Singing Trees: A Requiem for Toru Takemitsu
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Artist:
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Album:Little Tokyo Singers
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Track:Singing Trees: Requiem for Toru Takemitsu
Hello friends, it's been a very long time. I've looked at so many of your posts, but have not had the time to properly thank you for them or post my own until today. Actually, I don't even have time today, but I just couldn't help myself. Musikfriend posted a famous Japanese tune, Sakura, performed by Lionel Hampton and his posse. This triggered too many feelings for me to stay mute today. Sakura literally means cherry blossom, but symbolically it means so much more. It represents the bittersweetness of life and death. Cherry blossom trees bloom ever so beautifully, but their time is so short. Sakura is their national tribute to this appreciation for ephemeral things, a concept called mono no aware which is based in Buddhist traditions.
This tune, even a hopping and lively interpretation by Lionel Hampton, always puts me in the most melancholy of moods. And today it's raining. And later today it will snow. And so, the weight of nature's little yearly death is upon me. This brings me to a piece I just have to share with you.
This is a piece by Toshio Hosokawa, a Japanese composer of "art music", written in memory of a great composer, Toru Takemitsu. You may think you don't know Toru Takemitsu, but if you have ever seen Japanese films (such as Ran, Kwaidan, and many others), you most likely have heard his brilliant film scores. He was a composer of both art music, film music (99 films to be exact), a philosopher, and a writer of wonderful essays about music, art, nature and beyond. His is a life worth celebrating. I'll talk about him again some day, but just listen to this wonderful piece today. This is performed by the The Little Tokyo Singers, an a capella children's chorus. Their unearthly whispers and whistles sound as if they are whipping through the trees, which make their eventual singing voices all the more ethereal and sublime when they enter in their eerie ways. (I recommend headphones for this one.)
I hope you love it: Singing Trees: A Requiem for Toru Takemitsu.
Comments (23)
Long time no see, Ms.COB. ephemeral track indeed...spooky and beautiful
Here's the code (from Bartleby) for posting in a comment
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UL the track, take the letters and numbers + .mp3 part, not the ~ and paste where bartleby sez..then put < at the beginning and > at the end.
Good to see you.
Thanks a million Cody! I'll use these steps next time.
It's really nice to be back. Glad you liked the piece. It's not quite the funky stuff that's near and dear to your heart, but it does make you think, no?
I may be mostly funk on zee MOG, but I get around..genre wise that is. In matters outside music, I'm mostly strictly monogamous. Hope you are back for real.
so glad to see you back. I have spent a lot of time with trees, mostly to try and draw and paint them and the feelings I get being with them. I love this.Heres a painting I did that I called Dancing Trees
cpetersonart3: Wow, this is wonderful! I'm so glad this made you remember your painting. Takemitsu has a piece called Treeline that I think you would like very much. I'll try to post it soon. I'll have to dig it up first. I just moved and everything is in a box somewhere. Anyone who incorporates nature and art would love Takemitsu's music and writing. This piece my Hosokawa is such a perfect tribute to him. Thanks so much for sharing your painting with me. Really glad you liked the post.
Cory B: I'll be back as much as I can. School keeps me super busy. Glad to hear you get around in all the right and none of the wrong ways.
CeeOhBee, your description of the piece is quite eloquent and accurate. The music has a different kind of strong beauty from any other music that I've ever heard, or at least that I've noticed that I was hearing at the time, because this piece must be in the style of Toru Takemitsu, a few of whose 99 films I've probably seen and gotten too caught up in to notice the music. Now I vow to re-view and re-hear Kwaidan, at least. That children's chorus sang a difficult score pretty darn well!
I hope that the exciting and important things in life, that pull you (as they pull all of us) away from MOG, will occasionally relent and allow these interchanges.
Before I say anything about the music, I'd like to second my distinguished fellow Mogger, Spike. I too hope we will hear/read more from you.
Regarding the music, it has a primeval quality which kind of reminds me of some proto-Gregorian music. Your description of "whipping through the trees" is not potent but conjures up so many sylvan creatures that I don't know where to begin. Except perhaps by saying thank you for this aural hanami.
I knew there was a reason I missed this place. Thanks people. I'm as back as I can be. More sweet Japanese action coming soon to a post near you!
Oh gosh, I just found the score to this piece at the bottom of a box! If only I'd had this this morning when I put up the post.
Here are the lyrics:
Behind your closed eyes
there runs
a river of sound
that you are dreaming
as you listen
forever
to the wind
to the rain
to the light of the sun
to the sound of the trees
singing. ––Singing Trees.
Requiem aeternam
dona eis Domine
et lux perpetua
luceat eis Domine.
