Exploring Music Cognition and Perception in Tōru Takemitsu’s November Steps

          “Expression in art is discovery of something new in this world” (Takemitsu, 1995, p. 3). One of the discoveries in the art that Takemitsu brought into my life has a huge impact on my musical expression both as a Japanese and a musician who seeks excellence in Western classical music. My experience with his music is distinct from Western classical music. It provides an unconventional way of listening to music in Takemitsu’s work in a way that I seem to abandon some of the basic elements of music cognition in Western music, such as tonality, rhythm, harmony, and form. Not only he uses some of the familiar Japanese traditional instruments from my childhood, but also his musical expression speaks to the dualism that I experience in my everyday life between East and West. Part of the challenges to the complexity of Takemitsu’s music is the fact that he is not merely combining Japanese traditional instruments or folk music with Western classical elements that we see in major composers in the 17th century through the 19th century. His music goes beyond this dualism to discover “something new in this world” by exploring Japanese aesthetics, the nature of sound and silence, Western post-tonal music, and experiments in musical contradiction.

          After Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa brought a tape of Eclipse (1966) written for two Japanese traditional instruments, shakuhachi and biwa by Tōru Takemitsu to his mentor Leonard Bernstein, who was a music director of the New York Philharmonic at that time, Bernstein became interested in combining Japanese traditional instruments with the Western orchestra (Takemitsu, 1995). In 1967, the New York Philharmonic commissioned Tōru Takemitsu to write the piece for its 125th anniversary, and November Steps was premiered in November 1967 under the direction of Seiji Ozawa. Initially, there was little respect from the members of the Philharmonic to the composition and two masters, who came from Japan for the premiere. In fact, since the instruments of shakuhachi and biwa were not well-known in the U.S. at that time, some members from the Philharmonic suggested that any American musicians can substitute with their flute and harp so they can save the coast and satisfy the union regulations (Blasdel, 2000). However, since its premiere in 1967, November Steps has been performed throughout the world, and the instruments of shakuhachi and biwa became widely known among musicians today.

          In recent years, the interest in non-Western music has been growing as diversity and equality are playing an important role in society. However, a large portion of research in music cognition is still dominated by Western classical music, and cross-cultural music cognition and perception are yet to be explored further. As Brandt et al. (2020) made an argument that “music cognition is not innate, but rather shaped both by cultural entrainment and individual differences in the functional connectivity of baseline auditory processing” (p. 9), it has been acknowledged some of the fundamental differences in how individuals from different cultures perceive their familiar music and unfamiliar music. In this paper, I would like to explore emotional connotation in November Steps in which the piece presents a fusion of Western music or musical ideas and Japanese instruments and expression through both Western music analytical lens and Japanese musical analytical lens. Three major elements of the analysis consist of the form and rhythm, the fusion of two distinct timbres, and pitch collections and harmony.

·      Form and rhythm

          The title of the piece, November Steps has little to do with autumn or the composer’s programmatic expression of autumn. The title comes from a Japanese word, danmono, which is the term frequently used for koto music to describe a specific genre or style, or for Noh theater, it refers to the scene changes or scene division. In the Western music term, danmono is often referred to as theme and variation although Takemitsu did not intend to compose the piece based on Western formal structure (Nakatani, 2005). The Japanese word dan is translated as step, and the work consists of eleven steps as the premiere was in November. While Takemitsu notated eleven dan in the score, Llorente argues that the piece is essentially structured as comparative variations, eight pairs of each step, in which the beginning of all the eleven steps is assigned both to the Western instruments (orchestra only) and Japanese instruments. In a global structure of the piece, November Steps is organized in a large A-B-A’ form, A as tutti section and B as solo (cadenza) section (Llorente, 13). As Takemitsu noted “eleven steps without any special melodic scheme ... constantly swaying impulses, like those in Noh drama" (Takemitsu, 1995, p. 88), the entire structure of the piece is driven by the motivic elements having contrasts between A section and B section, rather than melodic “themes.”

