An itinerant is a person who travels from place to place with no fixed home.^[1] The term comes from the late 16th century: from late Latin itinerant (travelling), from the verb itinerari, from Latin iter, itiner (journey, road).^[2]

Types of itinerants[link]

• Drifters (rogues, rovers, vagabonds, vagrants)
• Perpetual travelers, including illegal aliens (migrants)
• Nomads, including hunter-gatherers and gypsies
• Hobos, including tramps, bums, derelicts
• Refugees and displaced persons
• Street people (street children, paupers, squatters, waifs, schnorrers)
• World citizens

Itinerants throughout history and today[link]

• Freight Train Riders of America (freighthoppers in United States)
• Romani people
• Various indigenous peoples (indigenous peoples, including uncontacted peoples)

"The Blind Girl" (1856), depicting two vagrants.

• Afar people in Horn of Africa
• Bajau people of Philippines
• Banjara of India
• Bedouin (nomadic Arab people of the desert)
• Beja people in North Africa
• Bushmen of Southern Africa
• Dom people in North Africa and Western Asia
• Eurasian nomads of Eurasian Steppe
• Ghilzai in South-Central Asia
• Indigenous Australians
• Indigenous Norwegian Travellers
• Indigenous peoples of the Americas
• Irish Travellers
• Kuchi people of Afghanistan
• Nomads of India
• Pygmy peoples in Equatorial Africa and parts of Southeast Asia
• Quinqui in northeren half of Spain)
• Scottish Travellers
• Yeniche people in Europe

• Carnies (travelling show-people)
• Hippies, including New Age travellers and Rainbow Travellers
• Jossers (circus artists)
• Kobzari (musicians of Ukraine)
• Lightermen (bargees in England)
• Peredvizhniki (realist artists of Russia)
• Swagmen (homeless transients in Australia and New Zealand)
• Circuit riders and Gyrovagues (Christian ministers and monks)
• Bhikkhus (Buddhist monks)
• Mendicants (beggars of Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism and Buddhism)
• Pilgrims (religious travellers)
• Sadhus (Jain monks)

Bajau nomad.

Notable itinerants[link]

• Alexander Supertramp
• Kinga Freespirit
• Albert Einstein
• Democritus
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
• Gautama Buddha
• Historical Jesus

See also[link]

Look up itinerant in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Human migration

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Jack Kerouac (1957). On the Road. Viking Press. ISBN 0-14-118267-9. 
• Rolf Potts (2002). Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel. Villard Books. ISBN 0-8129-9218-0. 

Toru Takemitsu (武満 徹, Takemitsu Tōru^?, October 8, 1930 – February 20, 1996) was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu possessed consummate skill in the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre. He drew from a wide range of influences, including jazz, popular music, avant-garde procedures and traditional Japanese music, in a harmonic idiom largely derived from the music of Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen.^[1][2]

His 1957 Requiem for strings attracted international attention, led to several commissions from across the world and established his reputation as one of the leading 20th century Japanese composers.^[3] Takemitsu was the recipient of numerous awards, commissions and honours. He composed over 100 film scores^[4][5] and about 130 concert works^[5] for ensembles of various sizes and combinations.^[6] He also wrote a detective novel and appeared frequently on Japanese television as a celebrity chef.^[7]

In the foreword to a selection of Takemitsu's writings in English, conductor Seiji Ozawa writes: "I am very proud of my friend Toru Takemitsu. He is the first Japanese composer to write for a world audience and achieve international recognition."^[8]

Biography[link]

Youth[link]

Takemitsu was born in Tokyo on October 8, 1930; a month later his family moved to Dalian in the Chinese province then known as Manchuria. He returned to Japan to attend elementary school, but his education was cut short by military conscription in 1944.^[2] Takemitsu described his experience of military service at such a young age, under the Japanese Nationalist government, as "... extremely bitter".^[9] Takemitsu first became really conscious of Western classical music (which was banned in Japan during the war) during his term of military service, in the form of a popular French Song ("Parlez-moi d'amour") which he listened to with colleagues in secret, played on a gramophone with a makeshift needle fashioned from bamboo.^[9][10]

During the post-war U.S. occupation of Japan, Takemitsu worked for the U.S. Armed Forces, but was ill for a long period. Hospitalised and bed-ridden, he took the opportunity to listen to as much Western music as he could on the U.S. Armed Forces network. While deeply affected by these experiences of Western music, he simultaneously felt a need to distance himself from the traditional music of his native Japan. He explained much later, in a lecture at the New York International Festival of the Arts, that for him Japanese traditional music "always recalled the bitter memories of war".^[9]

Despite his almost complete lack of musical training, and taking inspiration from what little Western music he had heard, Takemitsu began to compose in earnest at the age of 16: "... I began [writing] music attracted to music itself as one human being. Being in music I found my raison d'être as a man. After the war, music was the only thing. Choosing to be in music clarified my identity."^[11] Though he studied briefly with Yasuji Kiyose beginning in 1948, Takemitsu remained largely self-taught throughout his musical career.^[2]

Early development and Jikken Kōbō[link]

In 1948, Takemitsu conceived the idea of electronic music technology, or in his own words, to "bring noise into tempered musical tones inside a busy small tube." During the 1950s, Takemitsu had learned that in 1948 "a French [engineer] Pierre Schaeffer invented the method(s) of musique concrète based on the same idea as mine. I was pleased with this coincidence."^[12][13]

In 1951, Takemitsu was a founding member of the anti-academic Jikken Kōbō (実験工房, "experimental workshop"^?): an artistic group established for multidisciplinary collaboration on mixed-media projects, who sought to avoid Japanese artistic tradition.^[14] The performances and works undertaken by the group introduced several contemporary Western composers to Japanese audiences.^[2][15] During this period he wrote Saegirarenai Kyūsoku I ("Uninterrupted Rest I", 1952: a piano work, without a regular rhythmic pulse or barlines); and by 1955 Takemitsu had begun to use electronic tape-recording techniques in such works as Relief Statique (1955) and Vocalism A·I (1956).^[2] Takemitsu also studied in the early 1950s with the composer Fumio Hayasaka, perhaps best known for the scores he wrote for films by Kenji Mizoguchi and Akira Kurosawa, the latter of whom Takemitsu would collaborate with decades later.

