Sorry to be so late in responding to this one.

May I say, first of all, that I deeply appreciate Rozsa's music, more
especially his concertos and his works for strings.

However one point has been worrying me for some time and as I cannot find
a satisfactory explanation, I am hoping someone (Jeff?) will be able and
willing to provide me with one...  please.

Towards the end of April, Jeff Dunn wrote:

>Rozsa has always been my greatest love.  [...] But I'll never forget my
>first viewing of Ben Hur in Hollywood only a few days after the premiere.
>Operatically, the overture was played before the closed curtains in the
>huge theater.  What an excitement!  I still think of its score, along with
>the Violin Concerto, as among his best works.  The "Christ" or "God" motive
>still sends shivers down my spine.  Imagine how surpised I was, however, to
>hear Takemitsu make extensive use of it in his "From me flows what you call
>Time"!  Takemitsu should have given Rozsa credit.

This is so absolutely out of character...  Takemitsu paid tribute to
so many friends, poets, artists and musicians, finding inspiration in
their work, dedicating certain works to them (Messiaen, Feldman, Serkin,
Redon...) or quoting them openly (Debussy, for instance).  He was a very
loyal and respectful person.  When a concertante work was commissioned for
the ensemble Tashi, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, the exact instruments
Messiaen had to hand for his "Quartet for the End of Time", Takemitsu
immediately asked to meet with Messiaen, seeking his advice and
'permission', both of which he obtained.  ("Quatrain", 1975)

I have listened hard to "From me flows..." - even harder than before -
but I cannot discern anything that might be borrowed from "Ben Hur".
As I don't have a recording of "Ben Hur" to check more thoroughly, I have
read all I could (books, Takemitsu himself, texts on the internet...), and
have found no reference to Rozsa in this context.  Which motive would
correspond? How?...  I really need help here...  I do not forget Takemitsu
appreciated the cinema (he wrote music for over 90 films).

Takemitsu's music is so different from Rozsa's.  "From me flows..." is for
five percussionists and orchestra.  Amongst others, there is a five note
theme creating different harmonic fields - five for the five percussionists
of the Nexus ensemble, five for the number's symbolism in Tibetan Buddhism
and the imagery of the Wind Horse (water, fire, earth, wind, sky).  The
accent is on timbre and developing sound, rather than on recognized form
and relative note values.  Poetry in each flow...

The piece was commissioned for the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the
centenary of the Carnegie Hall in 1990.  The first performance, with
Nexus and the BSO, Ozawa conducting, was in the October of that year.

Regards,

Christine Labroche