MiYoTa by Takemitsu

Nagano prefecture is located in the center of the main land of our country. It is a mountenous area. Route 18 runs north west from Karuisawa, a famous resort, to Ueda. It is located in the skirt of a volcano Asama mountain to the north with a big river named Chikuma river flowing on the opposite side. Driving that route, we could enjoy grand view of the big valley along that river. 

I have enjoyed driving that route for many times. Twice with my wife and once with my mother. Most often alone. When I quit working at a med school hospital, I had had a month long break until I started working at another hospital. During that period, I have visited there 2 or 3 times by myself. It was in late 80's.

It was not too long ago when I knew Toru Takemitsu had spent summer at a cottage in Miyota town those days. I was always conscious of the town with peculiar name when I went through there. It was a small town next to Karuisawa. It is the place where he has produced a lot of masterpieces. It reminds me that he has been a contemporary composer to me.

In 1996, when he passed away, another renowned composer Toshiro Mayuzumi made a speech. Takemitsu used to be an assistant to him in his young days. Composing music for a movie together, Takemitsu hummed a tune before him, which Mayuzumi, a supervisor for him at that time, thought too beautiful to make use for the movie. At the funeral, Mayuzumi has introduced it humming before the attendees and told it was the saddest tune he had ever known. A close friend of Takemitsu's, a poet Shuntaroh Tanikawa, has written lyrics to it. The title is MI・YO・TA. Of course, after the name of the town he used to stay every summer. The lyric refers to recollection of an important person, possibly of a girl friend in young days. No, the objective was Takemitsu himself. The sunray filtering through the trees is a key figurative word in it. Takemitsu used to walk around the forrest there, as he said, trying to listen how the nature sounded. Tanikawa must have known of his creativity in the forrest.

This is  MI・YO・TA, a chorus version. There are a lot of different versions. I am not capable of translating the lyrics by myself. As Mayuzumi told at the funeral ceremony for Takemitsu, the tune sounds sad but, at the same time, peacful at least to me. This double meaning won't bring us down but lift our minds up to higher place, I believe. It is always a characteristic for Takemitsu's works.

 

Writing this post, I have investigated on his life again. I knew he had lived with serious illnesses throughout his life. In his young days, he has had tuberculosis which urged him to be hospitalized for a few times. Later, he has suffered from collagen disease. Complicating cancer has made him deceased at pretty young age. As I wrote, he had lived life in close relation with death, as we say, lived life side by side with death. That should be the reason why his music sounds that way, dual meaining apparently in contradiction. 

It is the 27th anniversary of his passing today.