A Way a Lone (1980)

A glance at the titles of some of Toru Takemitsu’s major works – A flock descends into the pentagonal garden, To the edge of dream, Tree line, I hear the water dreaming – tells you quite a lot about him. He was clearly more likely to be inspired by a poetic image than by a formal concept, and if there is some intangible or even inaudible quality to the image so much the better. His music is, in fact, the result of a highly refined exotic sensibility applied to a no less highly developed western technique and, as such, something quite unique in the repertoire. It is true that it sounds more French than anything else, but it is not so much that affiliation as the sheer quality of the craftsmanship and the imagination behind it that has made Takemitsu the one Japanese composer so far to register a major impression in the concert halls of Europe and America.

A Way a Lone, written in 1980 for the tenth anniversary of the Tokyo String Quartet, is one of four Takemitsu scores (including an orchestral elaboration of A Way a Lone) inspired by Finnegans Wake. Taking its title from the end of James Joyce’s magnum opus, “The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the,” it is actually rather more comprehensible than that might suggest. It is a highly melodious work – its main theme is a three-note motif, E flat, E, A, representing the sea in Takemitsu’s cryptography – and its scoring is an unfailing source of fascination. It would be a mistake, however, to expect A Way a Lone to respect any recognised musical form. It is a highly subjective construction, as unpredictable as Joyce’s writing in its stream-of-consciousness thinking. “After all,” as Takemitsu once asked, “what is more fun, a trip that has been planned meticulously or one taken on the spur of the moment?”