockhausen have named pieces after the music, and have no doubt studied gagaku works. 

I don't know a lot about Takemitsu. (I mean, what am I expecting of myself? I don't need to be an expert on everything.) He's probably best known for his (symphonic) orchestral music, he's also composed film soundtracks and even done some electroacoustic recordings.

This work, in six movements, was a commission dating to 1973 for gagaku ensemble. How do you compose for such an ensemble? Traditionally, they're not reading scores. I don't know if this ensemble required players who could read western notation on their instruments, or if Takemitsu worked in a more idiomatic Japanese notation. The work is through-composed though, there's little question. The opening and closing movements, "Strophe" and "Antistrophe" suggest western classical methods, the piece itself can't help but sound Japanese. Takemitsu in general clears away the sound though, the element of silence is far more prominent that any traditional gagaku recording I know. The result is something that unquestionably sounds Japanese without mimicking the methods of traditional Japanese practices.

This was a nice find, especially for $3. I see on discogs.com that this was only released in Japan, in its various issues. How did this copy find its way to the US, to Pittsburgh, to the used classical bins at Jerry's Records new CD room?