Toru Takemitsu
In an Autumn Garden
JVC (Japan) 1980
SJX-9548 (LP) w/insert.
sleeve : EX-(WD: light stain on one corner, light wear on corner, slightly color-faded.)
media : EX+/EX+(some slightly noises.)
Toru Takemitsu, a composer from Japan celebrated worldwide, went beyond the boundaries of contemporary music to experiment with various compositional approaches. Following his 1973 work In Autumn Garden, composed for Gagaku—one of Japan’s traditional forms of court music—he revisited the same theme with this 1979 piece, performed by the Tokyo Gakuso ensemble. Takemitsu himself noted in his commentary, "There is no medium as suitable as Gagaku to explore matters such as timbral color, closely integrated time—the issues of tempo, duration, and the spatial transformation of color." Indeed, without a conventional score or regularity like that of Western harmony, Gagaku advances solely on the performers’ breathing, giving the music a unique fluctuation and floating quality. This remarkable piece beautifully captures these nuances. Much like the soundtrack for The Tale of Genji, composed by Haruomi Hosono, it defies the definition of ambient music, having long transcended it to merge with the distinctiveness of ethnic and traditional music.