She sat listening to the music. It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean, and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music had escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance.
I'll bet it's been 10 years since I read it, but now that you mention it, it brings me right back. I remember that passage as if I read it yesterday. It was at about the same time that I discovered Mendelssohn and Wagner. I'll bet I listened to the Scottish & Italian symphonies, Hebrides overture and the Gotterdammerung trauermarsch & Seigfrieds Rheinfahrt 100 times back then. They would put me in the very state of mind that that passage describes.
Thank you for that. It's a pleasant recollection.
Ah, Halley's Fourth Concerto. Not available at Amazon.