I'm doing it, I can believe it too! This is what dictionaries and books bring.
It begins.
The basses begin and do that that constantly bowing on multiple strings at a time, not dissonant, but not in harmony. Maybe only two notes at two octaves between them.
The violins then begin a back and forth bowing that starts very slow but gets faster incrementally. They are playing a note at two octaves as well that makes completes a minor 7 chord between them and the basses.
The drums and the cellos start at the same time. The drums go crazy and make you scared and wonder if the earth will swallow you up, or at least if the auditorium will collapse. No "beat".
But, the cellos start playing, very sweetly, some variation of the ascending scale which compliments the m7 chord still being sustained and sped up. When the cellos hit certain notes, the sound gets warm and smooth. But when they hit other notes, the sound gets dark and wavy.
Then all of a sudden, the chaotic drums seem to begin to fall into place. Image that this "drum process" is like a very very very slow motion video of syrup being poured onto very cavernous waffles. Initially, the syrup stays on top and you are worried it will spill over, but then, slowly but surely the syrup sinks into the nooks of the waffle and is absorbed. This is the way the drums sound. They form this pulse:
Low: dom dom |
Middle: dikka dikka .|
Middle-High: cha .|
High: tikka tikka |
Then, and this is representative of the most recent paragraph, the basses who have been doing their thing slide very smoothly from the two notes into two different notes, one being lower than the previous lowest note, and the other being higher than the previous highest note, the violins have reached the pinnacle of their speed increase (which just as it happens in congruent with the drum's pulse), they then do that sort of bowing that allows the last note to resonate a long long time and they just hold really really still, the note they are playing is in harmony with the bass notes. The drums all stop except for one "sleigh bell" sort of instrument that just keeps getting shook. Then the cellos, trombones, tubas, trumpets play an arpeggio of the previous ascending scale. The cellos ascend this arpeggio, and the brass descends to create a sort of inverse effect. While this is happening the flutes are transitioning between two notes, maybe the same ones the basses are playing. And all of the clarinet players have their clarinets on the ground and are oscillating between two different notes, also far away from each other, but they are "sliding" between the notes, it looks like this.
DaaaahhhhDaaaahhhh
D
u
u
u
u
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Then all of the sounds stop, and I resume writing my paper. On to the second movement.