CeeOhBee,
Welcome back! The piece by Hosokawa (Singing Trees: A Requiem for Toru Takemitsu) reminds me oa similar work by Ligeti which was used in "2001: A Space Odyssey." Except that this work is much better, more inventive and very atmospheric. One can hear the wind blowing through the trees and rustling the leaves and/or petals. The varying uses of imitations is uncanny. If anything this work reminds me of Toru Takemitsu's compositions. I remember one was a dialogue between piano and orchestra which Peter Serkin performed with the New York Philharmonic led by Pierre Boules. This is something of a revelation. Thank you very, very much for the posting! It made a special impact today!
Yours truly,
musikfriend
That scene in "Ran" that surveys the post-battle carnage in a slow pan over that aching Takemitsu string arrangement is, I think ,one of the best pairings of images and music in the history of the movies. This Hosokawa is so delicate and mournful and has such a physical presence. It's the sound of a perfectly clear, windswept winter night...
Hi musikfriend! I love Ligeti and Takemitsu for very different reasons. Both are so important! Hosokawa is hailed as the man who took over for Takemitsu after his death. This piece is definitely an homage to Toru Takemitu's. Hosokawa's music can also be very different from this. He did a fantastic job of blending East-West and his work with Takemitsu's. As for Ligeti, several pieces were used in 2001, namely Lontano. That work is incredible, but much harder to digest that this sweet confection from Hosokawa.
ivylander: That scene in Ran is spectacular. I know exactly which one you mean. the music ends with a gun shot. That was Takemitsu's idea. He was restrained by Kurosawa's direction and though he's very subtle about his disagreements with him, (Takemitsu did not want to use Mahleresque music for this score!) he did feel victorious about winning his battle about that scene by ending this lush music with the triggered gun shot and stylized battle sounds, screams, etc. It really is a spectacular scene and probably one of film's best narrative and musical compromises. I adore that film.
thanks for listening, both of you!
Bah, what do you know about Japanese music? :>)
Carolyn your a sight for sore eyes. I missed you kid.
You in Chicago still? If you are I imagine it's getting mighty cold.
So great to see you back with another excelent sonic exploration. It's going to make me rewatch Kurosawa with a new pair of ears. Hope you don't disappear for as long this time.
O the tyranny of my finders!!! I forgot the word crucial word in comments which have read: "Your description of "whipping through the trees" is not only potent but conjures up so many sylvan creatures that I don't know where to begin."
Thanks for the words
As we speak I am here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnWAq_O5QTI&feature=related
in Dersu Uzala.
I love Kurosawa. I cannot tell you how much.
My god, what a fantastic story that is! Have you read the book, the true story by V.K. Arseniev? It's an out of print book, I believe, but so worth the time. The movie is truly brilliant too, and true to the story.
No, I haven't but I know about it. In fact, the book I'm reading now, The Shaman's Coat, by Anna Reid mentions it. It's a historical journey through Central Asia.
Also, love Farley Mowat.
I'll have to look up Farley Mowat. Never heard that name. Please tell me more!
I can't say how haunting and beautiful this is. I am amazed at the voices, if they are children. Not to mention the skill. I always liked Takemitsu when I used to wallow in the classics. (music of the cultured tradition). I loved Green for String Orchestra and played it on my little radio program.
Mrs. Spike 1 and I recently watched Ran and I was swept up in the music and the action together. In that post-battle scene, we both felt shot through the heart by that gunshot. It all fell into place when I saw Takemitsu in the credits. Made me want to go back and watch it again.
I think that Ligeti has a rather hard edge by comparison to this. Erie and awsome, but without the personal emotional impact of THIS work. I think Ligeti intentionally tuned the intervals to harmonic frequencies that would destroy the recognizable sound of the voices as human utterances.
If you like Takemitsu's style, then watch Kwaidan next. That's a great film score. So is Rikyu. Brilliant music. Takemitsu scored 98 films. He's better away from Kurosawa's iron grip on Westernism and Mahler wanna be film scores.
As for Ligeti, you haven't heard enough. (If the channel via Kubrick is your only introduction, that is.) He has a wonderful sense of humor. He's not just about bitterness and composing out of a closed drawer in occupied Hungary. I'll post something very different and very funny if you'd like. Just ask.
Thanks. I'd like that. I know you are fond of Ligeti. I'm surprised at how little I apparently know, or knew, of Ligeti. I used to like Les Aventures - Nouvelles Aventures. (on a candide/vox release with Volumina and Etude No. 1) I don't recall what it sounded like. I found the album! Dr. William Ober's liner notes describes the vocal text as "a model of incoherence and disjunctivity, consisting of ohs, ha-ha-has, oh-oho-ohos, moans, groand, sibilants, and crepitations." (Boy, I haven't heard that word in years!) "[T]he baritone's skill in clearing his nether throat is indispensible to the sense of irrelevance and triviality which is modestly asserted by the instrumental accompaniment." That does sound rather humorous. Bring it on.
Cool. Count on another post very soon, then. I love that piece. Ligeti notates it with the international phonetic alphabet. It's really cool to see. More soon!