Suite for Four Hands
David Carrico
Grantville
Late July, 1633
As he turned from closing the door of the Bledsoe and Riebeck workshop, Franz Sylwester found several pairs of eyes focused on him. “Well?” his friend Friedrich Braun asked expectantly. “What did the nurse say?”
Franz struggled to keep his expression solemn as he took his jacket off. He heaved a sigh and turned to hang it on a peg by the door. As he faced the others again, Marla moved closer and placed a hand on his arm.
“Franz,” she started softly, obviously ready to comfort. He couldn’t hold it in any longer, and broke out in a smile, then laughed.
“Frau Musgrove declares that my hand is good, is healed.” He held his left hand up and flexed his fingers. The thumb, index and middle fingers moved easily. The ring and little fingers were still frozen in the same curved shape they had healed in after the knuckles were crushed in Heydrich’s assault, but even those fingertips flexed a little. “So, I now have enough of a hand to hold things.”
“Franz!” Marla squealed. She grabbed him and swung him around. “That’s great news!” Friedrich, Anna and Thomas crowded around to slap him on his back in congratulations.
Ingram Bledsoe came in from a door at the back of the workshop. “What’s the occasion?” Marla bounced over to him and gave him a swift hug, leaving him looking a little surprised but smiling nonetheless.
The others stepped back from Franz, who lifted up his hand again and flexed the fingers, smiling. “Nurse Musgrove says I am not to come back, that I am healed.”
“Congratulations!” Ingram stepped forward to shake hands. “That’s great news!”
Franz held up his good hand for quiet, reached into his pocket and dug out a three-inch rubber ball. “Marla,” tossing the ball to her, “please give this instrument of torture back to your niece. Tell her I thank her with all my heart for the loan of it, and that I never want to see it again!” Everyone laughed with him again, but they were all aware of how hard he had worked the last few months with that ball to rehabilitate his hand...squeezing it over and over and over again in every unoccupied moment...squeezing it until his arm ached to the elbow with the effort. They knew what drove him—the determination that he would not be a cripple, that in some way he would again be able to support himself.
Marla moved up and took his arm in both her hands.
“Franz,” she said, “to celebrate this occasion, we’ve got a gift for you.” He looked at her quizzically. “Anna, the first part’s yours.” Franz looked at his friend, wondering what was going on, while everyone else shifted around like young children trying to stifle exclamations. Anna walked over to a chest against the far wall, a chest that had come with them from Mainz, opened it up and took out a bundle wrapped in burgundy velvet. She handed it to Thomas, who passed it to Friedrich, who unwrapped the cloth to display a violin. As he held it out toward Franz, Marla felt him stiffen.
“That...that is...my violin,” he stuttered.
“Yes,” from Friedrich.
“How...how...” he stopped, swallowed, and forced himself to composure. “How is this possible? I smashed it...did I not?”
“No,” Anna stepped up, smiling, “no, you did not. You did smash your bow that night, and you endeavored to likewise destroy your violin. You did indeed throw it at the wall that night, in your fever and your anger, but you ran out the door before you could see that although the scroll hit the wall above the bench, the body hit a cushion instead.”
“The scroll was scraped,” Friedrich added, angling the instrument to show the traces of the mar, “but I was able to smooth it down and apply new finish to it. And so,” pressing the violin into his friend’s hands, “it returns to you. Both are somewhat older, both are somewhat stressed by your experiences, but you still suit one another very well. We kept it safe until you were ready to hold it again.” He stepped back, leaving Franz to clasp the instrument he thought he had destroyed—to hold it gently and pass one hand in a caress over its top.
Still staring at the violin—his violin—Franz said, “Never has a man had friends such as you. When I regained my senses, in my wanderings after I left Mainz, I grieved over this, grieved most sorely. The thought that I had wantonly destroyed my violin, made solely for the creation of beauty in a world that has not enough of it, did try my soul indeed.” He looked up, blinking, eyes bright with unshed tears. “And today you have restored it to me. I have not words to thank you as you deserve.” He looked back down at it as the tears spilled over, caressed it again, then embraced it for a long moment, his cheek leaning against the scroll.
The room was quiet, everyone respecting Franz’s emotions. He finally looked up again, smiled a little, and said, “Thank you. I thank God for you, my friends, who have saved me, and now have saved my violin as well. Now I am free of that guilt, and I am free to find someone who will take it from my hands to love it as I do and to play it as I no longer can.”
Marla took his arm again and turned him to face her. “Now for my gift. Franz, you don’t have to give it up. You can play.”
Franz was shocked that she would say such a thing, and a flash of anger and sorrow went through him. “Do not mock me, Marla.” Holding up his left hand, he said, “Even with the healing that has been done, I cannot finger the neck I cannot play.”
“Maybe you can’t finger the neck with that hand, but I’ll bet you can hold a bow with it now! Switch hands! Learn to play with switched hands!” Marla was grinning with delight and bouncing slightly in her excitement. Franz felt stunned. Was it possible? Could he do it? He felt dazed, as if he had been hit in the head. He saw Marla put her hand over her mouth to keep from giggling, so he was sure he looked as amazed as he felt.
“It’s true,” Ingram said, grinning himself. “I knew a mountain fiddler once who had an accident that left his left hand like yours. He just taught himself how to finger the neck with the right and learned to bow with his left. Last time I saw him, he was just as good that way as he was ’tother.”
Franz shuddered, and his jaw snapped shut. He felt an excitement building in him, and his eyebrows climbed to meet his hairline, causing Marla to giggle. He looked at her, and asked, “Do you think I can do this?”
“I know you can.”
Taking a deep breath, Franz turned to Friedrich and said, “My friend, how long until you can make me a bow to grace the violin you have restored to me?”
“As it happens,” Ingram interrupted, “that’s my gift to you.” He brought his hand out from behind his back, and presented a bow to Franz. “I always seem to end up with odds and ends of musical stuff. I’ve had this bow for ten years, never had a fiddle to go with it, never could bring myself to get rid of it. Now I know why. I was savin’ it for you. It’s made in the up-time style, not like the ones you’re used to, but I believe you’ll actually find it easier to hold with your hand the way it is.”
“So,” Marla spoke again, “you have your violin, you have your bow, you have your hand, and you have your friends. What more do you need?”
Franz looked around at the smiling faces, and smiled back. “Nothing.”
“Then get started.”
“As you wish, Mistress Marla,” and he danced away from the jab she aimed at his ribs.
Bouree
Grantville
August 1633
As he was giving the tuning knob a final twist, Franz heard the door open.
“So, have you decided yet?”
Franz looked up from his violin to see his friend Isaac Fremdling entering the choir room. “Have I decided what?”
“How you will string your violin, of course? Will you string it in the usual manner, or will you reverse the order of the strings?” Isaac pulled one of the chairs around and sat down.
“What do you think I should do?”
Isaac fingered his moustache, and after a moment of contemplation said, “ ’Twould perhaps be best to keep the usual order of the strings. In that manner you and another could play each other’s instruments with no difficulty.”
“An advantage, to be sure,” Franz replied. “Yet think of this, if you will: it will likely be easier to learn to play again if each right finger will move in the same manner and in the same relationship to the strings as the left does—if to play an ‘F’ the related finger makes the same motion, only mirror reversed, if you will.”
“A point,” nodded Isaac.
“And then consider the bow. Would it not be easier to train myself to reproduce the position of the bow as in a mirror, rather than in a totally different angle and position?”
“Aye,” Isaac nodded again.
“Well, then, Isaac, you have answered the question, have you not?”
“It seems that I have, at that,” his friend laughed. “So you have decided, then?”
