The band in the square

An original imagined literary non-fiction-style account of an outdoor brass-band performance.

The first note gave the square a new set of walls. Until then, people had crossed it diagonally, thinking about shops and parked cars. Now several stopped with one foot still pointed towards the errand they had abandoned.

Sunlight travelled over the instruments in impatient flashes. A trombone slid forward, gathered itself and returned. Behind it, a row of shoulders rose together, as though the tune had taken hold of a single larger body. The drummer watched with a face which made every small beat look necessary.

Near the fountain, a child tried to conduct. Her hands supplied twice as many instructions as the band required. Nobody corrected her. A man continued holding the sandwich he had unwrapped before the music began, its paper making a small white flag beneath his wrist.

The tune widened. It reached the café tables and entered a conversation which paused without quite ending. Above the shop, an open window held a person whose face I could not see. Only a sleeve rested on the sill, still enough to suggest listening.

When the final chord stopped, the square seemed briefly too large. The new walls had gone. People clapped, the child bowed to no particular section, and the man remembered his sandwich. Then the diagonal paths began again, carrying the music away in several different directions.

Examine the methods the writer uses to show the performance temporarily changing the square.