The composer describes the matter of this music as follows: . . . In the life of any person there comes the Time of the Miraculous. Particularly when one is in a bad mood. And then, suddenly, the old cuckoo clock becomes animated, the Clay cowboy enters into worldly discussions with the Gloomy stork, the flowers on the window sill begin to jangle under the palpations of sunbeams, and one begins to resemble a mechanical toy, wound by someone else . . .