Franz chuckled, and held up his violin. “Friedrich has moved the sound post inside and made a new bridge. I just now finished the stringing and tuning. Behold, a mirror violin.” He handed the instrument to Isaac, who examined it closely, tested the tuning, then attempted to place it under his chin.
“Pfaugh! It feels most unnatural to try to hold it under the right chin. But if anyone can do this, Franz,” he handed the violin back, “ ’tis you.”
“My thanks. I’ve no choice, you see, for now that I see a glimmering of light in the night, I will pursue it with all my heart.”
Isaac looked at his friend, his expression sobered, and he said quietly, “I grieved for you when I heard of the attack.”
Franz looked down, uncomfortable as always when offered sympathy. “I thank you, but as you are so fond of saying, ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.’ My pride needed curbing, I freely admit. I could wish that the manner of that curbing had not been so severe, and that I had been calmer and wiser and more considerate of my friends afterward. But it took long months of being alone before I began to slowly grow wise, and it was not until I found my way here to Grantville that I could begin to understand how and why you would say that. The Lord gave, the Lord took away, the Lord gave again, and I have learned to bless Him no matter my circumstance.”
“Then you are indeed wise, my friend, for there are few enough even of gray-hairs who possess wisdom that equals what you have just shared.” Isaac paused for a moment, then chuckled.
Franz raised an eyebrow.
“My initial reaction to your misfortune was grief indeed,” Isaac said, “but hard on its heels came indignation in harness with rage. I must admit that the thought of applying the consequences of the Golden Rule to Heydrich did cross my mind more than once or twice.”
“Surely you did not...”
“No, I could not bring myself to do it in cold blood. But there were others of like mind, and I doubt not that their conversations did find their ways to Rupert’s itching ears, there to alarm rather than soothe. In truth, he began to company with various fellows, brutes from low taverns, in fear of what had been rumored. And he found no ease in that none of the rest of us would be alone with him thereafter. All of us found it to be most humorous.”
“Well, I am not saintly enough to not find some small pleasure in hearing of his discomfort,” Franz smiled.
“Oh, aye, before we left Mainz he had become almost two men, one moment the loudest of braggarts, the next like a nervous hind when the hounds bell out. I have seen the man’s head almost swivel completely in a circle as he tried to watch his own back.”
“The wicked fleeth when no man pursueth,” Franz chuckled. “It is perhaps the best vengeance. He will torment himself more than I could or would, and my hands and heart are clean.”
“Indeed.” There was another moment of quiet before Isaac continued, “As I said, I grieved when I heard. Of all my friends and fellow musicians, your love of the art is most like my own, and I knew well how I felt when someone attempted to take it from me.”
Franz raised an eyebrow again.
Isaac made a hand motion as if brushing off a table top. “You know that I am out of the Jews, but I say nothing of my life before Mainz. I knew, however, what you would feel. I was born Isaac Levin. My father is—I trust he still lives—a rabbi in Aschenhausen, where our forebears settled when the elector expelled the Jews from Saxony. Early in my years I showed promise of music, and he desired me to become a cantor. But other music enticed me, that which I heard from the taverns, through the windows of the merchants’ houses and the doorways of the salons. I hungered for more than the Psalms, for more than the music of our traditions. The wealth that was to be heard away from the synagogue filled my heart. I could not see how beauty such as that could not exist in God’s presence, but my father rejected it. He forbade me, he lectured me; as I grew older he reasoned with me. He even took a rod to me more than once.
“Finally, in my sixteenth year, he caught me once again slipping away from the door of a salon, and dragged me in front of the elders of our congregation. Right soundly he berated me, and demanded of me a solemn oath by the name of God that I would abandon foolishness and obey him in this. He ended by saying to me that if I would not, then I would no longer be his son. I would be dead to him.”
Franz whistled.
“Aye. I was stunned indeed, as were the elders. They argued with him that he was being too harsh, that he should not emulate Saul who drove away David, but to no avail. And all the while I tried to think of life without the music that was so much a part of me. He withstood them all, seeming to grow ever more rigid, and when they were finally silenced he turned to me and demanded my answer.
“I grappled my wits together, and gave the only answer I could give. I still remember every word. ‘Papa, I have tried to do as you say, but you were the one who instructed me that the Holy One, blessed be He, created music, that His very spirit guided David when he invented the lyre. Do not now blame me if that music calls me. Some men are called to trading; some men are called to farming; some men are called to the working of metal; some men are called to the study of Torah; and men such as I are called to music. If I do not swear, I am dead to you; yet if I do, I will be dead inside. You force me to judge between two evils, to cause a death either way. But in truth, it seems to me that the greater evil would be to forswear what the Holy One above has placed in me. Papa, it will be as you will it, but I cannot swear.’ ”
“A grievous choice, indeed, for a youth to have to make.” Franz placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“But the tale is not finished. I saw at that moment that my father had never truly understood me, for all his wisdom in Torah and Talmud. I saw that he had fully believed that I would swear, for the shock of my choice well-nigh shattered him. A proud, upright man he was, but he turned away from me gray and old. It was as if a tall and vital oak in the full bloom of summer in an eye-blink turned to a dead and hollow husk. The light in his eyes died, for he had made his command in public in front of the elders of the congregation, and his own pride and authority would not let him recant. His face turned to stone, his very voice turned to gravel as he said, ‘Thou art dead to me; Thou art dead to me; Thou art dead to me.’ He turned away, and trudged out of the court and into the house. The elders followed him, silently, except that for a moment old Joachim Arst, a man I had never before cared for, came to me. As tears coursed my cheeks, he placed a purse in my hands, saying, ‘I believe that I have lost some coins in the streets today.’ Then he took my face between his hands, and said, ‘Always remember, young Isaac who is now a stranger, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.’ And so I am now Isaac Fremdling, Isaac the stranger.”
Isaac brushed a hand across his eyes, looked at Isaac and said gently, “And so I know somewhat of how you felt after Heydrich mauled you, for I know how I felt when I thought I would not have the music, and I know how high a price I paid to have it.”
“Indeed,” Franz said, aching in his heart for his friend, knowing the kind of desolation that had been dealt him. “How is it I never heard this, from you or one of the others?”
“Because I have not shared it these last five years; before now there was none who would understand, none who could know what I felt then.”
Two young men—of different heritage, yet brothers in their love of music and the prices they had paid to have it—sat together in silence, contemplating things lost and things gained, and likewise contemplating the ancient wisdom of a man named Job.
Allemande
Grantville
Moments later
The door to the choir room crashed open, startling Franz and Isaac both. They had been wrapped so deeply in their thoughts they had not heard anyone approach. As the door panel bounced off the doorstop, a group of young men of an age with themselves broke into the room, arguing at the top of their lungs. They threw their books down on the tables at the head of the room and carried on with their heated discussion. Two of them in particular stood almost toe-to-toe, arms waving frantically. German epithets were bouncing from the walls and ceiling, the mildest of which were “Fool!” and “Imbecile!” The others quickly turned to egging their champions on, and if the volume did not decrease, at least the mass confusion did. Franz began to chuckle. They were such a sight: faces red, veins bulging on their foreheads, hair dancing wildly. He leaned over to Isaac, who was grinning broadly, and near-shouted in his ear, “I wonder how long Thomas and Hermann have been at it this time?” Isaac shrugged, but didn’t try to shout over the din.
For a moment there was quiet, as both men ran out of breath at the same time. Chests heaving, sweat running down their faces, they stood glaring at each other. Nothing was settled, though—this wasn’t even a truce. It was more in the way of a pause for breath in a long-fought duel between two very evenly matched opponents. That last thought caused Franz to laugh out loud, for although the two champions might have been evenly matched with their chosen weapons of words, little else about them was.
