Toru Takemitsu

I've had a tough grapple with atonal music. Not the dissonance … no that exotic touch tickled my fancy long ago; it's the stagnation, the desperately boring lack of progress I associated with atonality. The music scorned me with its intense intellectual quality – “you're just not smart enough to understand this music.” But what enjoyment could I glean from a composer's circle jerk? Like baroque, these compositions felt like a computer could generate them: algorithms of harmony without any touch of emotion.

And for all the chills and shivers coursing through my body from the dissonance, I never felt any sense of fear. WHY!!!? Why would these composers disregard the most poignant aspect of their music?

But then comes Toru Takemitsu, and my new love for horror music. I'm serious about this … treat it like a horror film. Sit in a dark room, turn up the volume, and enjoy the fright. The western orchestration churns out a fair few petrifying moments, but that's just the shrapnel from the Shakuhachi and Biwa duel. In awe I hear Takemitsu employ the entirety of the Shakuhachi's timbrel might – and yes all of those strange air sounds come from this one instrument.

November Steps