Tōru Takemitsu's A Bird came down the Walk for viola accompanied by piano: An Analysis

Abstract

In one of his last compositions, A Bird came down the Walk (1995), Tōru Takemitsu uses numbers to organize all parameters of the work and to create an association between the chords ju and gyo, as produced on the traditional Japanese wind instrument shō, and Messiaen's seven modes à transpositions limitées. With the help of the numbers three, seven, and nine, form and meter build a palindromic architecture around the middle measure of the piece (m. 30), where the piano plays in Messiaen's fourth mode. In Japanese, the words for "four" and "death" are associated because both are pronounced shi, and thus A Bird may contain a reference to the deaths in 1992 of Olivier Messiaen and John Cage.<br/> The rigidity of the numeric structure is softened by the application of Messiaen's valeur ajoutée on all levels. Added values are essential in Takemitsu's technique for designing chords, melodies, and rhythms, breaking up the rigorous symmetry of the serial technique. The omnipresent Japanese philosophical concept ma refers to the unity of space and time (harmony and rhythm) that obtains meaning when filled with motion (tempo). The tempo indications in A Bird appear to create unity among all the parameters in a truly Western, mid-twentieth-century, and serialistic understanding of the term.