Thomas Schwarzberg, one of Franz’s closest friends, was a very tall man. Even among the giants of Grantville he stood out; among the native down-timers he was more than the Biblical head and shoulders taller. On the other hand, Hermann Katzberg was short, even for a down-timer. Franz doubted if he was five feet tall, especially if he took off his boots with the built-up heels. He was stocky, though not misshapen, and reasonably handsome with dark hair. In Franz’s mind, Hermann was more than a bit pugnacious, as he had just been demonstrating—possibly an in-born temperament, but just as likely an attitude adopted to keep the taller world in which he dwelt from overlooking him. It obviously irked Hermann just now that as much as he wanted to be nose-to-nose with Thomas, he was actually more like nose-to-navel.
The two were both excellent musicians, adept at several instruments, although each had one in which he was clearly superior. Hermann was perhaps the best harpsichordist that Franz had ever heard—better even than Thomas, which was praise indeed. Thomas, on the other hand, was far and away the finest flautist it had been his pleasure to hear, although Hermann, in his turn, was more than competent with a flute. Neither man had met the other before they came to Grantville; Thomas at Franz’s invitation, Hermann following rumors of new and powerful music. Within hours of their first meeting, they had accurately assessed each other’s skill and moved directly to mutual respect. And indeed, on most days and on most subjects they were very amicable and usually in agreement. There was one topic, however, on which both men had very strong opinions, and they were on different sides of the issue.
Just as Hermann opened his mouth to renew the verbal conflict, Marla Linder came walking in the door, books in arms. She stopped dead at the sight of Thomas and Hermann on their feet. “Not again!” She stalked over to the instructor’s desk, dropped her books with a loud slam, and glared at Franz and Isaac. “Can’t you keep them under control?”
“The battle was well under way ere they arrived, Fraulein Marla,” Isaac said, holding up both hands in a placating gesture. “In truth, it were worth our lives to attempt to come between them.” His inability to repress a grin garnered another glare from Marla.
“And I suppose that’s your story as well.” She shifted the adamantine gaze of her icy blue eyes to Franz.
“Well, as they had not progressed to the throwing stage yet, I had hopes that they would run out of energy soon.” He twitched his shoulders; Marla was obviously in a testy mood today.
Marla snorted, turned to the other men and pointed at ranked chairs. “Take a seat!” Looking over her shoulder at Franz and Isaac, she added, “You, too!” They all wasted no time in obeying. As they did so, Franz propped his chin on his good hand, looked at them all through half-lowered eyelids, and smiled a little.
He remembered the day these discussions began. He and Thomas and their other close friend Friedrich Braun had met with the musicians that were going to participate in the music “sem-i-nar.” In addition to Isaac, another of the newcomers was a man that he and Thomas and Friedrich had known in Mainz—Leopold Gruenwald, a maker of trumpets who was also a player of some skill. Leopold was the last of the musicians that Franz had invited to come to Grantville.
Of the others, there was Hermann, of course, and two brothers, Josef and Rudolf Tuchman. Hermann had come from Magdeburg, and the brothers Tuchman had followed the rumors all the way from Hanover to Grantville.
Leopold and Isaac were willing to accept the unanimous declaration of Franz, Friedrich and Thomas about Marla’s knowledge, talent and musicianship. The other three, however, had come seeking the new music that was hinted at in the rumors, seeking with an odd mixture of skepticism and hope. Once they heard what they would have to do to learn it, the skepticism rose to the top and they expressed some serious reservations. The thought of sitting in a school room to learn music was unheard of, by all that was holy. Musicians learned by doing, by sitting with other musicians and copying technique until they made it their own. This sitting in a room and talking about it was nonsense!
Then they found out that the seminar leader was to be a woman, and hackles started rising. By all that was unholy, a woman had no place in music, or at least not in the serious work that they themselves were doing!
Franz remembered shuddering as he looked around to make sure that Marla was not in ear-shot. From the expressions on their faces, Thomas and Friedrich had been thinking much the same thing. Together they faced forward and glared at the Tuchmans, who had been the most outspoken in their opinions. Franz had started to speak, but Thomas held up his hand and Franz swallowed his words.
“I make allowances,” Thomas had said sternly, “for the fact that you do not know Fraulein Marla. I also agree that a woman musician is most unusual, although perhaps not strictly unknown. However, I strongly urge you to keep the words you have just said behind your teeth in the future.
“Let me make it clear to you: you will accord to Fraulein Marla the minimum respect you would grant a visiting doyen or master. You will find that she is worthy of it.”
“And what if we do not?” Josef had asked, almost sneering.
Three faces had glowered in return, and Josef’s face went blank.
“You will not be allowed to learn from her,” Franz had said finally. “And there is no one else to learn from, for Master Wendell has said that this is to be her work.”
“Well, will she go all faint and quivery if I yell,” Hermann had demanded, “or, God forbid,” going falsetto, “I should be vulgar in her presence?” He had looked very nonplussed as Franz, Friedrich and Thomas had burst into laughter.
“No,” Franz had choked, fighting down the mirth, “she is no wilting flower. She will assuredly deal with you as you are.” Sobering quickly, he had reiterated, “She is worthy of your respect.” Hermann looked at the brothers and shrugged, and they all nodded.
Franz felt Isaac nudge him, and he came back to the present quickly, noticing that the room had gone quiet. Marla’s eyes were drilling into him. “Excuse me,” he said.
“You with us now?” Marla asked sharply.
“Yes.”
“English or German?”
She was asking what language this day’s discussion would be held in. They had adopted the practice of alternating between the two to strengthen Marla’s command of German and help the others improve their English.
“English,” Franz said, and his heart beat faster as she rewarded him with one of her glorious smiles.
“Good,” she said. “That’s the first thing that’s gone my way today.” She glanced at the door, then back at the others. “We’re going to have guests today. Elizabeth Jordan, one of my former voice teachers, has made contact with a couple of Italians who wish to join us today. One is a musician—a composer, I believe—and the other is a craftsman of some kind. They should be here any...ah, and here they are now.”
The door to the choir room opened, and a short, slightly plump woman entered, followed by a short man in a black cassock. Franz didn’t quite goggle at him, but was taken back a bit. One did not ordinarily expect that mode of dress in Grantville, or at least not in the high school. A Catholic cleric of some kind, obviously.
The third member of the party was somewhat larger, but definitely not of a size to stare Thomas eye to eye. Franz estimated he was about his own height. He moved with some grace, but was obviously not a courtier. He must be the artisan that Marla had mentioned.
“Elizabeth, you’re just in time.” Marla stepped forward and shook hands with her former teacher. “Please, introduce your guests.”
“This is Maestro Giacomo Carissimi and Signor Girolamo Zenti, all the way from Rome.” Each man nodded slightly when his name was called; Carissimi stiffly, as if he wasn’t comfortable, and Zenti with a slight, crooked smile on his face. “The maestro has come in search of knowledge about our music, and Signor Zenti looks for knowledge about musical instruments. When you told me yesterday what you would be discussing today, I knew they would both find it of interest.”
“Thank you for coming,” Marla said, offering her hand. Carissimi hesitated, then reached out and shook it quickly, releasing it at once. Zenti in turn took her hand, and instead of shaking it raised it to his lips. Marla was obviously taken off guard, but kept her composure and retrieved her fingers as soon as he released him.
Marla turned and had the others introduce themselves. As they did so, Franz decided that the maestro was innocuous, but that he could find himself taking a dislike to Zenti without much effort.
Once the introductions were completed, Marla said, “Please be seated where you please. We were about to get started. And please, feel free to speak up at any time. This bunch certainly does.”
With that, she shifted her focus again to Thomas and Hermann, who, despite their verbal combat were sitting next to each other. “You two were arguing about tempering again, weren’t you?” They nodded cheerfully. “And the rest of you,” sweeping a hand motion to include Josef, Rudolf, Leopold and Friedrich, “were kibitzing and cheering them on from the peanut gallery, right?”
