He was making music - Howells, Finzi, Holst - so you could see the sounds in the serried air. Serried. Then just as suddenly empty when his sound-proof right hand closed off the notes.

Craig Raine
About This Quote

This line by the poet and journalist, Philip Larkin, describes a whole range of emotions and thoughts about music and its effect on the listener. The word "serried" describes how the notes appear in a row, as if they have been arranged that way by someone else. We can see here that Larkin is describing a sound that has been created by someone else, for someone else. Then as suddenly as the sound was there it is gone.

This emotion makes sense because music is something artificial. While it may have been created by a real person, it has an artificial quality about it. It is not something that can be experienced in real life.

It is a sound that only exists in the moment.

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