ABSTRACT
Issues of development, continuity and long-range formal process are central to the late style of the Japanese composer To-ru Takemitsu. This chapter discusses the eclecticism and overt expressivity of the music of Takemitsu's final decade aligns it clearly with the other compositions. The path taken may be circuitous and wandering at times, but the stability of the garden itself nonetheless gives some coherence to the experience; a walk around a formal garden is a very different experience from a ramble in wild forest or parkland. This is music of aimless strolling, not of direction or expectation. And yet a return to the analogy of a garden suggests a different perspective: a walk around a formal garden is very different from a ramble in open countryside. Returning to the horticultural analogy, here we are strolling through an ornamental garden, but one with no clear path; so our progress is slow and our bearing rather wandering.
