How would you describe music...?

Victor Hugo, in his novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, has done a delightful job. The situation of churches dotting the landscape, and all sending their music into the air visually reminds me of a spider web woven of light-emitting glass strands, that hangs suspended upon the atmosphere above the city. (pg 114-115)

This excerpt is from a chapter entitled, A Bird's Eye View of the City.

"Behold, at a signal from heaven--for it is the sun that gives it--those thousand churches starting from their sleep. At first you hear but scattered tinklings, going from church to church, as when musicians are giving one another notice to begin. The, of a sudden, behold--for there are moments when the ear itself seems to see--behold, ascending at the same moment, from every steeple, a column of sound, as it were, a cloud of harmony. At first the vibration of each bell mounts up direct, clear, and so to speak, isolated from the rest, into the splendid morning sky; then, by degrees, as they expand, they mingle, unite, are lost in each other, and confounded in one magnificent concert. It is no longer anything but a mass of sonorous vibrations, incessantly sent forth from the innumerable belfries--floating undulating, bounding and eddying, over the town, and prolonging far beyon the horizon the deafening circle of its oscillations. Yet that sea of harmony is not chaos. Wide and deep it is, it has not lost its transparency; you perceive the windings of each group of notes that escapes from the chimes. You can follow the dialogue, by turns solemn and shrill, of the treble and the bass; you perceive the octaes leaping from one steeple to another, you observe them springing aloft, winged, light and whirring, from the bell of silver; falling broken and limping from the bell of wood. You admire among them the rich gamut incessantly descending and reascending the seven bells of Saint Eustache; and you see clear and rapid notes, running criss-cross, in here or there luminous zigzags, and vanishing like flashes of lightening. Younder is the abbey Saint Martin's, a shrill and roken-voiced sonstress; here is the sinister and sullen voice of the Bastille; at the other end is the great tower of the Louvre, with its counter-tenor. The royal peal of the Palais unceasingly flings on every side resplendent trills, and upon them fall, at regular intervals heavy strokes from the belfry of Notre Dame, which strike sparks from them like the hammer from the anvil. At intervals, you see passing tones, of every form, coming from the triple peal of Saint Germain des Pres. Then again, from time to time, this mass of sublime sounds half opens and makes way to the tretto of the Ave Maria which flashes and sparkles like a cluster of starts. Below, in the heart of the harmony you vaguely catch the chanting inside the churches, exhaled through the vibrating pores of their vaulted roofs. This is, certainly, and opera worth hearing."