In the late 1950s chance brought Takemitsu international attention: his Requiem for string orchestra (1957  listen (help·info)), written as an homage to Hayasaka, was heard by Igor Stravinsky in 1958 during his visit to Japan. (The NHK had organised opportunities for Stravinsky to listen to some of the latest Japanese music; when Takemitsu's work was put on by mistake, Stravinsky insisted on hearing it to the end.) At a press conference later, Stravinsky expressed his admiration for the work, praising its "sincerity" and "passionate" writing.^[16] Stravinsky subsequently invited Takemitsu to lunch; and for Takemitsu this was an "unforgettable" experience.^[17] After Stravinsky returned to the U.S., Takemitsu soon received a commission for a new work from the Koussevitsky Foundation which, he assumed, had come as a suggestion from Stravinsky to Aaron Copland.^[17] For this he composed Dorian Horizon, (1966), which was premièred by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Copland.^[17]

Influence of Cage; interest in traditional Japanese music[link]

During his time with Jikken Kōbō, Takemitsu came into contact with the experimental work of John Cage; but when the composer Toshi Ichiyanagi returned from his studies in America in 1961, he gave the first Japanese performance of Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra. This left a "deep impression" on Takemitsu: he recalled the impact of hearing the work when writing an obituary for Cage, 31 years later.^[18] This encouraged Takemitsu in his use of indeterminate procedures and graphic-score notation, for example in the graphic scores of Ring (1961), Corona for pianist(s) and Corona II for string(s) (both 1962). In these works each performer is presented with cards printed with coloured circular patterns which are freely arranged by the performer to create "the score".^[19]

Although the immediate influence of Cage's procedures did not last in Takemitsu's music—Coral Island, for example for soprano and orchestra (1962) shows significant departures from indeterminate procedures partly as a result of Takemitsu's renewed interest in the music of Anton Webern—certain similarities between Cage's philosophies and Takemitsu's thought remained. For example, Cage's emphasis on timbres within individual sound-events, and his notion of silence "as plenum rather than vacuum", can be aligned with Takemitsu's interest in ma.^[20] Furthermore, Cage's interest in Zen practice (through his contact with Zen Master Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki) seems to have resulted in a renewed interest in the East in general, and ultimately alerted Takemitsu to the potential for incorporating elements drawn from Japanese traditional music into his composition:

I must express my deep and sincere gratitude to John Cage. The reason for this is that in my own life, in my own development, for a long period I struggled to avoid being "Japanese", to avoid "Japanese" qualities. It was largely through my contact with John Cage that I came to recognize the value of my own tradition.^[9]

For Takemitsu, as he explained later in a lecture in 1988, one performance of Japanese traditional music stood out:

One day I chanced to see a performance of the Bunraku puppet theater and was very surprised by it. It was in the tone quality, the timbre, of the futazao shamisen, the wide-necked shamisen used in Bunraku, that I first recognized the splendor of traditional Japanese music. I was very moved by it and I wondered why my attention had never been captured before by this Japanese music.^[9]

Thereafter, he resolved to study all types of traditional Japanese music, paying special attention to the differences between the two very different musical traditions; in a diligent attempt to "bring forth the sensibilities of Japanese music that had always been within [him]...".^[9] This was no easy task, since in the years following the war traditional music was largely overlooked and ignored: only one or two "masters" continued to keep their art alive, often meeting with public indifference. In conservatoria across the country, even students of traditional instruments were always required to learn the piano.^[21]

From the early 1960s, Takemitsu began to make use of traditional Japanese instruments in his music, and even took up playing the biwa—an instrument he used in his score for the film Seppuku (1962).^[2] In 1967, Takemitsu received a commission from the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, to commemorate the orchestra's 125th anniversary, for which he wrote November Steps for biwa, shakuhachi, and orchestra. Initially, Takemitsu had great difficulty in uniting these instruments from such different musical cultures in one work.^[9] Eclipse for biwa and shakuhachi (1966) illustrates Takemitsu's attempts to find a viable notational system for these instruments, which in normal circumstances neither sound together nor are used in works notated in any system of Western staff notation.^[22]

The first performance of November Steps was given in 1967, under Seiji Ozawa. Despite the trials of writing such an ambitious work, Takemitsu maintained "that making the attempt was very worthwhile because what resulted somehow liberated music from a certain stagnation and brought to music something distinctly new and different".^[9] The work was distributed widely in the West when it was coupled as the fourth side of an LP release of Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony.^[23]

In 1972, Takemitsu, accompanied by Iannis Xenakis, Betsy Jolas, and others, heard Balinese gamelan music in Bali. The experience influenced the composer on a largely philosophical and theological level. For those accompanying Takemitsu on the expedition (most of whom were French musicians), who "... could not keep their composure as I did before this music: it was too foreign for them to be able to assess the resulting discrepancies with their logic", the experience was without precedent. For Takemitsu, however, by now quite familiar with his own native musical tradition, there was a relationship between "the sounds of the gamelan, the tone of the kapachi, the unique scales and rhythms by which they are formed, and Japanese traditional music which had shaped such a large part of my sensitivity".^[24] In his solo piano work For Away (written for Roger Woodward in 1973), a single, complex line is distributed between the pianist's hands, which reflects the interlocking patterns between the metallophones of a gamelan orchestra.^[25]

A year later, Takemitsu returned to the instrumental combination of shakuhachi, biwa, and orchestra, in the less well known work Autumn (1973). The significance of this work is revealed in its far greater integration of the traditional Japanese instruments into the orchestral discourse; whereas in November Steps, the two contrasting instrumental ensembles perform largely in alternation, with only a few moments of contact. Takemitsu expressed this change in attitude:

But now my attitude is getting to be a little different, I think. Now my concern is mostly to find out what there is in common ... Autumn was written after November Steps. I really wanted to do something which I hadn't done in November Steps, not to blend the instruments, but to integrate them.^[26]

International status and the gradual shift in style[link]

By 1970, Takemitsu's reputation as a leading member of avant-garde community was well established, and during his involvement with Expo '70 in Osaka, he was at last able to meet more of his Western colleagues, including Karlheinz Stockhausen. Also, during a contemporary music festival in April 1970, produced by the Japanese composer himself ("Iron and Steel Pavilion"), Takemitsu met among the participants Lukas Foss, Peter Sculthorpe, and Vinko Globokar. Later that year, as part of a commission from Paul Sacher and the Zurich Collegium Musicum, Takemitsu incorporated into his Eucalyptus I parts for international performers: flautist Aurèle Nicolet, oboist Heinz Holliger, and harpist Ursula Holliger.^[27]

Critical examination of the complex instrumental works written during this period for the new generation of "contemporary soloists" reveals the level of his high-profile engagement with the Western avant-garde, in works such as Voice for solo flute (1971), Waves for clarinet, horn, two trombones and bass drum (1976), Quatrain for clarinet, violin, cello, piano and orchestra (1977). Experiments and works that incorporated traditional Japanese musical ideas and language continued to appear in his output, and an increased interest in the traditional Japanese garden began to reflect itself in works such as In an Autumn Garden for gagaku orchestra (1973), and A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden for orchestra (1977).^[28]

Throughout this apogee of avant-garde work, Takemitsu's musical style seems to have undergone a series of stylistic changes. Comparison of Green (for orchestra, 1967) and A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden (1977) quickly reveals the seeds of this change. The latter was composed according a pre-compositional scheme, in which pentatonic modes were superimposed over one central pentatonic scale (the so-called "black-key pentatonic") around a central sustained central pitch (F-sharp), and an approach that is highly indicative of the sort of "pantonal" and modal pitch material seen gradually emerging in his works throughout the 1970s.^[29] The former, Green (or November Steps II) written 10 years earlier, is heavily influenced by Debussy,^[30][31] and is, in spite of its very dissonant language (including momentary quarter-tone clusters), largely constructed through a complex web of modal forms. These modal forms are largely audible, particularly in the momentary repose toward the end of the work.^[32] Thus in these works, it is possible to see both a continuity of approach, and the emergence of a simpler harmonic language that was to characterise the work of his later period.

