Toru Takemitsu Quotes


Music should be able to invoke the natural emotions in all human beings. Music is not notes fixed on apiece of paper.

Music is a form of prayer.

I probably belong to a type of composer of songs who keeps thinking about melody... I am old fashioned.

Although I am basically self taught I consider Debussy my teacher - the most important elements are colour light and shadow.

Composition gives proper meaning to the natural streams of sound that penetrate the world.

My teachers are Duke Ellington and nature.

I am a gardener of infinite time.

I always want to write erotic music... Not only about the love between men and women but in a much more universal sense - about the sensuality of the mechanism of the universe... about life.