Doctoral candidate Ikuko Inoguchi presented her paper, “Performing Tōru Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketch: A Sense of Time, A Sense of Space, and A Sensitivity to Colour and Tone,” on 1 February, 2013, at the conference “Music from Japan.” Co-hosted by the Institute of Musical Research and Guildhall School of Music & Drama, the conference was programmed to complement the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Total Immersion: Sounds from Japan.

After performing Rain Tree Sketch, Ikuko discussed the notion of time in the work, and how to respond to it in performance. Following the analysis of the piece, showing how Takemitsu communicates the idea of natural cycles of water with his cyclical use of motif and pitch-class sets, she compared three recordings by Kazuoki Fujii (1982), Roger Woodward (1990), Peter Serkin (2000) and suggested that their choices of different tempi could have been the result of different tempo markings in three editions, based on her recent findings made upon her visit to Schott Japan Tokyo office in December 2012.

After introducing the concept of ma with a DVD performance of nō, Ikuko concluded her presentation with a discussion of how the performer can assimilate the aesthetic of ma in order to evoke in the listener’s perception the feel of cyclic time that Takemitsu had in mind.