          One of the key elements to our emotional connotation is the use of ma in November Steps. The literal translation of ma is the perception of space, gap, or interval. However, ma in music has such diverse meanings as rest, pulse, tempo, sense of rhythm, and timing. The general agreement of its definition is some forms of sensitivity in the pause or attentiveness to the space that is integrated into Japanese culture and art (Nakamura, 2002). Example 1 shows two excerpts of a solo duet between shakuhachi and biwa (dan 1 and dan 6). Although Takemitsu seems to trust two masters and allow them to create ma with their own perception and sense of ma in these sections, there are some implications of the silence through the dashes and the rest with a fermata. As Takemitsu pointed out that within Western musical notation, the silences (rests) tend to be placed with statistical considerations. However, these passages with Japanese instruments are composed without strong consideration in the Western sense of musical pulse. Pulsations are perceived as a beat that is the analog of the tactus of Western music (Stevens, 2012). However, in West African music, the main beat and its metric grouping are encoded in “suggestion and complexity” (Iyer, 1998). Soley and Hannon (2010) demonstrated the comparison of preferences for musical meters between American infants and Turkish infants. American infants preferred Western over Balkan meter while Turkish infants familiar with Western and Balkan meter showed no preference. Therefore, Japanese “ma” and traditional music from the other cultures indicate that periodicity is not necessary for music production or perception (Huron, 2006)

·      Timbre

          As Takemitsu remarked in his essay, “Sound in Western music progresses horizontally. But the sound of the shakuhachi rises vertically, like a tree” (Takemitsu, 1995, p. 87), Eastern instruments are considered as foreign to Western instruments. One of the most remarkable achievements Takemitsu made in November Steps is the fusion between Japanese traditional instruments, shakuhachi and biwa, and the Western orchestra for the first time in classical music history. It is fair to say that Takemitsu creates a unique timbre and a new sound world through this fusion that would yield the specific emotional connotation. Example 2 shows the first entrance of shakuhachi in dan 1. Takemitsu creates a careful transition to the introduction of the two instruments. Prior to the entrance of shakuhachi, he neutralizes the cluster harmony that we hear throughout the beginning of the piece by the harps and the percussions. The perceivable pitches during these 4 measures are sustained D and E harmonics in basses (Nakatani, 2005). Then, shakuhachi enters with D sliding into E that leads to Takeyuri, a type of vibrato created by moving the shakuhachi towards the chin. Thus, it is clear that Takemitsu aimed for the seamless transition from the Western sound world to the East. In almost a call-and-response manner, biwa follows shakuhachi right after with percussive and deep sounds.

        Another important element of dualistic timbre is the role of the harps and the percussions. Nakatani claims that the harps and the percussions are a link between the two Japanese traditional instruments and the orchestra (2005). Not only the harp is considered one of the oldest Western instruments, but also its timbre and articulation could be associated with another Japanese traditional instrument, the koto. The percussions highlight the harps with percussive effect as well as a ringing quality of the gongs and the tam-tam. Two sections in the piece demonstrate the use of the harps and the percussions as a bridge. The first section is right before the first entrance of shakuhachi and biwa as described above. The second section (Example 3) is right after the lengthy cadenza by shakuhachi and biwa. Even though the timbre of the Western orchestral sound is far apart from the timbre of the two instruments, the common pitches, and the use of “bridge” instruments, one might perceive a single continuity of the entire piece.

          Takemitsu believed that the major difference between Japanese instruments and Western instruments is the treatment of “noise” in the sound (1995). The biwa, known as the mother of Japanese music, is constructed to create “beautiful noise.” The part of the neck of the biwa is called sawari where strings are stretched over a grooved ivory plate (Takemitsu, 1995). This creates “noise” like insects. Example 4 shows the notation figures of shakuhachi and biwa. Although the basis of the notation for the two instruments is in the Western staff, Takemitsu created these special notations which include the ways to create such “noise” One of the “noise” techniques in shakuhachi is called muraiki in which a player blows strong and uneven breath to create breathy sound. As Tamba (1976) writes, “In the instrumental techniques we find a marked preference for glissandi, an accelerating repetition of the same note, an undulation of the notes, noises such as that of breathings, strokes with the plectrum against the lateral holes or the sound-board, shouts, etc. All these procedures are, as we know, prohibited in Western music…” (p. 8), the idea of musical “noise” is completely foreign to Western classical music, and November Steps attempts to confront this contradiction of two worlds.

          Timbre is often considered as auditory attributes that carry musical qualities and contribute to sound source recognition and identification (McAdams, et al. 2019). One of the most effective timbral moments in the piece is dan 1 when we hear the sound of shakuhachi and biwa for the first time. It seems to be difficult to perceive the entrance of the two instruments as a fused or blended single auditory image as McAdams, et al. suggest at this moment. However, some cross-culture research points out that there is a cultural influence in perceiving culturally specific music or instruments. Morrison et al. conducted the study with US-born adults and fifth-grade students using Western and Turkish music (2008). Their finding is that participants were more successful in remembering culturally familiar music and sounds of instruments since certain cognitive boundaries are formed early in life. In other words, internalized cultural knowledge influences musical expectancies in the context of unfamiliar music, in the case of November Steps, both for Eastern listeners and Western listeners (Curtis et all. 2009). The role of familiarity seems to be a key to understand individual differences in musical perception depending on the frequencies of how much one was attached to the sound of shakuhachi or biwa and their natural “noise” in their childhood.

