Structurally, it has an almost 19th-century delicacy, with quasi-formal groupings crystallising and dissolving with the kaleidoscopic variety of a Romantic-era dream sequence.
By 1968 the quintet was dissolving, with bassist Ron Carter unwilling to go electric, and the others increasingly absorbed in projects of their own.
Indeed, a wish "to do an English Sabbath's Theater" got him writing again, just as his second marriage was dissolving with much acrimony.
This once very solid man was dissolving with grief over the loss of his wife; he was rarely able to talk about her without his tough, sandpapery old face breaking into tears.
The genius of the design is that Rudolph has taken standard bookcases, staircases and built-in couches and woven them into a dazzling fabric, the walls and floors dissolving with Rudolph's ceaseless push and pull.
His hope, he says, would be of "dissolving with her, and being happier still"; he's had the side of her coffin removed, he explains, so that, when he dies and is buried alongside her, their decaying bodies might mingle together.