Smiles and nods were mixed with confusion over the figure of speech. “Meanwhile, the grinning gargoyle brothers over here”—she pointed to Isaac, who looked offended, and Franz, who just smiled—“were laughing at all of you. And you probably deserved it.”
She sat down at the piano, and placed her hands on top of the cabinet. “I’m tired of all this argument, so I’ve spent the last couple of days researching this issue, and I’m ready to put a stake in it and bury it for good.” The Italians looked very confused, but Elizabeth was whispering to them, explaining Marla’s figure of speech.
As always when she started one of their sessions, Franz was a little nervous for her. He knew her heart, her desire: how she desperately wanted to succeed at this work; wanted to bring the glory of the music she knew to the time she was now in; how she wanted to midwife the birth of a glorious age of music. He knew how hard she studied and prepared. He knew how when she first started her stomach had ached before every class; knew, too, how she had castigated herself after each of those early sessions because she felt she had sounded uncertain and timid rather than assured and self-confident. The fact that he had detected nothing of the kind and repeatedly told her so was no comfort to her. But gradually, as she learned that she could teach them, that she could hold her own in discussions with them, that she could find answers to all their questions, she had indeed found assurance and self-confidence, and their sessions had become the joy that she had so wanted them to be.
Today, however, she was tackling head on an issue that she had been dancing around for weeks, the issue of tunings and tempering systems. If she was feeling nervous, there was no evidence of it in her demeanor. She sat there calmly, smiling slightly, looking cool and collected in front of the eight of them.
“Hermann, how many tempering systems are you aware of?”
He sat in thought for a moment, then said, “The Just and the Pyth...
Pytha...”
“Pythagorean,” Thomas prompted.
“Pythagorean systems,” he muttered under his breath.
“What did you say?” Marla looked at him with her head tilted to one side.
He squirmed a little, then said, “I have trouble wrapping my tongue around that name when I’m speaking good Deutsche. It is even harder with English.”
“Continue.”
“Just, Pythagorean, and Mean are the ones I know of, Fraulein Marla.”
Franz looked at him out of the corner of his eye, checking his attitude, but he seemed totally serious.
“And of those, which are in common use?”
“Only the Mean.”
“Why is that?”
Hermann thought for a moment, wanting to make sure he didn’t trip up, then said, “Because the other two are too limited, are too discordant except in a few keys.”
“Right. But, can’t you say much the same thing for the Mean temperament as well?
Hermann looked stubborn, while Thomas made no attempt to suppress a very wide smile as Marla made his case for him. Franz watched to see how Marla would handle this. He wanted her to do well, to bring Hermann around, because to be the power in music in the USE that he thought she should become, she had to be able to engage the stubborn peers of his musical generation in dialogue, reason with them and eventually bring them to see her positions. Hermann was perhaps her first serious test, as he himself, Friedrich and Thomas had been won over very easily.
“Hermann,” she said, “you have to face the fact that the Mean system works okay with voices, strings and horns, all of which the musicians instinctively tune, usually without even being aware they’re doing it. But with any kind of keyboard, it is just too limiting. You’re basically limited to four or five tonalities, the simpler ones.” She set her hands on the piano keys, saying, “Stay with me, Hermann. We’re going for a ride.”
Marla began playing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Over the simple harmony, she said, “You know this hymn. Even in the time we came from, it’s one of Luther’s most famous works. It’s in our hymnals in the key of C major—no sharps, no flats. Now listen, and listen carefully.”
Franz saw an intent expression come over her face, one that he was coming to know very well. He nudged Isaac, and mouthed to him, “Get ready.”
There was a brief pause, then Marla’s hands began moving swiftly over the piano keyboard. Arpeggios were rolling up from the low end of the keyboard, and over it she began playing the melody and harmony of the old hymn in the traditional 4/4 time. At the end of the verse, she played a transitional phrase which modulated into a sustained chord, then suddenly began playing a light rendition of the song in 3/4 time, almost a dance, in a new key. Again, when she came to the end of the verse she played a transition, this time immediately modulating to a new key where once again she played in 4/4, this time playing the song as a canon of repeating lines over a constant bass note. Another modulation, another style—this time a quiet meditation, almost in the manner of an adagio.
Franz looked at the others, and saw on the faces of the newcomers the stupefaction he had expected. He, Thomas and Friedrich knew Marla’s talent, but this was the first time she had unleashed its full potential before Isaac, Leopold, Hermann and the Tuchman brothers, and they were obviously stunned.
Once again she modulated, this time playing the old hymn in a hammering martial style, at once pompous yet regal. She brought it to a rousing close, playing the last line in a slow ritard that allowed her to alternate chords first in the treble keys, then in the bass, using the sustain pedal to let them ring and create an effect that almost rivaled an organ for richness and sonority. She allowed the final chord to resound in the room, then released the pedal and let the piano action damp the strings.
Franz saw a small smile play about the corners of her mouth as she took in the expressions of the others.
“Okay, guys,” she said, “how many keys did I play in?”
Hermann shook himself, looked at the others, and said, “Five.” They nodded in support.
“And what were they?”
“First was C.”
“Right.”
“Then the next was...G.”
Hermann sounded a little reluctant, and Franz thought he knew why. When Marla smiled, he knew he was right.
“And what is G to C?” Marla asked.
“The dominant,”
“And in the Mean system,” she said, “can those two keys sound consonant in the same piece of music?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, but what about the next keys? Where did I go from G?”
“D?” Hermann sounded a little unsure of himself.
“Yes, D was next. I used an augmented sixth chord for the modulation, so it was a little tricky, but you got it, we landed in D. D is the dominant of G, right?”
Heads nodded all over the room.
“So now we have C, G and D. Is consonance possible in the same piece with those keys? Just possibly,” she answered her own question, “just possibly. But where did we go from there?”
No one ventured a guess.
“Thomas, did you follow?” When he shook his head, she smiled again, and said, “Okay, I’ll have mercy on you. I went from D to A, and ended in E. See the pattern in the modulations? Each time I modulated to the dominant of the previous key. I’ve now got five different keys in this piece, ranging from C major with no sharps or flats to E major with four sharps. Hermann,” she looked at him seriously, “in the Mean system, can I have all five of those keys sound consonant in the same piece of music?”
Franz heard her emphasis, but was glad to note that her tone of voice and her expression were both serious, that there was no sense of mocking or humor. She was treating both the topic and Hermann with respect.
The room was quiet. No one said anything, no one even stirred until Hermann finally sighed, and said, “No, Fraulein Marla, you cannot. Your point is made.”
“But don’t you see, Hermann,” Marla said, “don’t you see that it’s not my point? This is not some dictate that I’m trying to force upon you. It’s not some up-time invention or standard that I’m trying to shove down your throat. The earliest mention I could find for equal temperament goes all the way back to some guy named Grammateus in 1518—that’s over one hundred years before today, for heaven’s sake! Equal temperament was something that generations—your predecessors in music, your peers now, and your successors in music—all worked toward. As composers and performers alike desired more tonal complexity and sophistication in their music, as they experimented and argued amongst themselves and with their patrons, they eventually hammered out a consensus for the equal temperament system.”
Marla looked around at all of them, then said slowly, “And Hermann, it was the Germans who arrived at it first. By 1800, this was the standard in German music. It took the rest of the world at least another fifty years to catch up to you. So you see, I’m not trying to force the stream of music into an unnatural streambed, I’m not trying to force it to flow uphill. Instead, I’m trying to guide you into the natural bed for your stream, but I’m trying to guide you to it now instead of several generations later.”
Hermann muttered again. Franz saw Marla lift an eyebrow, Hermann coughed, and said, “But it still sounds discordant.”