His friend and colleague Jō Kondō said, "If his later works sound different from earlier pieces, it is due to his gradual refining of his basic style rather than any real alteration of it."^[33]

Later works: the sea of tonality[link]

In a Tokyo lecture given in 1984, Takemitsu identified a melodic motive in his Far Calls. Coming Far! (for violin and orchestra, 1980) that would recur throughout his later works:

I wanted to plan a tonal "sea". Here the "sea" is E-flat [Es in German nomenclature]-E-A, a three-note ascending motive consisting of a half step and perfect fourth. [... In Far Calls] this is extended upward from A with two major thirds and one minor third ... Using these patterns I set the "sea of tonality" from which many pantonal chords flow.^[34]

Takemitsu's words here highlight his changing stylistic trends from the late 1970s into the 1980s, which have been described as "an increased use of diatonic material [... with] references to tertian harmony and jazz voicing", which do not, however, project a sense of "large-scale tonality".^[35] Many of the works from this period have titles that include a reference to water: Toward the Sea (1981), Rain Tree and Rain Coming (1982), riverrun and I Hear the Water Dreaming (1987). Takemitsu wrote in his notes for the score of Rain Coming that "... the complete collection [is] entitled "Waterscape" ... it was the composer's intention to create a series of works, which like their subject, pass through various metamorphoses, culminating in a sea of tonality."^[36] Throughout these works, the S-E-A motive (discussed further below) features prominently, and points to an increased emphasis on the melodic element in Takemitsu's music that began during this later period.

Pedal notes played an increasingly prominent role in Takemitsu's music during this period, as in A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden. In Dream/Window, (orchestra, 1985) a pedal D serves as anchor point, holding together statements of a striking four-note motivic gesture which recurs in various instrumental and rhythmic guises throughout. Very occasionally, fully fledged references to diatonic tonality can be found, often in harmonic allusions to early- and pre-20th century composers—for example, Folios for guitar (1974), which quotes from J. S. Bach's St Matthew Passion, and Family Tree for narrator and orchestra (1984), which invokes the musical language of Ravel and American popular song.^[2]

By this time, Takemitsu's incorporation of traditional Japanese (and other Eastern) musical traditions with his Western style had become much more integrated. Takemitsu commented, "There is no doubt ... the various countries and cultures of the world have begun a journey toward the geographic and historic unity of all peoples ... The old and new exist within me with equal weight."^[37]

Toward the end of his life, Takemitsu had planned to complete an opera, a collaboration with the novelist Barry Gifford and the director Daniel Schmid, commissioned by the Opéra National de Lyon in France. He was in the process of publishing a plan of its musical and dramatic structure with Kenzaburō Ōe, but he was prevented from completing it by his death at 65.^[38][39] He died of pneumonia on February 20, 1996, while undergoing treatment for bladder cancer .

Legacy[link]

In a memorial issue of Contemporary Music Review, Jō Kondō wrote, "Needless to say, Takemitsu is among the most important composers in Japanese music history. He was also the first Japanese composer fully recognized in the west, and remained the guiding light for the younger generations of Japanese composers."^[33]

Composer Peter Lieberson shared the following in his program note to the Ocean that has no East and West, written in memory of Takemitsu: "I spent the most time with Toru in Tokyo when I was invited to be a guest composer at his Music Today Festival in 1987. Peter Serkin and composer Oliver Knussen were also there, as was cellist Fred Sherry. Though he was the senior of our group by many years, Toru stayed up with us every night and literally drank us under the table. I was confirmed in my impression of Toru as a person who lived his life like a traditional Zen poet."^[40]

Music[link]

Composers whom Takemitsu cited as influential in his early work include Claude Debussy, Anton Webern, Edgard Varèse, Arnold Schoenberg, and Olivier Messiaen.^[41] (Messiaen was introduced to him by fellow composer Toshi Ichiyanagi, and remained a lifelong influence).^[2] Although Takemitsu was reluctant at first to develop an interest in traditional Japanese music after his wartime experiences of nationalism, Takemitsu showed an early interest in "... the Japanese Garden in color spacing and form ...". The formal garden of the kaiyu-shiki interested him in particular.^[9][42]

He expressed his unusual stance toward compositional theory early on, his lack of respect for the "trite rules of music, rules that are ... stifled by formulas and calculations"; for Takemitsu it was of far greater importance that "sounds have the freedom to breathe. ... Just as one cannot plan his life, neither can he plan music".^[43]

Takemitsu's sensitivity to instrumental and orchestral timbre can be heard throughout his work, and is often made apparent by the unusual instrumental combinations he specified. This is evident in works such as November Steps, that combine traditional Japanese instruments, shakuhachi and biwa, with a conventional Western orchestra. It may also be discerned in his works for ensembles that make no use of traditional instruments, for example Quotation of Dream (1991), Archipelago S., for 21 players (1993), and Arc I & II (1963–66/1976). In these works, the more conventional orchestral forces are divided into unconventional "groups". Even where these instrumental combinations were determined by the particular ensemble commissioning the work, "Takemitsu's genius for instrumentation (and genius it was, in my view) ...", in the words of Oliver Knussen, "... creates the illusion that the instrumental restrictions are self-imposed".^[44]

Influence of traditional Japanese music[link]

Takemitsu summed up his initial aversion to Japanese (and all non-Western) traditional musical forms in his own words: "There may be folk music with strength and beauty, but I cannot be completely honest in this kind of music. I want a more active relationship to the present. (Folk music in a 'contemporary style' is nothing but a deception)".^[45] His dislike for the music traditions of his own country in particular were intensified by his experiences of the war, during which Japanese music became associated with militaristic and nationalistic cultural ideals.^[46]

Nevertheless, Takemitsu incorporated some idiomatic elements of Japanese music in his very earliest works, perhaps unconsciously. One unpublished set of pieces, Kakehi ("Conduit"), written at the age of 17, incorporates the ryō, ritsu and insen scales throughout. When Takemitsu discovered that these "nationalist" elements had somehow found their way into his music, he was so alarmed that he later destroyed the works.^[47] Further examples can be seen for example in the quarter-tone glissandi of Masques I (for two flutes, 1959), which mirror the characteristic pitch bends of the shakuhachi, and for which he devised his own unique notation: a held note is tied to an enharmonic spelling of the same pitch class, with a portamento direction across the tie.^[48]

File:Takemitsu litany diagram.png

Example 2. Opening bars of Litany—In Memory of Michael Vyner, i Adagio, for solo piano (1950/1989). Another early example of Takemitsu's incorporation of traditional Japanese music in his writing, shown here in the use of the Japanese in scale in the upper melodic line of the right hand part. ( Listen)

Other Japanese characteristics, including the further use of traditional pentatonic scales, continued to crop up elsewhere in his early works. In the opening bars of Litany, for Michael Vyner (first movement), a reconstruction from memory by Takemitsu of Lento in Due Movimenti (1950; the original score was lost), pentatonicism is clearly visible in the upper voice, which opens the work on an unaccompanied anacrusis.^[49] The pitches of the opening melody combine to form the constituent notes of the ascending form of the Japanese in scale.

