Takemitsu - A flock descends into the pentagonal garden

As backstories to a piece of music go, this is up there with the best, or at least the weirdest. One day, one normal, ordinary day in 1977, Japan's greatest composer Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996) saw this:

The back of a man's head. It's a photograph from 1919 called 'Tonsure', taken by the great American-French surrealist photographer Man Ray of the artist Marcel Duchamp. As you can see, Duchamp has, for some reason, shaved a 5-pointed star in his head. And why not? It's his head, he could do whatever he wanted with it.

Later that night, one normal, ordinary night, Takemitsu went to bed and had a dream about a flock of birds landing in a pentagonal-shaped garden, brought about by the 5-pointed star he saw on Marcel Duchamp's head. When Takemitsu woke up, he drew a picture of his dream ...

... and then he wrote a piece of music about it.

Back when I started this blog, I said that you can put bird-inspired music into one of three categories:

• Metaphor & mythology - where birds become something more than just a bird, such as how they're represented in folklore (eg Ravens = death / doves = peace / Cuckoos = spring)

• Literal use - where a composer actually tries to replicate a singing bird in music

• Recorded bird song - I've not posted anything in this category yet, but this is where a composer is too lazy to write music sounding like birds, so they just use recordings instead. And I've got a few fantastic pieces to post later in the year about that

However, I now realise that I should have added another category:

• Eating too much cheese before you go to bed

Anyway, it's a beautiful, floating piece of music, obviously full of Japanese and eastern influence, but also totally indebted to the French impressionist music of Debussy and Ravel. Put on some headphones, turn off the lights, pour yourself a chipped mug of Babycham and try not to listen too analytically, just let it wash over you.