Equinox for Guitar by Tōru Takemitsu

ByBradford Werner
2021

Equinox for Guitar by Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996) – One of the 20th Century’s most influential composers, Takemitsu was also a writer on aesthetics and music theory. Known for his subtle attention to timbre, silence, and fusing tradition with innovation. His music has a beauty and stillness to it, always filled with subtle but colourful timbral qualities and the writing is very focused and concise. The transformative nature of the motifs in this work also highlight his fascination with time, as he states in his book Confronting Silence: “Westerners, especially today, consider time as linear and continuity as a steady and unchanging state. But I think time as circular and continuity as a constantly changing state. These are important assumptions in my concept of musical form.”

Graham Wade writes via this Naxos, “Equinox (1993) was composed for a recital commemorating the 25th anniversary of Kiyoshi Shomura’s début and is dedicated to him. The first performance was given by Kiyoshi Shomura on 4 April 1994 in Tokyo. Takemitsu wrote concert programme notes to introduce the work: ‘Equinox for guitar was inspired by the painting of the same name by the Catalan painter, Joan Miro (1967). During the equinox the length of day and night are the same and the title has some relationship to musical proportions and the harmonic pitch interval within the composition, but no literary meaning. This piece is a gift for the 25th anniversary since his début of Mr Kiyoshi Shomura, who taught me about the guitar. ’”

Recommended Sheet Music
Equinox for Guitar by Tōru Takemitsu (Schott)

Recommended Album
Shin-ichi Fukuda on Naxos

Bradford Werner

Bradford Werner is a classical guitarist and music publisher from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He originally created this site for his students at the Victoria Conservatory of Music but now shares content worldwide. Curating guitar content helps students absorb the culture, musical ideas, and technique of the classical guitar. Bradford also has a YouTube channel with over 94,000 subscribers and 13 million views. He taught classical guitar at the Victoria Conservatory of Music for 16 years and freelanced in Greater Victoria for 20 years and now dedicates much of his time curating content online and helping connect the classical guitar community. See more at his personal website.