When, from the early 1960s,^[2] Takemitsu began to "consciously apprehend" the sounds of traditional Japanese music, he found that his creative process, "the logic of my compositional thought[,] was torn apart", and nevertheless, "hogaku [traditional Japanese music ...] seized my heart and refuses to release it".^[50] In particular, Takemitsu perceived that, for example, the sound of a single stroke of the biwa or single pitch breathed through the shakuhachi, could "so transport our reason because they are of extreme complexity ... already complete in themselves". This fascination with the sounds produced in traditional Japanese music brought Takemitsu to his idea of ma (usually translated as the space between two objects),^[51] which ultimately informed his understanding of the intense quality of traditional Japanese music as a whole:

Just one sound can be complete in itself, for its complexity lies in the formulation of ma, an unquantifiable metaphysical space (duration) of dynamically tensed absence of sound. For example, in the performance of nō, the ma of sound and silence does not have an organic relation for the purpose of artistic expression. Rather, these two elements contrast sharply with one another in an immaterial balance.^[52]

In 1970, Takemitsu received a commission from the National Theatre of Japan to write a work for the gagaku ensemble of the Imperial Household; this was fulfilled in 1973, when he completed Shuteiga ("In an Autumn Garden", although he later incorporated the work, as the fourth movement, into his 50 minute long "In an Autumn Garden—Complete Version").^[53] As well as being "... the furthest removed from the West of any work he had written",^[54] While it introduces certain Western musical ideas to the Japanese court ensemble, the work represents the deepest of Takemitsu's investigations into Japanese musical tradition, the lasting effects of which are clearly reflected in his works for conventional Western ensemble formats that followed.^[55]

In Garden Rain (1974, for brass ensemble), the limited and pitch-specific harmonic vocabulary of the Japanese mouth organ, the shō (see ex. 3), and its specific timbres, are clearly emulated in Takemitsu's writing for brass instruments; even similarities of performance practice can be seen, (the players are often required to hold notes to the limit of their breath capacity).^[56] In A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden, the characteristic timbres of the shō and its chords (several of which are simultaneous soundings of traditional Japanese pentatonic scales) are emulated in the opening held chords of the wind instruments (the first chord is in fact an exact transposition of the shō's chord, Jū (i); see ex. 3); meanwhile a solo oboe is assigned a melodic line that is similarly reminiscent of the lines played by the hichiriki in gagaku ensembles.^[57]

Influence of Messiaen[link]

The influence of Olivier Messiaen on Takemitsu was already apparent in some of Takemitsu's earliest published works. By the time he composed Lento in Due Movimenti, (1950), Takemitsu had already come into possession of a copy of Messiaen's 8 Préludes (through Toshi Ichiyanagi), and the influence of Messiaen is clearly visible in the work, in the use of modes, the suspension of regular metre, and sensitivity to timbre.^[2][59] Throughout his career Takemitsu often made use of modes from which he derived his musical material, both melodic and harmonic among which Messiaen's modes of limited transposition to appear with some frequency.^[60] In particular, the use of the octatonic, (mode II, or the 8-28 collection), and mode VI (8-25) is particularly common. However, Takemitsu pointed out that he had used the octatonic collection in his music before ever coming across it in Messiaen's music.^[61]

In 1975, Takemitsu met Messiaen in New York, and during "what was to be a one-hour 'lesson' [but which] lasted three hours ... Messiaen played his Quartet for the End of Time for Takemitsu at the piano",^[62] which, Takemitsu recalled, was like listening to an orchestral performance.^[63] Takemitsu responded to this with his homage to the French composer, Quatrain, for which he asked Messiaen's permission to use the same instrumental combination for the main quartet, cello, violin, clarinet and piano (which is accompanied by orchestra).^[64] As well as the obvious similarity of instrumentation, Takemitsu employs several melodic figures that appear to "mimic" certain musical examples given by Messiaen in his Technique de mon langage musical, (see ex. 4).^[58]. In 1977, Takemitsu reworked Quatrain for quartet alone, without orchestra, and titled the new work Quatrain II

On hearing of Messiaen's death in 1992, Takemitsu was interviewed by telephone, and still in shock, "blurted out, 'His death leaves a crisis in contemporary music!' " Then later, in an obituary written for the French composer in the same year, Takemitsu further expressed his sense of loss at Messiaen's death: "Truly, he was my spiritual mentor ... Among the many things I learned from his music, the concept and experience of color and the form of time will be unforgettable."^[63] The composition Rain Tree Sketch II, which was to be Takemitsu's final piano piece, was also written that year and subtitled "In Memoriam Olivier Messiaen".

Influence of Debussy[link]

Takemitsu frequently expressed his indebtedness to Claude Debussy, referring to the French composer as his "great mentor".^[65] As Arnold Whitall puts it:

Given the enthusiasm for the exotic and the Orient in these [Debussy and Messiaen] and other French composers, it is understandable that Takemitsu should have been attracted to the expressive and formal qualities of music in which flexibility of rhythm and richness of harmony count for so much.^[66]

For Takemitsu, Debussy's "greatest contribution was his unique orchestration which emphasizes colour, light and shadow ... the orchestration of Debussy has many musical focuses." He was fully aware of Debussy's own interest in Japanese art, (the cover of the first edition of La Mer, for example, was famously adorned by Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa).^[67] For Takemitsu, this interest in Japanese culture, combined with his unique personality, and perhaps most importantly, his lineage as a composer of the French musical tradition running from Rameau and Lully through Berlioz in which colour is given special attention, gave Debussy his unique style and sense of orchestration.^[68]

During the composition of Green (November Steps II, for orchestra, 1967: "steeped in the sound-color world of the orchestral music of Claude Debussy")^[69] Takemitsu said he had taken the scores of Debussy's Prélude à l'Après-midi d'un Faune and Jeux to the mountain villa where both this work and November Steps I were composed. For Oliver Knussen, "the final appearance of the main theme irresistibly prompts the thought that Takemitsu may, quite unconsciously, have been attempting a latterday Japanese Après-midi d'un Faune".^[70] Details of orchestration in Green, such as the prominent use of antique cymbals, and tremolandi harmonies in the strings, clearly point to the influence of Takemitsu's compositional mentor, and of these works in particular.^[71]

In Quotation of Dream (1991), direct quotations from Debussy's La Mer and Takemitsu's earlier works relating to the sea are incorporated into the musical flow ("stylistic jolts were not intended"), depicting the landscape outside the Japanese garden of his own music.^[72]

Motives[link]

Several recurring musical motives can be heard in Takemitsu's works. In particular the pitch motive E♭-E-A can be heard in many of his later works, whose titles refer to water in some form (Toward the Sea, 1981; Rain Tree Sketch, 1982; I Hear the Water Dreaming, 1987).

