Tuesday Tones

Staying in Japan, and in fact sticking with the same composer as last week: we return to Toru Takemitsu, the great Japanese modernist whose music evokes meanderings through time, space, and geometry, as is noted by the title to this work. A Flock Descends Into a Pentagonal Garden is strangely evocative and meditative. Its title gives us a few specifics to focus upon, but not enough to really form a definitive image in our minds: a flock, yes, but of what? How large is this garden? What is growing there, or is it a garden of stones? The work invites us to make our own imaginations as to what exactly we are seeing, what we are hearing, and what we are experiencing. Is the flock gently descending, or it is somewhat forced because of wind? We don’t know. Takemitsu’s modernist mind gives us almost pure abstraction in a shifting world of tonal sound.