More on: Jeanne Murray Walker

When the concertmaster gestures to the oboe, silence flutters through the massive hall. Then comes the tuning up. Before that, though— go back. Before the obedient violin falls to his A, before the flutes, trombones, and tuba head like horses in the same direction to plow and plant one of Beethoven’s great fields. Go back.…

It was your hunch, this world. On the heyday of creation, you called, Okay, go! and a ball of white hot gasses spun its lonely way for a million years, all spill and dangerous fall until it settled into orbit. And a tough neighborhood, it was, too. Irate Mars, and sexually explicit Venus, the kerfluff…