Aging & Wisdom Quote by Toru Takemitsu

Takemitsu’s “old fashioned” is a provocation disguised as a shrug. Coming from a postwar composer who became synonymous with timbre, texture, and the idea of sound as environment, the line plays like a deliberate misdirection: the avant-gardist insisting he’s merely a tunesmith. The intent isn’t to retreat into nostalgia, but to reclaim melody as a private obsession in a culture of proclamations about “progress.”

The subtext cuts two ways. First, it’s a quiet critique of mid-century modernist orthodoxy, where melody could be treated as a compromised, sentimental relic. By admitting he “keeps thinking about melody,” he refuses the pose of the theorist who has purged desire from the work. Melody here isn’t a whistleable hook; it’s a human trace, a line that implies breath, memory, and vulnerability. Calling that “old fashioned” is Takemitsu wryly acknowledging how unfashionable emotional directness had become in certain new-music circles.

Second, it’s a sly correction to the way audiences package him: “Japanese composer” as a category, “colorist” as a brand. Takemitsu’s context is an era of competing identities: Western modernism, Japanese tradition, and his own complicated relationship to both. Melody becomes a kind of passport he issues to himself, a way to cross those borders without preaching about them.

The line works because it’s modest on the surface and defiant underneath: a composer asserting that the future of music might still depend on something as supposedly passé as a line you can follow.