When spelt in German (Es-E-A), the motive can be seen as a musical "transliteration" of the word "sea". Takemitsu used this motive (usually transposed) to indicate the presence of water in his "musical landscapes", even in works whose titles do not directly refer to water, such as A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden (1977; see ex. 5).^[73]

Musique Concrète[link]

During Takemitsu's years as a member of the Jikken Kōbō, he experimented with compositions of musique concrète (and a very limited amount of electronic music, the most notable example being Stanza II for harp and tape written later in 1972).^[74] In Water Music (1960  listen (help·info)), Takemitsu's source material consisted entirely of sounds produced by droplets of water. His manipulation of these sounds, through the use of highly percussive envelopes, often results in a resemblance to traditional Japanese instruments, such as the tsuzumi and nō ensembles.^[75]

Aleatory techniques[link]

One aspect of John Cage's compositional procedure that Takemitsu continued to use throughout his career, was the use of indeterminacy, in which performers are given a degree of choice in what to perform. As mentioned previously, this was particularly used in works such as November Steps, in which musicians playing traditional Japanese instruments were able to play in an orchestral setting with a certain degree of improvisational freedom.^[22] However, he also employed a technique that is sometimes called "aleatory counterpoint"^[76] in his well-known orchestral work A Flock Descends Into the Pentagonal Garden (1977, at [J] in the score  listen (help·info)),^[77] and in the score of Arc II: i Textures (1964) for piano and orchestra, in which sections of the orchestra are divided into groups, and required to repeat short passages of music at will. In these passages the overall sequence of events is, however, controlled by the conductor, who is instructed about the approximate durations for each section, and who indicates to the orchestra when to move from one section to next. The technique is commonly found in the work of Witold Lutosławski, who pioneered it in his Jeux vénitiens.^[76]

Film music[link]

Takemitsu's contribution to film music was considerable; in under 40 years he composed music for over 100 films,^[78] some of which were written for purely financial reasons (such as those written for Noboru Nakamura). However, as the composer attained financial independence, he grew more selective, often reading whole scripts before agreeing to compose the music, and later surveying the action on set, "breathing the atmosphere" whilst conceiving his musical ideas.^[79] One notable consideration in Takemitsu's composition for film was his careful use of silence (also important in many of his concert works), which often immediately intensifies the events on screen, and prevents any monotony through a continuous musical accompaniment. For the first battle scene of Akira Kurosawa's Ran, Takemitsu provided an extended passage of intense elegiac quality that halts at the sound of a single gunshot, leaving the audience with the pure "sounds of battle: cries screams and neighing horses".^[80]

Takemitsu attached the greatest importance to the director's conception of the film; in an interview with Max Tessier, he explained that, "everything depends on the film itself ... I try to concentrate as much as possible on the subject, so that I can express what the director feels himself. I try to extend his feelings with my music."^[81]

Awards[link]

Takemitsu won awards for composition, both in Japan and abroad, including the Prix Italia for his orchestral work Tableau noir in 1958, the Otaka Prize in 1976 and 1981, the Los Angeles Film Critics Award in 1987 (for the film score Ran) and the Grawemeyer Award in 1994 (for Fantasma/Cantos).^[2] In Japan, he received the Film Awards of the Japanese Academy for outstanding achievement in music, for soundtracks to the following films:

• 1979 Ai no borei (愛の亡霊^?)
• 1986 Ran (乱^?)
• 1990 Rikyu (利休^?)
• 1996 Sharaku (写楽^?)

He was also invited to attend numerous international festivals throughout his career, and presented lectures and talks at academic institutions across the world. He was made an honorary member of the Akademie der Künste of the DDR in 1979, and the American Institute of Arts and Letters in 1985. He was admitted to the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1985, and the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1986. He is the recipient of the 22nd Suntory Music Award (1990).

Takemitsu was posthumously awarded the fourth Glenn Gould Prize in Autumn, 1996.

Notable compositions[link]

Literary works[link]

• Takemitsu, Toru (1995). Confronting Silence. Fallen Leaf Press. ISBN 0-914913-36-0. 
• Takemitsu, Toru, with Cronin, Tania and Tann, Hilary, "Afterword", Perspectives of New Music, vol. 27, no. 2 (Summer, 1989), 205–214, accessible at JSTOR, (subscription access) [5]
• Takemitsu, Tōru, (trans. Adachi, Sumi with Reynolds, Roger), "Mirrors", Perspectives of New Music, vol. 30 no. 1 (Winter, 1992), 36–80 accessible at JSTOR, (subscription access) [6]
• Takemitsu, Toru, (trans. Hugh de Ferranti) "One Sound", Contemporary Music Review, vol. 8, part 2, (Harwood, 1994), 3–4, accessible at informaworld (subscription access) [7]
• Takemitsu, Tōru, "Contemporary Music in Japan", Perspectives of New Music, vol. 27 no. 2 (Summer, 1989), 198–204 accessible at JSTOR, (subscription access) [8]

Listening[link]

• Toru Takemitsu : Air, John McMurtery, flute
• Toru Takemitsu : Voice, John McMurtery, flute
• Toru Takemitsu : Guitar, Shin-Ichi Fukuda, guitar

Further reading[link]

Music portal

General reference

• Burt, Peter (2001). The Music of Toru Takemitsu. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-78220-1. 
• Ohtake, Noriko (1993). Creative sources for the Music of Toru Takemitsu. Scolar Press. ISBN 0-85967-954-3. 
• Kreidy, Ziad (2009). TAKEMITSU à l'écoute de l'inaudible. L'Harmattan. ISBN 978-2-296-07763-8. 

Other references

• Koozin, Timothy, "Traversing distances: pitch organization, gesture and imagery in the late works of Tōru Takemitsu", Contemporary Music Review, vol. 21, no.4, (Taylor & Francis, 2002), 17–34 accessible at informaworld (subscription access) [9]
• Nuss, Steven, "Hearing 'Japanese', hearing Takemitsu", Contemporary Music Review, vol. 21, no.4, (Taylor & Francis, 2002), 35–71 accessible at informaworld (subscription access) [10]
• Robinson, Elizabeth A. Voice, itinerant, and air: a performance and analytical guide to the solo flute works of Toru Takemitsu. 2011.

