Tōru Takemitsu

was a Japanese composer of contemporary classical music and writer on music. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu was admired for his subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre. He is known for combining elements of oriental and occidental philosophy and for fusing sound with silence and tradition with innovation. Takemitsu composed several hundred independent works of music, scored more than ninety films and published twenty books. His 1957 Requiem for string orchestra attracted international attention, led to several commissions from across the world and established his reputation as the leading 20th-century Japanese composer. He was the recipient of numerous awards and honours and the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award is named after him. Biography Youth Tōru Takemitsu was born on 8 October 1930 in the northern Hongō district of Tokyo. The family moved a month later to the then Japanese-controlled Dalian, Manchuria, where Tōru’s father Takeo Takemitsu, was a government official. After his father’s early death in 1938, Tōru’s mother Reiko sent him back to Japan to attend elementary (1938–1943) and middle school (1944). He lived with an aunt and uncle, again in Hongō, Tokyo