娘：「本当に素敵な演奏だったわ」
母：「グレゴリウス聖歌とサックスが見事に溶け合っていたわね」
toke-au
Musume: Hontoo ni suteki na ensoo datta wa.
Haha : Guregoriusu seika to sakkusu ga migoto ni toke-atte ita wa ne.
Daughter: That was a really beautiful concert, wasn't it?
Mother: The saxophone blends in so well with the Gregorian chants, doesn't it.
toke-au is used to describe two things mixing or blending well together.
I recently went to see a concert entitled "Officium." This was a performance of Gregorian chants sung by the Hilliard Ensemble, an English choral ensemble, originally recorded in 1974.
This quarter of male vocalists has already received several prizes for their outstanding recordings, but for "Officium," they added a saxophonist, Jan Garbarek, to their number. If you haven't already heard them, you may well wonder what kind of effect this creates.
Shuukyoo-ongaku to sakkusu ga toke-au to wa, totemo omoemasen ne (It's hard to imagine religious music mixing very well with the saxophone, isn't it?), one of my friends commented. Well, you can never tell until you hear something for yourself.
The concert was a complete sellout, but we were lucky enough to get seats in the fourth row. When the concert was about to begin, everyone was very quiet, and then as the first notes began to unfold their strange, unfamiliar harmony, the audience became captivated.
It was unlike anything I'd ever heard before, Seigaku to sakkusu ga toke-atta oto to mo koe to mo ienai haamonii (A harmony in which the sounds of the instruments and die voices blended so well that you could hardly tell one from the other).
It was like floating around at the bottom of the sea, or listening to a sound from somewhere far away in the sky. A pitch dark forest, a sunset, Donna bamen ni mo, kono ongaku wa toke-au yoo ni omoeru (I could imagine this music going with any kind of scene).
For humankind prayer seems to have a universal rhythm and melody. Seiko ga bukkyo no inori to sae toke-au yd na ki ga suru (Religious chants seem to blend particularly well with Buddhist prayer).
And I can imagine if "Officium" was used as backing music to Murasaki Shikibu's Genji Monogatari, Seiyoo to Nihon, kodai to gendaiga toke-au no de wa nai desho ka (It would create an interesting blend of Western and Japanese, old and new). If I were a film director, I would like to try my hand at making this movie.