“Of course it does,” Marla laughed. “It’s a result of musical diplomacy. I once heard a definition of diplomacy that goes something like this: diplomacy is the art of leaving all interested parties equally dissatisfied. That’s a perfect definition of equal temperament. All keys are slightly less than consonant, but importantly, all keys are equally dissonant. Once we accept that compromise, then the full artist’s palette of tonalities is available to us.”
Franz smiled at her metaphor.
“Believe me,” Marla added, “I know exactly how discordant equal temperament is. I have absolute perfect pitch, so anything less than pure consonance grates on my ear. But, I will accept the minor discomfort that equal temperament causes in order to play things like this.”
She turned to the piano again, and began a piece in 3/4 time. It lilted and danced, almost like a stream flowing over rocks. The music flowed, with waterfall-like runs in it, broadened out to a more stately theme and treatment, then returned to the original style. Marla’s fingers flew, the tempo ebbed and flowed, and finally began to move faster and faster until it trailed away under the right hand in the high treble keys.
Once again dead silence reigned in the room, until it was broken by a collective sigh from the men. Marla turned to them, and said, “That was the Waltz in C# minor by Frederic Chopin, part of his Opus 64, one of the loveliest piano pieces ever written. The key has four sharps, and it probably couldn’t be played in the Mean system.”
Looking around the room, she asked, “Any questions? Any comments?”
“Excuse me, please, Signorina,” Maestro Carissimi said.
“Yes, sir?”
“I understand what you say, and it makes clear much that I did wonder about. But is there not a...how would you say...along side...”
“Parallel?”
“Yes! Thank you for the word. Is there not parallel issue, one of tuning, of intonation?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Marla said. She pressed a key on the piano, and a tone sounded. “That is an A, the note defined by international agreement to be the tuning standard. And there are machines and tuning forks to exhibit that standard and to measure against. That standard was arrived at almost,” she looked confused for a moment, “well, what would have been almost two hundred fify years from now. But between now and then, tuning was a local matter, usually determined by whoever built the organ in the local church or cathedral.”
“Exactly my point!” said the Italian. “In Italy, the tuning is higher, brighter than in Germanies, but even within a province, is not the same from place to place. Until a standard for all of Europe can be devised, we musicians must still adjust tuning as from place to place we go. Music written for Italian churches transcribed to other keys must be to get same sound in northern German churches, and perhaps the same if northern music to Rome or Naples is brought.”
“And that will change not so quickly,” his companion said. “Musicians—especially Italians—will not like hearing that wrong are their tunings.” There were murmurs of agreement from around the room, and Thomas and Hermann in particular nodded vigorously.
“Well,” Marla said, “at least we all agree that developing a standard tuning is a problem, and that it probably won’t be solved soon. But do you all understand why the equal temperament is so important?”
Heads nodded all around, and “Yes,” was heard from every corner.
Marla looked down at her watch. “Yikes! I didn’t realize it was that late! This is Wednesday night, and I’ve got choir rehearsal at church. Okay, we’ll meet again on Friday here in the school choir room. We’ll finish the discussion we started last time about modes and the changeover to major and minor keys. See you then!” And in a whirlwind, she grabbed her books and was gone. Elizabeth and her guests also rose, made their farewells, and left.
The eight young men sat quietly for a moment, as if drained of energy. Finally, Hermann looked up, and said to Franz, “Now I know what you meant. She is indeed worthy of our respect. It would be an insult to say she does not play like a woman, but when I close my eyes, all I hear is a musician of great skill and talent playing with vigor and authority.”
He sighed. “Forced to discard another preconception. Two in one day. At this rate, in another month she will have me cleaned off like a blank slate, a tabula rasa.”
“Well, I am tempted to ask if that would be such a bad thing.” Thomas grinned, obviously restraining himself from crowing over Marla’s victory. “But instead I will say that you at least had the advantage of knowing her first, and seeing that she did indeed posses some knowledge and skill before she unleashed the full fury of her arsenal on you. Friedrich and I, we were exposed to the full-bore power of her talent within hours of first meeting her.”
“And do not forget the hangovers,” Friedrich interjected.
“Ach, how could I forget? The memory of the thunder in my skull being matched by the thunder of her piano playing still makes me shudder!” Thomas matched actions to words. “Some time, Hermann, have her play for you the “Revolutionary Etude.” Then you will see the full scope of her power, and you will truly understand why I sit at her feet.”
“But she is so young!” Josef said. “How can she be so strong, so assured, so...so...”
“Authoritative?” Thomas supplied.
“Yes, how can she be so authoritative? How can she be like a master at her age?”
Thomas looked to Franz. “How old is she?”
“She recently passed her twenty-first birthday, which is young but not so young. To us, she’s of an age to be a journeyman. To the folk of Grantville, she’s her own woman, to do as she pleases. Most of them know she is talented, but I believe that Master Wendell and perhaps Master Bledsoe are the only ones who truly appreciate her magnitude. Master Wendell says that if not for the Ring of Fire, he thinks she could have been one of the great ones of their time.”
He stood and walked over to look out the window. “She is driven to mastery. Her spirit, her gifts drive her to rise above her origins, her womanhood, to become a master.” He turned to face them. “She will not stop until she is either broken or is acclaimed by all.”
“So if she is of age, why is she not married, as so many of the Grantvillers are?” asked Josef. “She is comely, and seems pleasant enough.”
“Hah!” snorted Rudolf, surprising everyone, since he was the most taciturn individual most of them had ever met and never volunteered anything. “No, thank you. That fraulein has sword steel for a spine, and I suspect she could out-stubborn Gustav Adolf himself. She may be a muse incarnate, a very Calliope...”
“Take care,” Friedrich warned.
“Nevertheless, I fear that most men would desire someone with at least some compliance in her soul. Fraulein Marla may be doomed to a spinster’s life.”
Friedrich and Thomas burst out in uproarious laughter. Friedrich actually slid out of his chair and rolled on the floor. Thomas bent over holding his stomach, howling.
The newcomers all stared, eyes wide and jaws agape. Finally Hermann collected himself. “What is the jest?” he demanded.
Thomas managed, by sheer willpower, to somewhat compose himself. “The jest,” he wheezed, “stands there.” He waved a hand at Franz. Franz waved back, smiling slightly, as Thomas continued. “Our man Franz there woos her.”
“Not just woos,” Friedrich husked, levering himself into a sitting position on the floor. “Not just woos; for he has won her heart.”
The astounded expressions returned, now focused on Franz. He shrugged and said, “ ’Tis true.”
“Then why have you not wed, if you feel thus?” asked Hermann.
Franz lifted his left hand, and everyone sobered. They all knew the story by now. “When I can play again in public, when I can again make my way with my violin, then I will ask her.” The fire in his heart at that moment was a match for Marla’s, and enough of it showed that the others actually sat back a little.
“She assents to this? It seems somewhat unlike her,” said Rudolf.
“She knows. She agrees.”
They all looked at Franz soberly. He bore their gaze calmly, and they all saw the determination in his eyes. Finally Hermann spoke.
“Of all men, Franz, you may be most worthy of Fraulein Marla.”
As the others nodded, Franz said quietly, “ ’Tis the challenge of the rest of my life, Hermann.”
Gigue
Grantville
A few days later
“C’mon in, guys,” Marla said to Franz and Isaac, holding open the door to her Aunt Susan’s house. “The rest of the group is already here.” She led them into the living room, where the only seats left open were the hard wooden chairs that had been brought in from the dining room. The sofa and easy chairs had already been claimed. Thomas, Hermann and the others grinned at them from the soft seats as Marla’s aunt bustled around handing out glasses of apple cider and water. Cookies were evident all around, and Thomas was almost oblivious to their entry as he blissfully devoured a slice of apple pie that must have occupied a quarter of the pie pan it came from.
