Actual whole of music, paperback/haydn middleton

Many years later a small boy would say to me, Whats inside music? If the bit we hear is just the skin of it, the scent, whats the actual whole of music? There wasnt a great deal I could say to him in reply.

Not then.

But his question took me back to our expeditionary era, which did feel like a time of transaction as well as transition.