The thing about music was that you never knew the shape of anyone’s desire.

Els puts his eye to a burst of stars. They cluster, a blue star nursery, spraying out new worlds. He feels like he did two years ago, when he first looked at a glowing stain of cells under the 1,000x objective and realized that life happens elsewhere, on scales that have nothing to do with him.

They form in front of him: his friend, his wife, his daughter. People who loved him, who believed he’d do good things. In the mild April mist, he thinks: All I ever wanted was to make one slight noise that might delight you all. How small a thought it took. How small a thought.

From the first leaping figure in the strings, Els heard again the problem with music. Even the slightest tune sounded like a story. Melody played on the brain like a weather report, an avowal of faith, gossip, a manifesto. The tale came across, clearer than words. But there was no tale.

To call any music subversive, to say that a set of pitches and rhythms could pose a threat to real power . . . ludicrous. And yet, from Plato to Pyongyang, that endless need to legislate sounds. To police the harmonic possibilities as if there were no limits to music’s threat.

Listen closer, listen smaller, listen lighter, to any noise at all, and hear what the world will still sound like, long after your concert ends.

I don't know any sad songs. Except for the funny ones.

Music forecasts the past, recalls the future. Now and then the difference falls away, and in one simple gift of circling sound, the ear solves the scrambled cryptogram. One abiding rhythm, present and always, and you’re free.

And then the finale, its four modest notes. Do, re, fa, mi: half a jumbled scale. Too simple to be called invented. But the thing spills out into the world like one of those African antelopes that fall from the womb, still wet with afterbirth but already running.