“Sit down, boys, sit down,” Susan said, as she went by them on her way to the kitchen. She came back out with glasses of ice and pitchers of cider and water and set them down on the coffee table in front of them. “Fill up with whichever you like,” came back over her shoulder as she returned to the kitchen once more.
She reappeared carrying another plate of cookies, which Isaac took from her with alacrity, fending off hands that reached toward it from those who had been there before him.
“Away with you, jackals,” he mock-snarled, holding the plate out of their reach. “ ’Tis bad enough that you usurp the chief places, leaving poor Franz and myself to set our nether portions on the hardest seats. ’Tis not enough that you have already wreaked destruction upon good Frau Garrett’s provisions. But when she takes pity on poor Franz and myself and brings forth the fruits of her labors to revive us, you attempt to acquire them as well. Nay,” he laughed, leaning away from Hermann, “nay, you will not have them. Look to your own!”
“But there are only crumbs here,” Hermann whined.
“Then lick the platters clean,” Franz weighed in, taking a handful of cookies from Isaac’s plate, “for you’ll have none of ours.”
He took a bite, and the expression that came over his face rivaled that on Thomas’, who had finished his pie and was now diligently scraping his plate clean and licking the fork.
Franz stood and bowed to Susan. “Frau Garrett, once again you have demonstrated your command of the baker’s art, and produced what might be a model for the ambrosia of Olympus.”
“Enough of your foolishness, Franz Sylwester,” Susan said, blushing slightly as she wiped her hands on her apron.
Marla’s aunt was indeed one of the best bakers in town, but at this point in the post-Ring of Fire existence of Grantville, she had what some in town considered an unfair advantage. Her husband, Jim, had owned and managed Garrett’s Super Market when the Ring fell. As soon as she had recovered from her shock and thought through the implications of that event, she had marched right down to the store and commandeered all the spices that were left on the shelves. As a result of her foresight and her sparing use of them, she had bottles of cinnamon, nutmeg and other spices hidden away long after most of the other households in town had run out. True, spices were now available from the down-time merchants that serviced Grantville’s economy, but their supplies were low in quantity and erratic in availability, which kept the prices quite high. As a consequence, in the late summer of 1634, if a baking mood settled on her, children from all around could be seen gathered around the screen door to her kitchen inhaling the aromas, and it wasn’t unknown for grown men to plead for the privilege of licking her mixer beaters and bowls.
Franz and Isaac gave testimony to Susan’s skills as they wasted no time in reducing their plate to mere crumbs as well. There was silence as everyone was either chewing or chasing crumbs around their plates, obviously thinking hard about licking them, but resisting the temptation. Finally, Marla stood up.
“Okay, guys, let’s get started. English or German?”
“English,” several voices replied.
“Good,” she said, “because I’m not sure I could discuss today’s topic in German.
“I asked you to meet here today, because I needed access to a good stereo.” She put her hand on a stack of black metal cabinets piled on a small table next to where she stood at the head of the room, and then pointed to some fairly large wooden boxes in the corners of the room. Franz noticed wires running from the metal cabinets to the boxes in the corners, and deduced that they must be some type of the “speakers” that were used elsewhere in Grantville to produce sound and music from the shiny silver discs called CDs. The speakers had the letters “JBL” on an emblem. He wondered what that stood for.
A sad expression crossed Marla’s face, and she said quietly, “This was my brother Paul’s stereo. Before the Ring fell, he spent hours listening to it. This is the first time it’s been hooked up since then.”
She fell silent for several moments, then sighed. The others waited patiently, knowing that her brother, along with her parents, had not been within the radius of the Ring when it fell. Franz in particular knew how hard she had been struck by the knowledge that she would never see them again.
She looked up and, with an obvious effort, said, “Anyway, I want to spend tonight talking about popular music.
“There has always been a difference between the music done for art’s sake, and the music done to please the common man. You know that’s true. The music you create for patrons, and I include the church in that category, is different from the music you create on street corners and in taverns. It may be related—you know as well as I do that melodies from the street and the taverns have a way of sneaking into even the music written for the churches—but there is a definite difference in complexity between the two. The more complex the music grows, the smaller it seems the audience is who can truly appreciate it.
“As I said, this has pretty much always been the case, but until the early 1900s the music of the streets was more of an undercurrent in the stream of music. That changed with the invention of mechanical devices that could record music played in one place onto some kind of medium, such as wax or types of plastic—” They all nodded at the reference to the magic stuff that was so prevalent in Grantville. “—or even the CDs.
“What happened was once the average citizen could own a device that would play whatever music he wanted whenever he wanted it, he began buying the music he liked. That changed the way music was created and performed. By the 1970s, it was becoming difficult for many orchestras to exist, partly because people were buying different music than what the orchestras played, and partly because even the music the orchestras did play could be recorded, bought and played any time.
“The popular music, the outgrowth of the music of the streets, took many forms. Most people would like a few types. Very few people liked them all. But in almost every case, the popular musicians became like heroes, and it became a status symbol to people to have a lot of these recordings. The more you had, especially of rare or new or avant-garde musicians, the more status you had among your friends. By the time I was in high school, a ridiculously large amount of money was being spent every year by people all across our nation to purchase these recordings.
“The styles of music diverged for a while, but inevitably they began influencing each other again, both between different types of popular music and between the popular music and the art music.”
Marla stopped here, took a drink of cider, then picked up a CD and began to turn all the equipment on. “We’re going to listen to a number of different kinds of popular music tonight. Some of it you may like, most of it you will find discordant, some of it you will out and out hate. But this is part of what music was right before the Ring fell.”
* * *
Susan turned back into the kitchen from the door into the living room as music began to flow out of the speakers. She recognized the tune: “The Entertainer,” by Scott Joplin. She was slightly pleased with herself that she knew it...Lord knew that music was not her strength, not like Marla and Paul and their mother Alison. Now that Marla was so involved with this bunch of boys—young men, rather—she had rather the feeling of the duck that had hatched a swan. Marla was growing and stretching her horizons, and Susan could only stand behind her and watch her go. It was good to see her living and laughing again, but it still was a little scary to see her surrounded by these young men all the time, talking about things that Susan didn’t understand. If only John and Alison could have been with her. They would have been so proud of Marla, and Alison at least would have understood her and what was going on.
She dabbed at her eyes with her apron, then muttered, “Standing around leaking tears isn’t going to get the dishes done, silly.” She began running the water in the sink, added the soap, then gathered up the bowls, pans and plates and put them in the sink. As she was turning the water off, the outside screen door opened, and she looked around to see Ingram Bledsoe and Hans Riebeck coming in.
“Sorry we didn’t knock, Susan,” Ingram said, carefully closing the door, “but we didn’t want to disturb anything.”
“That’s all right,” she said, drying her hands on a towel. “You all want some water or cider? I’d offer you some cookies, but those two-legged vacuum cleaners in the other room have already Hoovered up everything I baked today.”
Ingram chuckled, and said, “I’ll take some cider, thank you kindly.”
“I, too, bitte,” Master Riebeck said. His English had rapidly improved since he had first come to Grantville back in March, but he was obviously still thinking in German and translating to English as he spoke. Occasionally, what came out sounded a little odd or stilted to American ears.
In the other room, the music had ceased, and there was a murmur of conversation. Ingram looked that way, then looked back at Susan and said, “How’s she doing?”
She shrugged. “You’re askin’ the wrong person, Ingram. I’m a Linder born, and ain’t no Linders been musicians before Paul and Marla. Grandpa used to say that he was goin’ to sing in Heaven, but it would take Heaven for him to do it. The Linder women all sound like rusty gates, and the men all sound like asthmatic bullfrogs. Even Marla’s older sister Jonni takes after us. No, it was the Easterly blood that brought Paul and Marla their talents.”
