The guitar enters first, followed immediately with the vibes, and the character of the whole piece is already established: artificially frenetic, radically pointillistic with jagged, anti-lyrical lines. Takemitsu went through an earnest period during which most of his music sounded like this; an extension of Le Marteau Sans Maitre by Pierre Boulez. But now it's all in fun, and the raison d'être of Stanza I its gently self-mocking wit.

When the piano enters, a minute later, the guitar and vibes clear out in the wake of heavy handed, upper mid-register chords. They cause the music to briefly freeze before the whole ensemble returns in another flurry of activity. From here on Takemitsu treats the instruments like a single instrument, giving Stanza I very much the feel of a solo for some elaborate, unknown instrument. He also continues the back and forth swing between frenetic noodling and stillness, using silences up to 12 seconds long. The internal structure is made up of basic imitative part-writing, and divisions of musical statements across the ensemble. He likes to present variations of the same music in all three instruments simultaneously. Later, the ensemble players loudly whisper random syllables and statements: "Yeah!" "uh!" "oof," and "It means yes?" The female voice, a soprano, enters in the last section, without affecting the character of the ensemble playing, singing first in German, then speaking emphatically in English an excerpt from Wittgenstein: "How things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world."

Boulez wrote of his spiritual/artistic aims in Le Marteau: "I increasingly believe that to make effective art, we have to take delirium, yes, and organize it." Takemitsu discards the genuine sense of urgency that Le Marteau had, and makes a game of the "delirium." Stanza I is good light listening, but, as parlor jokes must, it quickly grows pale.

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