“Daphnis and Chloe”

“After a few minutes, Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé sounded from the red-nosed Magnavox stereo. This music enthralled her. In it she heard the world awakening from its dark-night slumbers. The composer had somehow managed to eavesdrop on nature herself, so that he could audibly portray her first twinklings of dawning awareness, the hypnopompic images that passed like flashing masterpieces before her still-closed eyes. Here, in these piccolo and flute notes, the maestro perfectly captured the dew drops on scarlet poppies, the first tentative flutterings of robins’ wings, and the pearly luster of the languid clouds caught by the rays of the newborn sun. The fragile oboes portrayed the earliest chirps of the nestling sparrow chicks. And then the master brought in the violins to announce the flexing of the waking earth’s muscles, her colossal limb stretches, and deep exhalations. The clarinets showed the upper branches of the oaks beginning to shake off their nocturnal slumbers and reposition their arms under the enlivening influence of the warming rays. The glissandos of the harp strings revealed the glinting waters of the wooded stream as it burbled over the gray rocks smoothed by its passage. And the double basses allowed the listener to see, with her mind’s eye, that even the immense and apparently lifeless boulders responded to nature’s awakening bell.”