She picked up her glass of water and swirled it around. “Alison used to say that her great-grandmother was half Black Irish and half Cherokee and was what the old folks used to call a cunning woman, but that even in her eighties when Alison knew her, she could still sing the birds out of the trees onto her fingers. She said all the talent came from her.”
She raised the glass and swallowed the water. “John was mystified by them two kids,” she continued. “He didn’t understand them at all. Called them his cuckoos sometimes. He was proud of them, though. He’d about bust his suspenders any time that Marla sang, and he just about couldn’t keep his feet on the ground when Paul played that guitar.” She set the glass in the sink, and she stared into the soapy water. “It about killed him when Paul got the cancer. He lost about as much weight watching Paul suffer through the chemotherapy for the leukemia as Paul did. That’s why they weren’t here when the Ring fell...they’d driven Paul to his next treatment. Oh, drat,” she said matter of factly, wiping her eyes with her apron again. “It’s been over three years. You’d think I could talk about them without crying.”
She was surprised when Master Riebeck reached a gnarled hand over and patted her shoulder. “Frau Susan,” he said, “those we love, we love forever, we miss forever. My brother was younger than me. He died years ago. I miss him still.”
“Thanks,” she said softly. “I miss them, I worry about how they felt and how they handled our being gone, but I think the worst is that we don’t know what happened to Paul. Marla had a bad cold, so she’d been sleeping over here for several days so she wouldn’t infect him. She didn’t even get to say goodbye. She took it hard, real hard.”
Ingram nodded in agreement. “The Bible says Hell is a place of fire, but I seem to remember readin’ about some guy who said that there was a place of ice in Hell.”
“Dante Alighieri,” said Master Riebeck.
“Whoever. I could almost believe that, ’cause that’s what Marla was like after the Ring fell,” Susan said. “Her soul was frozen, and she was pure cutting edge. I thank God every night for Franz Sylwester. I mean, I’m sorry he got hurt and all, but I think it was purely the hand of God that brought him to Grantville and to Marla. Whether they marry or not, he’s made her live again, and he’ll always have a place in my heart and my home because of it.”
“Ja, and we say danke Gott for Fraulein Marla, because she gave him life and worth again.”
“Ain’t it funny how God works?” The two men raised their glasses in a toast to that simple truth.
A long moment of quiet followed, and the music from the other room intruded. A man with a silky voice began singing. Ingram raised his eyebrows. “Frank Sinatra? What’s she doing tonight?”
“She said she was going to walk them through one hundred years of popular music tonight.”
“Well, it sounds like she’s only up to about 1940. She’s got a ways to go yet.”
* * *
Franz’s head seemed full to bursting, and he was very glad to hear Marla say, “Okay guys, we’re almost done. Let’s take a quick break, and then we’ll wrap it up with one last song.”
She disappeared down the hallway to the bathroom, and everyone else just seemed to slump in their chairs. Isaac leaned over, rested his elbows on his knees and put his head in his hands.
“Oooh,” he moaned. “My head is spinning. Ragtime, Dixieland, jazz...”
“Southern gospel, black gospel...” Hermann added.
“Blues...” from Leopold.
“Country and western...” Josef and Rudolph said together.
“Rock and roll,” finished Friedrich.
“Louis Armstrong...”
“Glenn Miller...”
“Harry James...”
“Billie Holiday...”
“Frank Sinatra...”
“Elvis Presley...”
“Brubeck...”
“Hank Williams...”
“The Beatles...”
“Johnny Cash!” several voices said at once, and they all started laughing.
After they regained their composure, Friedrich said, “How can so many different styles have developed so quickly? Our music develops slowly, changes slowly. Why did theirs change so rapidly?”
“We’ve already talked about the access to mechanical and electrical systems to play music,” Marla said as she walked back into the room. “Another factor, though, is the changes in the place and authority of the church in society. For most of its existence, the church has been a conservative institution. That can be a good thing, at times. However, it can also be a drawback, for conservative organizations tend to be very slow to change. Ultraconservative organizations actively resist change. Hence the boiling pot of Europe that Luther and Calvin have lit a fire under.”
She moved to the stereo, and continued speaking while she searched for a CD. “One of the areas where the church exerted its control was in the arts. Musical forms changed very slowly over the years. But as a result of the changes that occurred beginning with Luther, the influence of the church—whether Roman, Lutheran or Reformed—over music began to ebb, and musical evolutions began to cycle faster. By the 1800s, musical generations were occurring on a level with human generations. By my lifetime, musical generations were occurring every five to ten years.
“Ah, here it is!” She picked up a CD and turned to them with a smile so filled with mischievous glee that the hair on the back of Franz’s neck prickled.
“Okay, guys, one last style, one last song. I’ve been promising Franz for weeks that I’d explain what ‘heavy metal’ means in our rock and roll music, and tonight’s the night. You’re all along for the ride. The song is ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls.’ ” She loaded the CD player, pushed the play button, and turned the volume up.
Franz leaned back as a bell began to toll out of the speakers, and then the speakers erupted. After his exposure to what the local band Mountaintop played, he could call it music, but it was of a type that even Mountaintop had not produced. The sounds were harsh, discordant, but there was beat, there was rhythm, there was a recognizable harmony. What impressed him the most was the relentlessness of the music. There were lyrics—he heard them—but his whole focus was grabbed by the sounds produced by the musicians.
From the beginning, he was snared by the textures. The sounds that Marla had assured him before were produced by a type of guitar—somehow combined with the miracle of electricity—had an edge to them, and edge that was like both a saw blade that cut and a string of barbed fish hooks that caught and tore. There was no virtuosity, no showcasing of a musician’s skill at ornamentation. There was only pure relentlessness, pure passion, pure drive, that reached deep inside him and struck a resonance that vibrated his entire being. The song was not performed, it was executed, and he was the target of it, caught up in it, feeling nothing but the angst of the music.
After an eternity, the song gradually faded away. Franz fell back in his chair, suddenly released from the tension, feeling more drained than if he had been performing for hours. He looked around, and the others looked even worse than he felt—pale, eyes wide, breathing hard.
Marla looked around, smiling slightly, and asked, “Well, what do you think?”
“I think I’ve heard the triumphal march of Hell,” Hermann muttered. “Nothing could have prepared me for that.”
“Was that really popular in your time?” Leopold asked.
“Oh, yes,” Marla said. “Millions of people, including my brother, loved the stuff. If he had...Let’s just say that his heart’s desire was to play it, and he was well on his way when he got sick.”
“I liked it,” Rudolf said, which provided everyone with their first glimpse of a disconcerted Marla.
“You did?”
“Yes. Oh, do not mistake me! I would not choose it to listen to all day long, nor do I think it will ever be accepted by our people—definitely not by the church. But there was a passion to it, and once you get past the harsh metallic sound you can tell that it was crafted well. We could learn about the use of discord and tension from that music.”
Marla had smiled in the middle of Rudolf’s comments, then started to giggle, and finally started laughing when he was finished. She calmed down quickly, wiping her eyes, and said, “I’m sorry, Rudolf, I wasn’t laughing at you. It’s just that you were righter than you knew when you described the sound as metallic. The band’s name was Metallica.”
“Appropriate.” He smiled in return.
Marla stood and stepped forward a step or two. Franz watched with pride as she effortlessly gathered their eyes and attention.