Notes and references[link]

External links[link]

• Toru Takemitsu: Complete Works
• Schott Music Biography
• Complete Takemitsu Edition (Japanese)
• Slate article focusing on his film music
• Interview with Toru Takemitsu
• Toru Takemitsu at the Internet Movie Database
• (French) A biography of Toru Takemitsu, from IRCAM's website.
• Excerpts from sound archives of Takemitsu's works.

Isamu Noguchi
Isamu Noguchi, 1941.
Born	(1904-11-17)November 17, 1904 Los Angeles, California
Died	December 30, 1988(1988-12-30) (aged 84) New York City, New York
Nationality	American
Field	Sculpture, landscape architecture, furniture design
Movement	Biomorphism
Works	Red Cube (New York City), Black Sun (Seattle), Sky Gate (Honolulu), Akari lanterns, Herman Miller lounge table
Awards	Logan Medal of the arts (Art Institute of Chicago), 1963; Gold Medal, Architectural League of New York, 1965; Brandeis Creative Arts Award, 1966; Gold Medal (American Academy of Arts and Letters), 1977; Order of the Sacred Treasure; National Medal of Arts (1987)

Isamu Noguchi (野口 勇, Noguchi Isamu^?, November 17, 1904 – December 30, 1988) was a prominent Japanese American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward.^[1] Known for his sculpture and public works, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several mass-produced lamps and furniture pieces, some of which are still manufactured and sold.

In 1947, Noguchi began a collaboration with the Herman Miller company, when he joined with George Nelson, Paul László and Charles Eames to produce a catalog containing what is often considered to be the most influential body of modern furniture ever produced, including the iconic Noguchi table which remains in production today^[2] His work lives on around the world and at the Noguchi Museum in New York City.

Biography[link]

Early life (1904–1922)[link]

Isamu Noguchi was born in Los Angeles, the illegitimate son of Yone Noguchi, a Japanese poet who was acclaimed in the United States, and Léonie Gilmour, an American writer who edited much of Yone Noguchi's work.

Yone had ended his relationship with Gilmour earlier that year and planned to marry his true romance, The Washington Post reporter Ethel Armes. After proposing to Ethel Armes, Yone left for Japan in late August, settling in Tokyo and awaiting her arrival; their engagement fell through months later when she learned of Léonie and her newborn son.

In 1906, Yone invited Léonie to come to Tokyo with their son. She at first refused, but growing anti-Japanese sentiment following the Russo–Japanese War eventually convinced her to take up Yone's offer.^[3] The two departed from San Francisco in March 1907, arriving in Yokohama to meet Yone. Upon arrival, their son was finally given the name Isamu (勇, "courage"). However, Yone had taken a Japanese wife by the time they arrived, and was mostly absent from his son's childhood. After again separating from Yone, Léonie and Isamu moved several times throughout Japan.

In 1912, while the two were living in Chigasaki, Isamu's half-sister, pioneer of the American Modern Dance movement Ailes Gilmour, was born to Léonie and an unknown father. Here, Léonie had a house built for the three of them, a project that she had the 8-year-old Isamu "oversee". Nurturing her son's artistic ability, she put him in charge of their garden and apprenticed him to a local carpenter.^[4] However, they moved once again in December 1917 to an English-speaking community in Yokohama.

In 1918, Noguchi was sent back to the U.S. for schooling in Rolling Prairie, Indiana. After graduation, he left with Dr. Edward Rumely to LaPorte, where he found boarding with a Swedenborgian pastor, Samuel Mack. Noguchi began attending La Porte High School, graduating in 1922. During this period of his life, he was known by the name "Sam Gilmour."^[5]

Early artistic career (1922–1927)[link]

After high school, Noguchi explained his desire to become an artist to Rumely;^[6] though he preferred that Noguchi become a doctor, he acknowledged Noguchi's request and sent him to Connecticut to work as an apprentice to his friend Gutzon Borglum. Best known as the creator of Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Borglum was at the time working on the group called Wars of America for the city of Newark, New Jersey, a piece that includes forty two figures and two equestrian sculptures. As one of Borglum's apprentices, Noguchi received little training as a sculptor; his tasks included arranging the horses and modeling for the monument as General Sherman. He did, however, pick up some skills in casting from Borglum's Italian assistants, later fashioning a bust of Abraham Lincoln.^[7] At summer's end, Borglum told Noguchi that he would never become a sculptor, prompting him to reconsider Rumely's prior suggestion.^[8]

He then traveled to New York City, reuniting with the Rumely family at their new residence, and with Dr. Rumely's financial aid enrolled in February 1922 as a premedical student at Columbia University. Soon after, he met the bacteriologist Hideyo Noguchi, who urged him to reconsider art, as well as the Japanese dancer Michio Itō, whose celebrity status later helped Noguchi find acquaintances in the art world.^[9] Another influence was his mother, who in 1923 moved from Japan to California, then later to New York.

In 1924, while still enrolled at Columbia, Noguchi followed his mother's advice to take night classes at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School. The school's head, Onorio Ruotolo, was immediately impressed by Noguchi's work. Only three months later, Noguchi held his first exhibit, a selection of plaster and terra cotta works. He soon dropped out of Columbia University to pursue sculpture full-time, changing his name from Gilmour (the surname he had used for years) to Noguchi.

After moving into his own studio, Noguchi found work through commissions for portrait busts, he won the Logan Medal of the arts. During this time, he frequented avant garde shows at the galleries of such modernists as Alfred Stieglitz and J. B. Neuman, and took a particular interest in a show of the works of Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuşi.^[10]

In late 1926, Noguchi applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship. In his letter of application, he proposed to study stone and wood cutting and to gain "a better understanding of the human figure" in Paris for a year, then spend another year traveling through Asia, exhibit his work, and return to New York.^[11] He was awarded the grant despite being three years short of the age requirement.

Early travels (1927–1937)[link]

Noguchi arrived in Paris in April 1927 and soon afterward met the American author Robert McAlmon, who brought him to Constantin Brâncuşi's studio for an introduction. Despite a language barrier between the two artists (Noguchi barely spoke French, and Brâncuşi did not speak English^[12]), Noguchi was taken in as Brâncuşi's assistant for the next seven months. During this time, Noguchi gained his footing in stone sculpture, a medium with which he was unacquainted, though he would later admit that one of Brâncuşi's greatest teachings was to appreciate "the value of the moment."^[13] Meanwhile, Noguchi found himself in good company in France, with letters of introduction from Michio Itō helping him to meet such artists as Jules Pascin and Alexander Calder, who lived in the studio of Arno Breker. They became friends and Breker did a bronze bust of Noguchi.

