Just finished a book, Thomas Pynchon's massive Against the Day, at least 60% of which flew over my head, but which I think one of the best novels I've ever read. I came across this passage on page 896: In September, Hunter would invite her to accompany him to Gloucester Cathedral, where as part of that year's Three Choirs Festival, a new work by Ralph Vaughan Williams would be having its first performance. Ruperta, who despised church music, must have seen some irresistible opening for idle mischief, because she went along wearing a sportive toilette more appropriate to Brighton, with a hat she had always found particularly loathsome but kept handy for occasions just such as this. The composer was conducting two string orchestras set like cantors and decani facing each other across the chancel, with a string quartet between them. The moment Vaughan Williams raised his baton, even before the first notes, something happened to Ruperta. As Phrygian resonances swept the great nave, doubled strings sang back and forth, and nine-part harmonies occupied the bones and blood vessels of those in attendance, very slowly Ruperta began to levitate, nothing vulgar, simply a tactful and stately ascent about halfway to the vaulting, where, tears running without interruption down her face, she floated in autumnal light above the heads of the audience for the duration of the piece. At the last long diminuendo, she returned calmly to earth and reoccupied herself, never again to pursue her old career of determined pest. She and Hunter, who was vaguely aware that something momentous had befallen her, walked in silence out along the Severn, and it was hours before she could trust herself to speak. "You must never, never forgive me, Hunter," she whispered. "I can never claim forgiveness from anyone. Somehow, I alone, for every single wrong act in my life, must find a right one to balance it. I may not have that much time left." Ordinarily he would have humorously disputed her theory of moral bookkeeping. But later he would swear he had seen her surrounded then by a queer luminous aura he knew he could not banter away. Possessing one of those English ears on which flatted-seventh sonorities are never lost, Hunter had of course immediately fallen for the Tallis Fantasia, would always love it, but the change of heart he himself needed would have to proceed from some other source. Steve Schwartz *********************************************** The CLASSICAL mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's HDMail High Deliverability Mailer for reliable, lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html