Dreams, Gardens, Mirrors: Layers of Narrative in Takemitsu's Quotation of Dream

Abstract

Takemitsu's two-piano concertante work Quotation of Dream: Say Sea, Take Me! (1991) is typical of the composer's late works in its rarefied atmosphere and spacious, carefully balanced structure, both qualities which highlight the influence of Claude Debussy. Uniquely within his output, however, here Takemitsu makes this debt explicit: Quotation of Dream is interwoven with a series of direct quotations from Debussy's La Mer, which serve as crucial landmarks in its formal drama. Three metaphors taken from Takemitsu's writings serve to delimit a number of different layers at which we might perceive the work. We might hear it as a ‘dream’, perceptually immediate and built around bizarre free-associations; as a Japanese ‘stroll garden’, where elements recur in ways which seem free but are actually carefully balanced; or as a fractured ‘mirror’ (or even a hall of mirrors), integrating Western and Japanese elements into an ambiguous, unstable whole.

Keywords:

• Tōru Takemitsu
• Claude Debussy
• Temporality
• Metaphor
• Proportion
• Japanese Aesthetics

ORCID

Supriya Singh http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2026-2871

Notes

1 See Reynolds's (1987) article of the same title.

2 And Then I Knew ’Twas Wind (1992) is scored for flute, viola, and harp, reflecting the unusual instrumentation of Debussy's own late sonata, and near the end, the viola part incorporates a brief quotation from Debussy's composition—a reference which Takemitsu has to mark as such in the score, since otherwise it would be barely audible (Burt, 2001, p. 222). The main theme of How Slow the Wind (1991) seems like a homage to Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faun, given that it is centred on the same pitch, traverses a tritonal space in an equally sinuous, chromatic way, and is used similarly throughout the tone-poem as motivic stable point across constantly shifting harmonic contexts. Neither of these works approaches Quotation of Dream in the scope or clarity of their reference, however.

3 A brief explanation on bar numbering may be useful for anyone wishing to consult the score. Takemitsu provides no bar numbers, and the piano parts are briefly barred differently from one another during two of their solos, to signify a hemiola pattern between them; the numbering here always uses the ‘Solo Piano I’ part as its basis.

4 The high level of attention paid to structure in Japanese garden design is evident from even a cursory examination of its foundational text, the eleventh-century manual Sakuteiki, which is replete with detailed measurements for different situations, and dire warnings of the curses which are supposed to arise from structural errors. For example, the introduction to the section on ‘Taboos' states:

Regarding the placement of stones there are many taboos. If so much as one of these taboos is violated, the master of the household will fall ill and eventually die, and his land will fall into desolation and become the abode of devils. (Takei & Keane, 2001, p. 188)

5 The reference recording was taken from the CD Quotation of Dream, with the London Sinfonietta conducted by Oliver Knussen (Deutsche Grammophon: DG 453 495-2).

6 Disregarding additional silence at the end of the recording, GS− falls at 6′9″; the overt presentation of the ‘SEA motif’ in section VI runs from 6′7 ″ to 6′13″. GS+ falls at 9′58″, and the climactic ‘SEA motif’ gesture in section VIII falls from 9′48″ to 9′58″. The midpoint falls at 8′4″, and the central Debussy quotation begins at 8′16″.

7 For a discussion of similar proportional relationships in How Slow the Wind, and their implications for formal coherence, see Hutchinson, 2012, pp. 213–218.

8 For a detailed discussion of the issues that arise in considering Takemitsu's ‘Japaneseness’, see Burt, 2010.