Noguchi only produced one sculpture – his marble Sphere Section – in his first year, but during his second year he stayed in Paris and continued his training in stoneworking with the Italian sculptor Mateo Hernandes, producing over twenty more abstractions of wood, stone and sheet metal. Noguchi's next major destination was to be India, from which he would travel east; he arrived in London to read up on Oriental Sculpture, but was denied the extension to the Guggenheim Fellowship he needed.

In February 1929, he left for New York City. Brâncuşi had recommended that Noguchi visit Romany Marie's café in Greenwich Village.^[14] Noguchi did so and there met Buckminster Fuller, with whom he collaborated on several projects,^{[15][16][17][18]} including the modeling of Fuller's Dymaxion car.^[19]

Upon his return, Noguchi's abstract sculptures made in Paris were exhibited in his first one-man show at the Eugene Schoen Gallery. After none of his works sold, Noguchi altogether abandoned abstract art for portrait busts in order to support himself. He soon found himself accepting commissions from wealthy and celebrity clients. A 1930 exhibit of several busts, including those of Martha Graham and Buckminster Fuller, garnered positive reviews,^[20] and after less than a year of portrait sculpture, Noguchi had earned enough money to continue his trip to Asia.

Noguchi left for Paris in April 1930, and two months later received his visa to ride the Trans-Siberian Railway. He opted to visit Japan first rather than India, but after learning that his father Yone did not want his son to visit using his surname, a shaken Noguchi instead departed for Peking. In China, he studied brush painting with Qi Baishi, staying for six months before finally sailing for Japan. Even before his arrival in Kobe, Japanese newspapers had picked up on Noguchi's supposed reunion with his father; though he denied that this was the reason for his visit, the two did meet in Tokyo. He later arrived in Kyoto to study pottery with Uno Jinmatsu. Here he took note of local Zen gardens and haniwa, clay funerary figures of the Kofun era which inspired his terra cotta The Queen.

Noguchi returned to New York amidst the Great Depression, finding few clients for his portrait busts. Instead, he hoped to sell his newly-produced sculptures and brush paintings from Asia. Though very few sold, Noguchi regarded this one-man exhibition (which began in February 1932 and toured Chicago, the west coast, and Honolulu) as his "most successful".^[21] Additionally, his next attempt to break into abstract art, a large streamlined figure of dancer Ruth Page entitled Miss Expanding Universe, was poorly received.^[22] In January 1933 he worked in Chicago with Santiago Martínez Delgado on a mural for Chicago's Century of Progress Exposition, then again found a business for his portrait busts; he moved to London in June hoping to find more work, but returned in December just before his mother Leonie's death.

Beginning in February 1934, Noguchi began submitting his first designs for public spaces and monuments to the Public Works of Art Program. One such design, a monument to Benjamin Franklin, remained unrealized for decades. Another design, a gigantic pyramidal earthwork entitled Monument to the American Plow, was similarly rejected, and his "sculptural landscape" of a playground, Play Mountain, was personally rejected by Parks Commissioner Robert Moses. He was eventually dropped from the program, and again supported himself by sculpting portrait busts. In early 1935, after another solo exhibition, the New York Sun's Henry McBride labeled Noguchi's Death, depicting a lynched African-American, as "a little Japanese mistake."^[23] That same year he produced the set for Frontier, the first of many set designs for Martha Graham.

After the Federal Art Project started up, Noguchi again put forth designs, one of which was another earthwork chosen for the New York City airport entitled Relief Seen from the Sky; following further rejection, Noguchi left for Hollywood, where he again worked as a portrait sculptor to earn money for a sojourn in Mexico. Here, Noguchi was chosen to design his first public work, a relief mural for the Abelardo Rodriguez market in Mexico City. The 20-meter-long History as Seen from Mexico in 1936 was hugely political and socially conscious, featuring such modern symbols as the Nazi swastika, a hammer and sickle, and the equation E = mc².

Further career in the United States (1937–1948)[link]

Noguchi returned to New York in 1937. He again began to turn out portrait busts, and after various proposals was selected for two sculptures. The first of these, a fountain built of automobile parts for the Ford Motor Company's exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair, was thought of poorly by critics and Noguchi alike^[24][25] but nevertheless introduced him to fountain-construction and magnesite. Conversely, his second sculpture, a nine-ton stainless steel bas-relief entitled News, was unveiled over the entrance to the Associated Press building at the Rockefeller Center in April 1940 to much praise.^[26] Following further rejections of his playground designs, Noguchi left on a cross-country road trip with Arshile Gorky and Gorky's fiancée in July 1941, eventually separating from them to go to Hollywood.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, anti-Japanese sentiment was reenergized in the United States, and in response Noguchi formed "Nisei Writers and Artists for Democracy". Noguchi and other group leaders wrote to influential officials, including the congressional committee headed by Representative John Tolan, hoping to halt the internment of Japanese Americans; Noguchi later attended the hearings but had little effect on their outcome. He later helped organize a documentary of the internment, but left California before its release; as a legal resident of New York, he was allowed to return home. He hoped to prove Japanese-American loyalty by somehow helping the war effort, but when other governmental departments turned him down, Noguchi met with John Collier, head of the Office of Indian Affairs, who convinced him to travel to the internment camp located on an Indian reservation in Poston, Arizona to promote arts and crafts and community.

Noguchi arrived at the Poston camp in May 1942, becoming its only voluntary internee.^[27] Noguchi first worked in a carpentry shop, but his hope was to design parks and recreational areas within the camp. Although he created several plans at Poston, among them designs for baseball fields, swimming pools, and a cemetery,^[28] he found that the War Relocation Authority had no intention of implementing them. Noguchi also realized that, despite his heritage, he had little in common with the internees, who he described as being mostly unintellectual, nonpolitical farmers.^[29] In June, Noguchi applied for release, but intelligence officers labeled him as a "suspicious person" due to his involvement in "Nisei Writers and Artists for Democracy". He was finally granted a month-long furlough on November 12, but never returned; though he was granted a permanent leave afterward, he soon afterward received a deportation order. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, accusing him of espionage, launched into a full investigation of Noguchi which ended only through the American Civil Liberties Union's intervention.^[30] Noguchi would later retell his wartime experiences in the British World War II documentary series The World at War.

