Scenario:The cellist finds themselves in a strange environment where everything they do is mimicked by five other instrumentalists. The cellist tries out various sounds and figures in this unfamiliar sonic world, making things up as they go and listening to the result. The cellist eventually finds a soulful aria (Meme 3), and as the aria becomes more impassioned, the imitators get better and better at predicting what the cellist is going to do, eventually singing right along with the cellist as equals, subsuming the cellist into their sound and then suplanting the cellist in the leadership position. A fight/dialogue ensues, and as the cellist gradually regains their role as the primary voice, the clarinet emerges as the principal outlier/antagonist, only re-joining the task at hand with the piece's final note.- Andrew Norman