He doesn’t yet know of the flare, but even if he had been dreaming of it, the light of dreams is never that bright. Even the faint glow of a real bedside lamp sheds more illumination than anything seen while one is sleeping, even a burning sun. As his dream takes shape he hears sound too, the crisp notes of Francesco Landini’s organ behind polyphonic voices extolling the virtues of love, seven hundred years after the notes were first written. He feels joy, and peace, and is happy to be alone with the music. The polyphonic chorus keeps on, popping in and out with the rhythm, jumping over and crawling under each other’s notes, but never falling out of sync, not once. But then … The subtle, straightforward seven-hundred-year-old tones of Landini’s organ morph into sharp, brazen piano notes. The understated love songs fade to the sweeping style of Rachmaninoff, and the polyphonic voices turn into the Russian master’s virtuosic style, slipping in and out of keys and moving with an unforgiving cadence.
