JAVS Spring 2014

But further support for the performer-as-audience mentality in the case of A Bird came down the Walk comes from the poem by Emily Dickinson. The poem’s narrator does not simply describe the events she witnesses but actively engages in them. By “offer[ing] him a Crumb,” the narrator becomes not only an audience member but a performer in the events of the poem; and by reflecting on the events she has described, she becomes not only a performer but an audience member. So the distinction between performer and spectator, like that between sound and silence or between finite and infinite, ultimately seems to disappear. To this end, the performer can take advantage of Takemitsu’s penchant for silences: built-in moments for garden-strolling, for listening from the perspec tive of an audience member—or in this case, of a bird-watcher. Essentially, a successful performance of A Bird came down the Walk , or any other work of Takemitsu, depends on an acute mindfulness to the subtleties of timbre as well as a dissolving of Western music’s traditional barrier between audience and per former. Takemitsu’s writings become a poetic and enlightening read for a flexible musician willing to expand his or her sensitivity to color and to embrace a new mindset with respect to the performer’s role. Julie Michael is pursuing a Master’s degree in viola per formance at McGill University, where she studies with André Roy. She teaches at the McGill Conservatory and holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan. 1 Tōru Takemitsu, liner notes to A Bird came down the Walk: Original Works for Viola and Piano , by Nobuko Imai (viola) and Roland Pöntinen (piano), BIS-CD-829, 1996, compact disc. 2 Tōru Takemitsu, Confronting Silence: Selected Writings (Lanham, MD: Fallen Leaf Press, 1995), 103. Notes

5 Ibid., 9.

6 Ibid., 110.

7 John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 119. 8 Dana Richard Wilson, “The Role of Texture in Selected Works of Toru Takemitsu” (PhD disserta tion, University of Rochester, 1982), 22.

9 Kyoto National Museum.

10 Tōru Takemitsu, “Mirrors,” trans. Sumi Adachi and Roger Reynolds, Perspectives of New Music 30, no. 1 (Winter 1992): 39–40.

11 Kyoto National Museum.

12 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence: Selected Writings , 95.

13 Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikime dia.org/wiki/File:Saih%C3%B4-ji_Temple_- _Garden2.jpg#filelinks.

14 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence: Selected Writings , 119.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid., 6.

17 Ibid., 7.

18 Ibid., 106.

19 Ibid., 7.

20 Japanese Shō (Mouth Organ), Early Tokugawa period (19th century). Bamboo, wood, metal. Dimensions: L. longest pipe 45.4 cm (17–7/8 in.); L. shortest pipe 18.1 cm (7–1/8 in.). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rogers Fund, 1968.

3 Ibid., 106.

21 Takemitsu, Confronting Silence: Selected Writings , 7.

4 Ibid., 84.

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