1635: Music and Murder Read Free Page A

brought from the future.
    This next part is for Anna. I was in Herr Bledsoe's workshop one day when I made the mistake of saying that women had no strength for music.
    Memory again.
    Marla looked at him, eyes narrowed, and said quietly, "Is that so?"
    He knew her well enough now to recognize the warning signs, and said, "Well, so my masters taught me."
    "Your masters were fools, but I don't expect you'll take my word for it. Tomorrow is the town Christmas Party. There will be a concert in the Methodist church. You be there," and she turned and stalked out. He turned and looked at Ingram. "Did I say something wrong?"
    Ingram just laughed, and said, "Yep, you did. I'd be there tomorrow, if I were you."
    Knowing what was good for him, he went to the concert. Once again, Grantville shocked him, and he spent most of the concert in a daze. First of all, over half of the choir of almost sixty people was women. And Marla was among them. Second, the player at the piano was another woman. Third, they were good. The women's voices had a range and a power and a timbre that the boys' voices he was used to hearing on soprano and alto simply could not possess. And the pianist was extremely accomplished, demonstrating to him the power of that instrument as well.
    There came a point where Marla stepped out from the choir, and nodded to the pianist, who began a quiet introduction. The epiphany came when Marla began to sing.
    "Ave, Maria . . . "
    As she sang that beautiful melody, he was transported to another realm, lifting on the effortless soaring of what seemed to be the voice of a very angel from God. He closed his eyes, drinking in the splendor with his ears, seeming to rise out of his body while she sang. When the beautiful song came to a close, he was the first one on his feet, clapping with all his might, tears pouring down his face.
    Anna, you were right all along. Women can be musicians, professional musicians, and can be just as good as any man. Marla is the proof of it. I grovel at your feet, as I groveled abjectly at hers after the concert.
    Friedrich, there is more knowledge of music in Grantville than there is in all the courts and chapels of Europe combined! Knowledge of our music and its past and what music had grown into in their time. Master Wendell and Marla have shown me that within our generation the center of music moved north from Italy to Germany, and that Germany remained the center of the greatest music for almost two hundred years. They have devices that play music with no musicians (they say it is not magic, just superior mechanical arts), and I have heard the music of Bach, Brahms, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, and so many others. I know those names mean nothing to you now, but they are giants, Friedrich, giants. There is so much here, so much to feed on. But it rests on such a slender reed.
    One last memory unrolled. Marla turned off the device that had just finished playing Die Kunst der Fuge by Johann Sebastian Bach, and waited with Marcus Wendell while he returned from the heights that the order, structure and innovation of the masterwork had transported him to.
    "I seem to spend much time crying around you," he muttered, wiping his eyes with his sleeves. "Very unmanly."
    She shook her head, and said quietly, "To me it's a mark of how great a heart you have for music, that you can be so touched by the greatest."
    "This Bach, this master of contrapuntal art, he was born when?"
    "He was . . . will be . . . that is, 1685, I think. He's the beginning of the German era of great musicians."
    He sat with brow furrowed, thinking intently, and finally looked up. "Marla, this butterfly effect you explained to me . . . how because you exist here, now, that ripples of change have begun and that the future you knew will never happen, people will never be born . . . "
    "Yes?"
    "Is that true of Johann Sebastian Bach?"
    Sudden sucking of air, twin expressions of horror on Marla's and Marcus's faces, twin