The simplified style which characterised this new, ‘third period’ in Takemitsu's creative output was no adventitious development, but one whose roots can be traced in his work from the preceding years. In particular, the ground had long been prepared for the emergence of its more overt tonality by his engagement with a modal harmonic vocabulary which, though usually disguised somewhat by the dense textures of his ‘pantonal’ chromaticism, occasionally – as in the score of Green – had surfaced with surprising directness. There had also been sporadic excursions into conventional tonality in these years, such as the Abiyoyo quotation in Wind Horse and the Bach chorale in Folios; while outside the sphere of the composer's ‘serious’ work – in his film music, in the a cappella songs of Uta, or in the arrangements of pop ‘standards’ that formed Twelve Songs for Guitar (1977) – unapologetic tonal expression was flourishing shamelessly. The gradual emergence of the latter into the mainstream of Takemitsu's ‘serious’ composing activity was thus far from a sudden stylistic rupture, but more in the nature of an inevitability for which the soil had been carefully nurtured over a number of years.

While elements of his new style are certainly palpable in works such as Quatrain, in the author's opinion it is with the orchestral work A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden (1977) that Takemitsu first gives clear and unambiguous expression to the new stylistic preoccupations with which he is henceforth to be concerned. Moreover, if one grants this score a key role in Takemitsu's stylistic transformation, then a particular line of descent for certain aspects of the ‘late style’ which emerged as a result begins to suggest itself.