·      Pitch Organization and Harmony

          One of the main musical devices that plays a primary role in November Steps is tone clusters that Takemitsu uses throughout the piece. Smaldone claims that the pitch collection structured by each tone cluster shares features with the Western atonal tradition and Japanese traditional music (1989). Takemitsu remarked in his interview, “I think that we have Western music discover sine tone. Twelve-tone music to electronic and they discover sine wave tone. We have many tones. Like white noise. Make music is just sine to noise. Most important thing is to cut away - my notes not so important. I always use many tone clusters" (Lieberman 1965, 142). Here, Takemitsu is claiming that Japanese listeners tend to perceive the tone not as the individual pitches of the sound, but as the quality of the sound between a pure tone and noise (Smaldone, 1989). Although there has not been scholarly research on this particular topic, Example 5 demonstrates one of the examples in November Steps where Takemitsu seems to introduce “noise” with multiple cells of tone clusters followed by violas in an interval of minor 3rd, without vibrato in ordinary position implying a pure tone. This alternation between noise and a pure tone is seen throughout the piece as a symbol of Takemitsu’s interpretation in the fusion of the Western music tone cognition and the Eastern tone cognition.

          Takemitsu writes all the tone clusters carefully concerning register, tone color, and transposition. It is worth noting that when we “cut away” the tone clusters, several audible pitches remain, which Smaldone calls “nuclear tones” (Smaldone, 1989). Example 6 shows the opening three cluster chords played by violins in the right side. The pitches of the first chord belong to an octatonic scale. The second chord shares two pitches (B and C#) from the first chord, and the third chord has the same pitches except for the replacement of E with F#. Takemitsu creates several tone-clusters-chords consecutively with a few subtle changes between harmonies (Nakatani, 2005). In fact, underneath these tone clusters, there is a sustained F in the first harp, the violins on the ride side, violas, and celli on the left side. Even though these cluster sounds lose a sense of tonality in listeners’ ears, common tones that frequently occur within the cluster chords and an audible sustained pitch function as “nuclear tones” and provide listeners something to hold onto.

          In fact, the sound of tone clusters is rooted in medieval Japanese court music, Gagaku, which means “elegant, correct, or refined music,” and it is known as one of the oldest musical ensembles in the world (Malm, 1959). In Gagaku, the melodic instruments are accompanied by a mouth organ called a sho, that produces 11 primary dissonant cluster chords. Example 7 shows the comparison of the opening three cluster chords in November Steps and three of eleven cluster chords (transposed) that sho produces. Although it is not clear whether or not Takemitsu intended to imitate the cluster chords of sho, we can observe some similarities between them. In other words, Japanese listeners, who are familiar with Gagaku music might find certain familiarity in November Steps even though the cluster chords are played by the Western orchestral force instead of sho. In contrast, the cognitive reaction of the brain of the Western listeners might be different as the reaction to the familiarity of music depends on expectations based on knowledge about common features of the genre (Stevens, 2012). Because of its unfamiliarity to Western listeners, Gagaku is often used in the cross-culture research of music cognition. The study conducted by Brandt et al. compared the brain reaction of the Western listeners between J.S. Bach’s music and Gagaku, suggesting the result that while Bach activated the superior frontal gyrus, involved in introspective thought, Gagaku demonstrated the least overlapped with the other stimuli and uniquely activated the superior parietal lobule, necessary for working memory (2020). This phenomenon supports the idea that the brain tends to use alternative cues in order to process culturally unfamiliar music.

          In conclusion, November Steps is not a product of blending two cultures, on the contrary, it is to bring out the fundamental differences between Japanese music and Western classical music. Takemitsu’s concept of expression as a discovery in art is emphasized through the juxtaposition of the concept of form and rhythm, timbral differences, and pitch organizations. It is also significant to note that the perceptive and cognitive experiences with November Steps, which fuses two different cultures vary depending on the early exposure to the specific cultural music. In order to explore the cognitive and perceptive field of the pieces that integrate one musical culture to another, there need to be scientific experiments in the future. By utilizing the piece like November Steps, which contains multiple specific cultural genres of music, one can measure the response to the music both from the Western listeners and listeners whose musical exposure is limited within their own culture. The result could be compared and contrasted to examine whether or not there is any specific pattern or significant differences between the multiple groups of listeners.

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