“There’s a lot more that we could listen to, but the point of the evening was to give you an overview of what we called popular music to wrap up the seminar. Now, we’ve walked down a long road all these weeks, but you’ve been given a taste of what up-time music is like, the sonorities and techniques it can add to your musical palette. I don’t want it to replace everything that you have. I don’t want you to become imitation up-timers. I want you to be the musicians you are, but along the way I want you to incorporate what you find good and worthy from our music. Help preserve its master works, but produce your own as well. Regardless of what happens with the war, regardless of whether Gustavus Adolphus wins or loses, regardless of whether or not Grantville survives, don’t let our music die.”
Franz stared at Marla, standing straight and tall, eyes gleaming like blue torches, passion radiating from her like heat, and his eyes blurred as tears of pride welled up. Now she was coming into her own, now she was calling them, challenging them to follow her, to be more than they ever thought they could be.
Hermann was the first on his feet. He stepped forward, clasped her hand, stared up at her and swore, “By my name, Fraulein Marla, I am with you. If your cause is lost, it will not be for want of my best effort.”
Swiftly the others joined them, hands joined with Marla’s and Hermann’s. “The music of Grantville must not, will not die!” Thomas thundered.
“Amen!”
Coda
Magdeburg
August 1633
Mary Simpson picked the letter up and read it once more.
From the Desk of Marcus Wendell
Dear Mrs. Simpson
I received your request that I come to Magdeburg and become involved in the establishment of an instrumental arts program. While I am very flattered that you think so highly of me, I must regretfully decline.
What you need is a virtuoso, and even in my best days, in my youth, I was never a virtuoso. I am definitely not one now. I am good at what I do, which is take children and turn them into well-rounded educated individuals who know something about the arts and music. Every few years, I am fortunate enough to have a student or two of sufficient talent that I can guide them into a life of music as a teacher or minor performer. But that experience does not equip me to do the work you are asking of me. Bluntly speaking, I have neither the temperament nor the tools to be what you are seeking.
Having turned you down for myself, however, now let me provide you with another possibility. I don’t happen to have a virtuoso in my pocket, but I perhaps can point you to someone who can become a virtuoso.
Her name is Kristen Marlena Linder, although she prefers to go by Marla. She’s young, about 21. Physically, she’s rather striking. I wouldn’t call her pretty—handsome is a better word. She’s tall by our standards, about 5'10" or so, and she has that amazing Black Irish coloration that you sometimes see in the Appalachian hill families: coal black hair, skin so pale it’s almost translucent, a dusting of freckles, and the bluest of eyes. There were girls in her class at school who were prettier, but if she was in the room, most of the boys preferred to talk to her. Marla is definitely a good example of that old cliché, the magnetic personality. And if she smiles, it’s like switching on a floodlamp.
She was a senior the year of the Ring of Fire, almost ready to graduate. Musically, she was my drum major during marching season that year, and my student conductor and first chair flute player during concert season, but that’s not why I’m bringing her to your attention. She is also an extremely talented pianist, easily the equal of many collegiate piano majors. But perhaps her greatest gift is as a vocalist. She can vocalize to about four and one-half octaves, maybe a little more, and has a usable range of almost four octaves. Her voice is unusual—she has the high range of a coloratura, but the timbre and power of a lyric soprano.
As an indication of just how good she is, the day before the Ring fell I heard from a college friend who is the brother of a woman on the faculty at Eastman School of Music in New York. He told me that Eastman was going to offer her a full scholarship in voice. She had scholarship offers from other universities, but as you know, Eastman is a conservatory to rank with Juilliard. The official notice never arrived, of course. I never had the heart to tell her, because she was pretty badly torn up by losing her parents and brother, and this would have made her grief just that much worse.
She finally came out of her shell after meeting some down-time musicians this year, and for the last several months has been leading what I would consider to be a graduate level multidiscipline seminar in music history, form and analysis, and piano and voice performance with several down-timers using nothing more than a couple of old college textbooks, encyclopedia entries and liner notes from classical music recordings. They’re all young and arrogant, of course, but she has not only held her own with them, she’s earned their respect, to the point that they have basically accepted her as their leader and mentor. I don’t have to tell you just how unusual that would be in our time that was. I am almost in awe of it now.
Mrs. Simpson, if a music teacher in my position is very fortunate, perhaps once in his lifetime he finds a student who can soar to the highest heights, who can become one of the stars in the musical firmament. For me, that once-in-a-lifetime student is Marla Linder.
Allow me to present Marla to you as a virtuoso in development. I believe she is the best solution available for the situation you have described. I also believe that if you were to provide to her the guidance that I cannot, the guidance on how to be a virtuoso among virtuosi, then her potential will be realized, to the enrichment of the world we now live in and the joy of those who know her.
Sincerely,
Marcus Wendell
Mary put the letter down on her desk, and tapped her finger against her lips, thinking. Marla...a woman...She must be a truly remarkable young woman, to have brought forth such a paean from Marcus Wendell. She hadn’t had much contact with the band director during the Simpson’s relatively short stay in Grantville, but he had impressed her as a direct, outspoken man who would usually call a spade a spade. If he judged her so, then she must be good.
One of the things that Mary had been wrestling with was how to get up-time music somehow disseminated among the down-timers. That was the cornerstone to the plans she was even now trying to formulate for building an arts program in Magdeburg. An imperial capital deserved the best: opera, ballet, a symphony. Spreading the musical knowledge that she knew was available in Grantville had to happen for any of those programs to be sustainable.
The irony did not escape Mary that, even as she struggled with how to begin such a process, it had happened without her. With a quirky smile, she reminded herself that the world did not revolve around her. In fact, she’d best pull up her stockings and hustle if she wanted to guide this particular parade.
Mary reread the portion of the letter where Marcus described what Marla had done. A bond between an up-timer and down-timers, based on nothing more than the common love of great music. How remarkable.
Marla...a woman...Her thoughts repeated themselves. Mary liked the thought. She had never considered herself a feminist. In her college days, she had known plenty of fem-libbers. Some of them had become very impressive women in their maturity—she’d allow, albeit a bit grudgingly, that Melissa Mailey was no one to sneer at. But many had later morphed into the types who seemed to do nothing but whine endlessly, fund litigations over every perceived slight, and extend “political correctness” into even trying to revise the Bible to remove gender references to God. She’d never had much sympathy for them.
On the other hand, she had quietly encouraged John to ensure equal pay for equal work in his industrial plants. She’d always been of the opinion that if they were given a level playing field, women of any ability would do well.
Mary laughed to herself, almost wishing that one of those so-called radicals had been caught in the Ring of Fire. That would almost have made what had happened worth it, to see one of them caught up in the truly patriarchal societies of the seventeenth century. She would really have enjoyed seeing one of them square off against some of the down-time ministers. Melissa Mailey could stand her own against them, certainly, but most of the ones Mary had known in college would just run for cover.
Shaking her head, Mary returned to her thoughts about Marla. The more she thought about it, the more she liked the fact that a young woman had become the center around which this group revolved. Under her aegis, perhaps this young woman could serve as a dash of cold water in the face of the smug musicians she’d met so far, the ones who were just parasites on the coats of the Hoch-Adel.
There had been conflicts between up- and down-timers on many fronts. In the early days of the naval yard, John had more than once spent an evening raving about problems caused by hard-headed Grantvillers and hard-headed Germans both getting wrapped up in their pride and arrogance. She didn’t delude herself that it would be any different between the court musicians and Marla and her young lions. But the fact that Marla was a woman would perhaps keep the “old school” off balance.
She sat up straight. Decision made—invite Marla here. Why not? If she was that good, she was worth bringing in as a performer. If she could in time become something more than that, well...
Telegram? No, too impersonal. This needed a human touch. She pulled open a drawer and took out a sheet of cream-colored paper—they did make such nice paper here-and-now—and uncapped her fountain pen.
Dear Miss Linder,
My name is Mary Simpson, and I am writing to offer you an opportunity...