Rocking Mirror Daybreak for violin duo
by Toru Takemitsu

Composed in 1983, Toru Takemitsu’s Rocking Mirror Daybreak for violin duo was dedicated to Ani and Ida Kavafian, who gave the premier in Carnegie Hall on November 17 that same year.

The piece is based on the linked verse “Rocking Mirror Daybreak” by Makoto Ōoka and Thomas Fitzsimmons, and each movement title is taken from verses written by Ōoka and Fitzsimmons. The piece employs moments of silence that exist in the composition as an important counterpart to sound, demonstrating the Japanese idea of ma. Takemitsu defines ma as the fact that “sound and silence are equal,” while Japanese culture uses ma to describe both physical and temporal space. To Takemitsu, “Ma is the mother of sound…Ma is living space more than actual space.”

Autumn

Throughout the first movement, Autumn, the two violins paradoxically move together while bumping into each other with competing rhythms, mirroring the movements of falling leaves in autumn. These sounds imitate images found in Fitzsimmons’ poem by the same name: “Trees strip to bone leaving color to the wind,” and “bare bones against heaven’s robe.” Autumn employs characteristic Takemitsu sounds, such as frequent timbral changes and motives with large leaps in range which often die away quickly. This leaves emptiness (or ma) between the end of one motive and the beginning of the next.

Passing Bird and In the Shadow

In Passing Bird, Takemitsu extensively employs ma to create the image of the various birds present in Ōoka’s verse “Passing Bird.” Within the movement, Takemitsu juxtaposes sound with silence, using both with equal strength. During moments of sound, the two violins twist around each other, creating the images of “a great white bird” ascending, the “feathers of a lake bird,” and at times, “Rain [pouring] down from dark night sky.” The third movement, In the Shadow, briefly sees the violins taking on more expected roles of first violin as melody and second violin in a supporting role. In In the Shadow, Takemitsu continues to create sounds that mirror the verse that the movement is based on. Ma (silence) is not as present in this movement; instead, the two violins gently push and pull against each other with near constant movement (“Tension lying between opposite stars keeps this tree always dancing”).

Rocking Mirror

Rocking Mirror contains compositional mirrors, especially in the structure of the piece: the A section returns at the end exactly as it initially appears. Even within this section, the two violin parts reflect each other in canon. The B section contains a mirror, but it is altered, much like Fitzsimmon’s poem speaks of (“I see my face As in the sea long years ago, Rocking among the bodies of friends…”). Within this section, the two violins ripple against each other like waves, causing a “rocking” mirror effect.

Autumn

Trees strip to bone
leaving color to the wind;
bare bones against heaven’s robe
calling down the deep long
white long songs,
the snows.

The silence.

Fitzsimmons

Passing Bird

Up from the body of 
young Prince Yamato Takeru
dying
in the great Nobono wilderness,
a great white bird ascends,
and Princesses,
weeping, chanting,
struggle day after day
through mud-thick fields
to follow the great bird;

higher and higher the white 
bird flies, returning
to heaven; 
further and further
the Princesses wander,
returning to dust. 

Often in legend dead 
heroes become white birds. 

October first: before dawn
I lose my father.
From beside
Lake Commerce, Michigan,
following migrating birds,
I have come to his Tokyo hospital,
only to find him to coma;
six hours later he sighs, 
slips away to another world.

Rain pours down from dark
night sky; no bird flies. 

And no one knows whether my
father became a white bird, 
but I know he returned
to the twilight he witnessed
and made into poetry at 25:

"Evening glow lights now only
the back of a white waterbird;
as lake slips into darkness, light
lingers as delicately as it can."

The glare of lights he had
known all his life all finally
disappeared, but the delicate band
burnishing the feathers of a lake
bird remained in his poet's mind
as a beacon, a distant 

galactic stream . . .

Ōoka

In the Shadows

"Tension lying between opposite stars
keeps this tree always dancing," says
a woman come from far beyond
Chrysanthemums and November fog.

As if sprung from the sea, now and then
a tree, pregnant with dew, trunk drenched
in dew, swing up its roots, shakes down
multi-colored eggs of birds; but the new dawn
always comes. 

That tree must have grown by a creek
in my homeland Pluto: I feel the pulse-
enigma of that planet forcing me to be
its destined opposite. 

Before us, that woman and I,
dancing slowly still:

the tree. 

Ōoka

Rocking Mirror

In the water of this high lake
I see my face
as in the sea long years ago
rocking among the bodies
of friends, bits and pieces
of bodies of friends, not
friends, who knows, how know
which hand is a friend’s when
no arm, shoulder, neck, face
completes the hand? how
know how to look so’s not to
bleed into your own brain, scream
the salt, gag the wind, the blood
that streaks your hands the boat
the sea your eyes? how forget
the one face, yours, rocking
on the fire, bobbing in a mirror
of human garbage? flame and oil
face streaked
with memories now held cold
in clear blue water.

Fitzsimmons

About Toru Takemitsu

A self-taught Japanese composer, Toru Takemitsu (1931-1996) combined elements of Eastern and Western music and philosophy to create his unique sound world. Takemitsu believed in music as a means of ordering or contextualizing everyday sound in order to make it meaningful or comprehensible. His philosophy of “sound as life” lay behind his incorporation of natural sounds, as well as his desire to juxtapose and reconcile opposing elements such as Orient and Occident, sound and silence, tradition and innovation. The variety, quantity and consistency of Takemitsu’s output are remarkable considering that he never worked within any kind of conventional framework or genre. In addition to the several hundred independent works of music, he scored over ninety films and published twenty books. It was Stravinsky’s acclaim of the Requiem for strings in 1959 that launched Takemitsu’s international career. The next few years produced a wide variety of works including Takemitsu’s prolific film work, and numerous new music concerts and festivals that culminated in 1967 with a commission for the 125th anniversary of the New York Philharmonic. Takemitsu’s international fame skyrocketed after this premiere, flooding him with commissions and honors that established him as one of the most influential Japanese composers of the century.

All images created by and used with permission by Sarah Wilson.
Thomas Fitzsimmons’ “Autumn” and “Rocking Mirror” posted with permission by Karen Hargreaves-Fitzsimmons.
Makoto Ōoka “Passing Bird” and “In the Shadows” published with permission by the Japan Writer’s Association.