Upon his return to New York, Noguchi took a new studio in Greenwich Village. Throughout the 1940s, Noguchi's sculpture drew from the ongoing surrealist movement; these works include not only various mixed-media constructions and landscape reliefs, but lunars – self-illuminating reliefs – and a series of biomorphic sculptures made of interlocking slabs. The most famous of these assembled-slab works, Kouros, was first shown in a September 1946 exhibition, helping to cement his place in the New York art scene.^[31] In 1947 he began a relationship with Herman Miller of Zeeland, Michigan. This relationship was to prove very fruitful, resulting in several designs that have become symbols of the modernist style, including the iconic Noguchi table, which remains in production today. Noguchi also developed a relationship with Knoll, designing furniture and lamps. During this period he continued his involvement with theater, designing sets for Martha Graham's Appalachian Spring and John Cage and Merce Cunningham's production of The Seasons. Near the end of his time in New York, he also found more work designing public spaces, including a commission for the ceilings of the Time-Life headquarters. In March 1949, Noguchi had his first one-person show in New York since 1935 at the Charles Egan Gallery.^[32] In September 2003, The Pace Gallery held an exhibition of Noguchi's work at their 57th street gallery. The exhibition, entitled 33 MacDougal Alley: The Interlocking Sculpture of Isamu Noguchi, featured eleven of the artist’s interlocking sculptures. This was the first exhibition to illustrate the historical significance of the relationship between MacDougal Alley and Isamu Noguchi’s sculptural work.^[33]

Bollingen Fellowship and life in Japan (1948–1952)[link]

Following the suicide of his friend Arshile Gorky in 1948 and a failed romantic relationship with Nayantara Pandit, the niece of Indian nationalist Jawaharlal Nehru, Noguchi applied for a Bollingen Fellowship to travel the world, proposing to study public space as research for a book about the "environment of leisure."

Later years[link]

In the ensuing years he gained in prominence and acclaim, leaving his large-scale works in many of the world's major cities. He was briefly married to the ethnic-Japanese icon of Chinese song and cinema Yoshiko Ōtaka (known by the stage-name Li Xianglan (Chinese: 李香蘭; pinyin: Lǐ Xīanglán)) between 1951 and 1956. ^[34]

In 1955, he designed the sets and costumes for a controversial theatre production of King Lear starring John Gielgud.^[35]

In 1962, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.^[36]

In 1971, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[37]

In 1986, he represented the United States at the Venice Biennale, showing a number of his Akari light sculptures.^[38]

In 1987, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

Isamu Noguchi died on December 30, 1988 at the age of 84. In its obituary for Noguchi, the New York Times called him "a versatile and prolific sculptor whose earthy stones and meditative gardens bridging East and West have become landmarks of 20th-century art."^[39]

The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum is devoted to the preservation, documentation, presentation, and interpretation of the work of Isamu Noguchi. It is supported by a variety of public and private funding bodies.^[40] The U.S. copyright representative for the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum is the Artists Rights Society.^[41]

Zwillingsplastik Munich

The Isamu Noguchi Foundation is represented by The Pace Gallery, New York.

Notable works by Noguchi[link]

• Japanese Garden at UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France
• A bridge in Peace Park, Hiroshima, Japan
• Kodomo no Kuni, a children's playground in Yokohama, Japan
• Bayfront Park, 1980–1990, Miami, Florida
• Sunken Garden for Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
• Sunken Garden for Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza in New York, New York
• Gardens for the IBM headquarters, Armonk, New York
• Billy Rose Sculpture Garden, Israel Museum, Jerusalem
• Playscapes, a children's playground in Atlanta, Georgia
• Bust of Martha Graham, Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, Hawaii
• Tsuneko-san (1931), Honolulu Museum of Art
• Lunar Landscape (1943–44), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
• Sculpture for First National City Bank Building, Fort Worth, Texas
• The Cry (1962), Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
• Red Cube (1968), HSBC Building, New York, New York
• Octetra (1968), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
• Untitled Red (1965–66), Honolulu Museum of Art
• Twin Sculpture (1972), Munich, Germany
• Sky Gate (1977), Honolulu Hale, Honolulu, Hawaii
• Portal, Justice Center Complex, Cleveland, Ohio.
• Dodge Fountain and Philip A. Hart Plaza in Detroit, Michigan (created in collaboration with Shoji Sadao)
• Black Sun (1969), Volunteer Park, Seattle, Washington
• California Scenario (1980–1982), Costa Mesa, California
• Bolt of Lightning... Memorial to Ben Franklin (1984), Franklin Square (Philadelphia), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Landscape of the Cloud, in the lobby of 666 Fifth Avenue New York, New York
• The Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden (1986) for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
• Moerenuma Park, Sapporo, Japan

His final project was the design for Moerenuma Park, a 400 acre (1.6 km²) park for Sapporo, Japan. Designed in 1988 shortly before his death, it is completed and opened to the public in 2004.

Gallery[link]

• 

  Heimar, 1968, at the Billy Rose Sculpture Garden, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel

• 

  The Cry, 1959, Kröller-Müller Museum Sculpture Park, Otterlo, Netherlands

Honors[link]

Noguchi received the Edward MacDowell Medal for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to the Arts in 1982; the National Medal of Arts in 1987; and the Order of the Sacred Treasure from the Japanese government in 1988.^[42]

See also[link]

• Noguchi Museum

See also[link]

• Wabi-sabi

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Noguchi, Isamu (1968). A Sculptor's World. Harper & Row. 
• Duus, Masayo; translated by Duus, Peter (2004). The life of Isamu Noguchi: journey without borders. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-12096-X. 
• Kuh, Katherine (1962). The Artist's Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists. Harper & Row. 
• Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey, (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4. p. 254–257
• Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6. p. 39; p. 270–273
• Lifetime Honors – National Medal of Arts.

Further reading[link]

• Altshuler, Bruce (1995). Isamu Noguchi (Modern Masters). Abbeville Press, Inc. ISBN 1-55859-755-7.
• Ashton, Dore; Hare, Denise Brown (1993). Noguchi East and West. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-08340-7.
• Cort, Louise Allison, Bert Winther-Tamaki. Isamu Noguchi and modern Japanese ceramics: a close embrace of the earth. Washington, D.C.: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
• Kinnee, Sandy (2012). "Isamu Noguchi and His Nisei Muse". http://www.blurb.com/books/3158038
• Noguchi, Isamu et al. (1986). Space of Akari and Stone. Chronicle Books. ISBN 0-87701-405-1.
• Pina, Leslie (1998). Classic Herman Miller. Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing. ISBN 0-7643-0471-2. 
• Torres, Ana Maria; Williams, Tod (2000). Isamu Noguchi: A Study of Space. The Monticelli Press. ISBN 1-58093-054-9.
• Winther-Tamaki, Bert. Art in the encounter of nations: Japanese and American artists in the early postwar years. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001.
• Weilacher, Udo: "Isamu Noguchi: Space as Sculpture." in: Weilacher, Udo (1999): Between Landscape Architecture and Land Art. Birkhauser Publisher. ISBN 3-7643-6119-0.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Isamu Noguchi

• The Noguchi Museum
• The Pace Gallery
• Noguchi's Indiana experience
• Noguchi's California Scenario (LandLiving.com)
• Moerenuma Park (LandLiving.com)
• An Interview with Isamu Noguchi
• Artists Rights Society, Noguchi's U.S. Copyright Representatives
• "Noguchi - The Man Who Entered Stone", BigBridge Press, 1999; a biography in poem
• "Isamu Noguchi 'Radio Nurse' Baby Monitor". Furniture. Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/furniture/stories/radio_nurse/index.html. Retrieved 2011-04-03.