Rosalyn Tureck has this month been a neighbor across the island, at Quidnet. I accepted her dinner invitation on the condition that she garnish this with a private concert. I arranged myself carefully among the rather tough cushions of an antique pink sofa, and she began to play... The music, which I'd never heard or even heard of (Bach's D minor keyboard version of his A-minor violin sonata), was unutterably touching, and while it unwound the semi-wild fauna of Nantucket fluttered or scurried over the grass toward the glass panes and gazed through the sunset into my features. The sound, like all controlled perfection (is perfection by definition controlled?), seemed inscrutably tragic (general I'm not given, when speaking of music, to metaphoric adjectives) and all the more satisfyingly so in that the ravens and rabbits conspired contingently to found a Peaceable Kingdom, choreographing a composition beyond their earshot. The sonata was followed by a Chopinesque adagio, again from a fiddle suite, and by two symphonies. When Rosalyn had finished the mourning doves were lowing and the sky was filled with stars. << less