This is a part of a long line of compositions being stimulated in some way by visual art, such as Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead, Respighi's Trittico botticelliano, Vaughan Williams's Job: A Masque for Dancing, Henri Dutilleux's Timbres, espace, mouvement, and Mark-Anthony Turnage's Three Screaming Popes.

[1] Bruegel's woodcut depicts a procession led by Time, on a chariot drawn by horses, followed by Death.

[2] The first type of documentation of this composition can be found in a sketchbook titled Modual Book, The Triumph of Time, dated 2 April 1970, where the composer included several ideas that were related to An Imaginary Landscape, Prologue and a preliminary abandoned version of The Triumph of Time, all composed between 1970 and 1971.

Described as a funeral march by William Mann in a review of an early recording in 1975 and by the composer himself as "a huge Adagio of Mahlerian proportions",[2] it is quite possibly one of the finest examples of the style Birtwistle developed in the 70s, which he entitled processional music.

40 (not faster) in the score and is mainly made up of close-knit clusters in the strings and brass,[8] whereas important ideas come out of the rest of the texture.