Toward the Sea 

Toru Takemitsu was commissioned by Greenpeace to compose Toward the Sea in 1981 for the Save the Whales campaign. Inspired by Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick, the three movements titled The Night, Moby-Dick, and Cape Cod evoke water-like soundscapes from the classic novel. In the period which Takemitsu composed Toward the Sea, he frequently depicted water in his music; Garden Rain (1974), Waves (1976), Rain Tree (1981), Rain Coming (1982), riverrun (1984), The Sea is Still (1986), and I Hear the Water Dreaming (1987) all embrace this water theme. In Toward the Sea, Takemitsu employs the three-note motive Eb-E-A throughout the work, a symbolic gesture to the sea (Eb-E-A translates to “sea” in German).  

Takemitsu described Toward the Sea as an “homage to the sea which creates all things and a sketch for the sea of tonality.” During this compositional period, he began embracing tonality more than in his earlier works, and Toward the Sea may feel akin to the impressionistic music of Claude Debussy or Maurice Ravel. The music is largely absent of bar lines and requires various playing techniques and fingerings from the flautist. The timbral "sea" created by the guitar (played here on marimba) and the alto flute help to encapsulate the deep, dark, mysterious emotions of Moby-Dick.