7/4 Boscobel, Dvorak’s New World in a clear line of sight with West Point Academy, the audience scattered across the lawn as if caught between the two places, we the people just as randomly unable to live up to our presence as always. In some of the quietest moments of the symphony, cannon salutes are fired at West Point and white smoked moves across the hills, unexpected and without coordination. Later, after what is always a patience-wrecking 15-20 minutes while the last daylight fades, finally the fireworks. The crowd is quite silent, more silent in fact than during the concert. I always wonder, and fear, whether the fireworks might leave the audience underwhelmed, but fireworks always seem to find a childhood entrance into everyone’s minds. It is devastating that they have to end, and they do, after barely a few minutes. In pictures of people watching fireworks, they always seem to last forever, entire evenings at least, when in reality they are more fleeting than even rather short pieces of music.